Absolute Harmony (A Harmony Falls Novella), page 2
Hal rolled his eyes as Savina said, “That wasn’t a sucker punch, you moron. You tried to hit him first.”
“Whatever,” Michael snapped. He staggered toward his car and flipped them both the bird before climbing in and driving away in a squeal of tires and spray of gravel.
Savina groaned and rubbed at her forehead. She swayed on her feet, and Hal took her upper arm. He could feel hard muscle beneath his grip - Savina was no delicate flower - but there was softness too. So much sweet softness. He looked her up and down. Instead of her usual jeans and shirt combo, she wore a light green dress that hugged her breasts and flared around her hips. Her dress ended just above her knee, and he stared at her bare calves. Her skin looked smooth and silky soft, and he wondered how it’d feel to have those legs hooked around his ass, her soft body cushioning his as he pounded into her over and over until he’d finally satisfied his endless ache for her.
His dick twitched in his pants, and guilt immediately rushed in. Lusting after his dead best friend’s wife didn’t exactly make him a real fucking Prince Charming, did it?
“Hal.” Savina’s voice sounded breathless and unsure. He was still staring at her tits like a pervert, and he forced his gaze to her face. For a moment, he thought he saw the same need, the same deep-seated desire reflected in her eyes and his cock hardened and pushed painfully against his jeans.
Savina looked away for a second, and when her pretty dark eyes returned to his, the desire, if it had ever really been there, was gone. He dropped his hand from her arm and smiled tersely at her. “You okay?”
“Fine,” she said, then shook her head. “Scratch that. I’m tired and humiliated and drunk.”
“You need to dump your boyfriend,” he said.
She laughed, the sound bitter and jagged in the cool night air. “He’s not my boyfriend. It was a first date.”
“Don’t see him again,” he said.
“I’m not stupid,” she snapped.
God, he fucking loved her temper.
She sighed and rubbed at her forehead again. “Sorry. Thank you for your help, Hal. I’ll see you around.”
“You can’t drive home, Savina.” He sounded angry. Hell, he was furious. What had she been thinking getting drunk on a first date with a guy she didn’t know? It was reckless and stupid, and that wasn’t Savina. She was the most level-headed and intelligent woman he knew.
“I’m aware of that,” she said.
He tamped down his urge to lecture her. She didn’t belong to him, and even if she did, it was patriarchal bullshit to think he could tell her what she could and couldn’t do. But knowing that didn’t help quell the anger inside of him. What would have happened if he hadn’t been here? Savina was strong, but the guy had been bigger than her, and she’d had too much to drink. What if he’d forced Savina to -
Hal shut that thought down immediately. If he didn’t, he would spend the rest of his life searching for that Michael fucker and beating the shit out of him when he found him.
His urge to lecture her, to scold her as if she were a child, reared its ugly head again. He swallowed it like bitter medicine and took Savina’s arm when she started to walk away. “You’ve had too much to drink to drive.”
“I know,” she said, her temper lurking like a shadow in her words. “I’m calling an Uber.”
“I’ll drive you home,” he said.
Happiness flickered across her face. “Did you ride your bike here?”
“Yes, but I don’t have an extra helmet with me. I’ll drive you home in your truck.”
Her happiness faded like a dying star, and he hated that, but he wouldn’t risk her safety. “Give me your keys.”
She handed them over, and they walked silently to her truck. He wished she would weave again, or even stumble a little, any excuse to get his hands on her again. The guilt rolled in, relentless as the tide, and he wished, not for the first time, that he could shed its heavy weight. But that was nothing more than a pipe dream.
She climbed into the truck’s passenger side, and he shut the door before sliding behind the wheel. Her vehicle started with a low rumble, and he drove out of the lot, the headlights cutting through the darkness.
He glanced over at her. She stared woodenly out the windshield. The darkness swallowed her expression, but it couldn’t hide how tense she was. He sighed inwardly. They used to be friends. They used to talk and laugh and tease. Until he, or rather his fucking libido, had ruined it.
