Put Me to the Test
Hixon
THE NEXT NIGHT, while Greta was with her at-home client doing a wash, rinse and set (whatever that was), Hix was walking into the high school’s basketball court in order to watch his daughter play volleyball.
The minute he walked in, his eyes went to the team benches to see his daughter in her red and black Raiders uniform with its long sleeves, too tight shorts, black knee pads at her knees, her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, standing with her coach and the rest of the team.
He felt his lips form a grin.
A grin that died immediately when Hope materialized in front of him.
He stopped dead because she was blocking his way.
“Hix, we need to talk.”
He blew out a sigh and asked a question he knew the answer to because they’d been in Hope’s care for only a day and he’d seen one of them with his own eyes, “The girls okay?”
“Yes, but,” she got closer and her expression changed to one that Hix had to work hard not to let annoy him, “they, well, they shared that . . . that . . . that woman spent the night at your apartment while they were there.”
Hix stared down at her.
“You know that isn’t right, Hixon, you know,” she hissed under her breath.
He continued to stare down at her.
“The girls also told me the unfortunate event that took place that was the reason she was at your house, but it’s not like the woman doesn’t have friends,” she carried on.
Hix said nothing and just kept staring down at her.
“If you must see her, don’t shove her in the kids’ faces,” she ordered.
That was when Hix sidestepped her and walked right by her, along the front of the bleachers, knowing eyes were on him.
His were on the wall at the opposite end where Toast had his back to the cinderblock, the sole of his boot up against it, arms crossed on his chest.
This was the position he’d assumed when he came to watch his daughter play volleyball (that was how he and Hix had become friends, their daughters played sports together) shortly after his own ex made it impossible to sit in the bleachers without her finding opportunity from close proximity to harangue him.
When Hix’s back hit the wall at Toast’s side and he assumed the same position, Toast muttered, “Hate to say it, but welcome to my world, brother.”
Hix just emitted an unintelligible grunt.
“Let me guess, she’s pissed your woman stayed over,” Toast deduced.
“While the kids were there,” Hix confirmed.
“No, bro, she’d be pissed even if they weren’t, just gives her more ammunition that they were.”
Hix made no reply, just kept his attention on his daughter and her team.
“And heads up, they lose all rationality, they lose hold on your dick and some other woman is enjoying it. It doesn’t matter to her your woman got attacked. But the looks she’s gettin’, it matters to everyone else,” Toast told him.
That made Hix slide his eyes to the bleachers and it wasn’t hard to read the censure Hope was getting as she made her way to a seat.
It also wasn’t hard to read she didn’t miss it either.
Fortunately, his attention was taken with his younger daughter skipping his way.
“Hey, Dad,” she greeted, stopping toe to toe with him, bending forward so she hit him with her weight, resting the length of her along the length of him, her hands on his forearms, her head tipped back to grin up at him.
“Hey, baby,” he murmured, uncrossing his arms to touch a finger to her nose.
“Can I have popcorn?”
Oh shit.
“You ask your mom that?” he asked.
Her expression told him the answer.
“Mamie,” was all he said next.
She scrunched up her face then slid to the side, but twisted as she did, so she ended up with her shoulder tucked into his side.
He ran a hand around both and held her there.
“Your brother here yet?” he asked, again scanning the bleachers.
“He’s goin’ to pick up Wendy then he’ll be here,” she told him.
“Right,” he muttered.
“Hey, Uncle Toast,” she belatedly greeted.
“Hey there, gorgeous girl,” Toast returned.
“You want some popcorn?” she asked and immediately offered, “I can get it for you.”
“And eat half the box before it gets here?” Toast asked.
She gave him a sassy smile. “Sometimes they don’t fill it full.”
Toast pushed away from the wall to pull out his wallet. “Then I totally want popcorn.”
“Toast,” Hix warned.
“What?” Toast asked with sham innocence. “I had dinner all of fifteen minutes ago.” He gave Hix’s girl a bill. “I’m feelin’ peckish.”
She shot him a huge smile, grabbed the money and took off.
“More knowledge, brother,” Toast began as he settled back in. “You got the opportunity to fuck with ’em or piss them off in any way, you take it.”
“Hope doesn’t exist outside being the woman who my daughters go live with every other week, man. But she likes to find every reason she can to remind me she does. I’m not a big fan of giving them to her.”
“She doesn’t exist?”
“Nope.”
“Lookin’ right at her, bro.”
