Chapter Twenty-One
Aiden
Blistering warmth. That’s the first thing I feel when I blink my eyes open. Last night would feel like a dream if it wasn’t for the hair tickling my nostril. Lyndsey’s body is cloaked over mine. I smile to myself, burying my nose into the hair at the crown of her head.
When I came out of the shower last night, I just wanted to push her, to take a hammer to the wall she was building between us, but I never thought it would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I just thought it would lead to some teasing jabs and get the image of me barely clothed into Lyndsey’s head.
I wanted to chip at the wall but somehow that one simple act of “forgetting” my clothes was a bulldozer.
Now I get to deal with the aftermath, with Lyndsey using me like her own personal mattress, lying naked on top of me.
God, it is a breathtaking sight. Her alabaster skin, painted with a myriad of freckles, glows in the early morning light.
Both of us were too worn out last night to bother drawing the blinds and I’m so thankful to my lazy self.
Her strawberry-blond hair is wild, spread over my chest with some flyaways tickling at my nose and neck, fluttering with each one of my breaths.
The only thing that would make this better would be seeing her green eyes looking up at me with hunger or satisfaction, anything except regret.
If when Lyndsey wakes up she regrets what happened between us I think my heart would stop. She can feel anxious, she can feel vulnerable, I don’t care, as long as she lets me feel it with her. I can’t fathom her shutting me out again.
For a second when I opened the bathroom door in nothing but a towel there was something on her face that almost made me stop the plan altogether. Until it melted away, leaving nothing but longing. That is how I want her to look at me forever. Like she doesn’t just want me. Like she needs me.
I would stay in the bed forever, even with how hot I am under her. The steady thumping of her heart against my chest is one of my tethers to reality. If it wasn’t for that, I feel like I might float away.
When people talked about being on cloud nine I never really understood what that meant.
I just thought it was a way to say that they felt happy, but no, now I get it.
Cloud nine is where you go when the woman you have been falling for, for over a year, starts to hold your hand on the descent.
Lyndsey might not admit it but I know she is falling too, I could see it in her eyes last night.
In the way she held my face in her hands like I’m precious.
Men don’t get to feel that very often. Like we are allowed to be loved back unconditionally.
We are told to be distant and strong but Lyndsey doesn’t need my strength, she needs my honesty.
My vulnerability. It is not something I’m used to giving people but for her I will, if it means I get to wake up with her in my arms for the rest of my life.
I hate that it took us almost a year to get to this place.
To my sisters it probably seems like Lyndsey and I happened in the blink of an eye, but for me, it came just when it needed to.
I have wanted this woman in my bed for the best part of a year.
I have wanted her in my heart for nearly as long.
The girls have seen the way Lyndsey and I interact.
Sharing looks over breakfast. But even the way she interacts with them has shown them the relationship we have. Lyndsey has supported us all.
There is nothing wrong with waiting and building a relationship, so that is what I tried to do.
I showed up to help her lock up Bloom and Blossom when Ellis was on bed rest. I brought her coffee and asked her about her family.
If I never got to have her the way I wanted then I would have been happy to be her friend.
Even though it was slowly killing me that she wouldn’t let me show her how I felt, I took a back seat because of other people’s opinions and the fear that I might not be what she wants. But now I know the truth. She wants this too, she just needed to see I would be there to catch her.
My early morning musings are interrupted by a shattering sound from downstairs followed by sudden commotion. And in that second, I’m hit with painful clarity.
He’s gone.
Pops is gone.
I know it in my soul.
It is not just Lyndsey’s head on my chest, now there is a weight there too.
I need to get down there and hear the news from my sister’s mouth but I don’t want to leave this bed.
I want to pause this moment forever. A happy memory of a morning cuddle with my wife, not what is going to be waiting for us.
It has been just over a week since we got here and went to visit Pops.
Alice was right, he had less time than I wanted to believe, but there are no regrets in my mind.
I got to see him smile before he passed.
He looked at me with pride, and even if that pride was because of my fake marriage it was still enough for me.
“Lynds, darlin’, wake up.” My words are muffled in her hair but I know she hears me when her body unfurls like a cat stretching in the sunlight.
“What’s wrong?” she mumbles against the skin of my chest, and even with what I know is coming I take comfort in the fact she hasn’t jumped out of my arms. I think if she had, my heart would have broken for the second time today.
