No Weddings (No Weddings #1)(32)
“What?” She cocked her head, gazing at me from the bed.
We’d been holding back around each other, not quite breaching the distance to get closer. No further serious talks had occurred, only an occasional contemplative glance, like we kept gauging the probability of success if we finally connected on a deeper level.
Well acquainted with the risk-versus-reward model, I understood the wise hesitation on both our parts. The reward didn’t hold us back; in fact, it beckoned me in a way nothing else had in the last two years. We both knew we risked a great deal in going for more.
In my twenty-four years of life, I’d never once had a platonic female friend outside of my sisters. No woman had ever had the depth or capacity to want a friendship with me.
Until now.
In the company of the guys and privately on a dock on a cold, bitter night, a girl I’d never seen coming, one I’d never thought existed beneath her ice-queen mask, had breached my outer defenses. Unaware of the danger, I’d let someone unexpected into my heart. And it scared the f*ck out of me to lose the ground we’d gained, but the temptation of an even greater possibility kept gnawing at me.
“Let’s do your place tomorrow.” I leaned forward, holding my breath.
I didn’t know where it came from. Probably, I knew something had to change, and maybe throwing the ball into her territory would shake things up, but I could no longer remain Switzerland here. I knew she might hesitate. The heaviness of privacy would shift everything for us.
No longer on neutral ground at her cupcake shop, and no longer in the mixed company of the guys, our dance would finally escalate.
“Okay.” Her voice was quiet, but sure.
“Yeah?”
Her smile appeared. “Yeah. You can do my place tomorrow...”
I swallowed hard.
Her tone had gone soft, sultry. I didn’t need my phone and the text box to know three little dots were there. I’d heard them, as if she’d typed them oh so slowly: dot, dot, dot.
“Fuck, yeah!” I launched from the chair and jumped on the bed beside her, causing her body to bounce high before settling.
She burst out laughing.
No, I’d been wrong.
Before, we hadn’t been dancing with one another without touching; we’d been circling, hesitating, not quite flowing into the same rhythm.
I leaned over, brushing the hair off her face, noticing that the gold flecks in her hazel eyes sparkled more brilliantly. “I have something very serious to ask you.”
She stared up at me, implicitly trusting.
I waited a beat. “What’s your business forecast?”
With a shove, she pushed me over, laughing. I shifted the conversation to true business, planning to strategize a personal plan later.
In deciding to take the next step and spend more intimate time together, now we danced with each other. And my partner deserved my undivided attention.
When you watch the glassy surface of a lake, pay closer attention. Much more happens beneath that calm than meets the eye. Having buried secrets deep beneath a collected exterior myself, I should’ve known the phenomenon better than anyone, and yet, I’d been blindsided by the depth of Hannah’s.
Although it was still early to understand all that made her tick, knowing she was a fellow casualty on love’s battlefield with deep wounds under her scars, I understood enough. The details of her trauma weren’t important at this stage.
Hannah lived on a manicured street in an older part of town. Pride of ownership from people who’d lived there for decades showed in personal touches, like potted plants lining brick walkways and park benches beneath oak trees. But many also lived behind stone walls and down long driveways, which lent the neighborhood a feel that was, at once, both welcoming and private.
I rode into her driveway through a gate she’d left open in the middle of a classic white picket fence. Snowflakes fell from a darkening sky onto the gray cobblestones of her single driveway.
Her ivory house was more of a cottage, dark green shutters banking two small windows on either side of a natural wood front door. A red brick chimney rose above a gray-shingled roof, its spiraling column of smoke mixing into the clouds above.
Grabbing the now-damp brown paper bag that I’d secured to the seat behind me with a bungee cord, I glanced down the street. Lights were on in almost all of the windows. Three houses down, a four-door BMW turned, pulling into a leaf-littered driveway. The house across the street still had colored Christmas lights glowing from the eaves.
Knowing where Hannah came home to every night after she closed up shop filled me with a sense of peace, calming an unease I hadn’t known was there until that very moment. She lived in the middle of a sedate suburban neighborhood. Absent an alarm system, barking dogs, and a two-man security detail armed with semiautomatic weapons to protect her, I couldn’t imagine Hannah in a better place.
I climbed the two brick steps to her square landing and knocked on the door. It opened seconds later to her beaming smile and a blast of scents that made my mouth instantly water.
“Hey, Cade!” Before I was able to step inside, she embraced me in a full hug—our first. I held her tight, inhaling her tropical scent as I relished the full-body contact.
Although the hug didn’t mean much on the outside—it was a common way of greeting, after all—and it paled in comparison to our embrace that night on Kristen’s dock, it still meant a great deal to me for Hannah to offer.