“Shut up,” I mumbled, still smiling and his smile got bigger. “Dad knows about us.”
Yes, that was what I blurted. I knew it actually came out when Hop’s eyebrows shot up.
“Come again?” he asked.
I pulled in a breath.
I said it. I said it in Hop’s bed. I said it after making the unconscious but undeniable decision to let him in so I decided it was time to give him more.
“That was what that thing was about in Vail,” I admitted.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I muttered back, and his hand slid out of my hair to wrap around the back of my neck.
“Can’t say that’s too surprising, baby,” he said gently. “We were shit at hiding it.”
“Yeah,” I repeated.
“He’d have to be stupid and blind and your old man is neither. Caught your mom givin’ us looks too and, I don’t know, not gonna go there with her until you and me decide it’s time but I don’t think it escaped Molly either,” he told me and my stomach lurched.
“Really? Molly?” I asked.
“She loves her dad. She pays attention. She’s a girl. Even at her age, she swoons over boy band crap and guys on TV she thinks are cute. Romantic fantasy is ingrained in chicks. It might come out slow but it’ll always come out. You look great. You dress great. You smile at her like she’s the only girl in the world and you make her old man happy. She’s gonna get ideas. In this instance, they just happen to be the right ones.”
“This is true,” I murmured, and he grinned then his grin faded.
“So he said shit to you about me?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“And you packed your shit and walked out.”
It wasn’t a question, since he didn’t have to question seeing as he rode to my rescue, but there was something in his tone. Something that made my heart seize. Something important.
“Well, yeah,” I stated. “You rode to my rescue, remember?”
“Your dad said shit about me and you packed your shit and walked out.”
Again with the tone. Heavy.
No, weighty.
Meaningful.
Something was happening here.
“Hop—” I started but stopped when he rolled us so he was on top, and his hand came up to cup my jaw and I noted he was no longer just looking at me.
His eyes were burning into mine.
“All that shit you no doubt had to live through with your mom, you ever do anything like that before?” he asked.
“No,” I whispered.
“But your dad trash talked me, you threw a drama and walked out.”
“Yeah,” I replied, although I wouldn’t refer to it as “throwing a drama.” I couldn’t debate that I didn’t since, technically, I did.
And anyway, Hop was still being intense so I needed to concentrate and not debate terminology.
“So he trash talked me?”
I squirmed a little but stopped when Hop’s fingers dug lightly into my skin.
“He said you were a mistake, like Elliott,” I admitted cautiously.
“He’s wrong,” Hop growled, not cautiously.
“Hop—”
“He’s wrong, Lanie,” he bit out.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“Do not let him feed that monster in you. Not about me,” he ordered.
“Okay,” I repeated.
“With women, it’s about the slow soak, babe. Assholes pour shit on the surface and women keep goin’ not even knowin’ that shit is soakin’ in. Then one day, out of fuckin’ nowhere, that acid has burned deep in a way it leaves a wound that will never heal. Wipe that shit away, Lanie. Don’t let it soak in. He doesn’t know me. He cannot make that call about me.”
“That’s what I told him,” I shared.
“Good,” he clipped.
“Uh, Hop, he’s a biker bigot and he’s, well… other kinds of bigot besides. I told you that before you met him,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, you told me that but that was about how he’d be with me. I don’t give a fuck he makes a point and steps away from me after he shakes my hand. I give a fuck about him givin’ my woman shit and maybe makin’ her question bein’ with me. And when I say I give a shit, I mean in a big fuckin’ way.”
Boy, not much escaped Hop.
“He didn’t make me question it, Hopper,” I promised, then tried to lighten the mood. “And, just to say, it’s a little freaky how well you know women.”
“Babe, best wool men ever pulled was lettin’ women think we think with our dicks. We pay a fuckuva lot of attention. We know your shit maybe more than you do because we live it right along with you and some of you try to make us eat it. It’s just that some of us choose not to get sucked in the drama and instead focus on getting laid regularly.”
I felt my eyes get big right before I wrapped my arms around him and started giggling, but I managed to push through my giggles, “Honey, not sure you should share the brotherhood’s secrets.”
“You talk, no woman will listen. They prefer to think a man’s brain is in his dick. Gives ’em something to bitch about.”
“Again, freaking me out how well you know women,” I said, still giggling, and finally his face cleared and he smiled at me.
Then his thumb swept my lips right before it drifted away and his head dropped so his mouth could brush them.
When he lifted up again, he wasn’t smiling.
“You packed and walked out,” he whispered.
I stopped giggling and my teeth came out to graze my lower lip before I confirmed (again), “Yeah.”
“Means a lot, baby.”
It did. Absolutely.
I was just glad he agreed.
I tightened my arms around him but said nothing.
Hop wasn’t done.
“Means a lot you’re finally in my bed, too.”
My hand slid up his back so my fingertips could play with his hair but I again said nothing.
“It’ll be good to wake up with you here.”
He was killing me.
It felt exquisite but it had to stop before I melted and became one with his waterbed.
“I have to share that I’m also a bit freaked about the fact you have a waterbed but, even through our various, sometimes vigorous activities, the waves didn’t toss us off.”
He again gave me the subject change. His eyes lit with amusement and his hand moved down to the side of my neck so his thumb could stroke my throat.
It felt really nice.
“It’s waveless, Lanie.”
“Bodies of water, even small ones, and waveless aren’t natural, Hop,” I noted.
“Bein’ on the moon isn’t natural either, but man managed to do that,” he returned.
“Being on the moon is about harnessing science and technology. Waveless waterbeds are about harnessing nature and that, by definition, is not natural,” I shot back.
“Babe, you’re not lyin’ on a miracle,” he said through a lip twitch.
“No, I’m lying under one.”
His lips stopped twitching, his body went completely still, except his chin jerked back and his eyes started burning again.
This all confirmed the fact that those five words actually did come out of my mouth.
Damn.
“Hop—”
He cut me off. “You said it. Don’t pollute it.”
I closed my mouth and his hand moved up, fingers driving into the hair at the side of my head, his thumb moving out to sweep my cheek, his face getting close, his body pressing into mine and his lips whispering, “You givin’ me this?”
I knew what he meant. I was becoming fluent in Hop Speak but had already become fluent in Chaos Speak so I didn’t miss his question.
I understood it completely.