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He shifted under her touch and hummed deep in his throat. “Before you get too far, there’s something I want to tell you.”
“Something more important than a blow job? More important than my mouth around your thick cock?” The aforementioned cock jumped at her words. Galen sure loved it when she talked dirty. Maybe it was the contrast between her girl-next-door appearance, as she thought of it, although he always described her as angelic.
“No.” He growled as she unzipped his pants. “Yes. Stop. Don’t. Stop. I mean, yes, stop. Pause. Can we pause?”
She laughed and zipped his pants back up. “Pausing the pawing.”
He whooshed out a breath. “Temporary pause, yah?”
“So what is it you want to tell me?” She reached for the wine and splashed a little more in her glass.
“I need to leave for a little while.”
“What?” With a hard clunk, she set the bottle down on the steamer truck he used as a coffee table. The idea of Galen leaving was not only shocking but panic-inducing. Galen was always here, as if his roots had dug deep into Lake Bittersweet soil. “Where? How long is a little while?”
“I don’t know how long. I’m going to go find my father. Billy learned that he’s in California.”
All her selfish worries—what was she going to do without Galen—fled her mind. This was a big deal, she knew. He still had dreams about the last time he’d seen his father. She knew the mystery had taunted and haunted him ever since.
“When did you find that out?”
“A few days ago, fishing with my brothers. They think it’s a waste of time. They tried to talk me out of it. But when I get an idea about something, it doesn’t let go. I have to see him.”
She asked her next question carefully. “Do you want to have a relationship with him?”
He didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said, “I doubt it. He doesn’t want one with me, or any of us, or that’s what it seems like. There’s all these blanks. Unless I see him, I don’t know what to think about anything. I’m just hoping that’ll change. I have questions. A lot of them. I kept his secret for a long fucking time. I think he owes me answers.”
Her heart ached for him, for the confused kid who’d tried to make sense of a trauma, all alone. The scene he’d witnessed, and the way he’d described it, was so vivid that she’d wondered if she could use it in a book.
“That seems fair. I just…” She paused, biting her lip.
“What?”
“I hope you get what you need from him. It might not go the way you want it to. I know every time I try to work things out with my mother, it takes a left turn.”
He got up to add another log to the wood stove. “I don’t know what I want. I just know I need to go.”
As he crouched down to open the glass door, his jeans rode down and his sweater pulled up, giving her a glimpse of the hard muscles along his spine and the flat plateau of his sacrum. It flashed through her mind that she might love this man.
The thought was so shocking that she couldn’t breathe for a moment. Was it love, or was she just worried for him? Yes, that must be it. The idea of him traveling to a city as big as Los Angeles in search of the man who had traumatized his childhood wrenched her heart.
“I’ll go with you,” she said suddenly.
He glanced at her over his shoulder, his slashing eyebrows pulling together in a frown of surprise. “You have school. And your book is about to come out.”
“Then wait until Thanksgiving break. I have four days off then. We can go together. You might need backup.”
“This isn’t Law and Order. I’m not arresting him.” He tossed the log on the fire and closed the stove window. As he rose to his feet, she allowed her eyes to feast on the unfurling of his big body.
“Emotional backup.”
“If I need that, I’ll call you.”
She scrambled for another option. “What about your brothers? Can either of them go with you?”
“I don’t want them to. They’re both busy. And they don’t want to see him anyway. Don’t worry so much. I already have a flight booked. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll be back by Thanksgiving.”
“Galen…” She swallowed back her disappointment. Some instinct was telling her that he shouldn’t do this alone. He wasn’t used to cities. She was. “Remember how I hired you to take me to LadyBird Rock because I didn’t know the territory?”