Hix took his attention from the court where the girls were heading out to look at Toast and then follow where his eyes were directed to see Hope sitting in the stands, watching them.
She no longer looked pissed.
She looked sad.
Christ.
Hix returned his attention to the players and said nothing.
“She wants you back, Hix, and bad,” Toast shared.
Hix said something to that.
“If that’s true, that’s not gonna go well for her.”
“This other one, you know . . .”
His voice died away so Hix looked to him. “I know what?”
Toast looked uncomfortable when he said, “It’s been a while for you but you should know, you don’t play with that kind.”
“What kind?” Hix asked, wanting to know where this was going so he knew whether he was about to be pissed as shit or other.
“The good kind, Hix.”
So it was other.
Toast wasn’t done.
“Me bein’ tight with you, everyone is opening wide about her. And I’ve learned she’s like a second mom to Lou’s daughters, which is good, seein’ as half the time they don’t have a dad. Hear she’s got a brother whose brains were scrambled and she takes care of him. They go and play with the dogs at the shelter on the weekends, for Christ’s sake. Walked into Babycakes a Sunday ago or so, right after her and her brother left, and I swear, Babycakes laid it out for me either I got your head out of your ass about this Greta woman or the rest of the town would.”
Hix blew out another sigh and said, “They can relax. We’re back together.”
“You got a solid rep, bro, but this woman is—”
Hix cut him off. “We’re back together, Toast, and I’m not gonna fuck that shit up. I know what I got. I’ve got it so I know. So they can relax and you can too.”
Toast gave him a huge, goofy-assed smile. “Well, all right. When you bringin’ her to the Outpost to meet your boys, then?”
“Soon’s the broken nose that asshole gave her slammin’ her face in her own goddamned kitchen island heals.”
While Hix spoke, Toast’s smile died.
“Fucker,” he muttered.
“He’s going away for a long time,” Hix said, watching as play began and his daughter, a starter as a sophomore on the varsity team, sprang into action.
“How much effort it take for you not to kick his ass while he was in one of your cells?” Toast asked.
“So much, it’s a wonder I can walk.”
Toast chuckled and turned his attention to the game.
They watched and Hix uncrossed his arms from his chest and clapped, shouting out, “That’s it, Corinne!” when she aced a serve.
Pissed at her dad, her head needing to be in the game, she still loved her old man and he knew it when her eyes slid to him briefly and a grin flirted with her mouth as she walked to the line with the ball before she regained focus to set up for her next serve.
“The kids like her?” Toast asked after the team blew it and lost Corinne’s serve.
Hix knew what he was asking.
Did they like Greta?
“Nothin’ not to like.”
Toast left it a beat before he murmured, “Happy for you, bro. Way to land on your feet.”
Hix glanced at him before looking back to the play. “You’ll find someone, Toast.”
“I need to get laid on a semi-regular basis and I need to stay single. Outside that bullshit getting me my kids, shoulda stayed single from the start.”
“You’ll get over that.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Toast muttered.
Hix shook his head and said no more.
Hope and his shit was ugly. Toast and his shit with his ex was Armageddon.
As the teams were switching sides, Mamie skipped up with half a box of popcorn she’d consumed the rest of and handed it to Toast.
She then dug back into her dad’s side so Hix held her there.
He caught his son arriving and tried to stay loose even after he also caught the expression on his face.
And the set of his girl’s.
Hix gave Shaw a sharp look.
Shaw shook his head at his dad and Hix knew the state of play with the way Shaw actually spotted his girl as she led them to some seats, like she was doing it with a broken foot.
Things weren’t going good with her dad’s treatments.
Shit.
He’d talk to his boy.
Now it was about Corinne.
So he turned back to the game.
After the game, while Shaw was finishing up his date with Wendy, which Hix assumed would take him to the very last minute of his weekday curfew, Hix pulled his Bronco into Greta’s drive but he rounded the front seeing as he saw her on her porch as he pulled in.
He made it all the way to her with her watching his progress and bent to wrap his hand around the back of her head and touch his mouth to hers before she spoke.
“Hey, did she win?”
“No.”
“Bummer,” she muttered.
He grinned, let her go, shifted and rested his frame in the chair beside her.
“Want a beer?” she asked.
“I’ll get it in a second.”
“I have a broken nose, Hixon, not a broken leg.”
He looked from her street to her and repeated, “I’ll get it in a second.”
She rolled her eyes but did it with her lips twitching.
Then she lifted a mug to her lips and took a sip.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Sleepytime,” she answered.
