Chapter 16
SIXTEEN
Aidan
I didn’t mean to kiss him, but even if he pushes me away, I know I’ll never regret it.
But Ludo…
He doesn’t push me away.
He snatches a sharp, startled breath, and then he kisses me back, soft and sweet, like the rustle of leaves at the very top of my favourite tree.
He smiles against my lips, and it warms what space I have left in my bitter heart that he hasn’t already filled.
I wonder if he’s humouring me. Then his hands slide up my thighs, and he clasps my face, tugging me closer. The intensity of our kiss ramps up a gear. My head swims, but I don’t dare clutch at him to steady myself. I don’t dare move in case I break this spell.
A lifetime seems to pass as his lips move with mine, but at the same time, however long we’re pressed together is over in a flash.
Ludo pulls away, his face twisted in an expression so sheepish and rueful that I have to fight with myself in case I spring from the couch and tackle him to the floor.
God, I want him.
And damn, if I don’t care about him so fucking much that if the next words out of his mouth are that this was a mistake, I can live with it. I will live with it. Anything to be close to him for a little while longer.
A breathless laugh escapes him. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to jump on you.”
“I started it.”
“True.” He licks his reddened lips, and his gaze slips to my mouth.
Kiss me again. Please.
But he doesn’t. He stands and shakes his head. “I should go.”
“I don’t want you to.”
“I know, but I still should. That way I can come back another time.”
I don’t understand what could possibly happen if he stayed to prevent him coming back, and I don’t need to. The fact that he wants to come back is everything.
Bracing myself on the arm of the couch, I stand too. Our faces are inches apart, but I force myself not to kiss him again and walk him to the door.
Ludo opens it and takes a step outside. Then he turns back, eyes wide. “You know why I’m leaving, don’t you? It isn’t because I don’t want to stay.”
“I know.”
“Are you sure? Because I haven’t explained.”
“You don’t have to. I know what would happen if you stayed . . . at least, I know how it pans out in my head.”
I regret the words as soon as they’re out of my mouth, but Ludo’s nervous smile morphs into a wicked, dirty grin, and I remember that he’s a grown man who is so much more than the illness that puts such fear in his eyes.
My body floods with heat.
Too much heat.
I dampen it down and lean on the doorframe. “Seriously,” I say. “I get it. Just don’t leave it too long before you come back.”
Ludo leans in and kisses my cheek. “I won’t.”
“You want me to do admin work?” I glare at Bernard, horror seeping through me as I picture the porta-cabin he calls an office and the gaggle of women who work there.
“I need it doing,” he grunts. “And you need a job to keep you going before you’re back up them trees. Sounds like a fair deal to me.”
He shrugs as though it’s a done deal, and he’s right: it’s more than a fair deal considering he’s been paying me for sod all since the accident.
I still want to punch him in the face, though, and it takes all my favourite Ludo memories to stop me doing it.
Bernard buys me another cup of tea, then leaves me to it in the greasy spoon café he invited me to for a “business breakfast.” With him gone, I sit back in my chair, relieved.
Despite my aversion to working in his office, I’ve been shitting myself that he was going to ditch me all week.
The fact that he hasn’t, and that he seems to believe I’ll be fit enough one day to do my old job, has left me feeling ten stone lighter.
I sip my tea while I scroll through my phone.
It’s been three days since I last spoke to Ludo and a week since he came over and taught me to make soup.
My lips pulse and throb as I recall every second they spent pressed against his, but I don’t text him.
It’s his turn to message me, and so far I’ve made myself stick to that rule.
Ludo is unlike anyone I’ve ever known, but instinct tells me to give him space.
That if he wants to talk to me, to see me, to kiss me again, he will.
For now, that he answers my sporadic messages is enough.
Like it’s privy to my every thought, my phone flashes. I grip it tighter, but the message that invades my screen isn’t Ludo; it’s Michael, and my mood drops like a stone. My usual MO is to ignore him, but for reasons I can’t comprehend, I open the message.
