Page 41 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Chris

“ W ell, shit,” Hopper says as he looks around my place.

I laugh as I kick off my boots. “You can hang your jacket there,” I say, suddenly slightly self-conscious about my little house. He’s been outside before, when I’ve had to swing by when he’s been in the car. But that was before. There was never reason for him to come in.

“It’s not much,” I say, “but I like it.”

“Not much?” Hopper says as he walks around. “Chris, it’s like you in house form. I fucking love it.”

I try to ignore the splash of heat those words sends to my insides. Try to tell myself his choice of words doesn’t mean more than the place is cute. Because it is cute. I’ve worked hard on it.

I tell Hopper about how I rent this place from an old man, a friend of Mac’s dad. Both of them are in a home now. He doesn’t ever ask for the rent, but I send it to his account every month like clockwork. “He’s a crotchety old bastard, though,” I say, laughing.

“Did you ever consider buying it from him?” Hopper asks.

“Yes, with all my thousands of dollars,” I say with an eye roll. Then I freeze, nearly straining my eyeballs.

Hopper looks at me with a little smirk.

“I guess I do have thousands now, thanks to you.”

“It’s not like you’re a kept woman. You earned it, bangles.”

Still the reminder that I’m not living paycheck to paycheck—at least right now—makes me kind of sweaty. “The last time I had more than a few hundred dollars saved up, it was to get laser eye surgery.”

“I’m sorry, you wear glasses?”

“ Wore glasses. Try to keep up, Hop.”

He looks positively thirsty. “I need to see you in glasses. Fuck, you’d be sexy. Why’d you have to fix your eyes?”

“Because seeing things is nice! Anyway, I threw them all out, you nerd-pervert.” At his pained expression, I relent and say, “I’ll show you pictures sometime.”

Sometime? That feels very future-based. Not for the first time since the airplane, I catch myself saying things that imply we have a future.

I head through the wide archway to the kitchen, trying desperately to shove away the future thoughts that keep trying to poke up.

Live in the moment, Lana said when I texted her, desperate, a couple of nights ago. I was panicking about how amazing things were with Hopper .

Her advice made sense. And was very generous, considering how unhinged my texts were—in the middle of the night, no less.

What about when my contract is up? What if this is a thing he does with some women? Just makes them feel like they’re the only one he’s ever cared about and then flitters off to his next movie? What if everything he said was bullshit?

“Has he given you any indication that any of that is true?” Lana could have said. “Do you know him and his character?”

But she didn’t. She’s too smart for that. Just enjoy yourself. That’s really all you can control.

Surprisingly, it worked. I’m now mostly avoiding thoughts of the future, refusing to dwell on the what-ifs.

I’m just enjoying watching this beautiful man walk around my personal sanctuary as I fix us London fog lattes—a drink Shelby turned me on to.

He picks up each little thrift store tchotchke and demands to know the story behind it.

My place is what you’d call maximalist chic.

Or at least maximalist. I’ve got colorful throws on all the furniture, which in itself is mismatched and in bright colors.

A vintage orange plush couch, a bright red bookshelf, a rainbow knotted rug.

An oversized bookshelf chock-full of books, 90 percent of them romance.

My paperback collection is admittedly huge, thanks to Lana owning a romance bookstore.

“I don’t really have a story for each of them,” I tell Hopper as he runs a stick over the spiny back of a wooden frog, which makes the thing emit a ribbit sound. “ They just make me happy, just like all the colors in here make me happy.”

“This place makes me happy,” he says, his form duplicated a dozen times in the mirror salon wall next to the hallway. He grins at me in the mirrors. But as our eyes meet, something passes between us. Something hot and sticky that melts all over me, making it difficult to breathe.

“Hope you like these,” I say as I come over with the tray.

Hopper obviously saw what I felt in my eyes, though, because he’s quiet now, no longer like a tourist in a museum, but serious, as he takes the tray from me.

It’s a good thing too, because it was rattling a little in my hands.

“Hey,” he says softly once it’s on the coffee table. “You okay?”

Sure , I should say. All good. Just every time I think I’ve got a handle on this situation, you look at me and my insides feel like they’ve turned to cotton candy.

“No,” I say honestly.

Hopper brushes his hand over my cheek, thumbing away a strand of hair that’s escaped my hastily pulled-up bun. “Tell me.”

