by Lilly Wilde
“How so?” he asked.
“We weren’t speaking. We could barely stay in the same room together, yet we were fucking on the floor as if it was the last time in our lives we’d ever have sex. I felt like a piece of meat…and I felt weak. Then there was the fact that I’d wanted it, too. I hated that I wanted it.” I remembered how he’d come on my stomach and then dressed and left me on the floor. That was humiliating on so many levels. “What were you thinking that night?”
“I wasn’t. Had I been thinking, it never would have happened like that.” He took a drink and shook his head. “That night was all emotion. I was desperate to taste you…to feel you.”
I wasn’t at all surprised to hear he’d been as desperate for me as I’d been for him—I’d felt it with every touch.
“When it was over, I was pissed at myself,” he said. “Like you, I hated that I wanted it…that I still wanted you.”
“Aren’t we a pair?”
“It would appear so,” he said.
It was insane that we could so easily go from one extreme to the next in a matter of nanoseconds…but that’s who we were, and I didn’t see that changing. For now, I wanted us to get past this and move forward. “Well, that’s pretty much all of my story. You know the rest.”
His dark brow arched. “Do I?”
“Everything important. Yes.”
Aiden was on drink number three and I was on my second, staring at the decanter, contemplating a third. “What about you? How was it for you? Dianna and Allison mentioned a couple of things in passing, but at the time I was too furious to ask for details.”
“What did they tell you?” he asked.
“Just that you were moody, mean, and focused. I suppose you left several victims in your wake.”
“Victims? No one was my victim, Aria. I was hurt. That’s all there was to it, and I didn’t know the proper way of working through it.”
“Other than interviewing hot nannies and hanging out with JoJo,” I accused.
“Just as you don’t choose to discuss April, I don’t feel particularly inclined to discuss Anja or JoJo.”
“Okay. Fine.” I shook my head. Why was it always tit for tat with this man? “I can’t very well point a finger at you for handling some things improperly, can I? God knows I’ve done the same thing.”
“Yes,” he said. “You have.”
“I’ll never be able to apologize enough for what I did. I just hope we can make better decisions from now on.”
“I know you didn’t do anything out of malice. I regret you didn’t trust me enough to come to me. As I explained in my letter, it’s I who failed you in that regard. My actions hadn’t been those of a person who you could completely trust.”
“That’s no excuse,” I said. “But it means a lot just knowing you’re willing to look at it from every angle.”
“It took quite a bit of time for me to be able to do that.”
We fell silent.
After a while, I broke the silence and asked, “Was there anything else? I mean, I know you were hurt…but what else did you feel when I left?”
He finished off his drink and asked, “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“I was relieved. I no longer had to wait on the ax to fall. I knew you’d run again. No matter what you’d promised, I knew it was inevitable.”
I flinched as his truth tore at me. That wasn’t something I’d expected to hear.
“Let me explain. When you told me you loved me…” He started and then looked away.
Was he thinking back to the day when I finally said the words—told him that I loved him? To the moments directly after when he was spinning me around like a crazy person?
“I’d already known,” he said. “But I needed you to say it aloud …to fully accept what you’d wanted to reject. Every day after that, I felt we were more solid—that you were happy—that you trusted your feelings, but there were times when I saw the fear in your eyes. And I knew if I moved too much this way or that way, I’d lose you.”
“I had no idea. That must have been horrible for you.”
“I felt like I was walking on a tightrope. As I’m sure you’ve come to recognize, I don’t do well with tightropes.”
I was quiet, reflecting on the days before I’d left Aiden.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“About my feelings when I found out I was pregnant. Why I was so afraid to come to you, wondering what you’d say. Would you have been upset, would you have felt obligated, how your parents would react. Part of me considered the possibility of your parents accusing me of getting pregnant on purpose. That would have been yet another obstacle to deal with. There were so many different reasons why I left, but the most important was because I didn’t think you could give a child the love he’d need from a father. I left to protect him from what I thought would be a miserable childhood—one that could scar him for life. And a part of me left to protect you. I didn’t want to make you choose between your family and me, but I knew you’d eventually have to make a choice. And I knew that either choice would’ve been bad for Lyric.”
“You made a lot of fucking assumptions.” He lashed out, his emerald eyes flashing with anger. “Look where all of your protection got us!” He bolted from his chair and walked away from me.
Oh fuck! I was afraid this would happen. I swallowed the acid of his words and watched him stalk toward the window. He shoved his hands in his pockets and stared through the paned glass. I was hesitant to say anything, so I followed him. I placed my hand on his back, hoping to soften the words that were coming next. “I should have trusted what we had, but back then, my fear of being in a situation like my mom was greater than my trust—than my love for you, Aiden.”
He spun around, a look of angry confusion distorting his face. “So my love wasn’t—isn’t enough?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. Please don’t think that. Aiden, I had years and years for the crap with my mom to fester as compared to the time I had with you. What I felt—what I still feel for you is very powerful. But there was an internal tug of war for me. I tried to tell myself that I could do it, that I wanted it, but when the real test came, I failed. And I relied on what I did best—I ran and regrouped. Not until it was too late did I start to second-guess everything.”
