Fox was going to see his mother.
He always found out on short notice when she was working in the vicinity of Westport. If Fox wasn’t on the water, he always jumped, because he never knew when she’d be back again. He’d definitely been a little disappointed when Charlene called to say she’d be in Hoquiam for the night, because going to see his mother meant he wouldn’t be home with Hannah.
Hannah, who had slept in his bed last night, her tight little butt in his lap for a good two hours somewhere in the middle of it all. She’d barely walked out his front door this morning before he rolled onto his back, gripped his cock, and came after six strokes. Six. It usually took him a good five minutes, at least. He’d thought of Hannah during every one of those six strokes. Same way he had every time since last summer. Only now, she wasn’t just the girl he couldn’t stop thinking about. She was the girl who flat-out refused to fuck him.
And goddammit. Now she walked into the apartment, clothes damp and clingy from the rain, and there he went, thinking about being inside her again. Picturing her bowed back, her mouth open on a cry of his name, the slap of flesh on flesh. Stop it, you bastard.
Until recently, Fox had never fantasized about anyone specific while beating off.
A body was just a body.
But in his fantasies with Hannah, their minds were in sync as well as their physical selves. They laughed as often as they moaned. Even thinking of their fingers gripped together, the trust in her eyes, added to the insane pleasure. Imagining himself inside Hannah felt great. Better than great. His orgasms were more satisfying by leaps and bounds.
And that scared the holy shit out of him.
Fox was distracted from his troubling thoughts when Hannah stopped short just inside the door, framed in the lazy rainstorm, her face going from thoughtful to dismayed. Sad, even? “Oh,” she said, giving him a once-over. “Oh.”
He tried valiantly to ignore the pounding in his chest. Jesus, it got louder and harder to manage every time they were in the same room. For the longest time, he’d thought if they just slept together, it would go away. This twisting, hot, melting, spearing sensation she inspired in him with a blink of her eyes. He’d feel shitty afterward for jeopardizing their friendship, but at least it would be over and he could stop obsessing about her so much. Now he was beginning to seriously doubt anything would work.
“Hello to you, too,” he said, voice sounding strained.
“Sorry, I just didn’t expect— I . . .” She dropped the bag she was holding underneath her arm, jolted, then stooped down to pick it up. “You’re going on one.”
Fox frowned. “Going on one what?”
“Going out.” She stood slowly, holding the bag to her chest, eyes big and trained on him. “Going out on a date.”
Understanding dawned.
And then he saw her demeanor for what it was. This assumption that he was going on a date had thrown her big-time. Honestly, part of him wanted to shake her and say, Now you know how I feel sending you off to your director every morning. But what would that argument make them? A couple?
They weren’t. She lived in a different state and was actively pining for someone else. All he had to offer was a notched-up bedpost and the mockery that came along with it. Potentially for both of them. A relationship between them wasn’t happening, despite her obvious disappointment that he could be going on a date. And so for a split second, Fox considered letting Hannah believe he was going to meet someone else. Maybe it would put an end to whatever was happening between them. They shouldn’t be sleeping in the same bed, shouldn’t be telling each other deep, dark secrets. Look where it led. Jealousy. Longing that made him want to carry her back into his bedroom, wrap himself in her goodness, and feel normal again. She was the only person who made him normal. Made him . . . okay.
In the end, Fox couldn’t force himself to do it. He couldn’t let her think for a second that he’d rather spend his time with anyone else. It would have haunted him. “My mother is in town,” he said, relief coating his stomach when he saw hers. “Well, she’s in Hoquiam—tonight only. About forty minutes from here. That’s where I’m going. To see her.”
Her shoulders relaxed. It took her a moment to respond. “Why tonight only?”
Fox’s lips edged up into a half smile. “She’s a traveling bingo caller. Goes up and down the coast running bingo nights at various churches and rest homes.”
“Oh . . . wow. I did not expect you to say that.” Amusement danced behind her features. “Are you going to play bingo?”
“Sometimes I do. But mostly I help with crowd control.”
“You have to keep control of the bingo crowd?”
“Freckles, you have no idea.”
Glancing down at the bag in her hand, her smile turned into a curious one, a line appearing between her brows. “Fox”—she seemed to scrutinize him—“do you have a record player?”
Too late, he recognized the brown paper bag stamped with the purple logo for Disc N Dat and his gut seized. Of course she’d gone there. Why wouldn’t she visit at least once? It had been shortsighted of him to buy his records there when she could so easily find out he’d been to the shop. “Do I have a record player?”
Hannah raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I just asked you.”
“I heard.”
