Her Shadows, His Secrets

Looking at his watch, he suddenly rushes. Grabbing my throat, he kisses me and hurries out. “You only have an hour though or we will miss it. Hurry up, greens! I’ll be back in one hour!” he hollers as he runs down the hall and descends the stairs.

Left stunned and slightly disappointed, I stay in a standstill for a moment.

“You can’t love him. He isn’t capable of it. And your heart can’t take another blow,” I say into the nothing. The empty room. Me, my heartbreak, and the realization that I crossed a line. I fell in love with a man who was supposed to be nothing but a fling. I fucked up.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THEO

I put on jeans, brown boots, a black long-sleeved shirt, and a flat-bill hat. Grabbing my jacket, I hurry out the door with a cooler in my hand and my keys and phone in the other. I lock up the house and rush to the truck, the sun almost completely gone.

Starting the truck and heading to the store, I think about Hanna then. I can’t believe I told her that story. No one knows that side of the story. Not Brenda, not my parents, no one. They know I lost a friend, and that’s it. Not that I feel guilty and live with it daily.

But Hanna does something to me. She makes me feel like I have a safe place to talk, and I hate that. I’m not a man who needs safe places or confidants who I can lean on. But with Hanna, I saw pain, and I needed her to know she wasn’t alone. I had to take on her pain and share mine so she didn’t feel lost.

The constant pull in my head and that damn thing in my chest is exhausting. Love is a strong word, and that’s all it’s ever been to me—a word. I couldn’t know it as anything else, because I never felt a romantic type of love. So I can’t say that’s what’s happening here. That’s something I cling to, my last bit of sanity and little piece of hope left that I didn’t fuck up.

Hanna happened, and she happened fast. I couldn’t put an end to it. And now I wish I could draw up a wall so high neither she nor I could climb it or break through it. This is a dangerous game, and at first, when I started it, I didn’t think it would get to this place, but the moving pieces made all the wrong moves, and now I’m fighting what I’m feeling.

I have to stop thinking about this. I pull up to the store and run in to grab the items I need. Wine, cheese, strawberries, some chocolate syrup, candles, and a lighter. I grabbed a blanket and some pillows back at the house but forgot the lighter and candles.

The clerk at the cashier stand gives me a look that tells me she knows that tonight is going to be eventful. She isn’t wrong, but it isn’t just going to be mind-blowing sex. I have plans to be a softer man tonight. Hanna had the worst day, and I feel the need to give her something other than mind-numbing orgasms. Though those will definitely help.

“Have fun,” she says as a send-off, and I have to hide my shock. She really has no shame. Hurrying to the truck, I climb in, put the items in the back seat, and get to Hanna’s house in less than five minutes. When I pull up, I park the truck but leave it running. It’s a summer night, so it’s hot out. I want to keep the truck cool.

I get to the door and knock. I would walk in, but I locked the knob before I left. A minute later, the door opens, and I’m nearly knocked on my ass. Her hair is curled and falling all around her, and she has her makeup done in some smoky eye thing, and it makes her green eyes pop.

She looks dangerous. The best kind. But the red dress she wears and the shoes are what get me. I can’t explain it, but the fabric on her body is hanging on her shoulders by thin straps and drops into a deep V, showing me her cleavage. Tonight, is the night I will slide my cock in between those exquisite globes. The dress tightens with some strap under her breasts, then it flows to just below her knees, except the front is higher than the back, showing me her freshly tanned legs. The wedge shoes with red matching lace wrap around her ankles and up her legs a couple of inches. Even with them, she is still so much shorter than me.

Feminine and desire-inducing. That’s what she embodies in front of me. And the floral scent she wears hits me, and I have to resist pushing her back in and saying fuck it. “Baby, you look stunning. So damn beautiful.” I step up to her until we’re only about an inch or two apart. “Are you wearing panties, puppet?”