Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
AIDEN
The past three days had been a whirlwind, and I was fucking exhausted. Between the flight over, being jet-lagged as fuck, then a packed schedule filled with panels and pinging between publisher booths, and more cocktail parties than I ever wanted to attend again, I was wrung out.
But I was here—the first public appearance of A.M. Kinsey—and I was doing the thing.
At my siblings’ urging, I was enjoying it—or trying to—no longer paranoid about cameras or worried the media or influencers would find me out.
Addison had already shouted it to the world, wanting to get in front of the narrative and make sure the announcement came out on our terms.
When I’d told my publisher that, they’d been thrilled.
Thrilled enough to stuff my schedule full of public appearances.
They got me slotted in at the last minute for a signing where I’d sat, meeting fans and taking photos, until I’d run out of books.
Then there were the dinners and the networking and all the fucking socializing.
It was a humbling and awe-inspiring experience. Something I was immensely proud of but somehow still felt empty without Avery by my side.
She would’ve made this whole thing easier. Better. With her laughter and her whispered comments designed to make me smile and her light. She’d bring her sparkle into a place that felt drab…that felt exhausting…and brighten up the entire space—me right along with it.
But Avery wasn’t here.
Which meant I was traversing this exhausting day on my own, and I was only halfway through my afternoon of publisher meetings when all I really wanted to do was be back home.
Actually, if I was wishing for things, it wasn’t Starlight Cove I wanted, but Avery.
I’d hoped the days passing would’ve tempered this pain a little…
would’ve made her leaving easier to swallow, but all it’d done was push me further and further away from the last time I’d held her in my arms and felt her lips on mine.
And thinking of things like that wasn’t conducive to anything because she’d made her choice.
In the end, she’d picked what she wanted, and it wasn’t me. I needed to get that through my thick skull, or I’d still be pining for her in fifty years.
With what I felt for her, I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be anyway.
My last appointment had just cleared out, which meant I had about thirty seconds to myself before the next one would slip in.
Opulent Enterprises. Didn’t sound like a foreign publishing company to me, but what did I know?
I was so fucking tired, all the appointments I’d had were starting to bleed together.
I was just glad my agent would be brokering any deals and all I had to do was the meet and greet…
smile and discuss plans for the rest of the series.
The door opened, and I stood from the chair, making my way around the way-too-fucking-large conference table to greet my next appointment. I was halfway there, hand outstretched, when my steps stuttered, my brain taking longer than it should have to compute what it was seeing.
Because there, in the door I’d watched half a dozen men and women clad in their finest suits walk through, stood Avery. In jeans and a hoodie, her face free of makeup, hair in a high ponytail, and eyes tired and hesitant but hopeful.
I couldn’t drink her in fast enough, my gaze roving over every inch of her to catalog anything that had changed.
I wanted to ask her what she was doing here.
Why she was in Germany. Wanted to know how she liked her new job…
if it was everything she’d dreamed about.
If she had a matching pain in her chest that just wouldn’t go away.
But what came out was, “You’re not with Opulent Enterprises.”
Her lips quirked up into a tentative smile. “I’m not…”
“How’d you get in here?” Still not the question I wanted to ask, but this was far easier than anything I truly wanted to know.
She gave a short shrug. “Turns out, my mom’s sugar daddies are good for something. And Claude is kind of a romantic. He hooked me up with the pass to come here and the appointment to see you. I think he said I was a reporter? Or…I don’t even know. Or care. I just needed to get in here.”
“Yeah?” I crossed my arms over my chest and regarded her with as much detachment as I could, my armor back in place—something I hadn’t realized until now had been gone around her. “Why’s that?”
She swallowed, her nerves apparent in the tightening of her eyes, the pinch of her mouth.
“I needed to see you. I needed to tell you… God, Aiden.” She shook her head, her lips rolling in as her eyes filled with tears, and I had to force myself not to go to her.
Not to wrap her in my arms and offer her the comfort I knew she needed.
“I’m so sorry.” Her voice broke on the last word, and she cleared her throat to try again.
“I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you first. I’m sorry I bailed on you and left you to figure this out on your own.
” She gestured around us and took a step closer to me.
Close enough that she had to tip her head back to stare up at me.
“I’m sorry I ran after I promised you I wouldn’t. ”
That was what stung. She’d told me—she’d promised me—she wouldn’t. And she’d done it anyway.
“Why’d you do it?”
She brushed the back of her hand across her face, swiping away an escaped tear. “I was scared.”
“Of me?” I asked, voice rough.
“No, Aiden. Of us. Of what we were together—of what you were…are…to me.”
“And what am I, Avery?”