Her chest rose and fell. “You do have one.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Hannah.”
But she was already striding forward, on a mission, making panic sink like an anchor in his belly. Hiding the record player and albums from her had been selfish. He’d felt selfish so many times. But he’d bought the fucking thing for reasons he didn’t know how to express out loud. A gut-born need to be what she wanted.
And Hannah . . . she would make him admit to it.
On her way past Fox, she set her paper bag down on the kitchen table and circled the room, her gaze finally landing on his locked cabinet. “Is she in there?”
Fox gulped. “Yes.”
Hannah made a wounded sound, pressing a hand to the center of her chest.
This was it. No escaping what came next. With the discovery of the record player locked up in the cabinet, she was going to know how often he thought of her. She’d know the best parts of his days were her text messages before bed. She’d know his hands shook with the need to touch her when she was in the shower. That he could no longer look at other women, and his existence had become undeniably priestly. That all day long, her words from this morning had rung in his head, packing his chest tight with some unnamed emotion.
I’m just going to tell you that . . . I’ll be back tonight and that you’re really important to me.
Hannah remained silent so long, chewing on that full lower lip, he wondered if she was going to say anything at all. She seemed almost conflicted. What was she thinking?
“All this time, Fox? Really?” Her voice turned into a hushed whisper, and his pulse started to hammer against his eardrums. “I’ve been listening to music on my phone for no reason?”
Fox’s breath released slowly, relief warring with . . . disappointment?
No. That couldn’t be right.
Either she was letting him off the hook . . . or she didn’t realize the significance of him buying the record player. To be close to her. To have a connection to that day they’d spent together in Seattle when he’d felt human and heard for the first time in as long as he could remember. To be the man she imagined herself with. “I was . . . saving it as a surprise,” Fox said, reaching behind the cabinet for the leather pouch and removing the key, highly aware of how odd and telling it was that he’d hidden the damn thing. Beginning to sweat, he turned it in the lock. “Thought I’d break it out if you had a bad day at work, you know?”
His eyes closed when she hummed. From right behind him. She was so close he could almost feel the vibration on the back of his neck, his every hair follicle waking up. God, he wanted to touch and taste her so bad. Would get down on his knees if she batted her eyelashes. There was no denying the undercurrents between them—her distraught reaction to him going on a date spoke volumes. But he forced himself to accept what she was offering him, instead. Friendship.
Hannah knew it couldn’t work between them. She knew it as well as he did, and she was saving them when he wasn’t strong enough to do it. Maybe it would eventually get easier to keep his hands to himself. If he got friendship with Hannah out of the bargain, he had no choice but to be grateful.
Fox unlocked the cabinet and stepped back, absorbing her expression like a dry sponge dropped into the ocean.
When her face transformed with delight, he wanted to kick himself for not showing her sooner. “Oh. A Fluance.” She ran her finger along the smooth edge. “Fox, she’s beautiful. Are you taking good care of her?”
His lips twitched. “Yes, Hannah.”
She stepped back and tilted her head, looking at it from a different angle. Released a happy sigh. “This is such a perfect choice for you, too. The wood chassis reminds me of the deck of a ship.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” he said, honestly. The validation she always seemed to give so effortlessly pushed him to open the cabinet beneath, revealing the neat row of records he’d collected over the last seven months. He laughed at her strangled gasp. “Go ahead. Play something.”
She spoke with quiet reverence, bending forward to peruse the selection of everything from metal to blues to alternative. “Please. I’m going to be playing something all night while you’re gone.”
“No, you won’t, because you’re coming with me.”
He didn’t think there was anything that could compete with the records, but Hannah’s eyes zipped to his with that pronouncement, and they stared at each other in the ensuing silence. Did he plan on inviting Hannah to come meet his mother? No. No, it shouldn’t even have occurred to him. Introducing a girl to Charlene? Pigs must have been flying. But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he couldn’t imagine the night any other way. Of course she was coming with him. Of course.
“Who am I to turn down a bingo game so rowdy it needs crowd control?” she asked, breathless, her cheeks ever so slightly pink—and he had to restrain himself from kissing them. From tracing his lips down to her flushed neck and worshiping it until her panties were soaked. “Let me go change.”
“Yeah,” he said thickly, stuffing his fists into the pockets of his jeans.
Hannah was almost to her room when she stopped and jogged back to the turntable, pulling a Ray LaMontagne album out carefully and settling the needle on the first track, her lips curling happily at the first crackle. “For atmosphere,” she explained, eyes twinkling.
Then she fluttered back to her room, leaving Fox staring after her with his heart clogging his throat.
Phew. That had been a close one.
