Page 32 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
He scoffs, tilts his head back on his neck. “I meant what we just did. But…the rest too, I suppose. Since we’re talking about it.”
“No, I don’t regret what you and I just did, James.” I pin the blanket under my arms, against my sides. “I don’t regret it at all. I…it was the best I’ve felt in…a very, very, very long time.”
“Me too.”
“Do you regret it?” I ask him.
He doesn’t answer right away. “I…no. I don’t regret it. But I’m still…I don’t know how to put it. Fucked up about it. I feel…guilty, I guess. Like I betrayed her. But I know she’s… gone. And before she died, she made me promise not to stay alone forever. So I…I don’t think she would be mad, or whatever. That’s a stupid way to put it, but I’m not very good with words. She wanted me to find someone. I was with her when she died. I held her hand. We were separated by the blue tarp thing they put up for a C-section, and she was bleeding out and she knew it, and no one could stop it and…she squeezed my hand as hard as she could and looked at me, and begged me to not stay alone forever. She knew me, I guess. Knew I’d…well, do what I’ve done: close up. And she loved me so much she wanted me to find some kind of happiness after she was gone. Even in death she was thinking about me.” A tense, thick, sharp silence. “But I still feel guilty. Looking at you. Wanting you. Kissing you. Touching you. Wanting you as bad as I fucking want you? It feels like a betrayal of her. Of what we had for twenty fucking years. Of how I felt about her, how I loved her. And—and you touching me…that felt…so—god, I’ve had the worst…best…I don’t know—the craziest, dirtiest dreams since we met, since we kissed, and you touching me…it was…” He shakes his head and trails off.
“It was what, James?”
He shakes his head, his mouth moving but no words coming out. He tries again, with a sharp breath. “It felt amazing. I wish I had better words to use, but I don’t. Amazing isn’t strong enough. It was incredible. But the guilt…fuck, the guilt.” He looks at me, then, after long moments of staring anywhere but at my eyes.
“You dreamed about me?” I ask, a small smirk on my lips. I can’t help but be a little pleased by the fact that he’s dreamed about me.
He groans, head tilted backward again, hand rubbing over his lips. “Yes.”
“What kind of dreams?” I keep looking at him, watching him. “You said crazy, dirty dreams.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
He shakes his head. “I felt shitty about that too.”
“James, you have to know—”
“I do know. She’s gone and I’m allowed to move on. I know.” He shakes his head. “When I say I felt shitty about it, I didn’t mean like that. I meant…in terms of you. I…” Another shake of his head, another trailed off sentence.
“What, James?” I ask. “Tell me.”
“You’re fishing.”
“Yep.”
He looks at me, brown eyes steady and wide and deep. “I had fantasies about you, Nova. Dirty stuff. You can probably guess what I dreamed about. You. What we just did. Other stuff.”
“I’ve dreamed about you, too. Had thoughts.” I pause, try to smile but the tension is too taut and thick, and I can’t. “Wanted you, and tried to pretend I didn’t. Woke up with dreams about you—about us—lingering, and feeling guilty about it, because we agreed we wouldn’t…” I gesture toward the kitchen. “Do exactly that.”
“So neither of us regret it,” James says, “but…now what?”
I shake my head and shrug. “I have no idea.”
“That makes two of us.” A phone rings in the distance, and it breaks the moment. James growls. “That’s mine.”
“You should answer it. It’s probably important.”
“It’s always important.”
“All the more reason to answer it.”
“You trying to get rid of me?” he asks, and I think he’s hiding a real question behind a joke.
“No,” I say. “I’m not. But I’m really mixed up and confused right now, and I need to figure things out.”
James nods. Slides off the bed, and I’m surprised yet again at how lithe and quiet he can be, for such a huge, muscular man. He exits my room and I hear him call back whoever had called him. While he’s gone, I grab my knee-length plush robe from the back of my bedroom door and put it on, tie it. When James comes back, he’s fully dressed, hat back on, Oakleys on the brim, shirt tucked behind the buckle of his black leather belt.
His eyes rake over me in my robe, and then fix on my eyes. “I have to go. A client’s foundation is cracking.”
“Not good.”
“Nope. They’re gonna want me to fix it, but you really need a foundation repair specialist for that.” He shuffles his feet. “I didn’t build the house, by the way. When I put in a foundation, it don’t crack.”
