Chapter 25 Aria
ARIA
The world narrows to the sound coming through my speaker. Everything locks in place—my limbs, my breath, the cascade of sobs freezing over like a waterfall in winter, each drop hardening into an icicle sharp enough to pierce through my chest.
When he speaks again, my heart stutters. Recognition settles somewhere deep inside of me where fear heightens the longing, and longing only deepens the fear.
“Ledger?”
“Yeah, baby. I’m here.”
His smooth voice washes over me in cold waves, and every nerve in my body snaps to high alert.
It’s really him.
I lean across the kitchen island, fingers curling into the sharp edge of the counter as I try to steady myself.
How?
I don’t know if I said it out loud or just thought it, but he keeps talking.
“He made you cry,” he says, his voice gruff but still tender, hypnotic, and far too gentle for a man as callous as him.
Hot moisture prickles my eyes again. “I don't…understand.” My voice breaks, stuttering over another bout of hiccups. Trying to stop them only makes it worse.
A fresh tear slips free as I fight to catch my breath, my throat tightening around a pulse that chokes off the rest of my words.
Has he been watching me?
My eyes flick around the kitchen, searching every corner, but I don’t see any flashing lights that could be recording. My heart drums. He could’ve been watching me from outside.
“I’ll kill him,” he says, steady and eerily calm, the same voice he always uses under pressure. It stabs a sharp warning down my spine. Quiet. Collected.
Already decided.
He never raises his voice to make a threat. That’s what makes him dangerous—he never needs to.
“Please don’t h-hurt him.”
“If you don’t want me to. Then I won’t.” His voice stays firm and restrained, but there’s an unmistakable cruelty in the way he says it.
“I’ve never mentioned you to him,” I force out, my voice catching mid-sentence. “I haven’t told anyone…I swear…”
“Are you scared of me, Aria?”
My pulse jolts, my heart taking flight. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“No,” he says instantly, his voice lifting just a notch. “I’d rather die than hurt you.”
Something dangerous stirs, rippling through my stomach like an electric current, sharp and strangely thrilling in a way that should scare me off from asking another question.
I ignore it, swallowing, my tongue briefly darting out to catch the salt clinging to my lips. “Why? You should hate me.” My voice quivers. “I’m the reason your friend is…” The word hesitantly drags out of me. “Dead.”
I expect that reminder to set him off, bracing for him to tell me I’m right. My hand tightens around the phone, trembling against my ear.
“I’d hate myself before I could ever hate you,” he says quietly. “He made his own choices, Aria. That was on him. Not you.”
I nod, the breath leaving me in a long, slow exhale. “Okay.”
A brief silence stretches between us.
“Where are you standing right now?” he asks.
“The kitchen.”
“Good,” he says, a sliver of ease threading into his voice. “Make sure the front door is locked. After that, let me know once you’re in your room.”
I do as I’m ordered, sliding the lock into place, then head upstairs on shaky legs. That answers any questions about potential hidden cameras.
My whole body trembles as I reach the bedroom, remembering the slight dip in the bedding from before.
I’d known something was off. I felt it from the beginning, the way the hairs on my arms would lift, how I’d whip my head toward passing cars, or jolt awake from dreams of him beside me, so vivid I could’ve sworn they were real.
My breath quickens. Heartbeat lurching.
Summoning every ounce of courage, I press through the closed door, my pulse leaping to my throat at the thought of seeing him inside.
It’s empty.
Exhaling a shaky breath, I murmur, “I’m inside.”
“Now shut your window, and make sure it’s all the way down before you lock it,” he says, calm but firm.
My gaze snaps to the slightly open window. The hallway light behind me reflects off the glass, casting my reflection back at me, faint and distorted, while the outside is swallowed in shadows.
I reach for the frame, my fingers brushing the mesh screen near the bottom as I lean in, but there’s nothing beyond the glass. Just darkness stretching over the open field like a shroud.
A jolt of fear strikes my chest, reverberating all the way down my legs, locking me in place. There’s no doubt that he was here.
Is he out there now, watching?
Pressing my thighs together, I slide the plastic latch into place, locking the window. “Done,” I say, my pulse thumping madly in my ears.
