Early February…
“Aren’t you lonely in here yet?” I ask, after scarfing all my food and then placing my hands on my expanded belly and patting it for a job well done. Life is good, the food was great, and the company is even better. I watch Ayden chew his lasagna in that careful way of his, where I just shove it into my mouth because I go from being not hungry to starving with no happy medium in between.
“I like being alone. I’m not bothered by my own company.” Ayden shrugs it off, but I know better. He’s asked me about the neighbourhoods nearby and scoured the listings for an apartment to rent, and while Toronto is building literally thousands of units a day, they still seem scarce. He wipes his mouth, carefully again, looking at me with an intensity that would make me squirm if I could move.
I shake my head, heaving myself up on the chair, settling against the back of it and wondering if I can surreptitiously undo the top button of my jeans to get some more breathing room. I have a food baby and she is large. “That’s not what I asked, Ayden.” I want to lean closer, but I just can’t.
Ayden glances down at his plate. His last few bites must be mighty interesting with the way he’s glaring at them. “I don’t know what you want me to say.” I’ve noticed that when Ayden gets uncomfortable, he doesn’t squirm or fidget, but goes still, waiting.
“The truth would be nice. I just want to know more about you. Tell me how Christmas was back home, tell me anything.” I make the herculean effort to lean forward to grab my glass of sparkling water and take a big gulp, hoping it’ll settle my stomach.
“I’d rather like it if you would stop questioning me all the time when we’re together. I feel like I’m back in school.”
Well, that’ll shut me up. I gape at him, wondering where the hell all this has come from. Since I’m not a mind reader, and Mama didn’t raise any kind of quitter, I ask another question instead. “Did something happen today?”
Ayden’s shoulders slump, and he puts his fork down with a clatter against his plate, rubbing at his eyes miserably with his hands. His trailer feels tight and enclosed, and even though the curtains haven’t been drawn, I feel like I’m in a fishbowl. When he looks at me, his eyes aren’t giving anything away, and the dark circles under them seem like they’ve been tattooed on. “I messed up today. Couldn’t get anything to go right. I had to kiss Bekah again—Amy—and it felt wrong, absolutely wrong. I felt absolutely sick to my stomach. Still do.”
“How come?” I whisper, afraid to say the words out loud. My heartbeat’s drumming in my ears and my throat’s gone dry.
Please let it be a good answer. Please, please, please.
Ayden looks up at me, his lashes casting shadows on his cheeks, and I can’t read his eyes. I swallow hard, taking in a deep breath to halt the pain that I’m bracing myself for once he actually answers my question. I can count the heartbeats drumming in my chest for the time he makes me wait for it.
“I thought it would be obvious, darling. I felt awful because I wasn’t kissing you—I was kissing someone else, and that felt disloyal.” I try to cover the smile forming on my mouth with my hands, but it just sort of spreads wider, and Ayden can totally see it, exasperated with me. “Right, I can see how that could make you happy.”
I grin all the harder, then try to sober up. “Ayden, c’mon, how do you want me to react? Honestly.” I do a little happy wiggle in my seat, or as much movement as I can muster right now.
He doesn’t look too broken up over the fact that I can’t stop smiling and takes a swig of his hours-old coffee to try and hide his smile, but I can see it on the rest of his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Ha. Sure you do. You want me to be completely okay with the fact that you kiss someone else, even if it’s for work? Especially because it’s for work! It’s weird. I understand why all those relationships in Hollywood never last.” I look at him, making sure he gets it. “I’m territorial when it comes to you. I don’t want you to be kissing anyone else but me. I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong.”
“Of course not. I’m just telling you about my day, how it messed up my scenes because I couldn’t pretend anymore. The façade cracked. I’m not really sure how to fix it.”
“I think you close a door to yourself,” I say, nodding now that the words are coming out in a way that makes sense. Hopefully. “Like, you put a part of yourself away, so you do what you have to. I think. I’m not too sure, though, don’t take my word for it,” I backpedal, leaning farther back in my chair.
His gaze gets intense, and he takes up more space across from me, leaning in closer, blocking out everything else so all I can focus on is him and only him. “Did you ever have to do that?”
Uh-oh.
Well, I opened myself up to that, and it would be dishonest not to tell him the truth. I shrug, getting ready to tell him, like an athlete doing a warmup drill, deep breaths and all.
