Chapter 20
Kason
“Seriously, dude? Hiking right after lunch?”
“I didn’t tell you to eat lunch. I packed us food for the top!”
Marcus pointed to his pack and rolled his eyes. He’d always been an outdoor person—hiking, camping, going to the beach, lounging around in the sun. Me? I preferred indoor activities.
Especially when they included Hanna.
“Well, I’ll need that food again when we get to the top.”
“Come on, we’ve got five miles ahead of us.”
“Five miles?!” I exclaimed.
Marcus chuckled. “You sound like Hanna.”
“Speaking of, why isn’t she here for this torture as well? You usually go out of your way to make her life miserable, not mine.”
“I’m not my sister’s keeper, dude. She’s about to graduate college. Why do you care where she is?”
“Well, I figured she might have liked it. Or you would’ve liked watching her suffer. Isn’t that what siblings do? Take pride in the other’s pain?” I asked, keeping my voice lighthearted.
Marcus eyed me as we started walking up the hill, and I could tell he was getting more and more suspicious. I knew Hanna was shit at keeping secrets, so god only knew the things she’d had to cover up on her end. Hanna and Marcus had many things in common, but one of them was their determination to get to the bottom of something. When the two of them got an idea in their heads, they rode it all the way through to the end. I saw Marcus’s head spinning with questions, and I knew he suspected something was going on between me and his sister.
And he’d ride that shit all the way to the end.
I needed to be careful. I was about to spend the entire afternoon with him, and I had to make sure I concealed my disappointment. Now whenever Marcus invited me to do something, I secretly hoped Hanna would tag along. Her outfits were getting more and more enticing, and after our little greenhouse escapade, I felt a voyeuristic side of me starting to emerge.
But I couldn’t think about her while I was with Marcus. He knew me too well and would start bombarding me with questions. And this time we were hiking to the top of a fucking hill so I couldn’t just walk into another room.
We hiked five miles, and I wanted to die. Then we sat down and enjoyed the heavy breeze while we ate the food Marcus had packed: fruits and water and a couple sandwiches. It wasn’t half bad to spend time with my best friend. Lately—ever since I’d hired him—our time together had been all about work, which was fine because I was usually all about business, but he was really getting into it. I loved his enthusiasm, but I couldn’t care less about the website.
Which was why I had hired someone else to give a shit about it.
But today wasn’t about any of that shit. We just talked, and Marcus gossiped like the old woman he was at heart. He even talked about his new girl a bit. His face lit up whenever he talked about her, and it made me happy to see my best friend that way. I’d seen him date many women and hop from girl to girl, never really taking any of them home or considering his future. But I could tell he was doing exactly that with this one. I was really excited for him.
Still, I had to admit that a part of me was a little jealous.
We finished our food and hiked back down. By the time we got back to the car, my shins were ready to spring from my body and run for the hills. I was ready for a fucking shower, and Marcus was teasing me about how out of shape I supposedly was. The only thing I told him was that my muscles didn’t do this bullshit cardio.
My phone rang just as Marcus and I hit the main road, and I put her on speaker in the car.
“Mom! It’s Marcus and me,” I said.
“Hey, Marcus! Listen, honey, Lisa’s invited us over for dinner tonight. So, get home and shower whenever you can. I’m sure Marcus wore you out.”
“You can say that again!” Marcus called out.
“I’ll get us home soon,” I said as I stepped on the gas.
“But don’t speed! Be careful!” my mom called out.
“Always!” I shouted at her. I hung up and Marcus hung on while I bobbed and weaved through traffic. We cranked up the radio and cruised down the highway, but the only thing I could think about was seeing Hanna tonight. I’d have to keep myself under control given how suspicious Marcus was getting, but I couldn’t contain my excitement. I knew she was going to look drop-dead sexy in whatever she decided to wear, and I wanted to put something on that would make her squirm in her seat.
So, once I dropped Marcus off and got myself cleaned up, I threw on a pair of tailored suit pants and a tailored silk top with a collar before I rolled the sleeves up. When mom questioned why I looked so nice, I just told her I wanted to be prepared if Marcus wanted to talk shop at all. Then I told her we’d probably go out afterward and I didn’t want to change again. It was easy to divert my mom and dad, but I knew it wouldn’t be easy to do the same with Marcus.
And I was right.
From the moment I walked into their house, he was curious about why I was dressed up. He kept glancing at me whenever I spoke to Hanna, and of course Hanna had to have on this tight little number for dinner: leggings, a tight-ass tank top with a little fluttering overlay, and sparkling jewelry that enhanced how big her tits were and how long her neck was. Holy hell, she looked incredible, and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes off her.
Every time my eyes lingered a little too long, I could feel Marcus’s suspicion growing stronger.