“Say again,” he ordered.
She took her eyes from her street and repeated, “Sleepytime. Sleepytime tea. Chamomile. Spearmint. And—”
He cut her off. “Babe.”
“What?”
“Don’t waste your breath. The concept of tea does not exist for a man who owns a Bronco.”
He enjoyed the show as she busted out laughing.
When she was done, she noted, “Britannia ruled the waves, darlin’, and those boys drank a lot of tea.”
“The kind they drank didn’t have spearmint in it.”
“Good point,” she muttered, her lips curved up as she took another sip.
He hated doing it but he had to so might as well get it out of the way.
“Hope was at the game.”
Her gaze slid to him. “And?”
“She’s in the know you’ve spent the night at my place while the kids were there.”
“And she’s not a big fan,” she guessed.
“Not sure I care but just in case she gets up to something, you should know.”
She nodded and added, “And we’ll slow that down.”
No, they wouldn’t.
“I like you in my bed.”
He also liked how her face got soft when he told her that.
“I like it there too, baby,” she told him. “But your apartment isn’t real big and it’s kinda in their faces more than it would be in that space. Plus, this is very new to them.”
“It’s also very much happening so they might as well get used to it.”
“Another good point,” she muttered again.
“And Greta, we’re movin’ to a place on Lavender Lane on Saturday.”
She stared at him. “Lavender Lane?”
He grinned at her.
And he did it because he liked the place they found but now he liked it even more because it was two blocks to the north of her place, on the same block.
“Wow, we’re practically gonna be neighbors,” she remarked and did it looking like she was trying hard not to laugh.
“Yup,” he agreed the same way.
“You buy?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nope. Everything on the market sucks and I can’t keep the kids in that apartment any longer, and not just because I hate the freakin’ place so much myself. Folks who own the house we picked are retired and movin’ to Florida. But they’re worried they’re gonna hate Florida. So they’re renting their place for a year to try it out. If they hate it, they’ll come back and revisit where they wanna spend their golden years. If they like it, they’ll sell to me and deduct the year’s rent from the final sale.”
She gave him a smile. “Great deal.”
If they didn’t come back, it was.
If they did, he had to find another place.
But they’d assured him they’d give him plenty of notice and his real estate agent was going to keep an eye out in the meantime.
It might mean moving twice in a year, which would suck.
It might mean settling in, but even if it didn’t, it gave them more time to find what was right instead of them moving into another place that was going to be wrong.
“Three bedrooms, two full baths, one in the master, on the top floor,” he shared. “Living room, dining room, half bath, big kitchen on the ground level. Refinished basement where Shaw will be with his own bathroom and a massive family room.”
“Sounds like my place,” she noted.
“Your basement refinished?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You need to give me a tour,” he told her.
She tipped her head to the side. “You want that now?”
He shook his head, pushing up from his chair. “I want a beer now.”
“Hix, I can get it.”
He stopped and looked down at her.
“You got a problem with me in your house, baby?” he asked softly, with genuine interest.
“Of course not, but I like . . .” her teeth came out to score her lip before she finished, “looking after you.”
And fuck, but he liked that.
“How about I get my beer tonight, and after tonight, we’ll go from there.”
She shot him a grin. “Works for me.”
He gave himself a moment to fully take in her grin before he asked, “You need more of that?” and he tipped his head to her mug.
She shook her own.
“Right. Be back,” he murmured, went in, got himself a beer and came out, doing it giving himself his first chance to really take in her space.
It wasn’t only the kitchen that was nice. The rest of it was too. All redone. Big, old-fashioned, kickass table in the dining room with one side having a bench instead of chairs. Huge couch in the living room with lots of woodwork on it, scrolled arms and massive pillows for the back in a print of some fancy, subtle cream and beige swirls.
The couch was ornate but it still looked comfortable.
A lot of her stuff was his style. He liked it. Even if it wasn’t, it worked and he liked that too. It was pretty phenomenal.
It was also confusing.
He knew women paid a lot of money to have their hair done. He knew how much it cost for Hope and the girls for theirs. They were in rural Nebraska, it might cost more in big cities, but even as it was, it wasn’t anywhere near what Hix paid for him and Shaw to go to the barber.
But it wouldn’t set Greta to rolling in it.
He went back out and saw her waving at something, so he looked that way as he moved to her and tipped up his chin at a woman who was walking her dog in front of Greta’s house.
The woman threw him an enormous beam through the dark as he sat his ass back down with his beer.