I wanted to draw him closer, to hug him, to embrace his hurt…but the tension radiating from his frame made me question if he would accept my comfort right now. So I waited for him to say something.
Before I knew it, his hands were on the sides of my face, his lips were on mine, and he was stabbing his alcohol-laced tongue into my mouth. He was hurting—even now I could sense that. His kiss was rough and urgent, and I let him have it. I didn’t fight what he was trying to communicate. When he finally ended the kiss, he pulled me into his arms and held me—so tightly that it almost frightened me. He eventually loosened his hold and lifted my chin to meet his soft gaze. He lowered his head and kissed my cheek, and then he reached for my hand and led us back to the table.
I didn’t know what to say. Was he okay?
“I’m sorry,” he said, and lifted my hand to his lips. “As we both expected, this isn’t an easy conversation.”
“It’s okay. Really.”
“So I guess I need to fill you in on things from my side now,” he said.
“If you’re ready.”
“I want to get this done so we can move on,” he said.
“Okay,” I said, as we sat down for part two.
“My world collapsed when you walked from my office that day. In spite of the devastation you’d wreaked on my heart, I was determined not to follow you—I was prepared to let you go. My anger gave me all the push I needed to do that. I was tired of trying to convince you of something you were determined to run from.”
“What did you do?” I asked. “You didn’t seem too bad off when you were with JoJo. Or Anja. And
whomever else.”
“Those were coping mechanisms. Nothing more, I assure you.”
“If you say so,” I replied.
“Are you going to let me answer your question, or will you keep putting your spin on it?”
“I’m sorry.” I pursed my lips and sat back.
He shook his head, feigning exasperation, and then he resumed. “I tried to move on…eventually. That was next to impossible though, because all I saw when I looked at anyone was you. I couldn’t go anywhere.” He grabbed his glass and swallowed a mouthful of liquor. “Fuck, I could barely sleep. You invaded my dreams. You were everywhere. There was no escape.”
I winced, absorbing the pain in his expression as he recalled what he’d gone through—of what I’d done to him.
“I buried myself in work, even more so than usual. I worked out two or three hours most days. I started riding more, sailing, anything to block out thoughts of you. None of that really worked. After a while, the anger lessened, and with that layer removed, I was no longer able to deny the truth—that I still wanted you. I’d convinced myself that we could make us work. That whatever caused you to leave…we could sort through it. That’s when I called April, and she told me you were pregnant with another man’s child…and that’s what broke me.”
And that’s when I lost it. My eyes gave no warning. A steady wave of tears spilled down my cheeks. I couldn’t stand to see it play out on his face, to hear the pain in his voice. His gaze was fixed on his glass, so he didn’t notice my quiet sobs. I wiped my face, erasing the water from my cheeks as the story of his heartbreak continued to unfold.
“I was at work when I’d made that call. I got really drunk that night, and passed out at the office. I awoke the next morning with one hell of a hangover.”
He lifted his gaze from the glass and looked at me. He noticed my tears and his brows puckered. I shook my head, indicating I was fine, and he went on with his story.
“I think I went through most of the liquor in my office that night. My blood was probably pure alcohol. All I saw when I closed my eyes was that guy’s hands all over you—touching you in the most intimate of ways, filling you with his seed, and creating a child with you,” he said, with a grimace. “I wanted to find him, and beat him to a pulp, but then I reminded myself that you’d chosen him, so the best thing for me to do was to back off…for good. I was incensed all over again. Some weeks later, April called me, and told me the baby was mine, and that he’d been born. And that’s when I really got mad.”
I was starting to wonder why we’d wanted to have this discussion. This was very painful. And what was the point? We were together now, so did any of this stuff matter? Then I answered my own question. Yes, it mattered, and the only reason I was suddenly against it, was because I couldn’t bear to hear what I’d caused.
“The first person I told about the baby was Dianna.”
“And then you lawyered up,” I piped in.
“Pretty much.”
“Dianna told me you’d planned to take Lyric from me,” I said. “Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“And you had the means to do it?”
“There’re very few things I can’t get, Aria. It was pretty much a done deal. I’d laid the groundwork to make it happen,” he said.
“Yet you didn’t go through with it. Why?” I asked.
“You know why.”
“I have an idea, but I’m not sure.”
He eyed me over the rim of his glass as he took a sip. “Because hurting you in theory is a hell of a lot easier than doing it in person. When I saw you, everything shifted out of place. I immediately wanted you. I knew I was still deeply in love with you, and I couldn’t do it—I couldn’t hurt you like that.”
I’d made a mess of everything. “It’s amazing that we’re here right now,” I said in a small voice.
“But we are,” he said. “And that’s what matters.”
I nodded.
“So…other than the rage and workouts, my time away from you wasn’t as eventful as yours.”