It takes him a second to respond, his voice low and rough when he does. “Good. Keep it that way.”
“Ledger—” I pull my lip deeper between my teeth. “Why did you call?”
“I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
Safe. That’s what he’s always tried to do.
My breathing slows, teeth grazing the edge of my lip, worrying the tender skin until I can’t bear it anymore. I finally let go.
How am I going to go to school after tonight? What will I tell Clara? She’s been so excited about prom, about all of us going together.
Shame rockets through me, heat blooming in my cheeks. “What happened earlier was my fault,” I say quietly into the speaker. “I let him kiss me, and then…” The rest of the words catch somewhere in my throat.
On the other end, I hear Ledger drag in a sharp breath, then swallow, the sound quiet but heavy enough to carry through the line.
I imagine the way his Adam’s apple would bob when he did that, how I used to press my face into the warm space beneath his neck, pretending we were fine. Pretending everything was okay.
Hearing his voice again has unraveled everything I spent weeks trying to forget. Every moment. Every touch. The way he used to whisper my name as he threaded his fingers into my hair at night, soothing me from another nightmare.
The heat of his body pressing into mine from behind. That time in the shower, how I trusted him, wanted him, how I let myself love every second of it despite knowing how wrong it was.
I’d forced it all out of my head, convinced he’d regretted it. That he didn’t want me. That’s why he left. Or so I thought.
The rest of my thoughts quiet, hovering just out of reach as I take a leap of faith and speak, cracking my heart open as I finally let the truth slip out.
“I thought I wanted it, but the whole time his mouth was on mine, I was thinking about yours instead.”
Silence spills between us, thick with things I shouldn’t have said but did. Line after line has already been crossed. I don’t care anymore.
“Go to bed, Aria,” he says, his voice tight, a deep gravel, lower than it had been before.
My thumbs hook around the waistband of my jeans instead, slowly yanking them down my body, my skin tingling as the rough material scrapes down my legs.
The thrill of him out there possibly watching me right now sends a sharp ping between my thighs that I can’t ignore.
I let the feeling win. Let it swallow me. Even if it’s a risk.
I’m down to my panties and bra, my finger toying with the tiny bow stitched into the satin fabric across my chest. My breath catches, oxygen thinning as I raise the phone to my ear again.
“Okay,” I whisper, turning toward my bed. I slip beneath the covers, my skin flushed and aching, molten heat rolling off me in waves, threatening to disintegrate what’s left of me.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his voice low and hoarse, thick with the same desire winding through me. Both of our breaths turn equally shallow.
“In bed,” I murmur innocently. “Just like you asked.”
He grunts through the phone, followed by a faint shuffle, then the sound of a car honking and a door slamming in the distance. “Have you tried touching yourself before?” he finally asks once it gets quiet again.
Warmth floods my cheeks as a throb pounds between my thighs. I press them together, a sigh slipping out through parted lips. “Sometimes. But I…”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to be shy with me,” he says, softer now.
I ease into my pillow, curling closer to the sound of his voice, pretending he’s right beside me instead of somewhere out there in the dark. “It never feels the same as it did with you,” I admit, tucking my face into the pillow as heat stings my cheeks.
“Stick your hand inside your panties.”
“Oh, my God,” I gasp, fingers tracing the lace at my hips. Already damp, molding tight against my mound.
“I’ll show you how to do it right,” he says, his voice heavy, restrained. “I bet you’re already soaked from us just talking, aren’t you?”
Heat pulses between my thighs. Sharper, stronger, needier. My hand moves before I can stop it, dragging across the fabric. My lips press firmly together to keep from moaning as I reach toward the slickest part of me. I gasp the second I graze the tender pulse, unable to hold it in.
“Tell me how it feels,” he rasps, his voice thick with grit.
“It’s soft…warm…” I sigh, stroking briefly over the most sensitive part. “And really wet.”
“Perfect,” he breathes. “Slide your fingers a bit higher until you reach the spot with the most pressure. Hold it there. That’s your clit.”
Another sigh slips out before my teeth sink into my bottom lip, stifling the sounds rising in my throat. My chest lifts and falls with the slow, measured motion of my fingers, the dull throb sharpening, climbing, spreading the longer I keep going.
