25. Aiden
Aiden
I t’s a fucking glorious morning and, like the movie said, it makes me sick.
My breaths burst small and white in front of my face. The sun is scorching but there’s a distinct chill in the air. The still lake waters practically beg me to dive in and give myself a heart attack with the shock of cold.
I’m seriously considering it.
There’s no sense getting worked up over what two other consenting adults do.
The moment I think about last night, my hands curl into fists and I pound them on the arms of the Adirondack chair. I barely got any sleep last night.
I was awake when Gilli left for work this morning, her long hair braided down her back and a loose grin on her face, one of the first genuine smiles I’ve seen on her and I've watched her a lot.
Damn it.
Would it have been different if I’d taken the cell phone into her room to show her the video? If I’d been the one to confront her?
I’ve never gotten this upset before when Soren finds a woman to sleep with. It’s his business, not mine, even if we’re sharing.
But this time he’s taken a step over the line he himself drew in the sand. He told Tase and me not to lay a finger on Gilli and then he goes and fucks her without consequence.
He followed her into her room and didn’t come out for hours. Leaving me and Tase in the living room with our thumbs up our asses and trying to ignore the muffled sounds of her screams. The good kind, not the terrorized kind.
The kind where a woman is pleasured and filled with cock.
He’s got a lot of goddamn nerve.
We've had our arguments in the past. Most of the time, we’d beat the shit out of each other and go back to being friendly at the end of the day. This time, I want to hurt him until I get answers. Like why he suddenly gets a free pass when he expects us to stay away.
The sliding door opens and from the corner of my eye I see Soren. Shirtless, his jeans zipped but unbuttoned.
He stretches his arms overhead and his tattoos stretch with the motion. “Morning.”
I grunt. I’ve got nothing to say to him.
No, that’s not exactly true. I have a lot of things to say to him and none of them friendly. Rational Aiden has left the building, ladies and gentlemen .
Soren places a mug of coffee on the side table between us before he throws himself into the empty chair. His attention narrows on the lake, but the air is thick enough to bite and I gnash my teeth.
Finally, I force myself to look at Soren.
“I’m done holding back,” I say. “Out of loyalty to you.”
He pauses a beat before asking, “Is this our come to Jesus moment?”
“You want to be flippant asshole right now?”
Anger is its own living feature inside of me. We haven’t been acquainted for a few years, not since That Time , but it’s back and I’m not trying to push it away.
Not yet.
“I guess I’m not sure what to say, and flippancy is easy,” Soren admits. “I should apologize. But I don’t feel like it.”
This smug prick.
“I want her.” It’s simple. “There’s no reason not to have her, if she’s willing.” And by god, I know she is. I recognize the look of hunger in a woman’s eyes, and when she watched me touch myself the other night, when she let me massage her breasts and glimpse those little freckles…
“I have no desire to claim her. Shit happened,” he says tersely. “It won’t happen again.”
I’m dying to ask him for details. How she felt and tasted, and the exact sensation of her lips on his body. Did he run his tongue over her freckles the way I want to?
In the end, I decide I’d much rather find them out for myself.
“You've always called the shots and I’ve let you because you’ve been there for me when I need you.” My throat starts to close and needles prick every inch of it. “I appreciate you, but this time, Soren, it’s a little fucking hard to sit and be cordial.”
His brow furrows. “I’m not going to let a woman come between us. You’re my blood.”
“But you have, and it’s not her fault. It’s yours.” My fingers will look great wrapped around his throat. “The way you tried to bind our hands away from her but you couldn’t keep yours to yourself.”
“I’m sorry.”
The words are simple, heartfelt. They’re infuriating.
“You should be sorry. You knew I wanted her and you still came down with your bullshit restrictions. Maybe I’m the dickhead for listening to them but I’ve always respected you.”
Soren groans and reaches out to knock his knuckles against my shoulder. “You know the feeling is mutual, dude. What do you want from me? What can I do to make this better?”
I force myself to slow down, to take a sip of the coffee he brought. Pity coffee.
“She’s single,” I say at last. “If she’s open to it, then I want to go for her. Like I said, there’s no reason for me not to have her.”
A lot of things draw me to Gilli. She’s like a breath of fresh air reminding me how stagnant my life has become. I don’t want her just because she’s pretty and I want to bed her. I want to pick her brain and listen to her berate me.