Hanna kept taking risks that both thrilled and scared me. She ran her toes up my leg and tried to run her hand along the inside of my thigh. She raked her eyes up and down me whenever Marcus left the table to do something, and sometimes she snuck little innuendos into the comments she made during dinner. She was killing me and she knew it, and there was nothing I could do to stop her without alerting Marcus, who was more focused on my moves than hers.
Great.
But when I tuned into the conversation, my ears perked up.
“You know, Joy, I started my family young,” Lisa said.
“Oh, so did I. That was just the thing when we were growing up, I suppose.” My mom giggled.
“I was so lucky to be such a young mother. I had energy to run with my kids, I still had patience to deal with their tantrums, and I knew once they got through high school I could still enjoy my life without technically being middle-aged. It was the best decision Roger and I ever made!”
“Oh, I know. David and I had Kason when we were pretty young, and it kills me that he hasn’t started a family yet,” my mom said.
“Seriously, Mom?” I asked.
“Mom…” Hanna warned.
“And I just want the same thing for my daughter! For her to be fulfilled in every aspect of her life and then still be able to enjoy it when she’s in her forties. I don’t want her looking back when she’s thirty-six and pregnant, wishing she’d had her children ten years earlier,” Lisa said.
I shot my eyes over to Hanna, and I saw the light of hope sparkle in her eyes. She’d made a comment to me in the greenhouse that I had thought was just a joke, but I was starting to realize that maybe it wasn’t. Maybe, in the back of Hanna’s mind, she was hoping her birth control would fail. The light shining in her eyes while her mother continued to talk about having children caused me to slowly scoot away from her at the table.
“God, I hope to be a grandmother someday, but Kason simply won’t settle down. So many beautiful women on his arm and not one of them with a ring,” my mother said.
“At least Kason’s trying. Hanna hasn’t brought a single man home to meet us. Not one! No dates, no girl talk, no nothing!” Lisa huffed.
“I suppose I’m just looking for the right one,” Hanna interjected.
“That’s a good thing, Hanna, but don’t let your standards be set too high. Men, just like us, have their quirks. Had Kason been a girl, I would’ve wanted her to do the same: have children young and raise them with that same energy, and then enjoy the back half of life instead of being sixty and just watching them graduate high school!” my mother said.
“You can still do that as an older woman, Mom,” I said. “Women all over the world are waiting until their thirties to have their first child. It’s just what’s happening.”
“Look. It’s easier for men to do that kind of thing. Have children when their older. They go to the office and they get away from the tantrums and the late-night feedings and the afternoons spent running around in the backyard. But, all that energy then falls back on the woman. It’s not a bad thing, it’s simply how it is. And it’s harder to do that when you’re an older woman. I’m not blind to how differently I raised Hanna because of the age I was when I had her,” Lisa said.
“Plus, there really are some snobs around here,” my mother said. “The moment Hanna puts off a family to become a career woman, she’ll be looked down upon.”
“That sounds like a personal problem, honestly,” I said.
“I just want Hanna to have what she’s always wanted. I see the books she reads sometimes, and they aren’t study books. She’s been born into a society that expects women to have careers and lead their own independent lives. There’s no room anymore for women who want to be stay-at-home mothers without someone thinking she’s compromised something in her life,” Lisa said.
“It really is sad,” my mother said.
“That’s why I have no problems with her having children young. I know it’s what she wants, and it will keep her shielded from the prying eyes on both sides of the argument!”
Shit. No wonder Hanna had these crazy ideas in her head. The smile on her face bloomed from ear to ear, and I slowly felt the fun we were supposed to have for the next two weeks slip from my grasp.
I whipped my eyes over to Marcus, who didn’t look happy at all. Hanna’s smile just grew the more our mothers continued to talk. Tension developed in the room, and soon our fathers tried to interject, but the women were on a tangent about having kids young and Hanna was just eating it up.
“I think I’m full,” Marcus announced loudly.
“Oh, sweetheart, you haven’t even finished your plate,” his mother said.
“No need,” he mumbled. He shoved himself out of his chair and stormed out of the kitchen. For a split second, Hanna’s attention was ripped from our mothers as she turned toward her brother. I watched as something akin to guilt fluttered behind her eyes, and for a moment, I truly felt sorry for her. Here was this young, vibrant, sassy girl with a mother who was hammering children down her throat already and a brother—whom she looked up to dearly— advising her to stay away from men altogether. I couldn’t imagine the dichotomy she was trapped in.
But soon the guilt was ripped from her when my mother posed a question directly to her.
“So, Hanna, any plans for your last year of college? I’m sure there’ll be a fresh batch of post-graduate men coming into your program.”
I decided to get up from the table and follow Marcus if only to get away from an answer I probably didn’t want to hear fall from Hanna’s lips.