No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(31)
“Of course, I also think it’s not all pretty ponies and fairy tales. Real love is messy. It’s fights, but more about the making up. It’s pulling apart to find our own paths, but running together and holding on tight, refusing to let go. Love is the calm in the middle of the storm.”
Hannah painted the world beautiful in a way I hadn’t expected. In a way I related to. Casting a jumble of pieces into complete disarray, she reassembled it into a whole new perspective. Life didn’t have to be good or bad. We didn’t have only one predestined road to follow. Life existed not in the black and white, but in the gray.
The realist in me knew that. My business mind had embraced the notion without ever giving it a second thought. Failure in business was not an option, it was only a learning point—a means to succeed, part of living in the gray.
Why was I so black and white when it came to my heart?
As I sat there, held by someone who had been there and survived, I remembered why. And accepted it. I’d buried my emotions behind a wall of steel because I hadn’t been ready. I didn’t want to trust that it would never happen again.
And…it had hurt like a motherf*cking bitch.
Dinner at my place had turned into something more than just dinner at my place.
Ever dance with someone without touching?
Neither had I.
Until Hannah.
Nothing more of any emotional importance had been said on the dock that night. We’d been tapped out and retreated to our separate mental corners.
Our dinner and business-study arrangement had continued at my house the next few times, a comfortable routine that I’d begun to look forward to. I liked having her in my house, in my kitchen that she seemed to come alive in, that she commanded with expert grace.
The guys grilled me for the dinner schedule, rearranging plans if anything conflicted. They wanted to make sure they were present for any meal she cooked. And it wasn’t only about the food. Her clever wit and jibes kept us on our toes. What I’d once thought was her ice-queen demeanor seemed to be transforming, in part, into a wicked sense of humor.
“I don’t know, Mase. What’s wrong with your hair?” She peered over her glass of the chardonnay she’d brought to pair with the fish, an entrée she’d prepared and we’d decimated.
I glanced at Mase. His mop had grown to a whole new level of ragged, hanging past his brows, spiked ends shadowing his eyes. Laura hated it and kept harping at him about it.
Which made the defiant guy only want to grow it longer. “Laura seems to like it just fine when fisting her hands into it.” He smirked.
“That why you’re growing it out? Giving her handlebars to hold on to for the ride?” Hannah arched a brow, fighting a smile.
Mase blinked and his focus fuzzed out, like he imagined Laura riding him in pornographic detail. I tossed a dinner roll at him, and we all busted up, laughing.
No other girls were allowed at these sacred dinners. We hadn’t outright discussed the subject, but in unwritten guy code, we wanted Hannah all to ourselves. She’d become one of us with her raunchy banter and fearlessness. She was ours. And we didn’t want to share.
When dinner wound down, Ben and Mase happily cleaned up the mess. We went back to my room, which had slowly gotten cleaner as her visits continued. Each time, her attention strayed to the new details, but she never said anything. And although I hadn’t felt the need to become a total neat freak (my OCD tendencies didn’t go that far), a little tidying seemed the least I could do for her caving and coming to my place all the time.
And just like the first time, and the handful of nights since then, I took the chair by the desk, giving her space on my bed. It had become her territory.
The bedding had also been completely redone. I never wanted her to hesitate with touching my pillow, or anything else of mine, again.
A complete one-eighty from the stark black sheets and comforter that had once covered the bed, I’d had the sales girl pick something less “sex god” and more “safe study zone” while emphasizing no flowers or patterns of any kind. I had no idea how people relaxed with all that blaring visual noise surrounding them, eyes closed or not.
Hannah threw her body into the center of the organic, beige duvet cover (the sales girl had raked me over the coals, insisting it was the safest fabric to cover my new down duvet). Yep, I now own something called a duvet. Four new organic pillows rested against the headboard, covered in pillowcases that were a pale green—“celery,” if I remembered the sales girl correctly.
None of the sales pitch had made any difference to me, though. All that mattered was Hannah had made herself comfortable there. Sure, upon discovering the bedding makeover on her second visit, she’d cocked a questioning brow at me. But I’d simply shrugged and cited a long overdue need to replace threadbare sheets, which had been true, even if not the sole reason.
She glanced up at me, waiting, with a huge smile on a face that had grown more beautiful every time I saw it.
Since that night on the dock, we’d gone back to our old routine: my teasing her from her front lobby, her catching me off guard with a heated stare, even if she was speckled with bits of frosting. She’d stopped going through the effort of wearing high heels and skirts, which was fine with me, because it didn’t matter what she wore—the girl beneath the clothing made my pulse catch fire.