Second Chance at the Riverview Inn (Riverview Inn)

“It’s just so intense.”

“Have you listened to the new album?”

She nodded. “Some of it.”

Well, that explained how she hadn’t recognized the words. It was criminal of him to feel relief.

Tell her. Tell her right now.

She turned the radio back on just as This is Forgiveness faded out and the DJ launched into an old Taylor Swift song.

She sat back and he boosted the volume to something a little more appropriate.

You are such a coward.

“Do you even have hearing anymore?” she yelled over the chorus.

“What?” he yelled back.

“Exactly.”

She’d taken a shower at the hotel and pulled her long blond hair up on top of her head where it was in a tight damp knot. He wanted to put his finger into the center of it. He wanted to pull it loose.

He wanted to ask her more questions about her fiance. He wanted to know who she was smiling at in the picture with the yellow sweater. He wanted to know everything.

He turned down the music once Taylor was done and it had moved on to one of the new groups that didn’t sound like music at all. Just electronic distortion and auto-tune.

“You don’t like that song?” she asked.

“It’s not a song,” he said.

“You must be excited that your album is doing so well,” she said.

“Yeah,” he nodded, but he didn’t want to talk about that album. He was a coward through and through.

She wasn’t wearing any makeup. And it had been a while since he’d seen a woman without makeup. That was strange, wasn’t it? He didn’t live with a woman. So he didn’t get to have those unguarded fully human moments that came with cohabitation.

Jo always came to work in her war paint, as she called it. And every other woman who came into contact with him or the band was dressed to impress. The whole nine.

Helen was beautiful without makeup.

“Your daughter?” he said changing the subject. “What’s her name?”

“Bea. Short for Beatrice.”

“How old is she?”

“Three. Like, totally three. She is fully and completely three.”

“It’s all violence and love,” Micah said.

“You should write that down,” she said. “All violence and love. That’s a good line.”

He wrote it down, watching her smile as he did it.

“You spend a lot of time with three-year-olds?”

“My brother is seven years younger than me. I did a lot of babysitting.”

“It sounds like you still are.”

Well, that was a direct hit. He turned to look out the window, trying to get his bearings. She kept taking his feet out from under him.

“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t really know you enough to say that kind of thing.”

“You know more than most,” he said. Their eyes caught when she glanced over and they were right back in that hallway. All that heat between them.

He took a tremendous risk and touched her. He touched her because she needed it and he wanted it. He cupped the back of her neck with his hand.

“I can’t…” She stopped. Licked her lips. Her breath was short and gaspy, and he wondered what it would take to convince her to pull over to the side of the road and let him get his hands up her skirt.

“What?”

“I can’t really think when you touch me,” she breathed, and he took his hand away from her skin.

She was gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles were white.

“Is this, like, a joke? Or something?” she asked.

“Is what a joke?”

“Like pretending to be interested in me, or whatever.” She shrugged like it was no big deal but she was lying.

“I’m not pretending anything,” he said. He couldn’t pretend this.

“Because if it’s a trick, and you’re like trying to see how far the sad, lonely widow is going to go—”

“Helen. Pull over.”

“I’m just saying it’s not a funny trick.”

“Pull the fucking car over,” he said.

She took one look at his face, quickly hit the signal and pulled over to the side of the road, the wheels bouncing off asphalt onto gravel.

She put the car in Park and then rested her hands in her lap, her eyes out the windshield.

“It’s just…” she started in a whisper.

“What?”

“So strange that someone like you would be interested in someone like me.”

There were about a million things he could say. Two of which were the truth: that he’d been infatuated with her as a teenager and she’d inspired his new album. But both those things would only create more questions.

“Look at me,” he said. And she did. Young and fucking gorgeous and nervous and proud. He wanted to take her hand and put it on his dick. Does this feel like a trick? he’d ask.

Instead, he cupped her cheeks in his hands, his thumb on the edge of her lips. She was nervous and she licked her lips, her tongue touching his thumb, and he almost fucking lost it right there. Her breath was coming hard and fast, and he could see her nipples beneath the camisole she wore. Hard and ripe and fucking asking for it. All of her was asking for it. And she knew it.