“You didn’t. I just… Sometimes it’s hard to explain how I feel, even to myself.”
His hand traveled from my ring, up my arm, under the sleeve of his shirt I was wearing, and back down. His other hand found the hem of the T-shirt, sliding underneath it, running over my stomach. Flickering lights surrounded me at his touch, pushing everything aside but him and me and the pulse that quickened the blood flowing through my veins.
“I don’t want you to not talk about him around me,” he said quietly.
I gulped on the wave of physical and emotional pain that filled me.
“Thank you for saying that.”
“I can’t be him…” His words slid away before continuing. “I don’t want to be him. But I do want to matter to you and Hannah. I want…to be yours.”
Hannah’s words filled my head—Grams bringing Brady to us to make sure we didn’t feel so sad anymore. Maybe my dead husband and grandmother had both conspired to make this happen. Me. Brady. Someone who could understand Hannah and the music inside her. Someone who understood the need to create inside me.
“I think we’d really like that,” I said. Then, I lost myself to his kisses and his touch. The kind full of want and need and hope and futures. Ones that made me forget I was once filled with loss. Ones that seemed to increase the size of my heart so I didn’t have to carve Darren out of it to fit Brady in, but so I could fit them both.
This was another beautiful moment that needed to be lived fully. Remembered.
I turned in his arms, straddling him, our kisses increasing the pace at which our hearts beat. Our bodies aligning through the clothes in a perfectly glorious way. Our touch flowing over the top and underneath the material like pubescent teens, seeking a relief that wouldn’t come from bodies fully clothed.
He groaned, deep and guttural, and I felt it all the way down into the depths of me as my hips skated over his jeans, the sweats doing very little to hide the hardness of him pressing against his zipper.
He slid a hand inside the waistline of the sweats, floating gently over my hips and finding my heat and curling into me. I gasped, eyes opening to meet his brown ones, concern filling them as if he had taken things one step too far, and his hand stilled.
“Don’t you dare stop,” I said softly, reassuring him and me at the same time.
I could do this. I needed this. I needed him.
He smiled that wide Brady smile, wicked and charming all at once, knocking me out of myself. Knocking me out of my mind that thought too much so I was left with just my artist brain, simply feeling with my soul. Feeling every plunge of his graceful fingers. Feeling every hopeful emotion pouring from him. I came hard, my body quivering and gasping while my heart marched one step closer to his.
???
My phone buzzed on the nightstand by the bed in Brady’s room. Hannah was passed out next to me, arms and legs flung in every direction. Lying in his bed only brought back thoughts of his touch and the make-out session on his couch.
I’d tried to return the favor of the orgasm he’d given me only to have him pull me away, saying, “If you touch me, I’m going to be so loud that not only will Hannah hear, but so will every single one of those media hounds outside.”
It had sent more thrills of desire over me. The knowledge that he’d be loud while we made love, and that I’d be the one to make him do so. It felt intoxicating and foreign. Doors I’d closed finding their way open again.
The phone vibrated again, and I grabbed it before it could wake Hannah.
STACY: Are you okay? I tried to see you, but the security team was all over your house and said you weren’t there.
Well, hell. What was the right answer to that? We’d talked the day before in the middle of game day with Brady’s family, so she knew where we were and what had happened.
ME: I’m at Brady’s.
I could imagine the mischievous look in her eye over that fact.
STACY: Well. Um. Wow.
ME: Get your mind out of the gutter, lady.
I responded before she could say anything else.
ME: They weren’t done installing the alarm. Hannah and I slept in his bed. He slept on the couch. I’m hoping we’ll be able to go back to the store and our house today.
STACY: The news vans were still staked out at both places.
I groaned. A week. Marco had said it would take a week for things to cool down, and Brady had agreed. On the one hand, I didn’t think I wanted the store to be closed for that long, but on the other hand, it wasn’t like the tiny bit of money I’d bring in over the course of a few days was going to pay off the loan and saveLa Musicafrom William Chan’s grubby hands.