Or was it? Had he excluded specific details, too? I was almost afraid to ask.
“So you revised your plans once you were in Belize. Once we were all under one roof, did you regret your decision?” I asked.
“I don’t know how to answer that, other than to say I knew I was doomed.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I was your first love, which coincided with a long list of other firsts for you. Thing is, you were my first love, also, and it’s different for a man—especially when the man has feelings he’s obsessively trying to control. It was difficult to keep things in perspective when you were so close, as evidenced by the night on the floor. And then the night you came to my room—you have no idea how badly I wanted to tell you to get out, but the words didn’t come.”
Our bodies had spoken for us—telling us everything we didn’t want to admit aloud.
He looked at the near empty glass and I followed his gaze. “My plan was falling apart minute by minute,” he said.
“What exactly was your plan?” I asked.
“To make you experience a loss like I had.”
Although Dianna had said as much, my heart dropped when I heard the words come from his mouth. He’d really wanted to see me broken. “I see.”
“And I couldn’t get a read on you at first. You were very guarded, and of course, I suspected you were in love with Kellan, but I didn’t really want to know. It would’ve been that much worse. I felt as though I was being torn apart from the inside, but I couldn’t let it show.”
Watching the varying emotions play out on his face was killing me. I didn’t want to hear any more about our time apart, but we weren’t done. For a brief moment, I glimpsed the Aiden I’d tried to avoid when I was back in Chicago—the Aiden that wanted to hurt me as much as I’d hurt him.
We were both quiet, the silence offering a small reprieve from the heartache. Aiden left the table and grabbed two bottles of water for us. When he returned, I decided to break the silence. “This is a little off topic. You’d never been in love, you didn’t have a string of girlfriends, and you’ve been adamant about not being a womanizer…yet you’re very talented in bed. How are you so skilled, if you didn’t have sex very much?”
“I never said that. I had sex—plenty of it…it just came late. And because of who I was, it came easy.”
“And love never was part of the equation?” I asked.
“Not really,” he replied.
“So…”
“What are you asking, Aria?”
He looked at me, waiting on me to ask him directly. He wasn’t about to volunteer any information without my asking. I wasn’t going to ask. I didn’t want to know. That wasn’t true—I did want to know, I just didn’t want to ask.
“You know you can ask me anything. Don’t you?”
“Just as you know you can tell me anything.” So why won’t you? Why make me ask what you know is eating me up inside?
I took a long drink and then placed the bottle on the table, spinning it in circles, afraid to meet his eyes. He didn’t say anything, so I took another sip and then looked up at him. He wasn’t going to budge, so I figured I’d be the one to open Pandora’s Box. “Did you have sex with anyone while I was away?”
“Do you think that’s any of your business?”
Well, damn. “You just said I could ask you anything.”
“You can. But this…it’s not important,” he said, his lips falling into a hard line.
“It is to me.”
He sat back in his chair and replied, “First off, you weren’t away—you’d left me.”
I looked down at the table. I had no reason to expect anything, and I really didn’t deserve a response…I knew that. Wondering what was next, I finally looked up, and his gaze was fixed on me. For several moments, our eyes were locked on each other. And he finally replied, “No, I
didn’t.”
The balloon of air in my chest slowly expelled, and I was able to breathe normally again. “The first night we had sex was the day you had lunch with JoJo. Was she the catalyst to what played out between you and me?”
“What?” he asked, his brows furrowed in irritation. “Hell no. I wanted you. Why would you ask something like that?”
It had all been so sudden. His unrelenting pursuit…my acquiescence…maybe I’d given in so quickly because I wanted to be the one who fulfilled Aiden’s needs instead of JoJo.
“So her naked picture did nothing for you?”
He squinted. “How did you know about that?”
“I saw it. I sort of peeped at it when the text came. I was livid.” After that, my mind had gone crazy. I could barely tolerate the images of them I’d conjured in my head. I wanted to block them out, and swallow my jealousy, but I couldn’t. The thought of Aiden pleasuring someone else drove me mad.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said.
“It’s not your fault women throw themselves at you. Well, most of the time it’s not your fault,” I rephrased. “So answer the question. Did it turn you on?”
“You and I had just had sex, Aria. No, it didn’t.”
“But had you received the picture beforehand?”
“I’m human, Aria.”
“What about Nadia?”
“Aria, I’m not sure what’s going on here, but the answer is no. I didn’t have sex with anyone when you were gone. Besides, no one stimulates me like you.”
“What?”
“My dick only gets hard for you.”
I paused. I had to send a message to Virginia to calm the fuck down. But that sounded so hot. He had to be lying. Was that even possible?
“I should clarify. It may get hard, but it doesn’t stay hard.” He studied me. “I did kiss someone, or rather I was kissed by someone.”
“Who?”
“You don’t need to know that.”
“Then why mention it, asshole?” I scowled at him.
“Ah, there it is—my favorite term of endearment. How I’ve missed that,” he chuckled.
