King Size

by Celia Crown

  I wipe them away.

  “I should have told you, and we could have worked something out, but I didn’t want to involve you in the mess that I made,” I said.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you. I wanted to call you and explain, but the damage was already done, and I thought I could work my way back to your love after the contract.”

  She mumbles moodily, “You’re two years late.”

  “I know, but I saw an opportunity, and here I am. I took this job as my last; it’s so I can see you again.”

  She rubs her eyes with the back of her hand; it’s too rough on her face when she wants the tears to stop.

  I take her hand and gently wipe them away, “Can you forgive me?”

  She nods.

  I see right through her, “Be honest.”

  “I don’t know.”

  It’s my turn to nod in understanding, “I can wait.”

  Chapter Seven

  Violet

  “Bathing in mother nature has been nice and all, but I have been bitten by five mosquitoes, and I would love to dip in mint balms.” Thomas slaps a mosquito with his hand, and the faces he’s making are hilarious.

  I extend my arms out, “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Dear girl, it’s six in the afternoon. Your man has been fighting off bugs for you when you were sleeping.”

  I glance over to Aiden who finally decided to put on a shirt. His tattooed arms are not bitten with red dots. A stupid thought occurs to me that he might have been fighting mosquitoes off with his bare hands. Heaven knows Aiden is not the most tolerable person; even mosquitoes will have a hard time getting through him.

  “How considerate of him!” My voice raises a notch, I’m not sure if I should be being honored or something else.

  “His face was not letting anything close to you,” Thomas snorts, tossing his sunglasses up to his head.

  I can only imagine how frightening Aiden looks; he may be a model, but his face is grumpy and angry all the time. Pictures of him sell whatever he is paid to advertise; his face became a trademark of brooding sexiness.

  After Aiden had forced me to listen to him, his explanation meant a lot to me because now I know that I can’t keep blaming myself for his choice to leave. I’m not the one who did something wrong, and I’m not the one who was in too deep with the relationship.

  The only remaining mysteries that I have is the girlfriend thing with that supermodel and him breaching the contract since he’s still under his agency.

  We can’t do anything about our relationship as long as he’s with his agency and I’m with mine; there is going to be a huge scandal when people find out. The news will paint the whole story as either I’m using Aiden, or he’s using me, but I know that the end story is going to be the same.

  One or both of us is using each other for profit.

  “You’re overthinking.” Aiden’s thick arm hooks around my neck and rolls my head back.

  “I’m not,” I pout grumpily.

  Sometimes I hate how he can read me; I like to think that I’m good at hiding my emotions and I have had a lot of practice of shoving bad memories to the back of my mind. It’s easy to avoid the bad things if I don’t think about or interact with them, but they are never going to go away.

  I know all of that, but I can’t just suddenly change. I’m the type of person who avoids confrontations. I’m not Aiden; he will face the problem head-on, and the force behind his words will get the issue demolished. He isn’t above using his hands to solve a problem. Aiden is not a good man in the traditional sense.

  He had done some bad things in the past when he was young, and those memories are etched onto his muscles that show me that he is still a very bad man. Although he never raises his hands to me, I have seen what he can do to a punching bag during his workout.

  I would jokingly say that he is a Viking in his past life.

  Aiden didn’t correct me; it’s as if he is part Viking from how strong he is built.

  “You two are too suspiciously close. What happened?” Donna demands with a hand to her hip.

  “Nothing,” I blurt out quickly.

  More suspicion is cast upon me, and I wish I could bang my bang on these pebbles under my feet. It would give me an escape to this horrible situation where I have to explain everything to Donna if she really wants to know the whole story.

  She is similar to Aiden. The way she asks me things compels the cowardly girl in me to spill out my darkest secrets.

  “I have eyes, Violet,” Donna taps the skin under her eyes.

  “Of course you do. It’s the two balls in your sockets, and they have photoreceptors to see colors!” I squeak. I’m so close to choking on my distress.

