“But,” Aria went on, “I need to go slow. For myself. I know you do everything instantly and you’re always so sure—”
“Hey,” he cut in gently, bringing a hand to her cheek. “It’s okay. I didn’t say it to pressure you. I said it because it’s how I feel, and I want to be honest with you. I always want to be honest with you, agapi mou.”
She huffed out a laugh. “I really need to start learning Greek.”
“I’ll teach you.” He kissed her, his tongue gliding against hers before they pulled away. “‘Agapi mou’,” he murmured, “means ‘my love’.”
She smiled. “How do you say, ‘my hot piece of—’”
Nik covered her lips with his again—only it was more of an awkwardly perfect laughing-into-each-other’s-mouths moment. Then she climbed on top of him and deepened the kiss with a blunt certainty that set him alight. This fucking woman.
“Wait,” he panted, pulling away.
Why was he pulling away? He wasn’t sure. His cock, especially, wanted an answer, because it had been ready to try for another round already. What a soldier.
Oh, yeah; that was it. They couldn’t have sex yet, because he wasn’t finished.
“I need to tell you something else,” he said. “Actually, it’s kind of a confession.”
A slight frown furrowed her brow. “What?”
“Well… like I said, I think I fell in love with you the night we met.”
She nodded slowly. Was he imagining things, or did she seem slightly tense in his arms, suddenly? He wasn’t sure. He was probably just nervous, so he’d better spit this out.
“I knew I was having strong feelings, but I was hesitant, I suppose, to label it? I just knew I wanted you. I really wanted you. In bed, yes, but… like this. Like it is now. So, the next morning I went to find you, but you didn’t seem open to dating.”
“Okay…”
“And then you brought up the—you know, the human shield thing. That whole, ah, concept.” Nik’s heart, for some reason, was pounding. And not in a good way. He wasn’t used to being nervous about anything other than work. Fuck, after all these years, he didn’t even get that anxious before a match; because he was confident, because he trusted himself, because he took things as they came.
But he wasn’t confident about this, and he couldn’t just take whatever outcome the universe threw at him. There was only one ending to this conversation that he could cope with: Aria deciding that, even though he was a complete prat, she didn’t really mind. Or, at least, didn’t mind enough to, say…
Leave him. Forever.
Christ, why had that possibility only just occurred to him? Now, when he was teetering on the precipice of confession?
“Well, I saw an opportunity,” he said, “so I took it.”
She stared. And stared some more. And Nik became uncomfortably aware that he should say a hell of a lot more than that—that he should explain fully, explicitly, and that he should apologise. Except he wasn’t even sure if he was sorry.
Yes, I lied to you and brought you here on false pretences, but since you’ll be able to start your tattoo shop now, and since the whole plan worked and we’re together, and since I love you to fucking distraction, I really don’t regret it. I feel bad about it, but I don’t regret it.
Did that count as an apology? Nik wasn’t sure. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had to make one.
Finally, Aria spoke. But the words were narrow, almost shrunken, her lips barely moving.
“Are you saying that… that you didn’t need…” She stopped, sucked in a breath as if steadying herself. And Nik’s heart, which had been warm and soft and melting like ice cream, began to cool into something cold and tough.
Finally, she said, “You didn’t need a fake girlfriend.” She spat out those last two words as if they were a curse, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “Of course you didn’t. Of course you didn’t. Stupid, Aria, fucking stupid—”
“Love—”
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped, her eyes flying open to reveal a look he’d never seen before. Not from her, anyway. Never from her. She scrambled out of his lap and off the bed, her face hard. “You made it up. You made it all up just to get me out here and… what, seduce me?”
“Well,” he allowed, “when you put it like that, it sounds pretty—”
“Dangerous,” she said, the word passing her lips like a ghost. “It sounds dangerous. You’re…”
Nik felt every ounce of blood drain from his body. His mind searched frantically for ways to control the situation, to fix that haunted, fearful look on her face, to make her see that it was okay. “This was never dangerous, Aria. Everything you thought was happening here, that was real, I just didn’t get the idea until—”
“Until you needed a way to trap me,” she finished, striding over to the wardrobe. He could see, in its reflection, that her look of horror was gone. It had been replaced by a grim determination that sent a chill of fear down his spine.