They’d spent countless evenings together in the first couple of years after Alan died, supporting each other through their mutual grief, and never once had he seen her as anything more than his best friend’s wife. Did he notice how fucking beautiful she was? Yeah, of course, but no more than he noticed any other beautiful woman crossing his path. And in the first couple of years after Alan’s death, Hal’s grief and sense of loss had been too profound to think of Savina beyond Alan’s grieving widow.
Until he didn’t anymore.
His attraction to her had snuck up on him like a little kid stealing from the cookie jar. One minute he was helping Savina build an Ikea dresser for the guest bedroom, and the next, he was wondering how she’d look on the bed, naked on her hands and knees and begging for his cock.
They were at the edge of town, and he followed the road to Savina’s place. He knew the route as well as he knew the way to his place, his body on autopilot as he drove.
He could tell himself that his attraction had just suddenly appeared, but deep down, he knew the real truth. The last three months before that day had been a slowly boiling pot of noticing things he shouldn’t have noticed. The silkiness of her soft brown hair, the perfect cupid’s bow of her upper lip, the curve of her ass in her jeans. He’d buried those observations deep, pretending he didn’t notice she was braless or the outline of her nipples against her thin shirt when he’d stopped by unexpectedly one day.
Until that fucking Sunday afternoon when he’d found himself in the guest bedroom, surrounded by Ikea parts, his cock a rigid pipe in his jeans, and a gently teasing Savina wanting to know why his face was suddenly so red.
He’d said nothing, just gave her a smile that was mostly a grimace because what could he say? I’m suddenly picturing you stuffed full of my cock, wasn’t exactly an appropriate reply to give to your dead best friend’s wife, was it?
That afternoon had been a turning point in their relationship. One Hal didn’t want but couldn’t stop. He’d begun to pull away, subtly and slowly, until here they were a year later, no longer friends and the tension so thick between them, he could taste it.
But what choice did he have? He was already suffocating in his guilt over Alan’s death. The added guilt of lusting after Savina nearly cracked him in two.
He turned into Savina’s driveway, parked the truck, and shut it off. Savina had left the front porch light on, providing just enough light to see her face. “Thank you for the ride home, Hal.”
“You’re welcome.”
She hesitated, her fingers plucking at her dress hem. “Just leave my truck in the parking lot of the Beaver. I’ll get Warren to give me a ride into town tomorrow to pick it up.”
“I can leave it here and take an Uber back to the pub,” he said.
She frowned. “No, absolutely not.”
“You leave your truck at the Beaver overnight, and people will talk,” he said.
She shrugged. “Like I care what they say.”
He thought about arguing before letting it go. Changing Savina’s mind was often like trying to keep sand off your feet at the beach. Impossible and pointless.
“Okay,” he said. “You have a spare key for the truck, I assume?”
She nodded and studied him in the dim light. “Are you okay to drive? It’s pretty late, and if you’re too tired, you’re welcome to sleep in the guest bedroom.”
“No.” He sounded angry, and he hated how Savina looked immediately guilty. But, holy fuck, she had no idea what that offer did to him. “I don’t want to leave my bike in the parking lot overnight.”
“Right,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. Okay, well, thank you again.”
She reached for the door handle, and desperate for even a few more minutes with her, he said, “How are Izzie and the puppies?”
Her smile, warm and genuine and so beautifully her, made every nerve in his body sizzle with awareness. “She’s good. The babies are nursing well and gaining weight. Izzie is a wonderful mom to them.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“You can come in and see them if you’d like.”
“Another time,” he said. “As you said, it’s late.”
She slid out of the truck, weaving a little as she grabbed the door. He clenched his hands around the steering wheel. “Do you need help getting into the house?”
He had no idea what the fuck he’d do if she said yes. He hadn’t been alone with Savina in her house after darkness fell in nearly nine months. It was too… dangerous. Brought on too many fantasies and ideas that were best left buried.