  Aiden runs a hand down my back, and it would have been comforting if Donna’s hawk eyes aren’t following the movements. He isn’t helping. I’m positively sure that he’s purposely making people aware of what’s going on between us.

  That is if I know how to define us right now.

  We’re still in the middle ground of unease and uncertainty. Well, it’s probably just me because Aiden doesn’t care what others think and the possessive display of his hand around my waist is like a symbol of him hanging his dirty laundry for others to see.

  I might be over exaggerating, but it’s basically the same thing, only on a smaller scale.

  “What the heck are you saying?” Thomas’s lips curl.

  Donna’s arms bulge when she lifts two heavy cases of equipment by herself, “Just don’t let whatever you two have affect your work.”

  I salute to her, “Yes, ma’am!”

  My heart nearly lunged out of my throat when Aiden’s hot fingers slipped into the edge of my shirt, ticking my side with his caresses. I turn to him and slap the hand away with a huff; his dark eyes turn menacing when I try to speak.

  The hair on my neck raises when he leans down, closing the distance between us to whisper in his baritone voice, the voice of velvet, and it’s one of the many weaknesses that will render me into a pile of goop.

  “Do not ever deny my right to touch you,” he sneers, and I moan with need.

  It’s so tempting to give in and kiss his lips. I could pass it off as tripping and lip-locking with the hottest model I have ever seen. That can probably trick some people, but not most.

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur out of habit.

  The part of me that is a good girl is coming out after being locked away for so long; it’s craving for Aiden’s domination and praises.

  “It’s alright, sweetheart,” he dips down and kisses my neck; the pulse kicks abruptly at his hot tongue.

  “You have had free rein for a while. It’s time to learn your place again.”

  The things he says, the way he touches me, and the intensity that pours out of his deep eyes, I’m drowning in his presence, and I never want to be able to breathe again if I can have this moment forever.

  “You came back for me,” I breathe.

  It’s unbelievable. I have dreamed of this day; my mind had come up many scenarios where we would find our ways back to each other, but none of them could get to a happy ending because I was too scared to give myself too much hope.

  “I’m never leaving again,” he kisses my ear with a whisper.

  He says it with conviction, and I believe him. Aiden tells me that I’m naïve for believing everything and never second-guessing. It’s true, in my line of work I have seen many catty fights between models torn between friendship and rivalry. It was never pretty to see them bring their beauty to a standard that isn’t worthy of their title.

  I need his guidance and protection from the vicious cycle of betrayal in the modeling industry. After Aiden had left, I was taken under the wings of Donna and Thomas. I never had the experience of fighting my way through people who use dirty tricks to get to places. Donna and Thomas hired me because they fancied my work.

  Now with Aiden, any tiny holes where snakes can slither through are filled. Anyone who has any ulterio
r motives would not get pass Aiden’s keen eyes. He’s good at spotting things that are too good to be true.

  He could see a sinkhole a mile away, and I wouldn’t notice until I’m neck-deep in the sand. It’s what happened to that one company who reached out to me years ago. They wanted to do a collaboration together, and they wanted me to pay for a studio for the photography to take place.

  Being the unsophisticated girl that I was, I would have said yes without understanding what anything meant. Being scammed out of thousands would likely be the outcome if Aiden hadn’t reported the company to the police. I thought he was doing the absolute most since I hadn’t paid, so I didn’t lose money.

  He said they tried it on me and that was enough reason to take action. Aiden would have left them alone if they hadn’t tried to con me, but I’m at fault too. I’m the one who was too trusting; it’s hard for me to distinguish legitimate work and elaborate schemes.

  I have eyes for spotting the perfect picture, but I have no skill when it involves business.

  I barely know how to do my taxes, and I still don’t file them myself. I leave it up to the professional tax team; it’s a group of people who specializes in taxes, so the agency employees get a discount when tax season comes around.