“Aria. I didn’t trap you.”
“You lured me over here with all your fucking money so you could have a chance at screwing me,” she clipped out, “because you knew that if you asked, I’d say no.”
“You still could’ve said no,” he burst out, rising to his feet. His words tumbled over each other, rapid as the beat of his heart. “I just wanted to be around you. But this happened between us because we’re good together—”
“This happened between us,” she said, shoving on a T-shirt, “because you wanted it to. Because you orchestrated it when you paid me to fawn all over you for a week and sleep next to you—God, I’m pathetic,” she ground out.
Nik threw up his hands. “How are you pathetic? Don’t say that!”
“Don’t tell me what to fucking say! I’m pathetic because I’m so bloody desperate for affection that I confused fake feelings with actual emotions. I’m pathetic because this whole ridiculous plan worked and you brainwashed me into wanting you!”
“Aria.” The word fell from his lips like a dry, dead autumn leaf. A jagged look of pain crossed her face, and he stepped forward, needing to comfort her.
But she held up a hand and said, “Don’t. You stay right the fuck over there.” She yanked a skirt up her thighs. “Jesus, what is wrong with me? Do I just scream ‘easy mark’?”
He’d never felt so helpless in his life. “What the hell are you talking about? I love you!”
“I’ve loved a lot of people myself,” she said. “But I didn’t care about them very much.”
“What does that mean?”
She gave him a sad smile. “It means I want to go home. Now. Without you.”
Chapter Eighteen
Aria’s best friend opened her fancy front door and beamed. “You’re home!”
“Hey, Jen.” Aria tried for a smile. She could tell, even without looking, that it was more of a pained grimace. Maybe because she’d cried so much on the journey home—first in the car with Georgia, then alone on the plane, then awkwardly not-quite-alone in the taxi. Perhaps her face was stuck in a frown, now.
Or maybe it was just hard to fake happiness when it felt like your chest was cracking open. She should’ve gotten that hole looked at, back when she was in therapy. Before Nik came along, and saw it, and used it, and broke her in two.
“Wait,” Jen said as Aria stepped into the house. “I thought you were due back tomorrow?”
“I was.” Aria dumped her luggage. She hadn’t been home yet. She couldn’t go home yet. “Jenny. I… I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Jen stepped forward, frowning, and pulled Aria into a hug. “What’s happened? Why do you look so…”
The awkward way Jen trailed off almost made Aria laugh. In fact, she managed a bitter puff of air that might have been a chuckle. “So terrible?”
“Oh, no,” Jen said firmly. “You don’t look terrible. You’ve got a cracking tan.”
This time, Aria did laugh. Even though it hurt her head and her hear
t. Even though it felt unnatural, as if she’d never done it before. Even though tears were streaming down her cheeks again. That, Aria supposed, was the power a best friend held.
She buried her face in Jen’s soft cloud of hair and admitted, “I lied.”
“Oh,” Jen said, her voice suspiciously high. “You did?”
“Yes. I didn’t go on holiday with some weird new boyfriend you’ve never heard of.” Aria pulled back and met her friend’s gaze as she confessed. “I went on holiday with a professional footballer who hired me to be his fake girlfriend.”
“Goodness me. Um… Let’s go and sit down, shall we?” Before Aria could process that suspiciously calm response, Jen grabbed her hand and tugged her through the house.
“Aria’s home!” Jen trilled to her husband, Theo—who was sitting in front of a perfectly good TV, reading the paper. The finance section, of all things. Aria really did wonder about that man.
“Hello,” he murmured absently. “How was your trip?”
“Terrible,” Aria replied, plopping down onto a nearby sofa. “I was just telling Jen how I lied to everyone about my new boyfriend. He was actually one of Keynes’s bonkers rich friends and he hired me to protect him from sex at a Spanish house party.”