He stretched out his legs out and crossed his ankles.
He did this as he tried to remember how to do the getting-to-know-you portion of being with a woman you’re interested in.
It seemed strange, all that had gone down between them, like she’d been a part of his life a lot longer than she had.
But she hadn’t and he barely knew anything about her.
He started it with, “How’s your nose?”
“Better today, thanks, Hixon,” she answered.
“Your brother?” he asked.
“Good, thanks, baby,” she said softly, this how she talked whenever she spoke about her brother, when she wasn’t laying shit out for him after he’d been a dick, that was.
Hix sucked back some beer and then asked, “You figure out what you’re gonna tell him?”
“I think I’m gonna say I had a fall.”
Hix was surprised she was going to lie so he looked from the dark night to her. “Yeah?”
She let out a big breath she aimed at the night and said, “Yeah. He . . .” she turned to him, “he can be unpredictable. Most of the time, he would be able to process what happened, understand it, understand the guy was caught and he was going to be punished and he’d be upset for me, but he’d see that I’m okay and he’d deal. Other times . . .”
She didn’t finish.
“Other times what, sweetheart?” he prompted gently.
“Other times anything can happen. He could get so upset and frustrated at not being able to do anything, he could get violent. He could regress to the point he’s like a little kid and stick in that zone for a while, which is harder to cope with for the staff because dealing with a young man with a brain injury is one thing. Dealing with a young boy who has tantrums or can turn sullen or uncommunicative is another.” She shrugged. “So I think I have to lie. For him. There’s nothing he can do anyway, it’s over. To keep him safe, I’ll give him an alternate version of events that doesn’t harm anything. No one would tell him. He won’t find out.”
After she gave him all of that, he whispered, “I don’t know how you do it.”
She genuinely looked confused when she asked, “Do what?”
He lifted his beer in a circle to indicate everything. “All of it. Work. Look after him. Handle what happened. Keep on keepin’ on.”
“I have no choice.”
He transferred the bottle to his other hand so he could reach out and take hers.
“If one of the kids—” he began.
“Don’t,” she said quickly. “Don’t think about it. It happened to us. But it doesn’t happen a lot so don’t think about it. Not with one of your kids. Not with anybody.”
“What I’m tryin’ to do is get in your headspace so I can be in a place of understanding with you,” he explained.
When he quit talking, she looked at him like she’d never seen him before.
So he gave her fingers a squeeze. “Greta?”
“I’m, like, really, really glad I unblocked you, Hixon,” she declared.
And after she gave him that, Hix leaned into her and pulled her hand to his mouth to touch it to his lips so he wouldn’t do something else, like pick her up and carry her into her house and touch his lips to other things.
He relaxed in his chair, put their hands back between them and remarked, “I still don’t know how you do it. This is a nice house, sweetheart. And I’m in the position to know how nice it is, bein’ in the market for my own. You work. You look after your brother. You dress great. You made this a great space. It’s like you can make miracles.”
He could have gone on but he didn’t because she’d returned her gaze to the street and lifted her mug of tea up to her mouth, both in what he read as an attempt to hide her face.
“Did I say something wrong?” he asked, twisting their hands so their fingers were facing up and he could run the tips of his along the insides of hers.
Her head turned again so her eyes could light on their hands before they lifted to him.
“Keith gave us this.”
His fingers quit moving.
“Keith?”
“My ex-husband. Keith. He’s . . . um, very wealthy. I didn’t, uh . . . want it, but he impressed on me that I needed to take it so the divorce settlement was exceptionally comfortable. For me. And for Andy.”
Hix just stared at her.
“He was . . . we were . . . we were dating when Andy got hurt. They were close even before. He, well, he always took care of Andy,” she shared. “He still does, kind of. And me. Well, just in the sense the settlement bought my house.”
Shit.
“And my car.”
Christ.
“And my furniture.”
Fuck.
“And it pays for Andy’s home and will for a good time, so I can, you know, not having a mortgage or a car payment or, um, other stuff, I’ll be able to do it for, maybe, um . . . ever.”
She stopped talking.
“That’s very wealthy, Greta,” Hix said low.
He watched her swallow.
Hix looked to the street and threw back some more beer.
He did this thinking he could never do that. Buy her a house outright. A car outright. Hell, he couldn’t even help her take care of her brother, not with setting up his own house and what would be coming up with his kids as they finished high school and entered life. He’d already dipped into his uncle’s inheritance to buy furniture and pay for the divorce and he’d need more.
