Chapter 53
CHAPTER 53
CHARLOTTE
The too-big house is empty when I wake up the next morning. My steps echo on the hardwood floors, and I lean against his kitchen island as I drink my morning coffee, watching the city beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows.
He slept in my bed with me last night. Just slept. Held me even after my tears dried. He was gone when I woke up, but left me a note on my bedside table. Take the day off.
I read the note several times, lingering over each word in his sprawling handwriting. Then I crumbled it into a ball and threw it into my waste paper basket.
The past is easy to forget until it comes rearing its head again. And it did last night, right in front of him. Embarrassment still makes my head feel heavy.
I’m so stupid.
He knows now, and it doesn’t seem like he’s judging me… or he hides it very well. Maybe that’s it. We only have two weeks left until the first draft is due. Two weeks until I have to send it to Aiden and get his thoughts on it. And then it’s time for me to pack up my things and leave. Like with all of my ghostwriting gigs.
Maybe he’s counting on that to be the natural end to things between us.
That’s the nature of my job, after all. I stay for a few months, maybe half a year. Move on when the book is done. Add it to the others in my repertoire and then reinvent myself somewhere new.
Never stay long enough for people to figure out my past.
I failed this time.
I work outside again. I should be finishing his chapters, but instead, I’m writing the pitch I’ve been dabbling on for so long. Pages pour out of me. They’re rough. I still need to do research and talk to experts, but the words suddenly flow for the first time.
It feels too personal, though. I sit back after lunch, looking over what I’ve written, and wonder if it’s anything I could ever share with the world.
The city is bathed in bright, beckoning sunshine. I feel antsy. Like I can’t sit still, can’t stay here. I want to get into the car and drive into the hills. Maybe I should take a hike. Maybe I should go to the observatory again. Or that spot high up on Mulholland that Aiden loves.
He mentioned we could go to see his childhood home.
I call him.
He answers on the second ring. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“You’re not.”
I tuck my phone against my shoulder and pull up Aiden’s schedule on my computer, the one Eric gave me access to all those weeks ago. “Are you free this afternoon? We could drive out to your family house. I feel like… I don’t know. Going somewhere. Moving.”
There’s a brief pause, and then a muffled sound across the line. I hear his voice. Faint, but audible. “ I’ll need to sit this one out. Continue without me.”
“Aiden?” I ask. “Are you in a meeting?”
“Not anymore,” he says.
“You didn’t just walk out of one.”
“Okay. I won’t tell you that I did.” There’s a smile in his voice. “I’ll come pick you up. Half an hour okay?”
His calendar finally loads. There are meetings booked throughout the entire afternoon. “Yes, but... you’re busy! I just saw your schedule.”
“Nothing that can’t be moved.”
“Eric is going to kill you. Or me, actually,” I say.
Aiden scoffs. “Nonsense. He loves you. We can stay overnight at the house, if you want. Watch the sunset.”
“Okay. I’ll pack a bag.” I’m already closing my laptop. It’ll be a short trip, but it means being on the road again. Seeing new things. For years, that’s been the best way to soothe my anxiety.
Aiden picks me up right on time. His stubble is thicker today. Did he not shave this morning? Maybe he lingered in bed with me longer than he usually does. The thought makes my stomach flip over.
His hand slides up beneath my skirt, gripping my knee. “How are you?”
“Good. I’ve been working.”
He hums. “No regrets after last night?”
I look out the window. “For telling you everything?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe. I haven’t really decided how I feel about it.”
He chuckles, and it amazes me again, how easy everything is with him. “All right. Well, let me know when you do.”
And that’s that. Without saying a word, I somehow know we won’t talk about it again until I’m ready.
“Tell me about the house.”
“It’s by the ocean in Malibu. Dad lost it in the divorce, and my mom doesn’t want to stay there much. She mostly stays at her place up in Sonoma. She loves it there, and it gets her far away from the social circles down here.”
We pass tall palm trees lining the residential streets and the beautiful greenery flanking Canyon Road, and eventually, the ocean starts to peak on the horizon. Aiden has the radio on and his hand on my knee. I feel the sun and hum along to the notes of a song, leaving the receding city and all the obligations that come with it behind.
And the complications that exist between us.
They also fade away into the distance.
Aiden pulls up to a large wrought iron metal gate. It’s anchored to a stone wall so high, I can’t see what’s behind it.
I peer out. “ This is where you grew up?”
“Yes.” There’s a smile in his voice. He taps in a code, and the gate swings open for us, revealing a curved stone driveway. The large house is white with blue shutters on the windows. Beachy, huge, and nestled right by the beach.
He parks, and I exit the car just to marvel at the place.
“How,” I breathe when he joins me, “could you ever leave this place? Your mom’s house in Sonoma must be insane to beat this.”
He wraps his arm around my waist and kisses my temple. “Come on. The back is the best part.”
He’s not lying. The porch opens up to a large deck, a terraced backyard, and then nothing but the beach and the deep blue ocean.
I set down my bag with a dull thump. “Oh my god.”
Aiden changed his suit for a pair of navy slacks and a short-sleeved T-shirt, with a pair of square sunglasses on his face.
He looks painfully handsome. Athletic and like himself, the version he is when no none is looking. With the sun on his face and broad shoulders, he’s ready to move.
“Chaos,” he says and holds out a hand in my direction. “Let’s get in the water.”
“In the water?”
His smile widens. “Let me show you how to surf.”
The air is warm, the water cold. It’s a beautiful day on the waves, and I can’t believe he has access to this. That he could do this every day if he wanted to.
Judging from the content look on his face, I bet he’d like to, as well.
I’ve surfed only once before and was terrible at it. I’m not great now either, but Aiden doesn’t seem to mind. I borrow a spare wetsuit, and we stick closer to shore than the professional surfers riding the bigger waves further out.
“Why don’t you do this every day?” I ask him.
A wave crashes over us. The water sparkles, and I taste salt on my tongue. I grin at him, and he grins back.
“What did you say?” he calls.
“Why don’t you do this every day?!”
He laughs. “I honestly don’t know, Chaos. I don’t know.”
I manage to get up on the board twice. He hollers at me both times, and I fall laughing into the surf at the end, adrenaline rushing through me.
“That was incredible!”
He grins at me. “You looked like a pro.”
“Now you’re lying.”
He wraps his hands around my waist, under the water. “You looked good, Chaos. Happy. We should do more things like this. Fuck the office.”
I kiss him. “Fuck the office.”
He grins and turns his face up to the sky. “Fuck the world!”
Later, he wraps me in a towel and tucks me against his side on the wide Malibu porch, where I lean against his bare chest, with the sun bathing us in its warmth. I’m still in my bikini. It’s dried by now, and my skin is salty.
He’s humming with infectious energy—his touches are light and his lips are always against me. My hair, my temple, my cheek. I turn and wrap my arms around his waist. Press my lips to his still-unshaven jaw and whisper what I’ve felt since we left the hills of Bel Air.
“I don’t want to go back to the city.”
He presses me tighter against him, hip to hip, chest to chest. “Then we won’t,” he says simply.
I know it’s not true, but I close my eyes and pretend it is.
Pretend that this can last forever.
“I have something to tell you,” he says, and just like that, the moment is broken. “And something I need to apologize for.”