  I just hand my information to them and let them do their magic. My brain isn’t meant to withstand the numbers and complicated tax words; math and English Literature were not my forte in school.

  I thought the Odyssey was my mortal enemy at one point. There was one week at school where I had to read that and solve derivatives; it was March Madness week, and I was stressing out on homework.

  School should not be teaching things beyond multiplication and division. The last time I used the freaking quadratic formula was on the Algebra final exam, and the only thing I got from the Odyssey was that there was a giant named Cyclops who had one eyeball on his forehead.

  Wait, why am I thinking of school? Where did that come from? Wasn’t I talking to Aiden or Donna?

  I shake my head from my thoughts, glancing around to find everyone had packed their stuff and is ready to go while the guide starts the trail back to the place where we are to be picked up by cars. Then we would go back to our overwater bungalows.

  I have a hard time saying the word bungalow with a straight face, especially after Thomas had made an inappropriate joke that has the word gigolo stuck in my head when I think of it.

  Donna had booked one section all to the agency; each person has their own cottage while being equally spaced out. We had the perfect number of people to take over the whole section of the water.

  Donna must have talked her way into getting the best views because when I dropped my things off at my cottage, it offered me a gorgeous sight.

  “Sweetheart, stop spacing out,” Aiden’s voice reaches into my ear, and I yelp with a jump.

  I clear my throat and pat my heart to calm the pumping organ from overexertion, “Coming, coming.”

  I quickly catch up to the others while Aiden laces our fingers together. The walk is quiet; we’re the last two people to leave the beautiful hidden gem. I want to spend the night out here with a big campfire. I would be less scared to sleep there at night when there are more people there.

  I do feel safe with Aiden, but it’s a numbers game when it’s the forest as my enemy. Mother nature is sometimes scary. I prefer not to wake up to a bear drool over me. The unknown lurks around the bushes, eyes gleaming in the darkness, the unpleasant feeling of not being alone in the forest creeps me out.

  Those who camp as a family activity or as a vocation are brave souls that courageously love mother nature with all its flaws.

  The only way I would be able to camp out there is someone paying me with five Navy SEALs positioned in a pentagonal formation to cover every side of me. I refuse to let the beauty of mother nature take my freedom and trap me in this god-awful death trap.

  “You keep lagging, and I will leave you behind.”

  I snap out of my thoughts to Aiden’s voice. My heart rumbles in my chest as I seize the fingers around mine. Picking up my pace, I catch up to his pace and occasionally glance behind me; the sun was starting to go down, and everything turns too dim for my likely.

  “Y-you can’t leave me here,” I shudder, gulping in fear as the rustling from all sides gets louder.

  The guide in the far front has no qualm about my fear as he just whacks the grass and breaks braces. I’m immersing into the jungle, and I’m feeling the bugs crawling on me.

  I squeal quietly, rubbing my arm with my other hand, shivering in disgust. There are no bugs on me; it’s just the feeling of itty-bitty legs tap dancing on my hypersensitive skin.

  Shuddering and shaking away the feelings, I tighten my fingers through his, as we walk in the path that the guide and other models have paved for us.

  I don’t think about the horror stories that I have read online. I focus on the impeccable thickness of Aiden’s body; this man is just too sexy for his own good. How is it possible for him to be perfect in every way?

  Thinking and admiring his body help me pass the time. The walk back to the car isn’t too scary when I have something else occupying my thoughts. Aiden caught me staring so unashamedly at his strong back that I’m constantly blushing.

  Everyone is split into three cars. Aiden is attached to my hips when we drove away. We keep the conversation to the minimal because there are still other people around and I don’t want to openly flaunt my relationship with him.

  That is another problem we haven’t solved; where we stand is unclear.

  It’s no use of stewing in thoughts. I couldn’t dramatically throw myself into my deepest secret because I had closed my eyes for one second, and I slept through the whole car drive.