He didn’t get paid shit but he’d never be able to buy anyone a new car outright.
No way a house.
Not in his life.
“Hixon?” she called hesitantly.
“And he divorced you because of your mother?” Hix asked the street.
“He took care of Andy, and obviously gave me a really good life. I mean, I worked and sometimes I sang but, you know, we had a comfortable life mostly because of him.”
He bet they did.
“But, well, I gave her money and he hated her and it bothered him that I did.”
Uh.
What?
He looked again to her. “Sorry?”
She did another shrug. “He really hated her. Like I said, we were together when the accident happened. He knew Andy before and after. She hurt him. And she wasn’t ever nice to me. So me giving her money—”
“She’s your mother.”
Greta shut her mouth.
She opened it right back up to say a loaded, “Yeah.”
He didn’t know what that was loaded with but he didn’t ask after that.
He asked, “So that’s it? He had you and gave you up because your mother is a parasitical bitch?”
“Well, that and I, um . . .”
She tried to slide her hand away.
Hix kept hold of it.
Her focus sharpened on him and she whispered, “I didn’t want to have a family.”
“And he did,” Hix guessed.
“Yes.”
“And you two didn’t talk about that before you got married?”
Her head twitched. “No. We did. He knew.”
That made Hix’s brows draw together. “So what was his beef?”
“He thought he could change my mind.”
“That’s not a beef, Greta. That’s bullshit.”
Her fingers convulsed around his.
“Why didn’t you want a family?” he asked.
“I had one.”
He twisted her way. “I get your mom isn’t great, Greta. And it goes without sayin’ I hate that you and your brother gotta live with what she did to him. But I mean a family that’s yours.”
“I had one, Hix.”
“The one you make,” he explained.
“I raised Andy, Hixon,” she told him. “He was mine. He was never hers. I took a bus to the hospital when she called me after she had him and the nurses got him for me and put me in a little room where I sat in a rocking chair and held him and that was it. He was mine. And I mean that in an emotional sense. But also in an everything sense, because she had nothing to do with him.”
Uh.
What?
“Come again?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. “No bottles. No diapers. No forcing him out of bed for school in the morning. We weren’t latchkey kids who had to look after ourselves while Mom was out making a living. She lived her life with two kids in her trailer she had to put up with and maybe throw some money at so we could eat, I could buy Andy diapers or go to Goodwill to get him clothes. I mean, in the beginning, I had to go to school and someone had to look after him. But if I couldn’t get a neighbor to help out, I’d come home and he’d be bawling because he had a dirty diaper and she barely pulled it together to give him some food so she’d hand him off to me and then she’d vanish. Other than that, we didn’t exist until I started making money and she could lean on me to give some of it to her.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You’re joking,” he growled.
She shook her head, again trying to slide her hand away but Hix held tight.
She gave up trying to get away and kept giving him her story.
“Normally, he would walk. But it was raining. So she was the one who picked him up from that party, because I was out with Keith and Andy didn’t want to interrupt us so he called her for a ride. And unfortunately, she felt in the rare mood to give him one.”
Hix looked back to the street and the amount of beer he threw back was a lot bigger.
“So now you get it,” she noted in a strange voice that regained his attention.
“Get what?” he asked.
“Get how Keith felt about her. About me not wanting a family because I’d already raised a son and started doing that at fourteen so I wasn’t feeling doing it again, this also because of her. How all that, being what she made, could . . .” she gave a tentative tug on her hand but when he didn’t let go, she quit doing it, “make him divorce me,” she finished.
“No, I don’t get that.”
She blinked several times before she asked, “You don’t?”
“Hell no.”
Her mouth got soft, her eyes went troubled, and she said quietly, “Hix, he lived with it for ten years.”
“Sweetheart, maybe he feels okay about himself that he left you to your life puttin’ you in a nice house in a nice car in a nice town with your brother in a good place where they take care of him, but you’re still here and he’s wherever he is and it isn’t here with you, so no. I don’t get it. I think he’s an idiot.”
Something lit in her eyes like humor with a whole load of something more before it faded and she said, “You haven’t even met Andy yet.”
“I’ve met your mom and I haven’t led my life or my career in law enforcement all in this town, so I know women like her and I know they’re bad news and I knew that, babe, before she even opened her mouth. I got more of it when she did. I get it. I get it would be frustrating. I don’t think bad about the man because of that, because this shit is extreme and he obviously wanted to look out for you in a variety of ways. He just totally fell down on that job.”
