Fuck me. The memory of holding her close to me, caressing those breasts, kissing those nipples, owning that incredible ass is slamming back into my memory. Even more precious is the memory of holding her as she slept.
The bottom of her swimsuit is tied together with strings and all I can think is how easy it would be to take one string and give it one gentle tug.
And take what’s mine.
This is wrong.
I’m going insane.
And then I hear her laughing with her friend, and I remember how madly I love her sweet spirit. Right or wrong, I love this woman.
And I have to have her.
But she doesn’t want big gestures, she doesn’t want my undying admiration, and she doesn’t want to be rescued.
I’ll sit here and wait until she’s ready to give me a chance. I can wait forever if I have to.
Chapter 16
Laney
Well shit.
This was supposed to be a sight-seeing day but the rain is coming down in buckets, so our crew decides to gather at Stella and Luke’s hut to play some Uno and wait out the rain.
As I’m chopping fruit for a salad to snack on while we play, something feels off.
I gather up my courage to ask the family if they mind if I invite a guest to join us. Hugo hasn’t bothered me in two whole days. He’s just there, on the deck of a barely-seaworthy sailboat in his marina, doing his best to mind his own business.
And it’s killing me.
Stella smiles. “I was wondering if you were going to invite him over at some point. Luke? You good with Hugo coming over?”
“I already said my peace with my fist. If everybody else is good, I’m good,” Luke says.
Before the next rainstorm hits, I squeeze in a beach run. When I make a detour to the marina to extend my invitation to Hugo, he accepts. He shows up an hour later, soaking wet, with a hostess gift of wine for Stella. I bite back the urge to tell him it’s only a game of Uno. The hostess gift is totally unnecessary but unsurprising, knowing this man the way I do.
We sit down to start the game and I sit next to Hugo and listen as the girls explain the rules of this particular set of Minecraft Uno cards. “And when you see this symbol, the order is reversed. And if you get the Creeper card you pick three but you can use it as a wild card later…,” instructs Cynthia.
I get the impression that Hugo already knows the rules of Uno, but he listens and smiles at the girls and asks intelligent follow up questions to make them feel like they are actually teaching him something. I feel my heart squeeze as I watch the way he interacts with them and doesn’t talk down to them.
We’re about half way through the first hand when I notice something odd. When the middle child, Cameron, who sits on Hugo’s other side, plays a “take two” card against him, Hugo doesn’t lay, and nods to me to take my turn. The girls correct him in unison. “You can play a card if you want!” they say.
Hugo looks confused. “But the rules of Uno say the player who has to draw cards loses his or her turn to play a card.”
The girls shake their heads simultaneously and stare at him like that’s the most horrid idea they’ve ever heard.
I touch his arm and explain, “No, in this house we play Compassionate Uno.”
He gawks at me, and I almost have to laugh; I’ve never seen this look on his face before. He looks completely discombobulated.
“What is Compassionate Uno?”
Stella says, “Some people are sticklers for the rules. Not so much with us.”
Hugo lays his cards on the table face down and takes a sip of his beer, then presses his thumbs into his eyes. “OK. This is just a little different from the way my family plays.”
I brighten up. “Oh, did you used to play this when you were a kid?”
He nods and swallows; boy, his Adam’s apple is doing a lot of work, for some reason. He gives a rueful laugh. “Yes, and they were ruthless.”
Luke speaks next. “Yeah, we just let people lay cards if they are forced to draw, it’s no big whoop.”
Hugo laughs again and shakes his head in wonderment as he lays down a card, like he’s being allowed to break some natural law of physics and he can’t believe it’s working.
The game continues for some time, and it starts to look as if Hugo might win. When he lays down his second to last card, he forgets to say Uno. When he ends up winning this hand, the girls clap like mad. Cameron actually gets up and hugs him. “You did really good, I’m so proud of you, Mister Hugo.”
He accepts the hug but it’s clear he feels a bit shocked. The look he gives me tells me he’s never once been hugged by a child and doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. I shoot him a confident smile, because it’s the dearest thing I’ve ever seen.
Suddenly, his face blanches. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I’m sorry, everyone. I forgot to announce Uno on my second to last card. I didn’t realize. I swear I wasn’t trying to cheat. We’ll have to call it a scratch for that hand.”
Everyone looks around at each other and back at him. “Hugo, it’s fine. Like I said, we’re not sticklers,” Stella says.
He protests and unfolds the rule sheet to read them out, pointing out that the winner must absolutely call Uno. “It’s the whole point of the game,” he says.
I try to give him a reassuring smile, but I’m starting to get a little worried that he’s sounding a bit strange about all this. “Sweetie, it’s OK. We forgot to call you on it so you still win. That’s just
