10. Dexter

Iwalk Hope to her car, keeping her hand firmly in mine. Our fumble in the alley has made me hungry for more, but I’ll be patient for her. This woman is my life, my everything. She’s worth waiting for.

Hope’s parked up the street from my pickup across the square from the restaurant.

She keeps her head lowered on the walk to the car, and I silently pray she’s not regretting the fumble in the alleyway. It’s not the bed of roses she deserves, and maybe it’s one more reminder how uncouth I am.

We reach her car, and she crosses her arms over her chest.

“I had a nice time tonight,” she says. “Can I see you tomorrow?”

She bites her lower lip, and it’s adorable that she’s nervous.

“We can meet for breakfast. Is that too early?” But damn, I don’t want to waste a moment that I could be with her, and I’m meeting Ty at eleven and I can’t let the kid down.

“Breakfast is good.”

I tell her a place to meet where we can get a bacon sandwich and eat it by the river.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Her brow is creased with frown lines, there are smudges under her eyes, and she worries her bottom lip.

My heart lurches. Whatever bad news she’s about to drop, I don’t want to know.

We’ve had the perfect day and the perfect evening. I want to remember this moment, this day, forever.

“Tell me tomorrow.” She opens her mouth to protest and I kiss her quickly on the lips, stopping whatever it is she’s about to say. “You need to get some sleep.”

She hesitates, then nods. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She gets in the car, and I watch as she clips her belt in and drives away. She gives me a smile and a wave, but my thoughts are buzzing wondering what she was about to say.

Probably that she’s realized what a brute I am and this was all fun, but she’s flying back tomorrow and I’ll never see her again.

Fuck that.

I’m not letting her go without telling her how I feel. That I love her. That I love her and I want to be with her and I don’t know how that will work, but I’ll do whatever it takes to be with Hope.

I’m a fucking idiot. I should have told her tonight rather than feel her up in an alley like a horny beast.

Fuck, I’m so bad at this. But there’s still time.

I race to my pickup and fling the door open, bumping my knee as I slide into the seat. I’m pulling out as I put my seatbelt on, and a moment later I turn the corner after her.

Hope’s car is a few hundred feet ahead, and I push the speed limit to catch up. She turns right at the lights, and they turn red after her.

“Fuck.” My fists hit the steering wheel in frustration, and it’s an agonizing wait for the light to turn green again.

Most of the motels are on the highway at the edge of town and I head in that direction, hoping to find her car again.

Ten minutes later I’m cruising past a line of motels when I see her car in the parking lot of the Mount View Motel.

I slam on the brakes and pull up across the road and watch as she climbs the outside stairs of the motel and uses a key swipe on room 102.

I open my car door and jog across the highway when there’s a break in the traffic. I’m going to knock on her door and tell her how I feel. Beg her not to leave, tell her that I’ll be a better man. I’ll bring her flowers and take her to restaurants and clean my fucking fingernails.

I’m about to call out to her when the door to the room opens.

A man stands on the threshold. He’s clean shaven with closely cropped hair. He’s wearing a tight white t-shirt tucked in to his crease-free khakis. And in his muscular arms, he’s holding a baby.

The baby’s cries stop me in my tracks. Hope takes the baby in her arms, pulling it close to her chest, the way a mother comforts her infant.

Hope has a baby.

The realization crashes through my fantasy, making my head ache. She presses the baby to her chest, jiggling it up and down as she plants tender kisses on the top of its head. The man, the tidy-looking muscular man, opens the door wide and puts his big, no doubt clean, hand on her shoulder.

Hope enters the motel room, and the man closes the door behind them.

She said she was here with her sister, but she’s here with her fucking man and their baby. My heart hurts so bad it might explode. A car beeps at me as I stumble across the road and back to my pickup.

Hope’s got a baby and probably a fucking husband.

That explains the vague answers and why she ran when I kissed her.

But I don’t know what the fuck tonight was about. Is that all I am to her? A quick fumble to give her something her man can’t? The chance to rough it with the demolition worker?

I don’t even realize I’m driving until I pull up at my place.

I head straight to the basement. The last few days play over and over in my head as it all slides into place.

I don’t know what the fuck Hope’s game is, but I should have known a woman like Hope has no business with a man like me.

I grab the nearest axe from the rack. It’s the short heavy one that I made myself, handcrafted from a pine I felled when staying at a buddy’s cabin on the mountain.

My head is full of jumbled thoughts and rage as I swing the axe. It hits the wooden work bench with a satisfying thwack, and pieces of wood shatter into the air. I swing again and again and again until there’s nothing left but shards of wood splintered on the floor.