“Did you…,” she trails off.
“Yes,” I say, letting out a long sigh.
Every time we have phone sex, it’s both the best thing I’ve ever done…and also a reminder that I’m wasting my seed, that truthfully it belongs inside my woman.
Nowhere else.
“Me too,” she whispers. “That was crazy. All that stuff.”
She’s talking about how I talked about owning her, her body….
She sounds unsure about it, as though she thinks I might’ve gone too far.
“I can’t control myself around you,” I tell her. “I guess that also means what I say during….”
“I liked it,” she cuts in. “It really…turned me on.”
I chuckle, standing and walking into the ensuite to clean myself up.
Putting the phone on speaker, I say, “You don’t have to sound so shy when you say stuff like that, Hallie.”
She giggles, the sound welcome, beautiful.
“I can’t help it. At least we’re sticking to our phone-only rule, right?”
Her voice turns downward at the end as though she’s roughly returning to the reality we’re facing. Janine and the meeting.
The betrayal of her dad, of Graham.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think that counts for something.”
I think, but I don’t know. I can’t be sure.
Maybe Janine will hate us anyway, despite our efforts to keep it over the phone only. Perhaps Graham will hate me even more.
He’d have every right.
I think back to the climax when I was thinking about fucking Hallie on the table downstairs as everybody slept upstairs.
Guilt cuts into me, sharp and cruel, and yet I can’t bring myself to regret it.
I can’t regret anything with Hallie.
Even if I should.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hallie
“I guess she overheard me,” I say, wringing my hands.
Lila sits in the driver’s seat, tapping her fingers against the steering wheel. She returned home shortly after Hayden and I indulged in that soul-searing phone sex.
Toward the end, when he was saying all that stuff about my body belonging to him, I wanted him to go further so badly.
Your heart, your future, everything belongs to me, I imagined him saying in the final moments of the orgasm, my hand rubbing furiously between my legs.
The phone sex is addictive, the dirty talk is compelling…but most of all, I want him.
And that’s exactly what mom is going to take away from me.
Which is fair, objectively speaking, the right thing to do.
“Maybe,” Lila says. “But mom has always been a heavy sleeper. Are you sure Hayden didn’t tell her?”
“I’m sure,” I reply firmly. “He was as surprised as me.”
Lila glances at me and then back across the street, chewing the inside of her cheek. “Maybe she did overhear then. I know I didn’t tell her.”
“On a scale of one to ten, how pissed do you think she’ll be?”
Lila fiddles with her bracelet, lips pursued. “Maybe a seven, eight? I’m not sure. Did you talk to Hayden about exactly what he wants from you?”
I sigh, looking out the window.
“It’s difficult,” I tell her. “Every time we talk, it’s like we get swept away. We can’t help it. It’s hard to remember to ask him stuff like that.”
“Well, now mom’s going to do it for you,” Lila says.
I groan. “I’m trying to think of another reason she’d want to see Hayden and me. But I can’t.”
“Neither can I,” Lila mutters.
Reaching over, I move to touch Lila’s hand, then decide against it. She spots the movement, smiles, reaches over, and takes my hand instead.
“You know nothing could ever come between us, right?”
“I know,” I murmur. “But I wouldn’t blame you if you resented me for this. I’ve put our family into one hell of a situation.”
“You didn’t put us into this position.”
“I was half of it,” I say when I sense where she’s going with this. “We can’t blame it all on Hayden…just because he’s older, more experienced, or whatever. Fine. But I wanted it, want it. It’s not like he did that stuff alone, you know.”
Lila smiles. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so understanding. It would be much easier – if this all blows up, I mean – to find it easy to blame Hayden. But you’re right. We can’t. I know how much you like him.”
The word like cuts into me as I glance at the digital clock. It doesn’t come close.
“I need to go,” I say, with five minutes left. “I don’t want to keep mom waiting.”
Lila nods, letting go of my hand. “I love you…and good luck. I’ll be waiting right here.”
“Thank you,” I murmur, stepping from the car, thinking about mom’s face as she confronts us and tells us she knows and doesn’t approve.
As I approach the familiar sight of the doctor’s office, Hayden walks out from under the eaves, near the corner of the building, where I didn’t think to look.
My breath cuts off sharply as I see him, seeming so much bigger than I remember, so much more muscular.
It hasn’t even been a week since we’ve physically seen each other, but it feels like longer.