“Wow,” Theo said. And turned a page.
Aria glared at Jen, jabbing a finger through the air. “I knew it. You knew!”
“No! Nooo, noo, no. Okay, yes. Sorry.” Jen scowled at Theo—or rather, at his paper. “I wasn’t going to say anything. It’s all supposed to be a secret, isn’t it?”
“But…” Aria rubbed her temples. This was, quite frankly, one surprise too many. She was on the edge. She was past the edge. She’d flown past the edge less than ten hours ago, when a man she’d trusted, a man she’d—
That’s enough of that. Pull yourself together.
Swallowing down her bile, Aria asked, “Who told you?”
“Theo,” Jen said promptly.
“And how the hell did you know?” Aria demanded, glaring at the newspaper in front of Theo’s face.
He sighed. “Keynes told me. Obviously. He did say not to tell anyone…”
“But you blabbed anyway? Jesus, man, you’re sixty years old and you haven’t learned to keep your mouth shut?”
Theo finally lowered the paper, his eyes narrowed. “Aria. I am not sixty.”
“Whatever. You’re supposed to be the mature one in this group!”
“Jennifer is my wife,” he sighed. “I don’t hide things from my wife.”
“I always want to be honest with you, agapi mou.” Ruthlessly, she shoved that traitorous memory aside—and shoved her heart aside too, since it couldn’t be trusted. Since it clenched every time she remembered that accented voice feeding her sweet bullshit, those gorgeous eyes lying to her.
“Well, what the fuck is Keynes’s excuse?” she huffed. “You’re not his husband.”
“If platonic marriage existed,” Theo said reasonably, “I would be.”
“Piss off.”
Jen rubbed a soothing hand over Aria’s back. “It’s really not that big a deal, love. I understand why you kept it to yourself. And God, I was relieved when I found out!” She gave an airy little laugh. “I mean, at first I thought you’d really fallen for some random stranger—” Her sentence cut off abruptly, but Aria had known Jen for almost twenty years. She knew what her best friend had been about to say.
Again. I thought you’d fallen for some random stranger again.
Fuck.
This time, when the tears returned, they weren’t the kind she could hide with a hug and a surreptitious swipe of her eyes. This time, they ripped her apart.
“She came home early, and now she won’t stop crying! I said crying. Yes!” Theo was trying to be quiet, she could tell. But when he got really angry, his voice sort of expanded like a balloon. It floated in from the hallway, reaching Aria’s ears without trouble.
She was alone in the living room, sobbing silently now, but the lack of sound didn’t make it any less embarrassing. Jen had run off for tea. Theo had run off to ring, Aria assumed, Keynes.
“You better call that motherfucker and find out what the hell he did. I know. I know. Call me back.”
He returned a second later with an expression of polite concern. “Well,” he said, his awkward tone a world away from the whip-sharp words she’d just heard. “You seem… better.”
Less hysterical, he meant. She was saved from drumming up a reply when Jen bustled into the room with a mug in each hand. She speared her husband with a glare and ordered, “Out.”
Theo didn’t need to be told twice.
Once he was gone, Jen turned a determinedly bright smile on Aria. “Tea!” she said, thrusting a cup into Aria’s hand. Kind of like you’d thrust food at a wild animal before backing away slowly.
Aria stared glumly into the milky brown liquid. Now, the inquisition would begin.
“There,” Jen said primly, sitting down. “That’s better. No more tears, or your eyes will go all puffy.”
“You can’t appeal to my vanity right now,” Aria lied. “I am desolate and despondent. I wouldn’t care if my eyebrows fell off.”
“Well, of course you wouldn’t. You could microblade new ones for yourself.”
She huffed out a resentful chuckle. “Stop making me laugh when my chest hurts.”
“But that’s what I’m for,” Jen said softly. “Now. Do you want to tell me what happened?”
A fresh wave of despair hit Aria like a brick, completely without warning. Suddenly choking back yet more tears, she put down her tea and asked, “Why do you even bother with me? How many times have you had to sit around, listening to me cry over some guy like it’s the first time I’ve been fucked over?”