  I didn’t wake up when we went through the bumpiest road ever uplifted from human construction. Aiden remarks plainly after we got off the car that my head probably has bruises from how rapidly I was banged against his shoulder.

  Dinner comes quickly, and we’re all seated in the large restaurant; Donna had let everyone choose their own things, and the appetizer is something to do with peaches.

  I can’t have that, so I skipped it while others are slurping the slices of fruit with sweetened syrup dripping from their forks. The scent of peaches is almost enough to break me out in hives; they smell sweet, but there is a note of sourness in the air that shrivels up my lips.

  The main course comes with a stacked sandwich and a small bowl of freshly chopped fruits. I made sure to tell them to not put any peaches in my dishes, and any raw fish is out of the equation. I like my food cooked so much that any bacteria are disintegrated.

  “You have no taste in the delicacies of food,” Thomas judges as he eyes my well-done and sliced steak sandwich.

  I didn’t know what I was getting when I saw the menu. There wasn’t any description of what is in the order, so I just selected what was popular.

  “Says the man that got Salmonella,” I retort back.

  He clears his throat, cutting a perfect slice of his chicken and eating it. “It was a bad time for me.”

  “I saw it, and it wasn’t glamorous.” I laugh while biting into my sandwich.

  I’m a simple girl with simple tastes. I could eat a tofu burger, and I would be alright with it. it’s not the first thing I would order, but I will still order it if I find nothing good on the menu. The biggest problem people have about a vegetarian or vegan burger is that they are advertised to be a close replacement for a meat burger, but they complain that it doesn’t taste like meat.

  I would lose brain cells just trying to comprehend the fact that people are getting upset about burgers because they aren’t meaty. Well, obviously, they are different things, so they should taste a little different.

  Sipping on my cold drink, I grimace immediately. The massive amount of fizz in my mouth curls my tongue upward to press away from the sensation that brings chills to my arms.

  “Wow,” I hold up the carbonate
d drink, “That’s a lot of fizz.”

  “Do you want me to get you another drink?” Thomas dabs his lips with a table cloth.

  I shake my head. The drink isn’t bad., I just have to let it sit for a bit to let the fizz pop away from the side of the cup.

  A tattooed arm crosses my vision; the familiar curve and bulkiness is a clear choice of men that I have in my mind. No one can compare to Aiden’s physique. He doesn’t have one microscopic flaw on him. Every inch of him has parts that bring more character to him, and he is a masterpiece.

  Okay, I need to stop. I’m drooling over a forearm.

  He exchanges his drink with mine; the clear glass of water clinks with the ice inside, and mine is moved to his side. I peer at him through my lashes and smile appreciatively. He pets my bare knee in response.

  I want to take it back because Aiden doesn’t drink or eat anything sweet That man has black coffee in the morning.

  What a monster.

  No taste buds should be allowed to be subjected to such bitterness. I can guarantee he can do the jelly bean challenge with a straight face; eat a jelly bean that’s dirty-dishwater flavored, and he’ll have that stoic expression.

  With age comes experience, and experience gives him control. He is much older than me and sees the world in different light than my naïve bubbles. Aiden and I are the complete opposite; he’s the older and sexier man with a body of a rugby player, the voice of sin, and a streak of heated possessiveness.

  He’s quite controlling too.

  I, on the other hand, am a mess. With puny arms and weak ankles, I am neither self-sufficient nor self-aware of many things. Too many bad habits and questionable life choices, and I have a strange obsession with strawberry milk.

  Aiden and I couldn’t be more different.

  We still found each other despite not being in the same social circles.

  I chew slowly, swallowing the sandwich before going for the glass of water. It washes down the little crumbles that are stuck in my throat. It soothes my tummy too.

  Everyone finishes up and begins to leave the restaurant to return to their bungalow. It’s time I call it a night. There is work tomorrow, and I need to be energetic, so I can motivate the models.