Hate You Not

“Hey, honey.” My voice is shaky, and I bet my lips are red. They’re throbbing. So are other places. “What’s the matter?”

She reaches up to wipe some hair off her forehead. “Dream,” she whispers.

“Oh, you had a bad dream?” I reach for my crutches. Then shirtless Burke snaps into motion, his back to Margot as he helps me up. My heart is pounding so fast, I’m barely tracking his hands on my arms, his palm against my back. And then he’s sitting back down on the couch, holding a pillow in his lap to hide his hard-on.

I talk to Margot as we trudge back down the hall toward her room. She dreamed about her mother, sailing away on a ship with long white sails that looked like ghosts. Hearing her tell of this dream breaks my heart. It’s such an awful dream to have—your mom sailing away—and yet it’s no worse than her reality. Sutton is dead, the door forever closed. Okay, well, I don’t know about forever, but it’s firmly shut for a long time.

I spend a little while with Margot, perched on her bed’s edge. I rub her hair until her eyelids are heavy, and then I hug her tight.

“I love you, sweetie.”

“Love you too,” she murmurs.

The kids’ room smells of mint and toothpaste. I can taste that mint on my tongue as I make my way into the shadowed hall and down the bare hardwood. My throat is tight and thick with grief, and still, I want him. Maybe this is why I want him. I catch my sore lip between my teeth as I move toward the living room. I bite until it stings.

Burke is at the kitchen island, leaning on it with his elbows when I crutch my way into the room. When he sees me, he stands up like I caught him in some unforgivable act. He cups a beer bottle in his hands and looks at me, all somber eyes and bare chest.

“She okay?” His voice is husky.

I nod. “Dreamed about her mama.”

He looks down, and I see his tongue move over his firm lower lip. He looks up and lets a breath out.

“Think I’m going to grab my stuff from that cabin I rented.” He starts toward the screened porch door without pausing to look over at me. “I’ll be back within the hour.”Chapter 17BurkeIt’s a problem. She’s a problem. I shouldn’t go back. I know I shouldn’t, and those words fill up my mind until my head aches. Shouldn’t go back, but I do because I’m weak. She nipped my lip so hard at one point that it’s bleeding at the corner. Tastes bitter when I press my tongue against the spot.

The car over the road is rough and jarring, red dirt cracked open. Needs smoothing. The moon is bright tonight, no clouds. I see glowing eyes as I turn back into her driveway—something wild, maybe a coyote.

When I get inside the house, she isn’t anywhere in sight. I took two hours—on purpose—so I’m not surprised. The laundry room is filled with dogs, the big ones sleeping on linoleum and the pups in their crate.

I eat some cornbread from a Tupperware container on her counter and pour myself some sweet tea. Shawn called it Southern table wine. Then I sit at her kitchen table and pull out my laptop. The table’s a long, oak oval, with eight chairs and a fruit bowl in the center. It looks like it was hand-crafted. When I check out June’s internet, I find a network called Platform934 that doesn’t have a passcode. The Harry Potter-inspired name makes me smirk.

Little book nerd.

When midnight comes and goes, I tell myself I’m grateful that she hasn’t returned. I’ve got enough work to last until morning, easy.

I think of going into the hall and setting up shop on the floor with my back against the wall, so I can hear if one of the kids wakes up again. I’m still mulling that over when I hear footsteps behind me.

I turn around, and there she is. She’s wearing a deep blue robe, and she’s balanced on her crutches.

“Hey,” she whispers, sleepy-eyed.

Ah, shit. I stand up. “You need something?”

She shakes her head. The faintest smile plays over her lips. “What are you doing?” She smiles like we’re co-conspirators.

“Working.”

“At 2:50 in the morning?”

I shut the laptop. “Work from home work never ends.”

“Do you work from home?”

“Not really.”

She fiddles with the neck of her robe. I catch a peek of creamy skin over the gentle swell of her breasts. She yawns; clearly, she fell asleep before and is just waking up. “I brought some linens to the couch for you.”

“Uh, thanks.”

I want to fuck her. God, I’d love to take her to that couch and lay her out the way she was before and fuck her hard enough to wear myself out. I bet she’d be tight and hot. She’d be one of those that claws your back up. I grit my teeth.