Page 33 of Soft Flannel Hank

“Yeah. And I found Esther first.”

“Well, hot damn,” Nat breathed. “Does she know what she’s in for?”

“I didn’t say a word about it. Needed more information about what to do with her when I found her. I don’t suppose Callum is taking calls at the moment.”

“You suppose correctly. But this is great, Hankie! I’m gonna get some shut-eye for a few hours, but I’ll let you know as soon as I hear from Callum about what he wants us to do.”

Hank grunted, “Enjoy your beauty rest,” and hung up.

Tonight. He’d hear from Nat tonight. It would give him plenty of time to pull his shit together. He’d get himself under control and then he’d go get Esther. Then she’d be gone and he could go back to pulling his life together. Alone. Because he sure as hell couldn’t do it with her anywhere near.

7

Hank hadn’t slept for shit. Memories of Esther in his recliner drove him to the couch, but he couldn’t get comfortable. He went up to bed, but his bedroom felt too big and too small at the same time, like it was suffocating him and swallowing him whole all at once.

Finally, at just after four in the morning, Hank went back downstairs and found himself standing in the den staring at the recliner. He couldalmoststill feel her in the room. Her joy. Her passion. Her absolutely unfettered brilliance. He remembered how it felt to be pressed back into the recliner by the grinding pop of her hips, back and forth, up and down, driving him past the point where he could ever have formed a coherent thought, let alone a coherent sentence.

She’d made him feel so special, in a way that no woman who wasn’t family ever had. He’d thought it had been a lie fed to him by an incredibly convincing actress. Or that maybe he’d been in her thrall, under her spell. He’d started to believe that she was just a vicious harpy who used men like him, swallowed them whole to take all the best parts of them, and then spat them out and abandoned them.

But then she’d smiled when she saw him. Sheranto him.She’d thrown herself at his chest and kissed his neck.I’m so glad you’re here,she’d said. And he’d believed her.

Hestillbelieved her, a fact which made him feel both better and worse at the same time. Better because it confirmed his instincts hadn’t gone completely to shit. Therehadbeen something between them, something incredible and rare and worth exploring.

But that made the worse all the more depressing because she was a goddamn criminal.

Hank sighed heavily as he finally sat in the recliner. He was wearing his usual cold weather house outfit—socks, sweatpants, Henley. Thinking about Esther had made him so uncomfortably hard that his dick tented his gray sweatpants. Hank rolled his eyes and pressed the heel of his hand against his erection.Get a fucking grip, man.You can’t be with a person like her.

And he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t. His conscience would never allow him any peace. His body and heart would be sated and satisfied, but his brain would nag the hell out of him until the bitter end.

He pulled on the lever and reclined the chair, pulling an old crocheted afghan over himself as he lay back and looked at the popcorn ceiling. He would be confronting and detaining Esther tomorrow in the late afternoon, just before sunset. Callum had a cohort nearby, and the plan was to meet at Esther’s rented cabin. Then she’d be their problem.

The thought of that should have made Hank happy. It looked like it would be a cut-and-dry success. She had no idea he knew. She had no idea the vampires were coming. The element of surprise was on his side. She would be tried in whatever kind of court system that vampires had, and he could get back to pulling his life together. She wouldn’t be in World’s End anymore to tempt him.

Itshouldhave made him happy. But it didn’t. Far from it.

Instead, Hank had an almost painful erection, knots in his stomach, and a head full of images of red hair that smelled like coconut.Riotous, red curls catching in the damp breeze and blowing around Esther’s head. He thought about Medusa and her snake hair, how a man would turn to stone as soon as he looked at her.

It didn’t feel far-fetched. Hank had been frozen on the spot when he’d first seen her. She’d been so vibrant and beautiful andalivethat he’d felt as if he’d been struck by lightning in his seat. And then when she’d climbed over the truck console and into his lap, he’d had the distinct feeling that his body was not at all his own anymore. It belonged to her, a point made all the more pointed when she’d sunk down and taken him inside of her. He’d been speechless, breathless, and absolutely ruined by her.

So he should have felt glad that she would soon be gone. It didn’t matter how bright Esther’s light shone, how sweetly her body had called to his, how desperate he’d been to respond. It didn’t matter at all. Because Esther MacLaren hurt people, and Hank wasn’t sure there was enough of him left to survive another great hurt.

He was still painfully hard, the head of his erection pressing against his old sweatpants under the blanket. But he wasn’t about to do a single thing about it. He knew, without shadow of a doubt, that as soon as he took it in his hand, his brain would flood with technicolor pictures of Esther. Esther smiling. Esther laughing. Esther running across her deck to get to him.Esther coming.

Fucking hell.

He groaned and once again pressed the heel of his hand against the throbbing inconvenience as he tried to think of the sort of things that made such inconveniences go away for a man like him. Cleaning fish. Dental work. The forty-fifth president of the United States.

But it didn’t work.

He needed to sleep. Everything would seem clearer in the morning, but his mind raced. Hank remembered the exercise that Nadja had asked him to do during his panic episode during their first session. “Can you list five things that you can see, Hank?”

In the dim glow from the outdoor floodlight shining through the windows, Hank could see the outline of the TV on the sand, his socked feet sticking out from the blanket that was not made with a man his size in mind, the outline of the frame on the wall that held a picture of his daughter as a baby, the chair that sat next to the back door, and, finally, draped over the back of it, his empty holster, which he’d dropped there when he’d come home after quitting the force and never moved in the months that followed.

He needed to move it. Or maybe he’d just throw it away. He didn’t need any reminders of that gun he’d once carried so casually.

Next, he needed to find four things he could touch. Hank closed his eyes. The soft, crocheted afghan draped over his body. The worn upholstery of the recliner. The waffle texture of his Henley. The worn comfort of his sweatpants.

His breathing slowed as he noted three things he could hear. The leaky faucet. The clock. The faint whistle of his exhales through his nose.