“Just like that, baby,” he whispers into my ear, my hips shifting deeper into my touch on their own accord. “Keep those fingers moving, nice and slow, round and round.”
My eyes flutter between open and shut, muscles taut, the delicious pressure building almost to a peak. It’s his hand that I’m imagining touching me, his fingers rubbing my sensitive clit, the deep gruff of his voice that feels so tangibly close. I snap my eyes closed as I imagine him beside me.
His voice is tight, almost choking on the words. “So perfect. Fuck, you’re getting me so hard listening to your sexy little pants. Do you remember the way your pert ass leaned into me before? How your hot, needy cunt pressed into my open palm, begging me for more?”
A harsh breath tears through the speaker, causing the pulse beneath my fingers to tighten.
“I’ve jerked my cock off so many times to the memory of that night. Always thinking of you.”
My breathing falters, vision blurring as my fingers increase the friction.
Oh, God, I’m close. Really close.
“That’s us right now, baby,” he nearly growls. “You, me, that hotel shower. You’re all mine. Especially that tight cunt of yours. That’s me touching it right now, playing with your throbbing clit until your hips buck, shouting with ecstasy.”
The pressure bursts like a dam before he’s even finished talking, multicolored speckles breaking out behind my eyes as strangled moans tear from my throat in rapid succession, the sound foreign even to me.
My lips part, but no words come. I’m too lost in the tightness unraveling inside me, soaking in wave after wave of release until I finally collapse into the mattress, heavy and light all at once.
“Good girl,” he breathes, his voice thick with the restraint, like he’s still holding something back. “God, I wish I could see you right now.”
I lay there for a moment, waiting for my breathing to slow, my chest still heaving from the aftershocks. Turning to my side, I bite the corner of my lip. Warmth trickles through me from head to toe. “Stay.”
I wince the moment the words escape. Then roll onto my back again, my heart thudding louder once it finally begins to slow.
“It’s getting late,” he says, his voice distant, like he’s already slipping away.
The low hum of static through the phone fills the silence, a thin thread still connecting us.
Then reality rushes in, suddenly chilling, like being doused in a bucket of ice-cold water.
He still thinks he can hurt me, even after risking so much to protect me.
What he doesn’t know is that it’s the distance that’s wrecked me most. Not him.
“Don’t leave your bed tonight. Stay warm under your covers and let sleep come to you. Just think of this moment. Erase everything else before it.”
I want to say something, to tell him I want to see him again, that I miss him. But he hangs up before I get the chance.
My hand drops to the side. I curl in slightly, knees folding closer as I stare at the ceiling. The stark, empty space mirrors the hollowness settling in my chest, holding it there for a beat before my heart stutters back to life.
I raise my phone back and swipe my thumb across the screen to open the camera. My reflection blinks back, flushed cheeks and hair splayed in loose, unruly strands over my bare shoulders.
I smooth out the bulk of the kinks, then snap a photo.
My fingers hover over it for a threadbare second.
It feels reckless. Intimate. Like slipping into an alternate version of myself I never knew existed. That’s what things were always like around Ledger. Lines were always crossed before I even had the chance to register them.
Halting my thoughts, I hit send, a quiet squeal slipping out as I immediately toss my phone aside, legs kicking up in a rush of nervous energy.
I can’t believe I just did that.
The steady thudding grows louder in my ears, my body still flushed as I nudge the duvet lower, toes curling into my cotton sheets while I wait for a ping to signal his response.
Seconds pass. It never comes.
What if he regrets calling me? I swallow, suddenly feeling my throat constrict. I sensed something off toward the end, his voice tighter, more distant before he hung up. My heart squeezes.
What if it’s the last time I hear from him?
Reaching for my phone again, I glance at the screen. My pulse still skittering, but no notification breaks the soft, orange haze of my lock screen. I groan, shoving the screen away and scrunching my nose at my own vulnerability, a hand coming to rest over my eyelids.
It’s fine.
I thought I heard the low rumble of his engine before the call ended. Maybe he was already driving. He’ll see it later.
Still, neither my mind nor my heart will settle. I keep circling back, picking apart every word, every pause, every breath, until the overthinking wears me out completely and my eyes finally give in to sleep.