I want to speak, but my mouth is suddenly dry. I swallow, the words lodging in my throat. Enjoy the moment , I try to remind myself. But how can I do that when it feels like not everything is out in the open? That’s just how I operate. No bullshit. Everything on the table.

“I think you’re going to break my heart,” I whisper .

Hopper’s eyes fill with an emotion that’s half pain and half something more. Affection maybe. I don’t know. I’m not an eye reader.

“Funny,” he said. “I was thinking something similar.”

“So you agree you’re going to break my heart?” I tease, desperate for anything—the slightest bit of levity—to pull me out of this intense emotion pummeling me.

But Hopper shakes his head, not laughing. “No. I was thinking it’s too late for me.”

His thumb brushes over my jaw, up slightly against the bottom ridge of my lower lip. I shudder inside, with want and need and the fear I just spoke aloud. “What do you mean?” I whisper, needing him to say it.

“I mean you already have my heart, Chris. It’s a jalopy, but it’s yours.”

I laugh, my throat thick. “Now who’s the grandpa?”

The tenderness in his smile almost makes me lose my mind as well as my heart.

“Maybe someday I will be,” Hopper whispers as he wraps his arms around me, lifting me off the floor. “What do you think about that?”

Heat surges through me as I wrap my legs around the hard plane of his waist. As I feel his strong arms curl under my thighs, his broad hand splay across my back.

“I think…good for you,” I say.

He shakes his head. “What if I told you I dream of putting babies in you, Chris?”

My stomach twangs like a banjo. For all his secrets—everything he thinks he can’t tell me—Hopper Donnach really does say exactly what’s on his mind when he wants to .

“You’re crazy.”

“About you.”

“Corndog.”

He doesn’t miss the reversal. I know he doesn’t, because he grins as he tilts his face up and kisses me.

The feel of him when our lips meet is electric.

The surge of sensation at every place we touch creates a brilliance of sparks.

My whole body, heart and all, throbs for this man.

It’s almost too much. I’m kissing him. I’m letting him in, all the alarm bells going off, telling me he’s going to obliterate you.

You’re doomed . And I don’t care in the least. I was fully serious when I said he was going to break my heart.

I know that with a certainty that feels like a knife wound and a bullet hole.

A fiery burning beam of wood on my stomach.

A hand gently cupping my heart and my life and my soul.

“Bedroom,” Hopper growls into my neck.

“Hallway,” I breathe.

Hopper carries me down the hall, bashing us into the first room he finds.

“Damn it,” he says. We’re in the bathroom.

“We are dirty,” I remind him.

His eyes snap up to meet mine, and I think I know what he’s thinking.

Because I’m thinking it too. For anyone else, this might be fun.

For me, this is stripping that last, hidden part of me away for him to see.

I feel the raw grip of terror, the panic that this could all go sideways, and my hands begin to tremble.

Getting cleaned off means removing clothes, which I don’t do.

I’m about to tell him I’m kidding. Maybe I was.

But now, I’m not. I have to do this. It’s a moment I didn’t realize I needed until now.

To cross that gap that’s been holding me back.

The crevasse between hiding where it’s safe and showing my whole self without shame.

“I promise to take care of you, Chris,” Hopper whispers. “No matter what you want to show me.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” I whisper back, those tears returning, just at the precipice; just like me.

“I’m going to take care of you in all the ways, Chris. No matter what happens after, I’ll be honored with whatever you choose to share with me. No bullshit, remember?” Hopper says. “You ask me a question and I give you a straight answer.”

Why do I keep forgetting my ace in the hole? From where he’s still holding me, my face is higher than his. So I look down into his eyes and ask the question that may not be the most important one. The question I should already know the answer to but is etched into me like an old wound.

“Will you run away once you see me?”

Any number of answers would be okay with me here. “No,” obviously. But also just plain honesty. “I don’t know.”

But Hopper doesn’t blink. “Nothing about you will ever make me run.”

I study him, his glacier eyes searing icy heat into mine.

I wonder if there’s some deeper message in there—that he won’t be the one to run.

That shouldn’t give me hope, but it does.

Because how could I ever run away from him?

Could this work between us? The thought is too big to contain.

So I don’t try to. I just nod, then tap his arms to let me go, and Hopper gently sets me on the ground. About the scar, I choose to believe.