Page 70 of You've Got Hate Mail
And this building?
It’s breaking too.
Also breaking?
Me.
Because I have a soft woman clinging to me with her raspy, shaky breath blowing into my neck, her legs wrapped around myhips, and her arms squeezing my neck so tight that I’m in danger of losing circulation to my brain.
As if I haven’t already.
When Cricket hugged me last week—that was a problem.
Because this woman that I bitch and moan to myself about, complaining that she’sone more thingthat I have to be responsible for—she gave me something I didn’t even know I needed when she gave me that hug.
She gave me a minute of feeling like I had someplace to lean when I’m overwhelmed too.
A sense of being less alone.
And like I don’t need to feel guilty for feeling alone when I’m surrounded by people who are the best definition of community.
Like I get to be complicated and messy too.
And now she’s climbing me like a tree, and my brain is flashing back to images of her wet and naked in the shower, and my dick is waking up and excited about every bit of this.
My dick hasn’t been excited about anything in ages.
“Sorry,” Cricket sobs. “Sorry. Sorry. I—I’ll let go.”
Not in here she won’t.
She’s fucking terrified.
Instead of putting her down, I wrap my arms around her to hold her tight, turn, and walk us past the old steel tanks and out into the sunshine.
“You’re safe,” I murmur to her. “Promise. I won’t let them hurt you.”
I won’t letanythinghurt this woman.
The woman who has such a generous spirit despite the shit hand she was dealt in the parent and internet virality departments.
The woman with the big doe eyes and pillowy-soft breasts and a squeezable ass and strong-as-fuck thighs.
The woman who’s trying too hard and overcompensating in all the wrong ways, when all anyone here wants from her is that she be herself.
Andthat—that’s most everything that I don’t like about her.
When I’m being honest, when I’m thinking at three a.m., when I hear her talking on the phone under my porch, that’s when I can admit what I don’t like about her.
That she’s attractive.
That she’s just as much a mess on the outside as I feel like on the inside.
That she’s been more of a help with my daughter than anyone else who’s ever been here, and that I genuinely believe Lav’s helping her as much as she’s helping us, which is also terrifying.
That I want to protect her from what brought her here, from the scare I gave her myself two weeks ago, and from anyone who ever thinks of looking at her wrong again.
She needs to leave.
