Lifeline (Ridgeline Station #2)

1. Aidan

AIDAN

Warmth.

The kind that made it impossible to think, or at least, think too hard. Well, it wasn’t that I couldn’t think. I just didn’t want to.

“Hey,” he muttered, and his hands slid through my hair, cupping the back of my neck. “You’re not sleeping, nice try.”

“You don’t know that,” I muttered into his stomach. I was, after all, technically facing away from him, and I hadn’t moved for several minutes.

“I do.”

“Nuh-uh.”

“You weren’t snoring loud enough to wake the dead; ergo, you weren’t sleeping.”

“Fuck off,” I muttered against his skin.

“Don’t think I’ll be doing that,” he said with a laugh that shook me. I always loved how he laughed; it was as if he was trying to hold it in, and yet every time, he failed miserably. It made me feel special, like he wasn’t able to control himself around me.

Dignity and self-control were ruined the moment I pressed my mouth against his stomach and blew hard, making him squeal as it tickled him. With a snicker from the depths of my evil soul, I blew even harder, latching my mouth onto his side and making him flail and shove me.

“Quit!” he protested with a gasp, slapping the back of my head, his desperation growing.

I knew I was pushing my luck, but I couldn’t help but give his sides another blow and then dig my finger up under his ribs. Carefully, of course, I didn’t want to hurt him, but I wanted to torture him.

It was overkill, and I should have known it.

I suppose I did, which is why I wasn’t surprised when his attempts to push me off turned wild.

The result was his ‘push’ was more like a slap to the side of my head and sent me tumbling with a cry of surprise, followed by a laugh.

It hurt, but I knew damn well he hadn’t meant it, and even if he had, I had earned a good slap anyway.

“I’d say I’m sorry, but I’m not,” he grumbled, and I laughed again, making him swat me, and I pounced on him. “Get off me.”

“Nope,” I told him brightly, laughing again when I kissed him and he kept his lips pressed tightly together. “Childish.”

“Says the one who tickled me,” he grumbled.

“You’re just mad because you can’t return the favor.”

“It is a cruel joke that the universe gave someone like me someone like you.”

“Oh, you mean, why do you, a headstrong, stubborn, irritating, overly precise pain in the ass, get to have someone like me, a wonderful, delightfully funny, caring, loving person, as your boyfriend?”

“No, the fact that you can’t be tickled is criminal when I’m overly sensitive,” he said with a frown.

“Maybe,” I said and smiled into the next kiss, feeling his stubborn refusal to part his lips ease a little. “I love you, though. You know that, right?”

“You love torturing me,” he said, but I could see the glint of humor in his eyes.

“Say it,” I prompted, poking his cheek.

“I love you, happy?” he asked, but he was smiling because I knew how much he loved saying those words to me, almost as much as he enjoyed hearing them from me.

“I am happy,” I said, nuzzling into his neck and breathing deep. “Very happy.”

“Me too,” he said, his arm wrapping around my shoulders and squeezing.

Happy enough that it felt illegal. It felt…doomed. Then again, a sense of foreboding when you were feeling amazing was probably about as normal as it was useless. There might be an end to the happiness; there might be a time when I thought back to that moment and felt only pain.

But it wasn’t that time, and it wasn’t a time that was guaranteed either.

It was just him and me, and that—

* * *

The truck gave a heavy lurch, and I jerked awake, realizing I had dozed off while being driven to the Search and Rescue team’s outpost in the heart of the Pacific Northwest. It was a weirdly stiff thought, and I shook my head, grimacing as I looked at the driver to see he wasn’t paying the slightest attention to me as he whisper-sang under his breath.

“Oh, holy shit,” I cried out as the truck went flying over what had to be an inhumanly sized bump in the road. “Woooaaahhhh!”

The truck came down and while I sent a prayer to the mechanical gods for the transmission, I couldn’t help but let out a wild laugh.

Beside me was a crazy man with a wide grin and a devil may care attitude as he gave the truck a little shake. “Doing alright over there?”

“Would it matter if I said no?” I asked with a laugh, gripping the handle above the door.

“Probably not,” Jake laughed as he looked around.

I knew he was looking for another opportunity to send the truck flying.

From the moment he’d picked me up from the airport, there had been a wildness that had drawn me to him.