“I think Pops has died.” Straight to the point, that’s the only way I know how to do it. It takes a second for the words to process for her but when they do she jolts up in the bed, letting the cover fall around us.
“What?” Her voice is still a whisper but there is no more sleep in it, now it is just quiet shock. Her hands fly to mine, holding them tightly, as though she is holding me together.
“Don’t worry, we knew it was going to happen.” I don’t know for sure, but my heart knows he has gone. I can hear the girls’ voices downstairs, I can’t hear what they are saying but there is urgency in their tone. I do what I do best: I hold strong.
Lyndsey hadn’t known my grandfather long but in the time we have been here she has developed a soft spot for everyone in my family. I know behind her solid exterior that she is soft and loving, I know she will feel the pain for all of us.
“Listen to me, Aiden.” She pulls me up so we are both standing toe to toe. “No matter what happened last night or whatever happens between us, I’m here. Right now I’m here with you, by your side, okay? Lean on me.”
“Lyndsey…” I want to but I can’t. It isn’t her job to look after me, that’s what I’m good for. All I know how to do is support the people who are important to me, it’s what makes me a good captain.
“Promise me, before we leave this room you have to promise me you won’t hide away from this, at least not to me.
” She makes it sound so easy. So easy that I want to do it.
She isn’t asking for something impossible, she isn’t asking me to put my emotions above everyone, she is just asking me to feel my emotions with her.
My grief, my anger. She wants it all. I think I’ll be able to give it to her.
“I promise.”
“I’ve got you, cowboy.” With that she rushes to throw some clothes on and I follow suit.
We move around the bedroom in what looks like a practised dance.
There is silence around us and I can feel the tension forming in my shoulders, but just when I ready myself to put on my mask, the one I wear every time I step on the ice, Lyndsey’s hand slips into mine. “Let’s go.”
I nod and we leave the room together. Hand in hand.
Walking downstairs feels like my legs are tangled in treacle, with each step I can feel time slowing down.
In theory I know what is going to meet me, even from here I can hear Celia crying, even if it was just an idea before I know I’m right but still I don’t know what state I’m going to find my sisters in.
More than anything I’m grateful that I’m here at all.
There is a real possibility that, if Pops hadn’t sent me that letter, I might have put off coming home again like I did last year.
When I worry about being seen as weak, I run and hide.
But thanks to Pops and Lyndsey I’m going to be able to be there for my sisters, as long as I can make it down the stairs.
My eyes scan the open-plan living room as my bare feet hit the hardwood floor.
The first thing my eyes settle on is my Cece sobbing on the floor in Alice’s arms. My twin has our baby sister held tightly, stroking her hair as she silently cries herself.
Beside them is a glass with spilled orange juice and Alice’s mobile cracked on the floor.
At first, I don’t see Eden. But when I walk completely into the room I find her pacing alone by the sofa. Her skin is almost grey with shock, I’m surprised she can even stand with how violently her body is shaking.
I can feel Lyndsey’s hand on the bottom of my back guiding me further in even when an alarm goes off in my mind that there is nothing I can do to fix this. I can’t bring him back, I can’t defeat their grief. Before I can spiral down that road, Eden looks up and meets my gaze.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she takes off in a run and jumps in my arms. Instantly she begins to sob against my shoulder. I hold her tight to me, absorbing her cries and screams.
There is a knot the size of Texas in my throat but I swallow my own tears down.
“Don’t hold it.” Lyndsey reaches up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek, slowly stroking Eden’s back as she meets my eyes.
Giving me some space, she moves to the kitchen to grab a broom to sweep up the fallen glass. Something about that small act of helpfulness in a tornado of emotion is what cracks me.
With Eden sheltered in my arms I let myself break. Tears fall, tears of grief for Pops. Tears of pain for my sisters. Tears of relief that he is no longer in pain even if it means we have to take that pain on for ourselves.
Alice lifts Cece to her feet and guides her over away from the shattered glass Lyndsey is cleaning and into my arms. One benefit of being an athlete is my arms are big enough to hold the three of my sisters. We cry together, held tight in each other’s arms.
Alice’s tears are silent but fierce when she meets my eye.
We have never really had that twin telepathy but right now we do, I see in her eyes that she needs to know I’m going to be here.
With a nod I tell her I’m going nowhere.
I’ll be here to be their rock while Lyndsey is mine, my rock, holding me steady in the storm of what is to come.