“Fine.”
Soren looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. Like maybe having his tattoos sliced off his skin inch by inch rather than give me this.
I need to hear him say it and lean in closer so I don’t miss a syllable. “Oh yeah?”
“If you want to make a move, then by all means. Do it. I know you don’t need my permission but I’m not going to stand in your way.”
We’ve known each other all our lives. It’s never been natural for us to clash heads for more than a few days or a week at most.
Soren shakes his and loose golden hair falls around his face. “I fucked up.”
My lips purse. “Is that what you think?”
He exhales loudly and his fingers tap, tap, tap on his knee. “I got carried away, and instead of stopping myself, I went way too far. And I’m pissed off about it.”
I can’t help myself. “You should be.”
“I’m not sure if I'm madder about losing control, or about how much I liked it. How much I want to do it again.”
“Again?” I ask sourly. “But you just?—”
He turns to me with a glower. “What do you want me to say, Aiden? I’ve already apologized. You want to be insecure dicks about it and make her a wedge between us? Of what?”
“Yeah, sure, you’re right.”
And he is. But the wound is fresh. It hasn’t had time to scab over yet.
He pushes off the chair, red-faced and staring at the horizon but finding nothing forgiving there, either. “I’m going fishing.”
“It’s a little late to head out.”
“I don’t fucking care.”
He shambles into the house, thumbs hooked into his jeans.
Let him go fishing. If he’s out of my sight, I’ll have more of a chance to reconcile with myself and figure out my next moves. This isn’t over between us, but at least he’s not acting like a fool about it.
While it loosens some of the constriction inside me to hear Soren take responsibility, it doesn’t change what happened.
I wanted it to be me. The first one to warm her bed after what happened in the lake water. And on the couch.
My control means nothing when Soren casually throws his away. Fuck.
Gilli is single and desirable, but that doesn’t mean she’s coming between us, or that we have a right to put her in a spot where she feels maneuvered. Forced to choose.
I have a life outside of this cabin. We’ve made ourselves insulated here and it’s hard to remember sometimes that there are real things out there requiring our brain cells.
Things like jobs and families. This place wraps us in familiar warmth, makes it difficult to reconnect once we’ve unplugged from the grind.
Every time we come here, it’s harder for me to leave this solitude and contentment. Harder to go back home and be Aiden October, washed-up injured player, the one with the ruined career .
Oh, and didn’t you hear? He once bullied a girl into attempting suicide. Slit her wrists in the bathtub. Poor thing, it’s a miracle she pulled through. The paramedics found her in time .
I’m losing the strength to leave. A couple more trips to the cabin and I might say screw the rest of the world and just stay here.
I’ve never told Soren how I feel, and it has nothing to do with Gilli’s presence. It’s all me.
The world doesn’t wait for people to get their shit together, though.
Life goes on without us and most of the time without even a glance back.
Like what happened to Sophie after my bullying.
The world didn’t stop to remember her after the first few months.
The world went on and her suicide attempt faded from memory like so many others.
Except not from my memory. It’s impossible to forget.
I worked hard to pull myself up from my own depression, a depression based on guilt since it was my decision to bully her. For being different. For the strange mottled red birthmarks on her skin as though Sophie had any control over them.
Revisiting that time of my life makes me feel sick. It’s the last thing I wanted to do, and depression always looms close enough for me to recognize the signs.
Work helps. Having goals for the future helps.
And damn me, but having Gilli around helps also.
It might be as simple as the secrets she’s keeping and my desire to draw them out, or it might simply be her presence. She’s the first ray of light after a rainstorm and she doesn’t even know how special she is.
At her age, I was nothing more than a giant douchebag. And Soren was just as bad as I was.
He might have wanted to push her away, but things changed. Now I’m willing to bet no matter what he says, he wants to draw her close the same way I do .
I move through the rest of the day like a ghost. A few emails, a few calls, and by the time the sun claws to the horizon, with Soren still gone, I’m back in my chair.
“Speak of the devil,” I say out loud when the sliding glass door opens behind me.
I turn and catch a glimpse of Gilli, but the way she almost staggers toward me makes my heart clench. Fear flashes across her face and the expression has the hair on my arms lifting in alarm.
I’m on my feet. “What happened? What’s wrong?”
And she bursts into tears.