“But I was . . . I was weak about my mom,” she declared. “It wasn’t like she’d ingratiate herself or she was around all the time, being annoying. She’d come and she’d go. But when she’d come, she’d always have her hand out. And part of me giving her money was the fact that, if I did, she’d go without making a mess of things, because she’d make a mess of things if she didn’t get what she wanted. But part of it was because, well, she’s far from great, but she’s the only mom I’ve got.”
“Greta, baby, she’s clearly even less of a peach than I expected, but I’ve seen kids take care of parents who beat them. Who sexually abused them. Who let men or women into their homes repeatedly, and it was them who would administer the abuse. I get that she’d manipulate shit to get what she wants, making it hard for you to say no. I also get it’s just straight up hard to say no to a parent. It isn’t that one person is stronger, being able to cut that shit out of their lives. It’s maybe that your heart is larger that you’d look after her, but it’s also not just that. It’s like the chicken and the egg. No one can say what’s the right answer in how to handle that. It’s just one of life’s things that we deal with the way our heart tells us to do it and there’s never anything wrong with that.”
She said nothing.
She just stared at him with those big eyes in that beautiful face that even a broken nose couldn’t make any less beautiful, and taking that in, Hix knew even more the man who divorced her was an idiot.
But even with all she’d just laid on him, Hix felt fucking great.
Because he couldn’t give her a house or a car or help out with her brother (much, this being financially) until after the girls were out of school.
But he could put up with her mother, and with the way her voice got when she talked about him, he had not the slightest hesitation of having her brother in his or his kids’ lives.
So yeah.
If this worked out, he could give her that.
And he had a feeling that meant more to her than a top-of-the-line Cherokee ever would.
Or a diamond ring.
He threw back more beer and heard her cautious, “Hix?”
He looked to her. “Yeah?”
More caution when she muttered, “I just, uh . . . gave you a lot.”
“Unh-hunh,” he agreed.
She studied him.
He leaned to her and whispered, “Put me to the test.”
“Sorry?”
“I’ll pass.”
He watched her eyes get bright with wet.
He did not want to make her cry. He liked she felt that much from what he said.
But he never wanted to be the man who made Greta cry.
“We’re new,” he stated. “Life has thrown me some curveballs lately so I have no idea how it’s gonna go. It’s obviously thrown more at you and has since birth. What I do know is how much I like bein’ with you. How good it feels. And I wanna take care of that. I let your mother put that at risk once, that was stupid but I’m not stupid, so I learned that lesson and it won’t happen again. And I think there’s nothing in my life I’ve heard that’s more beautiful than what you give your brother, before he got hurt and after. I also know I can say all that ’til I’m blue in the face, I still have to prove it. So put me to the test. Go for it. At least with all that, I’ll pass. What I don’t want is to make you cry about it, Greta. You laid it out and it is what it is and all you gotta do now is sit back and see.”
“Okay, I really wanna have sex with you, like, right now,” she announced.
His cock felt that.
But his lips only smiled.
“Baby, I’m not making love to you two days after you got your nose broke.”
“It’s been three.”
His lips kept smiling. “Greta, sweetheart, I’m not making love with you three days after you got your nose broke.”
“We won’t kiss.”
“The fuck we won’t,” he growled.
“We can—”
He gave her hand a firm shake and leaned to her. “Weekdays, Shaw’s curfew is ten. He’s gonna be home soon and I gotta be home with my boy. But Friday, Shaw plays ball and you won’t be singing. I’ll tell him to maneuver a sleepover with one of his buds. And after the game, we’ll have all night.”
Her eyes instantly rolled to the ceiling of her porch while her lips moved but no words came out.
“Babe?” he called.
“Hush,” she shushed him.
He started chuckling. “Greta.”
She rolled her eyes back. “Hush, Hix, I’m counting the hours so I can count them down.”
He stopped chuckling and busted out laughing.
Then he leaned farther and took her mouth in a slow, gentle, wet kiss.
When he was done, he pulled back an inch. “Tide you over?”
“Not even close.”
He touched his lips even more gently on the tip of her nose before he sat back, kept hold of her hand and lifted up his beer.
When he’d taken a tug and dropped it, he asked, “Okay, so what in the hell is a wash, rinse and set?”
That was when Greta laughed, he turned to watch, and when she quit, she explained a wash, rinse and set.
Having a dick, he discovered he really didn’t need to know.
But he was glad he did.