“I was in a bad situation once—maybe one day I’ll tell you all about it—but in the end, I was stuck in a bad spot and couldn’t get away easily. I was pissed at myself, piss-scared, and I wanted to cry in turns with yelling or getting violent. I told myself that I needed to push all of that away, lock it away for when I needed it, and I had to focus on how to get out, get away. I was able to, with a huge amount of luck, and I’ll never put myself in that kind of situation again. But I know what I’m talking about. You have to hide yourself away—good parts, bad parts—to do what you have to, and when you let out that part of yourself that was never touched by what you needed to do, you can go on, distance yourself from what happened because you weren’t really the one doing it at all. Does that make sense?”
Ayden’s face is tight, contained, a dark mass of water with something unknown moving underneath, ready to break the surface. The muscles in his jaw are clenched tight enough that I’m scared for his teeth. “And you’re all right?”
I shrug again, my stomach aching with too much food…and the heavy subject. Topic change, please! “As much as any of us is all right.”
I don’t like the way he moves his hand slowly towards me, seeking touch, but also extremely cautious, like he’s afraid to touch me. I rectify that by putting my hand in his grasp, his thumb stroking the back of my hand, bumping over my knuckles. “I wish that hadn’t happened to you, darling.” I can practically feel my eyes flutter when he says that special word. “And I’m glad you told me about it. I’ll think about using that mind trick for the next scene. I’m off for sixteen tomorrow and then back on for another sixteen. What would you like to do?”
I smile at him, ignoring the thudding of my heart and the relief cascading from my head down to my toes in a waterfall of warmth that makes me want to sit still and bask in it. I didn’t want to talk about it or go over it again. Maybe one day, but definitely not now. “We could go for a walk, but it’s doing that weird rain-sleet thing and I think your director would kill me if I brought you back with a broken ankle. We can stay in, cook something delicious, and watch a new docu-series I’d think you’d like about the professional soccer leagues in England?”
His mouth pops open, eyes going round. God damn it, he’s adorable at all times, and it makes it hard to think. Focus. “How did you know about that?”
I roll my eyes. “Ayden, I like soccer. But this is Canada—hockey is what we watch. You’re English, so soccer’s all you watch. We can stream it after we make something delicious for dessert.” Not that I can eat dessert, but it’s hard to stew on something when you’re baking something sweet.
I’ve never seen him this animated while we cook up some dessert in the tiny kitchen of his trailer, bumping into each other more often than not, making a whole mess but not worrying about it. I know he doesn’t have anyone who comes and cleans out his trailer, but we’ll take care of it later. We end up making funfetti cookies from scratch and settle in his bedroom with our food to watch the first few episodes.
“You know, I grew up not far from Manchester before moving to London. Only kid there who didn’t believe in either the Blue or the Red,” he says after we finish the first episode and he’s come back from depositing our plates in the kitchen. He crawls into his bed and grabs an extra blanket from somewhere beside him, hauling it over us. “That’s Manchester City or Manchester United to you.”
“One city has two teams?” Weird.
“It’s the same thing with New York hockey, right? The Islanders and the Rangers? Don’t ask me, one of the guys from the crew, Matt, is from there and it’s all he talks about.”
“Look at you, showing your hockey knowledge. It’s kinda cute.” I pinch at his cheek for added emphasis, flopping over onto my side, jostling my food baby to get closer to him.
“Only kind of?” He grins at me, gathering me close so we’re facing each other, chest to chest. “Would you like to watch another episode, or do you want to go home?”
“I’m pretty comfortable where I am, thanks.” And I am. So comfortable, all wrapped up in him, but the rest of me is doing the stupid thing and wanting more. I lean over just the few scant inches that are left between us and kiss him, slow and soft at first, before he rolls me onto my back, settling half on top of me, kissing me for all he’s worth. My body ignites with need, my skin tingling, my heart sprinting in my chest. I have a total fangirl moment in the confines of my skull while I realize that I’m kissing the crap out of Ayden Stone aka Chrisander Gage and life has reached peak fangirl love that I don’t think it will ever get better than this.
“Aria, we don’t have to do this,” he mumbles against my mouth, but I can feel how much he wants me against my thigh.
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