CHAPTER 31
Kipp
Hattie had rocked my world earlier, giving the absolute best blow-job of my life right out there under the open sky against my Jeep. I’d barely been able to keep my eyes from rolling straight out of my head while she’d licked and sucked me down.
Afterwards, she’d watched me under fluttering lashes as she’d eaten her sandwich with a knowing little smile, making me want to turn her over, spank her, and plow into her, but we didn’t have time for all of that.
We were still a little late after circling back to the cabins, but I knew that Mags wouldn’t mind. The Holts weren’t strict about the family night schedule, except that it happened like clockwork. Last year, I’d gotten into the habit of skipping, but then Maggie had fallen and broken her leg, and I realized what I was missing out on by falling back into old habits.
Letting myself move away from family like that would make me like my father, and I needed to guard against that. It wasn’t a good thing. He had been paranoid and thrived in isolation. Not to mention an abusive asshole at the best of times. His death had been traumatic for me as a nine-year-old since I lost my father, but it was also the very best thing that could have happened to me.
“You nervous?”
Hattie hid it well, but the small things gave her away. Her fingers brushed down one of the embroidered cherries on the pants she was wearing before she settled into the passenger seat, and gave Fish soft scratches behind the ears, the kind she always pretended were for him, but I suspected also soothed her nerves. Dogs were like that. Animals gave people a sense of calm. They never demanded anything from you or asked you probing questions. It was one of the reasons that I’d always liked them so much.
“A little,” she admitted. “I’m not really a meeting-the-family type.”
That surprised me. She seemed exactly like someone you’d bring home to meet the family. Honestly, I was surprised she wasn’t snapped up by some lucky fucker already. “You’re going to be fine. They’ll love you. Just fair warning, all of them together are a little chaotic,” I said, turning the key in the ignition. “But they mean well.”
She let out a quiet groan. “Comforting.”
“They terrify everyone the first time. Even the UPS guy leaves packages at the end of the drive now.” I glanced over with a grin. “But they like you already. And you already met some of them.”
“How could they like me already?” Hattie rolled her eyes at me. “They barely know me, Kipp. Although I have been invited to ladies’ night.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“You don’t understand. That’s even worse,” I teased. “It means they’re planning their absolute best behavior, which is always the most dangerous version.”
On the way back from King Creek, I’d been treated to a phone call from her mother and had been nothing short of appalled by the casual dismissiveness with which she’d treated Hattie. There was an oddness to the way Hattie’s mom spoke to her, almost like she forced herself to dial the phone and then checked it off her to-do list. For most of the call, she spoke about herself, giving Hattie a rundown of the entire day without engaging in any meaningful way. Apparently, this was normal because Hattie checked out and gazed out of the window, murmuring at appropriate times before saying goodbye at the end of the call without giving her mother any information about what she was doing, that she’d met someone, or that she might even be pregnant.
“Yep,” she said as she disconnected. “That’s my mom. She was different once.” Hattie’s whole body was sad. “When my sister was still here, my mom was engaged and interested in everything. You couldn’t keep her away. We had lunch twice a week, and there wasn’t anything she didn’t know about us.” Shaking her head, Hattie turned away from the window. “I understand her at least. Did you ever know your mother? Other than Maggie?”
“No, and my father never spoke of her. She died when I was very little, from what I could find out. I’m not sure what would have happened if she had been around, or if she would have stayed. He was a hard man and not well.”
“Sounds like we both know what we don’t want a child to experience,” Hattie says softly.
“That’s for sure.” I’d long had ideas about whatnotto do when it came to parenting.
The drive wound between rolling fields that had already turned a late-summer gold until the Holt farmhouse rose at the end of a long gravel drive, its soft siding worn by years of weather, but it had been freshly painted. It told a story of a place that was well-loved.
“There’s the barn back there. It used to be a working farm.” I pointed it out to her. “We had a few horses, so we all learned to ride, and we had goats and stuff.”
“It must have been nice growing up out here. It’s so beautiful. Really different from how Jane and I grew up. We lived in Chicago, well, the outskirts really, but close enough so my parents could commute. They bothworked in banking, so they were gone a lot. I would have liked to have a place like this where we could have really been kids. Where there were animals and dirt.”
“It was really awesome.”
When I parked, Hattie let out a breath so slow and careful that it told me she had thought about backing out at some point on the drive. She smoothed her hair, then frowned at herself for doing it.
“You look perfect,” I said.
Her cheeks warmed. There was no doubt that Hattie was beautiful, but everything about her seemed to come together to make her even more irresistible, even her nervous little quirks. She was smart and kind. Every detail I learned about her made me want to know more. She wore a pair of flared beige cropped pants with tiny embroidered cherries on them that I was sure Sage would love, paired with a red T-shirt that made me want to rip it in half.
“If you don’t stop looking at me like that, we’re going to have to go home.” She leaned in and gave me a quick kiss that had me gripping her tightly before she could ease away.
“It’s hard.” I groaned.
“Something is,” she laughed and then wobbled into me as Fish knocked into her on his way to sprint up theporch steps like he lived here, which in his mind, he might.
The screen door slapped open before we reached it, and two of my sisters immediately poked their heads out.
