Page 40 of The Forever After Bet

I narrow my eyes. “Are you, though?”

“At least ninety percent. Give or take.” Hannah laughs.

“I’ll take it.” I lean down. I Instead of kissing her, I open my mouth and shove in a handful of snow.

“Ford!” Hannah half yells, half laughs.

I lean down, letting the snow fall out of my mouth as I glide my lips along Hannah’s cheeks and nose. She squirms, but she’s laughing the entire time. I spit out the rest of the snow and press my cold lips to hers. She parts my lips with her tongue, and I suck on it, tangling it with mine. I let go of her hands, and she wraps them around my back.

“Hot and cold. I like it,” Hannah says.

“If we keep this up, we’re never going to finish.”

“I’m going to need a shower to warm up after this,” Hannah says, giving me another quick kiss.

“Now that’s an incentive.” I stand up and help her to her feet.

After another ten minutes, my grandpa come out dressed in his snow gear. He walks over to Hannah. I can’t hear the conversation, but I know he wants her to relinquish the snow blower. Finally, Hannah relents and lets him take over for her. She walks over to me and tries to push me away from my machine. “Not a chance, Clark.” I laugh. “Go inside. I’ll be up in a few.”

She narrows her eyes at me and sticks out her tongue.

“Don’t tempt me.”

She walks away but doesn’t go inside. She heads over to the lawn. I stand and watch her, curious about what she’s doing. She holds her hands out wide, giving me a little wave, then falls backward into the snow and makes snow angels.

I smile at her and get back to clearing the walk. We’re almost done. We finish all the parts we can with the snow blowers.

“I’ll worry about the other parts later,” my grandpa says, coming up to me. “Gigi made breakfast. It’s supposed to get into the low forties. Hopefully, some of this will melt.”

“Sounds good.” I turn to leave, but my grandpa grabs my arm.

“Hold on to that girl for dear life. She’s a keeper. She wasn’t going to give me the snow blower until I told her it was mine. If she didn’t give it to me, I’d consider it stealing.”

“Gramps!” I exclaim, pulling my hat off and running my hand through my sweaty hair.

“Relax. She knew I was joking. She told me I was mean for not giving her service hours to work off her drug possession charges and asked me to bring you to visit her when she got put back in juvie.”

I cover my hands over my face, laughing. “Only Hannah would come up with something like that. I better go find her. I have a feeling your front yard is covered in snow angels.”

She’s still in the front yard, but she’s abandoned her snow angels for a snowman, which is almost finished.

“Hey. What do you think?” She holds her hand out, proud of her snowballs.

“How did you make that so fast?”

“I have two little brothers who get demanding. Will you help me put the head on?”

“I’d love to.” We put on the snowman’s head and use the gravel from part of the driveway for eyes and a smile. Hannah takes her scarf off, wrapping it around the snowman’s neck.

“She’s so cute.” She pulls out her phone and drags me in front of it, and we take a handful of selfies.

“My grandma made breakfast.”

“Sweet, let’s go.” She grabs my hand, and we walk into the house through the main garage.

After breakfast, Hannah and I head back up to the apartment. It’s hard not to lament what could’ve been. This might have been our life if either of us had done things differently. There’s a part of me that wishes this was our life. The two of us married, taking on the world together. A more significant part is glad things worked out differently. I wish the last two and a half weeks hadn’t happened, but we learned a lot about ourselves and each other.

Hannah removes all her winter gear, puts it away in the closet, except for Gigi’s coat, and then heads into the bathroom. I take off all my stuff, lay it on the table, and follow Hannah. She’s already in the shower when I walk into the bathroom. I shuck off my clothes, get in, and wrap my arms around her from behind. She leans her head against my chest.

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