After a while, she heaves a big sigh. Like it’s the first time she’s been able to really breathe, but also like all the fight’s finally gone out of her.
Even so, I don’t ask if she’s okay. I know she doesn’t know the answer and wouldn’t want to tell me even if she did. What she wants, what she needs, is for me to just… be here.
“People are mean.” Her voice is angry, a punch back at the haters, but also etched with hurt.
“They sure can be.”
She still doesn’t look at me. She stares out at the lake as she says, “I got a lot of texts from your brothers’ girlfriends and your sister. Telling me not to go online. Warning me. It was super nice of them.”
“They’re your friends, Hanna. They’d go to the mat for you.”
“Would they?”
“Of course they would!”
She presses her lips together.
“If you don’t believe that, you definitely don’t know Amanda. Or Lucy. Or any of them.” I gesture to the two of us. “What do they have to say about all this? About us?”
“I haven’t told them.”
“Nothing? Not even about the kissing lessons?”
“You know how they are. They’ll want to make it into a thing. Talk about feelings. And besides. What would I tell them? ‘Your brother’s helping me break my sex drought?’”
She hugs herself, rocking, as if chilly. I reach out and draw her against me, close to my side, and she stiffens for a moment and then lets out another long exhale. It reminds me, heartbreakingly, of the way babies sigh just before they relax completely, seeping body heat and falling into sleep with utter trust.
“I’m your dirty secret?” I tease.
“You’re the best dirty secret,” she says, smiling for the first time.
“Does that mean we’re going to pretend nothing’s going on at family dinner?” There’s a friends-and-family dinner going down at Gabe’s house tomorrow night.
She tilts her head. “I think we have to, right?”
“You really think we’ll be able to pull that off?”
“What would give us away?”
“Maybe the fact that I can’t keep my eyes or my hands off you?” I ask, stroking a hand over her arm, brushing the side of her breast accidentally on purpose as I do so.
“For a couple of hours you can, right?”
“Yes,” I say. “For a couple of hours, no prob. Then after that, you’re all mine, and I’m going to make up for lost time.”
She makes a soft purring sound I feel in my cock.
“Hey,” I say. “I got you something. And it’s not a rock.”
“Is that a dirty come-on line?”
“For once? It’s not. I bought you something.”
She perks up. “Yeah? What is it?”
“Come back to my place. I’ll show you.”
When we get back to my apartment—caravanning with her truck behind my car—I go into the bedroom and come back out with a paper bag, folded over several times. And suddenly I’m self-conscious. Suddenly, what seemed like a great idea when I first had it seems…
All wrong.
“Maybe this was a bad idea,” I say, drawing the bag to my body.
She cocks her head. “Are you taking the gift back before you even give it to me?”
“I’m just. Okay, I think I need to explain this. Because it made sense in my head, but it’s not going to make sense to you. I don’t think.”
Her mouth is curved, like she’s trying not to smile, which might be my second favorite look on her, after the scowl she can’t quite keep on her face.
“So maybe I’m wrong about this…”
I stop. Why is this so hard?
“I guess I had this feeling that…”
“Easton,” she says, exasperated. “Just say it.”
“I know you say you don’t like ‘girly’ things. And I know that’s true. But I also know you said you liked that Bear Warden knew how to treat a woman. I could tell you liked the idea that he wanted to take you to a fancy restaurant and treat you—I don’t know, like a girl. And I’ve never treated you like a girl. I guess… I wanted, just for a minute, to do that. Treat you like a girl.”
I wait for her to shake her head. Tell me I’m nuts. But that’s not what happens. She blushes, actually. And bites her bottom lip.
“I’m not wrong, then?” I ask.
“You’re not wrong,” she whispers. And then, shocking me, her voice so low I can barely hear her, “I thought it might be nice for once. To be treated like a princess.”
“Yeah. That’s how I wanted you to feel. Like a princess.”
She gives me a sharp look, like she’s trying to suss out if I could be making fun of her, but I think she can see how serious I am. And her eyes go soft and uncertain.
Except now I’m really not sure if I’ve fucked this up beyond all recognition. But it’s too late now; I have to explain myself. “Okay, so… well, here’s the thing. I went shopping. By myself. And I picked out a lot of beautiful things. Things that would look amazing on you, by the way. I was thinking about you wearing all these beautiful things, and hard the whole time, picturing it.”
She gets pinker.
“Worst way to shop, honestly.” I shake my head. “But then, I don’t know, I was standing in the lingerie shop with all this stuff, and it didn’t feel quite right. Like I was buying you a costume. Instead of… instead of clothes. If that makes sense? So, I put it all back and…”
I thrust the bag into her hands. “I guess… I’m not sure if this is what a princess would wear. But it felt like… it felt like what you’d wear.”
The white of her tooth digs into the red of her lower lip, and all I can think about is how much I want to lick that lip, lick into her mouth, lick her all over.
She unfolds the bag and reaches in. Pulls out the two things I bought her. Lingerie, I guess. If you want to call it that.
“Oh,” she says, and for a second I’m sure I’ve gotten it all wrong. I reach my hand out, like I’m going to snatch it back, like I can undo how wrong I’ve read her. So I can run back to the mall and grab the lacy pink nightgown or the seafoam green bra-and-thong set. So I can make her feel like she wanted Bear to make her feel.
Like a princess.
But she won’t let me. She holds them out of reach, then sets the two items on the bed and stares down at them.
She turns to me. Her eyes are so bright. Soft.
She’s Hanna, so all she says is, “I’m going to put them on now.”
That’s how I know I did okay.