“Doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, wanting the floor to open and swallow her whole when she thought of that day and the things Sam had said to her after she’d pressed a quick kiss to his lips. She’d been rejected before. But never had it felt as awful as when he’d had to gently explain to her that he’d never see her as anything more than his high school girlfriend’s kid sister. “I’ve put him out of my mind. He’s a part of my past and will never occupy a place in my future.” She clapped her hands together as if dusting them off. “From now on, I’m keeping it one-hundred-percent in the present.”
Although, purposefully avoiding thinking of Sam during the day hadn’t stopped her from dreaming of him every night. And with the dreams had come a sense of need or hunger or…heck, maybe it’s just horniness, she thought.
It’d been over a yearsince she’d been naked with a man. And even longer since she’d been naked with a man who knew what he was doing.
But maybe if she allowed the door to the past to swing open inside her head without immediately shoving it shut, turning the lock, and tossing away the key, she could trick herunconsciousnessinto taking a page from herconsciousnessand just…letting go.LettingSamgo so she could finally,finallymove on.
And there’s no time like the present.
She allowed the memory of the first moment she set eyes on him to bloom to life inside her head.
He’d still been in his baseball uniform when Candy had brought him home to meet their parents. His hair had been dark and shaggy, curling over his ears. His shoulders had been broad and well-muscled thanks to all the time his coach had kept him in the weight room. And his face had been classically handsome. Like the heroes in the old black-and-white movies her mother always watched—Clark Gable or James Stewart transported sixty years into the future.
But what’d made Hannah’s pubescent heart go pitter-pat had been his eyes. Crystal blue and startlingly clear. Like Lake Michigan reflecting a cloudless summer sky. And theexpressionin them, mischief mixed with intelligence woven together with the kind of wariness that had come from growing up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the city, had made her aware of parts of her body she’d been completely oblivious to before he’d walked into her life.
Sam had been a heady mix of bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks and jock with the confident smile and cocky swagger. And from the first moment she’d experienced all six-plus feet of his sinewy brawn and burgeoning charisma, she’d known what it was to lust after a man.
Er…boyrather.He’d barely been eighteen at the time.
Eighteen then, thirty-four now andallgrown up.
When she’d hopped out of the cab on Goose Island six months earlier to find him leaning nonchalantly against the big iron gates surrounding the grounds of the old menthol cigarette factory, and despite all the intervening years, she’d recognized him immediately.
Recognized him and nearly swallowed her own tongue.
He’d been handsome as a boy on the cusp of manhood. But as a full-fledged man?
Well, not to put it too bluntly, but we’re talking straight fire. Hashtag smash. Bow-chicka-wow-wow. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
His face had lost the fullness of youth, his bearded jaw having been whittled down to hard planes and sharp edges. His steady teenage diet of chicken wings and cheeseburgers meant teenage Sam had been a little on the beefier side. But present-day Sam? Oh, present-day Sam was lean and mean, with the kind of physique that said he moved his body all day, every day. He’d replaced his youthful sneakers with steel-toed biker boots. An intricate tattoo depicting an eagle feather had peeked beneath the sleeve of his T-shirt. And the puckered scar across his neck had broadcast to the world that he was the rarest of specimens: a modern-day warrior.
Yes, thirty-four-year-old Sam was the kind of guy to make women suck in their stomachs and stick out their chests. The kind to make the minds of hetero ladies shoot straight to hot nights and tangled sheets. The kind that’d instantly made her forget he hadn’t spared her a single, solitary thought since he’d left their South Side neighborhood to join the Marines sixteen years earlier.
Although, if she was being fair, it wasn’t like heshouldhave spared her a thought. He hadn’t beenherboyfriend. She’d only gotten to know him—and lose her thirteen-year-old heart to him—because he’d been too nice to tell her to buzz off when she’d sidled up beside him on the front porch swing of her parents’ house all the times he’d waited for her older sister to finish blow-drying her hair, or putting on mascara, or changing outfits for the eighty-fifth time.
And yet… Hannah had missed him every single day since the day he’d left. And she’d just about given up hope of ever seeing him again when, out of the blue, he’d called with a request for her help on a job.
To say she’djumpedat the chance was an understatement. On the entire fifteen-minute cab ride from her neighborhood to Goose Island, she’d thought,Huzzah! Now’s my chance! He’ll look at me and see the woman I’ve become instead of the snot-nosed eighth grader with the knobby knees and training bra.
Boy-oh-boy, she couldn’t have been more wrong.
“I’m finally ready to let go of my girlish fantasies when it comes to Mr. Samuel Harwood.” She shook away the memories of him and gently closed the door on them. “The past is a place to learn from, not to live in.”
When Cesar opened his mouth, she expected him to naysay her. To tell her she was fooling herself if she thought that, after all these years, she could so easily let go of her hopes and dreams. She was relieved when he only dipped his chin. “Right. Which means you should change out of those ridiculous pajama bottoms and come to the club. You need to get out. You need to getlaid.”
“Wait. How did this get turned on me?” She sat up and frowned. “Weren’t we talking about you and Pete? I mean, youdolove him, don’t you?”
Cesar waved a hand through air redolent with the smells of nail polish, perfume, and face powder. “Of course I do. The man is perfect.” He screwed up his mouth in consideration. “Well, maybe notperfect. He wears cotton boxers with sports logos on them, which gives me totalsuburban dadvibes.” He shuddered as if suburban dads were akin to flesh-eating bacteria. “But we can’t have it all, can we? And Pete is more than I’d ever hoped for.”
“Sotellhim. Take the risk. Take the plunge. And if there’s heartbreak in your future, well…” She shrugged. “You know what they say. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
“You’re full of overused adages tonight, aren’t you?” His brows knit together. “And do youreallybelieve that?”
She thought back on her decade-and-a-half of unrequited longing for Sam. Sure, it hadn’t beenlovelove. It’d beenpuppylove. Even still, she could say without a doubt that she wouldn’t trade the time she’d spent with Sam back in Englewood, or the years since which she’d spent missing him and fantasizing about him, for anything.
She was a better person for having known him. And she had a far clearer picture of the kind of man she wanted in her future for having spent so much time daydreaming about him.
“Idobelieve it.” She nodded. “I think loving someone, even if that love doesn’t end up lasting, is a miracle. One of theonlymiracles we get to experience in life.”
