Page 92 of Over & Out

“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,throbsfor this man. It’s almost too much. I’m kissing him. I’m letting him in, all the alarm bells going off, telling mehe’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.

“Wearedirty,” 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 removingclothes, 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?”

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