“No,” she said. “I’m fine. Goodnight, Hal.”
“Goodnight, Savina.”
CHAPTER 3
Savina parked her truck in the Brandt Veterinary Clinic’s lot and cut the engine. She smoothed gloss onto her lips, pinched her cheeks, and studied herself in the rear-view mirror. She looked okay, maybe a little too excited for a woman taking her foster dog to an appointment to basically pee in a cup, but she couldn’t help it. Hal worked as a vet tech at Brandt Clinic and she always looked this way whenever there was a possibility of seeing Hal. Which was pathetic and ridiculous, and it just seemed like such a fucking cliche to be lusting after your husband’s best friend.
But she was, and she had long since stopped denying it.
It did make her a total asshole, though. Hal had been good to her and a solid rock for her to cling to after Alan’s death. His wife had died seven years prior, and while the intensity of his grieving had lessened, he’d understood what Savina went through. He’d even been the one to tell her about the grief group for people who’d lost their partners. He no longer attended the group, but he was honest about how much it helped him the first few years and encouraged her to attend a meeting.
She’d gone with a fair amount of trepidation, but even after the first meeting, she knew it would help. She had her brother Warren and her niece Harper to help her through her grief, and although Warren knew too well what it felt like to lose a spouse, there was a specific understanding she received from other women who’d gone through the same loss.
Hal had been instrumental in helping her through the grieving process, and how did she repay his kindness? By lusting after him like a silly teenage girl. And now they were no longer friends, and the loss of Hal and his friendship was a brand new type of hell.
She’d had no guilt over Alan’s death. Anger, sadness, despair… yes. But not guilt. After all, she hadn’t given Alan stage four pancreatic cancer. But she had no one to blame but herself for what happened with Hal.
She slumped back in her seat, staring blankly at her truck’s dashboard. It wasn’t like she’d never noticed how handsome Hal was, even when she was married to Alan. But it was in more of a ‘hey, that guy’s good looking’ way rather than an ‘I want that guy to be balls-deep inside of me’ way.
Until that damn Sunday afternoon. If she’d known asking Hal to help her build an Ikea dresser would have changed the course of their friendship, she’d have burned the fucking dresser. But how could she have known?
She hadn’t expected that watching Hal sitting on the floor of her guest bedroom in a patch of sunlight, carefully and precisely sorting out screws, bolts, and pieces of wood would be the catalyst for bringing her lady bits back to life.
She’d chalked it up to a weird blip at first. Just her head, or rather her sex drive, getting confused for an afternoon. Could she blame it? She hadn’t had sex in over two years, and Hal was kind, smart, and gorgeous. He’d been growing a beard – a new look for him - and while she’d teased him about the silver laced through it, she’d also secretly thought it made him look sexy as hell.
She’d pushed aside the tingling in her crotch and how her nipples had tightened when their hands touched while they built the dresser and told herself all afternoon that it meant nothing.
But she couldn’t convince herself it was nothing when, later that night, as she masturbated alone in her bed, images of Hal kept popping into her head. The bulge of his biceps as he lifted the dresser and the hint of his flat stomach she’d seen when his shirt lifted. She’d rubbed her clit in hard, firm circles while she thought about her sudden desire to drop to her knees, unbuckle his belt, and find out just how big Hal’s dick was.
That last image - her on her knees in front of Hal, his big hand palming the back of her skull as he urged her to suck his dick - had gotten her off like a fucking rocket. She’d ridden that orgasm high for nearly a minute, her body shuddering and shaking hard enough to make the bedsprings squeak.
She’d spent too much time over the last year wondering what Hal was like in bed. Would he be gentle or rough, tender or demanding? Her fantasies consumed her for the next few weeks after that Sunday afternoon. Hal bending her over the couch. Hal spreading her out on the big farm table in her kitchen and burying his face in her pussy like she was an all-you-could-eat buffet. Hal in her bed, his hands on her hips encouraging her to move harder and faster as she rode him to her release.
