Letting go of my nipple, he lets me lean back to get the maximum friction against my clit as his hands guide my thrusts up and down on his dick. “That’s it, come around me like thegood girl you are. Milk my cock.” With those words, I fall off the edge, with Ian following right behind me.
Not willing to lose contact with him yet, I keep him inside of me, laying across his chest, his soft fingers running up and down my spine.
“Okay maybe I had you from the moment I met you at the bar,” he says, breaking the silence, making me giggle at the thought of his first words to me.
“You did not! If I’m not mistaken, you told me to forget what you said, and then went on to say, ‘God, I hope she’s just drunk enough to forget what I said.’”
“Shit, you heard that?” he asks, looking embarrassed.
Nodding my head yes, I pull away even more, sitting back up onto him, feeling him softly slip out of me, giving me a full body shiver. Fuck, we forgot a condom again, but again, like last time, the panic doesn’t set in.
I couldn’t fall asleep that night. Usually it takes minutes, if not seconds, for me to fall asleep when Ian is wrapped around me. Tonight, my mind keeps wandering back to what he said—that he had me from the first words he spoke to me. Or at the cabin, when he had my coffee waiting for me. When he took me horseback riding for the first time. The thunderstorm, the restaurant, the tattoo parlor. Every moment we’ve spent together over the last two, almost three, months runs through my mind like movie scenes.
He might not have had me the moment I saw him at the bar, or when he took me to the zoo, or when we went bowling, or when he introduced me to his cat or Sadie or his mom, or everytime he asked me how my book or my Bucket List was coming along, but all those moments helped me put my heart back together. If I’m being honest with myself, it’s through all those moments that he made me fall in love with him.
Those moments filled the cracks in my heart until it was whole again.
Chapter 31
It’s been four days since I realized that somehow, somewhere, this summer, I fell in love with Ian. Yet, I still haven’t been able to wrap my head around it. It’s too soon. I can’t love a guy that I’ve only known for ten weeks, can I? How do I even know if it’s love, this isn’t how I felt with Lucas. Not even at the start of our relationship, not when I agreed to marry him, and not on our wedding day. My gut, head, and heart tell me that he’s it—he’s my happily ever after. But I’ve learned that I can’t trust my gut, my head or my heart. If I could, I wouldn’t be a divorcee before the age of thirty.
Can’t you though?I ask myself.
Lucas had to ask me out four times before I finally agreed to go out with him. It took him six months to convince me to move in with him. If Ian asked me to move in with him tomorrow, I would. Lucas didn’t discuss marriage with me before asking me to marry him in front of hundreds of people.
Right from the start, my gut, heart, and head told me to stay away and to say no to Lucas. I went against the feeling and went along with what he wanted, thinking that he was my only shot athappiness. I was wrong. I let a sigh leave my lips . . . but what if I’m wrong again?
“What’s wrong?” Levi asks. He’s been sitting on the couch beside me as I try to process my feelings about Ian. He hasn’t said or done much, other than mope on the couch since Lacey left, so I’m surprised to see he’s paying enough attention to me to ask me what’s wrong.
“Nothing, just thinking about life,” I answer, then take the opportunity to ask him how he’s doing. “How are you doing?”
“I’m fine.”
“Levi. I’m a woman, we inventedfine. So let me ask you again, how are you doing? Because I know you’re notfine.” I’m met with silence. “All right, I was trying to be nice, Levi, but you’re going to make me use my big sister voice aren’t you?” I say, sitting up straight on the couch and twisting to look right at him. “She’s been gone for a week and all you’ve done in those seven days is look at your phone and mope. You haven’t tried to call her, you’ve just been waiting for her to make the move . . .”
“Because she’s the one who left! She left me!” Levi screams.