Jen frowned, rolling her lips inwards. “Honey. It doesn’t matter. You’re my best friend and I want to be here for you. Always. And no matter how many times you get hurt, you have the right to feel that pain as if it’s brand new. There’s no cap on feelings.” She put a hand on Aria’s shoulder. “Please tell me you know that.”
“Sure,” Aria sniffed. “I know that. Logically. I used to tell myself that all the time. Like, yes this guy hurt me or that guy lied, and yes, I could’ve seen it coming, but I’m not to blame! They’re responsible for their actions and blah blah blah. But Jen, how many times can the same thing happen to me before I figure out the common denominator? I…” Her voice cracked, her vision blurring with tears. Christ, she must be so dehydrated by now. “I throw myself into relationships because I want someone to love, and I want someone to love me. But that’s not okay. Look what happened last time!”
Her final sentence, the words she’d been desperate to say all along, burst out almost violently. They were so loud, they seemed to echo around the room. Jen jerked back as if she’d been hit, her mouth forming a little ‘O’ for a moment. But then, as always, she rallied.
“Aria Granger. Please tell me you are not still freaking out over that thing with Simon.”
“Of course, I am, Jenny! I know I’m not allowed to feel guilty—I don’t feel guilty.” Shout out to Doctor Browne, therapist extraordinaire. “But I do know that if I didn’t need to be with someone, Simone wouldn’t have been able to use me. Because I wouldn’t have given him the time of day. What does it say about me, that I can fall for someone I don’t even like? Nothing good, no matter which way you spin it. I know that.
“So, I decided, if I can’t choose carefully, no more men! None at all! That makes sense, right? Only I fucked up. With Nik, I fucked up. Because I thought it was different, and I thought it was real, and that I wanted him—not just someone, him. So I let myself try again. And I fell for someone’s bullshit, again. I probably wanted to fall for it. I’m on some twisted self-sabotage kick where I throw myself at manipulative dickheads—”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Jen said, holding up a hand. “Nik, the guy you were fake-dating? What happened?”
So Aria told her. Aria told her
everything. And at the end of the most disjointed, teary, self-pitying speech of her life, she looked up to find her best friend frowning at the wall like it held the secrets of the cosmos.
After a slight pause, Jen said, “There are a couple of things I need to say.”
“O…kay?”
“First of all, Nik is a dickhead.”
Aria laughed, and accidentally blew a snot bubble. A snot bubble. Would these indignities never end?
“Nice,” Jen said dryly.
“I told you to stop making me laugh.”
“My wit is too powerful to contain, unfortunately.”
Aria rolled her eyes and reached for the tissues.
“The second thing I want to say,” Jen went on, “is that I understand why you’re doubting yourself. Because you’ve definitely made some unhealthy relationship choices. I can’t lie, I was glad when you stopped wifing any guy with functioning private parts, but not because I think there’s something wrong with you. I think you’re amazing. You love so easily.”
Aria grimaced.
“That’s not a bad thing! That’s a gift. I’ve always been so jealous of you. It’s like you don’t have a well that can run dry, you don’t have a barrier or a limit. You just love and love and love, and it never runs out, and you’re never afraid. Sometimes people take advantage of you, but that is not your fault—no matter how many times it happens. I don’t care. It is not your fault. Everyone wants love, and you’ve got an ocean of it. The people who know they don’t deserve it will always be the first in line, because they’re thirsty. And they know how to play you, because you’re too sweet to think the way they do. Like, you cannot comprehend their evil.” Aria winced as Jen tapped her on the forehead. “You have a mind of hearts and flowers.”
“No offence, but that it complete bullshit. I am not sweet.”
“You are. You’re like a loyal Alsatian. You will maul someone if necessary, but it’s always out of love. I just wish you’d protect yourself as much as you protect everyone else.” Jen paused. “Although, it sounds like you’ve started to. And, while I approve wholeheartedly, I do have one last point to make.”
Sweet on the Greek_An Interracial Romance Page 15