She’d tried hard to hide her newly discovered lust for him but failed spectacularly. Hal had started to pull away from her after that Sunday afternoon. Slowly at first and in subtle ways. Not replying to her texts as quickly as he used to, missing a few of their long-standing Sunday night dinners, and being too busy to go antiquing with her or catch the latest action movie at the theatre. She’d been so caught up in her lust for him that it had taken her a shamefully long time to notice the tension he now carried whenever he was near her.
Shame left her feeling sick and humiliated when it finally became apparent he was avoiding her. Her fawning over him, her obvious crush, had ruined their friendship, and she’d do anything to get it back.
But life didn’t always work out the way one hoped or wanted. Even now, knowing Hal had ended their friendship because of her crush, she still wanted him. The few men she’d dated in the last nine months had all been a desperate attempt to forget how much she wanted Alan’s best friend.
She smoothed a shaking hand over her face. She’d been sitting in the truck for nearly five minutes, and if she didn’t get into the clinic in the next two, she’d be late for Izzie’s appointment.
She turned in her seat to smile at the golden lab mix sitting patiently in the back seat. “You ready to be a good girl and pee on demand for us, Izzie?”
The dog’s tail thumped on the seat.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Savina said. “Also, can you send good vibes, that I don’t see Hal this visit? I need more time to recover from the humiliation of the pub incident.”
Izzie chuffed at her, and Savina smiled before climbing out of the truck. She opened the back door and took Izzie’s leash. Izzie jumped down, sniffing at the ground. She started to squat, and Savina gave her leash a gentle tug. “Hey, not here, sweetie. Save that for the cup.”
Izzie woofed but followed her toward the vet clinic’s front door. The gravel crunched under their feet, and the air was crisp and clean after last night’s crazy storm. Thankfully, the worst of the iciness on the roads had melted, and she’d had no issues driving to the clinic.
She stepped into the clinic. Until a few weeks ago, her brother Warren owned the vet practice, but he’d sold it to Nathan Henshaw, a young vet who started working at the clinic last year. Savina had questioned Warren’s decision at first, but after meeting Nathan, any trepidation she felt disappeared. He was intelligent and kind and had a great deal of respect for Warren, and while it was a bit of a rough patch for him right now in terms of the townfolk accepting him as the new owner, she hoped it would blow over quickly.
For the first time in a long time, her brother seemed happy and relaxed, and she wanted it to stay that way. He, more than anyone, deserved peace.
“Hi, Savina!” Fatima, one of the receptionists, waved at her from the desk. “You’re here for your appointment with Izzie?”
“That’s right,” Savina said.
“Great, let’s get you into the room. Dr. Warren will be right with you.”
She and Izzie followed Fatima into the room. After a quick pat to Izzie, Fatima left. Not two minutes later, the door opened, and Warren stepped inside. “Hey, Savina.”
“Hey. How are you?” she asked.
“Good. That was some storm last night, huh? Any troubles driving in?” Warren petted Izzie.
“No, the roads were fine. Thanks again for taking me to pick up my truck yesterday morning.”
He grinned and leaned against the counter that housed a sink and a small weight scale. “You’re welcome. Anyone say anything to you yet about your truck being at the Beaver all night?”
“No, but I haven’t been to town since I picked it up. Why, have you heard anything?”
His grin widened, and she rolled her eyes. “Small town gossip is the worst. Let me guess, you’ve heard I’m having drinking problems.”
Warren laughed. “That about sums it up, which is hilarious because I can’t remember the last time I saw you drink more than a single glass of wine. Why did you drink so much Thursday night anyway?”
Well, at least that quelled one fear. Hal hadn’t said anything to Warren about what he saw Thursday night.
“I had a date, and it went horribly,” she said.
A frown crossed her brother’s face. He was older than her by a decade, she’d been an oops baby, and he’d spent most of his life acting like a second dad to her. “What happened?”
