But they’d have the same meaning.
Therefore, I found myself whispering, “I love the song you sang for me.”
His face got soft but his smiling mouth said, “I think I got that when you stood on a chair and screamed I was the shit then jumped me the minute we got in your front door. Seriously, babe, I think I got carpet burns on my ass and shoulder blades, you rode me so hard.”
I smiled back but still gave his shoulder a puny slap and returned, “You don’t have carpet burns.”
He kept smiling through his muttered, “Feels like it.” I kept smiling too and Hop went on, “Good you got a rug inside your front door, lady. You rode me like that with my back on your tile, I wouldn’t be able to walk but that would be the least of my worries seein’ as I’d probably have a concussion.”
“Shut up,” I mumbled, still smiling and his smile got bigger. “Dad knows about us.”
Yes, that was what I blurted. I knew it actually came out when Hop’s eyebrows shot up.
“Come again?” he asked.
I pulled in a breath.
I said it. I said it in Hop’s bed. I said it after making the unconscious but undeniable decision to let him in so I decided it was time to give him more.
“That was what that thing was about in Vail,” I admitted.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I muttered back, and his hand slid out of my hair to wrap around the back of my neck.
“Can’t say that’s too surprising, baby,” he said gently. “We were shit at hiding it.”
“Yeah,” I repeated.
“He’d have to be stupid and blind and your old man is neither. Caught your mom givin’ us looks too and, I don’t know, not gonna go there with her until you and me decide it’s time but I don’t think it escaped Molly either,” he told me and my stomach lurched.
“Really? Molly?” I asked.
“She loves her dad. She pays attention. She’s a girl. Even at her age, she swoons over boy band crap and guys on TV she thinks are cute. Romantic fantasy is ingrained in chicks. It might come out slow but it’ll always come out. You look great. You dress great. You smile at her like she’s the only girl in the world and you make her old man happy. She’s gonna get ideas. In this instance, they just happen to be the right ones.”
“This is true,” I murmured, and he grinned then his grin faded.
“So he said shit to you about me?”
“Yeah,” I replied.
“And you packed your shit and walked out.”
It wasn’t a question, since he didn’t have to question seeing as he rode to my rescue, but there was something in his tone. Something that made my heart seize. Something important.
“Well, yeah,” I stated. “You rode to my rescue, remember?”
“Your dad said shit about me and you packed your shit and walked out.”
Again with the tone. Heavy.
No, weighty.
Meaningful.
Something was happening here.
“Hop—” I started but stopped when he rolled us so he was on top, and his hand came up to cup my jaw and I noted he was no longer just looking at me.
His eyes were burning into mine.
“All that shit you no doubt had to live through with your mom, you ever do anything like that before?” he asked.
“No,” I whispered.
“But your dad trash talked me, you threw a drama and walked out.”
“Yeah,” I replied, although I wouldn’t refer to it as “throwing a drama.” I couldn’t debate that I didn’t since, technically, I did.
And anyway, Hop was still being intense so I needed to concentrate and not debate terminology.
“So he trash talked me?”
I squirmed a little but stopped when Hop’s fingers dug lightly into my skin.
“He said you were a mistake, like Elliott,” I admitted cautiously.
“He’s wrong,” Hop growled, not cautiously.
“Hop—”
“He’s wrong, Lanie,” he bit out.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“Do not let him feed that monster in you. Not about me,” he ordered.
“Okay,” I repeated.
“With women, it’s about the slow soak, babe. Assholes pour shit on the surface and women keep goin’ not even knowin’ that shit is soakin’ in. Then one day, out of f**kin’ nowhere, that acid has burned deep in a way it leaves a wound that will never heal. Wipe that shit away, Lanie. Don’t let it soak in. He doesn’t know me. He cannot make that call about me.”
“That’s what I told him,” I shared.
“Good,” he clipped.
“Uh, Hop, he’s a biker bigot and he’s, well… other kinds of bigot besides. I told you that before you met him,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, you told me that but that was about how he’d be with me. I don’t give a f**k he makes a point and steps away from me after he shakes my hand. I give a f**k about him givin’ my woman shit and maybe makin’ her question bein’ with me. And when I say I give a shit, I mean in a big f**kin’ way.”
Boy, not much escaped Hop.
“He didn’t make me question it, Hopper,” I promised, then tried to lighten the mood. “And, just to say, it’s a little freaky how well you know women.”
“Babe, best wool men ever pulled was lettin’ women think we think with our dicks. We pay a f**kuva lot of attention. We know your shit maybe more than you do because we live it right along with you and some of you try to make us eat it. It’s just that some of us choose not to get sucked in the drama and instead focus on getting laid regularly.”
I felt my eyes get big right before I wrapped my arms around him and started giggling, but I managed to push through my giggles, “Honey, not sure you should share the brotherhood’s secrets.”
“You talk, no woman will listen. They prefer to think a man’s brain is in his dick. Gives ’em something to bitch about.”
“Again, freaking me out how well you know women,” I said, still giggling, and finally his face cleared and he smiled at me.
Then his thumb swept my lips right before it drifted away and his head dropped so his mouth could brush them.
When he lifted up again, he wasn’t smiling.
“You packed and walked out,” he whispered.
I stopped giggling and my teeth came out to graze my lower lip before I confirmed (again), “Yeah.”