“And why did she leave, Levi?” I challenge him. “Why did she leave, Levi? Wanna know what I think?” I ask in a softer voice. “I think shit got real and you chickened out. And you know you chickened out, so you don’t want to face that and call her with your tail between your legs. But at the same time, I think you don’t want to call her, because if you call her, you know there’s a good chance she comes back, but you don’t want her to come back. You want her to accomplish her dreams. So I get it. It sucks. But it’s not the end, Levi. That woman loves you. She’s not just going to forget about you. The only thing you can do right now, is figure out where you went wrong and make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice. Sulk and mend your heart, so that when the season starts you can be your best and keep accomplishing your dreams as Lacey accomplishes hers. Go toVancouver to visit your older brother Liam, go sulk and mend your heart somewhere where she doesn’t haunt every corner and figure out if you’re all in with her or not, because if you are, you have over a year to figure out how you’re going to make it up to her, and you know as well I as I do that Lacey doesn’t forget, and that she will make you work for it. As she should.” For a moment I think I broke him, he doesn’t say anything, just stares blankly at the wall.
“Like you’re one to talk, Hannah!” he finally says with a raised voice. “You came here a shell of the woman I used to know because of some guy who wasn’t worth your time. Now you have a great guy who can’t take his eyes or attention off you and yet, you sit here on my couch and hide from your own damn feelings because you’re scared. You don’t get to sit here and tell me what to do when you can’t even take your own advice! Ian is out there putting in the work for something he hasn’t even done, and yet, you can’t even tell him how you feel. You can’t even admit to yourself that he is head-over-heels in love with you and that you love him too. So don’t tell me what to do because you’re just being a coward.”
I was not expecting that. Levi is usually the quiet one, the peacemaker. He doesn’t like to stir the pot. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him raise his voice like this. But he’s not wrong. He hasn’t said anything that I haven’t told myself over the last four days.
“I know I love him,” I softly say, breaking the silence a few minutes later. The idea of Ian and I has been bouncing around my head for four days, and I can’t seem to fathom a future without him.
“Shit, Hannah. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said what I said,” he says, turning towards me, shame and sadness written all over his face. “I just can’t believe she left, everything hurts. And I see you having the chance that I blew with Lacey with Ian and I just get jealous and pissed off. You’re not a coward, I know howmuch Lucas hurt you. If anything, I’m so fuckin’ proud of you for even taking a chance with Ian. I know it wasn’t easy for you.”
“I know it hurts, Levi. And I’m sorry for raising my voice at you. I just didn’t know how else to get you to talk to me,” I say, moving so I’m sitting right beside him and can throw my arms around him and lay my head against his chest. “I think you should go to Vancouver, visit Liam, get out of this space a little. Decide what you want to do about Lacey. ”
“You’re right. I need to get out of this city for a bit, and Liam always knows what to say and how to help,” he agrees, wrapping his arms around me.
“For the record, I think she’s perfect for you,” I tell him.
He says I’m right, but he’s also right. I am being a coward. Here I am, telling him what to do, how to solve his love life problems, yet I can’t even admit to myself or anyone else that I fell in love with Ian. I can’t admit that he upended my world and showed me what true love looks and feels like. I’ve been so caught up in timelines and not wanting to be tied down like I was with Lucas that I couldn’t see that being with Ian was freeing. There’s no doubt in my mind that Ian does like me. That he’ll ever stop encouraging me to challenge myself.
I’ve been unfair to him, comparing him to Lucas in my mind since I met him. I’ve even compared him aloud, and every time Ian has just sat there listening to me, encouraging me to talk to him, letting me get my feelings out without judgement. He’s encouraged me to work through my feelings. He acknowledges how I feel and not only lets me know but shows me that he is a completely different man than Lucas, and that our relationship couldn’t—isn’t— comparable to the one I had with Lucas. If I’m being honest with myself, this arrangement with Ian stopped being just an arrangement and started being an actual relationship long ago. Looking back, I can say it was never just an arrangement. He’s always treated me as more than just afriend. He just let me set the pace and the boundaries I needed, without pressure.
“So you think he loves me?” I ask, breaking the silence a few moments later, making Levi laugh for the first time in a week.
