Sweet Ache

“Ben’s been able to keep my past zipped up so that no one knows about her, about any of it unless I want them to.”

My mind connects the dots, and understanding dawns about why even though I researched him, his father’s death was never mentioned. Somehow, some way, his boyhood friend used legal means to secure his past. Privacy about his father’s suicide I can understand, but what the hell are they talking about now?

Once again I find myself in the dark surrounded by the secrets Hawkin keeps. And I’m not a fan of secrets or the dark.

“But there’s always Hunter now, isn’t there?” Vince says, the room falling silent.

My mind reels and imagination runs wild. Does Hawke have a child? Has he been married? Was he in an accident and his girlfriend was injured and now he feels he owes her? What could possibly be so stressful that he can’t tell me?

My stomach churns with the possibilities and I’m not fond of any of them. Do I stay or do I leave undetected? I’d rather find out what is so horrible now before I fall even harder for Hawke than I already have. The best way to face it is head-on so I enter the kitchen just as Hawkin says, “The constant wild card in my life.”

“Good morning.” Vince and Hawkin’s bodies jolt at the sound of my voice.

“Morning,” Vince nods cautiously before shooting Hawkin a knowing glance and walking out of the kitchen.

“Sorry, was I interrupting?” I ask as I meet his eyes, hoping my eavesdropping isn’t given away in them.

His answer is to tug on the hem of his shirt I’m wearing and pull me into the V between his thighs. He wraps his arms around my waist and with the height difference of him sitting and me standing, he buries his face into my chest and holds me tight.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” he murmurs, the warmth of his breath seeping through my shirt and into the sensitized skin of my breasts. And there’s something so sexy about a man when he’s willing to cuddle in broad daylight. It’s that combination of rough and soft at the same time. The notion that he’s willing to be caught by the other band members.

I wrap my arms around him in kind and try not to let the confusion over the conversation I just walked in on ruin the moment. I press a kiss into the top of his head. “Morning. Everything okay?”

I almost don’t want him to answer, to ruin this, because this feels so normal, so right that I don’t want to worry about tomorrows or what most likely won’t be for us. If he says yes, everything is okay, I know despite last night, he’s still keeping secrets, and if he says no, then I fear he’ll tell me something I don’t want to deal with right now that might push me away.

The conundrum is we haven’t known each other long enough for me to feel like I deserve to know the answer to the question, and yet my feelings have grown strong enough for him that I want to know.

He sighs and I can feel the tension in his shoulders. “Yes. No. Just shit I don’t want to deal with right now,” he says, giving me an all of the above answer that allows our ambiguous state to remain. “I know what would make me feel better, though.” He looks up at me, eyes warm and inviting as his grin spreads slowly, the I’m-a-rock-god-bow-before-me one that I can’t resist.

“I’m sure you do.” Damn, just a few words and he already has that slow burn of desire simmering in my core.

“What instrument should we play today?” The amusement in his tone mixes with the lift of an eyebrow that has me laughing out loud.

“Oh, I’m sensing a new theme here. Working our way through the instruments now, are we?”

He slides his hands down to cup my ass, fingers sweeping ever so softly over the thin fabric of my panties between my thighs. “By the time I’m done with you, we’ll have played a rock band’s worth of instruments.”

He keeps his hands on my backside and pulls me into him, his forehead to my midchest. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, confusion lingering within me over things I know I can’t control: his secrets or my feelings. I tell myself that I need to take a step back from this paradox of a man.

I’m getting wrapped up too fast with him. And yes I think he feels similarly, but I also know there are way too many truths left untold. While I don’t feel that he owes it to me to throw his soul and secrets on the table at this juncture, I know I’ve been completely open, and that scares me. Unfortunately I’ve been on the receiving end before of situations when you fall and there’s no one there to catch you.

I tell myself that I need to tell him I’m super behind on the first draft of my thesis and I need to go home to work on it. Separating myself from his sexy morning voice and addictive smile is necessary for the space I need to get a new perspective on whatever this is between us from the outside looking in.

Because falling in love is like the rain. You can’t always predict it and when you do it might never appear, but you can always see the signs of it before it falls.

I know that if I take that step back, I’ll see storm clouds bearing down on the horizon. I’m just not sure how I feel about that. Living in Southern California, rain isn’t something I see a lot, and when I do, I love it for the first few hours … until I realize it’s ruined that perfectly composed appearance of mine. Once it makes my hair frizzy and my makeup run, I start to drown under its dark cloud.

And then there’s the thought that if it is raining, Hawke and I haven’t even given an ounce of thought to what comes next. We’re too busy enjoying the now, the intensity of getting to know each other in all senses of the word, and haven’t even thought about the umbrella to prevent us from getting soaked. He has a tour coming up; I have my thesis…. Ugh. I’m beginning to overthink crap I shouldn’t even be thinking about because shit, it might not even rain. Damn forecasters are always wrong.