I mean, that he was also tall, huge, and stupidly good-looking helped.

I had got 100% Grade A straight man off him with ten seconds of conversation, but hey, a guy could look and appreciate, right?

“At least you’re not screaming, so that’s something. ”

“I might regret saying this, but you’re going to have to try a lot harder to get me to scream,” I told him with a laugh.

He looked at me slyly. “Don’t go saying that; I’m good at getting people to scream.”

Oh, I bet he was.

Straight man, Aidan. He was a straight man.

He was like the good parts of a country boy, a frat boy, and a guy fresh from military basic training crammed into one person.

Obviously, I didn’t know Jake well enough from a couple hours driving to say if that was true or not, but that was the aura I got off him from start and if things kept going, our finish when we lost control and careened into a tree.

I suppose there were worse ways to go than with adrenaline pumping through your veins. There were other ways I’d prefer, that involved less screaming and a fiery death, but still…there were worse ways.

Admittedly, no one wanted to die while they were supposed to be setting out on some grand new adventure.

Especially when said adventure was supposed to be the start of something new.

It wasn’t like my life was awful or that I was running away from something bad, but…

I suppose feeling you were growing stagnant and if you didn’t get out of the swamp that was the foundation of your life, you might not move.

Of course, going to the middle of nowhere to work for a Search and Rescue team was a first step.

I hoped it was a step in the right direction and that I might actually do something with myself.

Then again, I could be dropping myself into the middle of nowhere with a bunch of guys I didn’t know to end up doing nothing, or worse, making an ass of myself.

I had to remind myself that nothing in life worth having came easily and freely.

I had never been comfortable taking risks with my life or future.

Sure, I’d made some choices that were…questionable.

Partying too hard, hopping around jobs when I should have settled for something to build a stronger foundation, screwing around in college too hard and not getting a degree…

well, there were several reasons I shouldn’t be trusted to measure risk and reward in my life.

Yet there I was, trying my hand at it. At least it felt more like an active choice than ignoring my current life’s course and letting the river take me. I was taking a risk, taking control of my life and—

“Holy shit!” I said with a laugh as he swerved around something that had fallen into the road and sent me bouncing around despite holding on and wearing a seatbelt. “They let you drive people all the time?”

“Sure do,” he said proudly, and I hung on as he dodged the debris in the road.

I knew there had been storms lately, and they had been pretty rough on the area, but hell, I would have thought they’d clear the roads.

Then again, I suppose the only thing out that way was the outpost, considering we had left the nearest town about twenty minutes before.

I couldn’t even remember the name of the town despite having spent a few hours there waiting for my… escort.

His driving evened out as the debris on the road dwindled, and I settled back into the seat, taking a deep breath, steadying myself.

My thoughts drifted back to the dream I’d been having when I’d dozed off.

I didn’t know why the dream, which was mostly a memory, had reared up from the depths of my brain and made a display of itself.

It had been…well, a while since I’d last thought about that time in my life.

I had dated before then, and I’d dated since.

I suppose we all had someone we considered ‘the one who got away’ and had to live with that for the rest of our lives.

That was fine…mostly, but I’d prefer to think about that on my own terms. Like when I was a few too many drinks in and the alcohol betrayed me, or when I was going through the chest I had in storage that I’d used for years to hold the memorabilia I’d collected over the years.

Not when I was catching a few winks before starting a new job that I did not feel confident in.

The part of my mind obsessed with psychology suggested that was exactly why I was thinking about back then.

It was one of the few times in my life that I looked back on with genuine regret that clearly still lingered.

The end had been so…unsatisfactory, leaving more questions than answers, which was common with a breakup, but something about that breakup had felt worse.

So why wouldn’t I, someone taking a significant risk and starting a grand new chapter of my life, think about the one chapter in my life that had never felt properly finished?

“You alright over there?” Jake asked, and I stiffened, realizing I had probably been giving away my thoughts, or at least blatant glimpses into them. I had always been told I had the worst poker face imaginable.

“Hmm?” I responded lightly, trying for nonchalance to offset whatever he’d seen on my face.

“I dunno, ya looked kinda…pissed?”

“Just randomly deciding this was the moment to sort through the ghosts in my past,” I told him with a snort.