Not having quite caught my breath either, I still burst out laughing.
When I came out of it, he was smiling at me.
I smiled back at first.
Then I stopped and said, “I heard you.”
“All right, Hattie,” he said softly.
All right.
“Is there jam and butter all over the sheets?” I asked.
“I don’t care,” he said as answer.
“Do you have extra sheets so, since a nap is next on our agenda, we can take it, get up, shower off jam and butter and change the sheets so we can fuck again after we eat?”
His body was shaking on mine with his humor when he answered, “Yeah. I have an extra set. Though, maybe we should shower and switch ’em out before we nap.”
I smoothed my fingers along his cheekbone into his silvery hair and suggested, “Works for me. Now, let’s go back to our perfect Sunday.”
He moved in, touched his mouth to mine.
And agreed, “You got it.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Back on Track
AXL
Hattie sat beside him in his Jeep, fiddling with her phone as they drove to her father’s.
“What do you think it means, two days, no stalker?” she asked the side window.
She wasn’t thinking about her stalker.
She was thinking about where they were going and asking about her stalker in order to stop thinking about it.
“Babe, I’m not a stalker,” he said quietly. “Got no clue what it means.”
Though he did.
There were three scenarios.
One: he lost interest.
Two: he finally processed she had a man in her life, and constant protection, and he decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Or three: he was gearing up for something big.
Obviously, Axl was pulling for one or two.
And more with the obvious, on her way to see her father with her new boyfriend was not the time to chat about it in case number three freaked her out.
“It’s our perfect Sunday, yeah?” he reminded her, even though they were taking a detour from that right now.
He’d get her back to it when they got home.
“My dad tonight, your dad tomorrow night,” she said softly.
“Hattie.”
He sensed her turn her eyes to him.
He glanced and saw he was correct.
“Done and then done,” he stated. “And just to say, I’m not gonna be a dick to your dad. I’m just gonna be honest and firm in letting him know you got a man in your life and where that man stands on how he expects the people in it to treat you.”
“Okay.”
She didn’t sound convinced.
“You got something on your mind, now’s the time to talk about it, before we walk in there,” he told her.
“You know I heard all you said to me this morning,” she noted.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“And you know, we’ve been having sex, eating, snoozing, and you kicked my ass in Pac-Man again.”
He grinned. “Yeah, I was there through all that.”
“I’m totally practicing Pac-Man while you’re at work tomorrow.”
“Honey, I’ve had years to become a master.”
“Well, your turns are very long at the video machine because of it, and as utterly fascinated as I am at witnessing your Pac-Man superiority, I have to admit that, at times, my mind may have wandered.”
Ah.
“Yeah?” he prompted on a smile.
“You’ve said things that have made me think.”
He wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
What he knew was, they didn’t have two hours to go through it. They had maybe fifteen minutes before they got to her father’s.
Even so, he said, “Sock it to me,” because if she needed it, he’d stop and talk to her for two hours and that was not about avoiding her dad.
It was to give her what she needed.
“One day, just, you know, on a roll, watching documentaries on Netflix, I watched the Amy Winehouse doc. Did you see that?”
“No.”
“Well, we can just say it didn’t depict her dad in the greatest light.”
There it was.
“Okay,” he said.
“Then, I don’t know, it was a bummer, obviously, since she’s lost to us now, and she was so amazingly talented. And Lady Gaga is so badass. So, in order to cleanse my palette, I watched Gaga’s documentary. And her dad is in it. And he’s awesome. Very supportive.”
No.
There it was.
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
“Did you see that one?” she asked.
“No, but I get you,” he told her.
“I never really … ” She paused. “It’s just my life. I never really stopped to think about it.”
“And now you are.”
“Yes. And what you said about loyalty. I don’t know if that’s true.”
“Baby, you go there every—”
She cut him off.
“I go there to win his approval. I’m realizing now that I’m still trying to win his approval, Axl.”
Well.
Shit.
He hadn’t thought of that.
“I can’t say I don’t love him,” she carried on. “He’s my dad. And like I told you, he can be charming. Funny. Not just to others, also to me. It isn’t just ugliness and yuck.”
Yuck.
So damned adorable.
He fought smiling.
“So, it’s not all bad times,” she continued. “But it isn’t even that. It’s just … ” Another pause. “I want what I can’t have because he’s not going to give it to me because if he did, he’d lose his ability to control me.”