Tentatively, she reached out to me, hovering a hand over my chest. When I didn’t step back, she placed it directly over my heart, and I had no doubt she could feel just how hard it was beating. Slamming a million miles an hour against my chest cavity, just trying to get closer to her.
“Everything,” she said, her voice cracking on the word. “You’re everything to me.”
I made a rough sound in the back of my throat, wanting so badly to hold her. To kiss away her tears. To wrap my arms around her, bury my face in her neck, and never let her go.
But I didn’t want to do this again.
When she got scared, or her emotions got too big, I didn’t want to have to worry about her running. Not from me and not from us and not from whatever life we’d built together.
“You’re the whole fucking world to me, bunny,” I managed through a tight throat. “But you left.”
“I know I did. It took me all of twenty minutes after leaving to realize it was probably the worst mistake of my life, then another day to realize there was no probably about it. And I’d estimate I’ve spent a grand total of three years thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made, so that’s saying a lot.
” She stared up at me, those gorgeous whiskey eyes so full of remorse and regret and pain.
But there was hope, too, and love. “I’m not going to do it again. ”
Unable to stop myself any longer, I cupped her face, swiping away her tears with my thumbs. “How do you know?”
She wrapped her fingers around my wrists and turned her head, kissing first one palm, then the other, before meeting my gaze again. “Because I know what it’s like to live without you. And I don’t ever want to feel that again.”
A breath escaped me in a whoosh as relief swept over me, tenderness and anticipation bubbling up as she mirrored exactly what I was feeling myself.
“Good,” I said, voice gruff.
“Good?” She darted her eyes between mine, a hopeful lilt to her voice.
“Yeah, good.” I stared down at her, at this beautiful woman who’d stolen my heart the first night we’d met and who’d have it until my last dying breath.
“Because I don’t want to spend another night out of your bed.
I don’t want another morning where I wake up without your face being the first thing I see or another night where your lips aren’t the last thing I taste.
And I don’t want to think for another fucking second what this life would be like without you. So let’s not do that, okay?”
She nodded quickly then, a surprised huff of laughter bursting out as tears streamed down her face faster than I could catch them. “I love you, Aiden. More than anything.”
“I love you, too, bunny.” I pressed my lips to her forehead, her nose, each of her cheeks, before hovering them over her mouth. “So fucking much.”
I kissed her then, her face cupped in my hands, her lips pliant under mine. She opened to me immediately, slipping her tongue into my mouth, and I groaned at finally tasting her again.
After long moments, when we were both panting and I was hard as a fucking rock with absolutely no option to handle it right now, I pulled back and gazed down at her. “I just have one question.”
“Anything.”
“Why would you have to ask your mom’s sugar daddy to borrow the jet—aka your office—instead of your boss? Isn’t he the same guy?”
She breathed out a laugh and shook her head. “He was my boss, and it was my office. But I quit.”
I froze, my entire body going still as I studied her.
I’d been ready to do whatever I needed to in order to make this work.
Travel around the world so she could live her dream…
I was pretty sure I could be a stowaway on Claude’s jet.
If he was as much of a romantic as she said, he probably wouldn’t mind. But we were in new territory now…
“Have another promising career on the line?” I asked.
“Yeah, actually. I do.” She grinned up at me, eyes bright.
“One where I handle guest relations for a gorgeous beachfront resort and get to travel with the man I love and gather ideas to bring back while he writes the hottest sex scenes I’ve ever read and then calls me in the middle of the day to read them to me before acting them out with me. ”
My lips twitched, my cock twitching right along with it at the memory of that day… “That seems oddly specific. Did you have to submit a résumé?”
Her laughter was the best fucking sound I’d heard all day—all week—and I wanted to soak it in. Wanted to bask in it. Wanted to do whatever it took just to hear it on repeat.
Before I could, someone knocked on the door, and I swore under my breath as I glanced at my watch. “Fuck. That’s my next appointment. I still have another two hours of this.”
“Oh, of course!” Avery said with a nod. “I should go so you can do your thing. I think this badge will let me walk around, so I can—”
Before she could step back, I wrapped an arm around her waist and held her to me. “No fucking way.”
“I—” She blinked up at me, eyes wide. “What?”
I guided us over to my seat and deposited her in the chair directly next to mine.
Then I settled in next to her, her hand encased in mine.
“If you think I’m not keeping you right by my side after two weeks without you, you haven’t been paying attention or I haven’t been direct enough.
” I called out for my next appointment to enter before turning back to her and dropping my voice into a low murmur.
“I love you, and I’m not letting you out of my sight until we’re back in Starlight Cove. ”