Michael: Just wondering how you are. We’re having a BBQ next week and would love you to come. No drinking, though, okay?
Only Michael could express concern for me, make me feel wanted, and judge the shit out of me in one message.
I want to delete it and pretend it never arrived, but I know that’ll only lead to phone calls I’ll have to ignore too.
Knocks at the door. Notes through my letterbox.
Fuck that shit. There’s only one person I want knocking at my door, and it’s the only soul on earth who’s never judged me.
I picture Ludo’s sweet face as I tap out words I don’t mean to my cousin.
Aidan: might be working, i’ll let you know. thanks for asking me tho, would love to see u too
Michael doesn’t reply, leaving me to believe that perhaps he didn’t mean it either, but as I toss my phone on the table, it lights up again. And it’s Ludo.
Huh. Maybe karma is a thing.
Ludo
I meet Aidan in the woods. Somehow it seems safer than my house or his, for him at least, if the dreams I’ve been having about him are anything to go by.
In the back of my mind, I’m grateful that my obsession with him is allowing me to sleep better than I have in months, but still.
Aidan lit a fire with his kiss, and I’m having trouble keeping it under control.
He waits for me by the tree I’ve come to think of as his. It’s a long way from his bedsit, and when he’s slow to rise from his perch on a nearby stump, I worry that I’ve made him walk too far.
“It’s fine.” He dismisses my concern with a wave of his work-hardened hands. “Does me good to get out, especially if I don’t go to the pub.”
“Which pub do you go to?”
“None if I can help it, but that’s a recent thing. I used to spend every night in the Red Lion.”
“Sounds fun.”
“It really wasn’t.”
“Then why did you do it?”
He shrugs and swings his gaze with Bella as she darts after a squirrel. “Habit. I grew up in pubs, keeping my old man company. I feel at home in them, so it’s hard to stay away when I don’t feel at home anywhere else.”
It makes sense, considering the sterile nature of his bedsit. I can’t fault him for cleanliness, especially from a man who claims not to care about anything, but then, there’s nothing in Aidan’s home to get cluttered or dirty. “Did you finish the soup?”
Aidan’s eyebrow twitches, as if the banality of my question amuses him. “Of course I did. I ate it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner until it was all gone.”
A laugh bursts out of me, and the awkward cloud hanging over us dissipates.
Bella returns from squirrel hunting with a stick in her mouth. She presents it to Aidan. He tosses it into the wilderness, and we follow as she crashes after it.
We hike in silence for a while. With Aidan by my side, the vast forest seems less daunting, and it’s . . . nice. Despite his spiky personality, his predilection for gruff quiet has always comforted me, a stark contrast to the noise and chaos I often need to feel calm.
I don’t know what he’s thinking, though, if he’s enjoying the sun-dappled tranquillity as much as I am.
As ever, he’s impossible to read, so I don’t try and, instead, turn to recalling a million different things about his beautiful lips.
How they press into a thin line when he’s in pain, the snarl he pulls when he’s annoyed, and how wonderful they felt when he pressed them against mine.
It’s been years since a boy kissed me. My last serious relationship was with the most beautiful girl in the world, but she never kissed me like Aidan did. She was made of glass—too precious to touch—and I scared her away.
Aidan isn’t scared of me. Perhaps because he doesn’t understand how destructive I can be, to my own life and anyone unlucky enough to get close to me.
But none of that mattered when he kissed me.
His lips made me feel like his most treasured thing, and I want, more than anything, for him to kiss me again.
We reach a clearing with a circle of fallen trees, each with patterns carved into the trunks. I’ve always found them bewitching, but what about Aidan? Trees are his life’s work, his passion. There is nothing that lights his face more. “Do you think they’re defaced?”
“Hmm?”
“The trees. I like them, but I sometimes wonder if they should’ve been left in their natural state.”
Aidan sits on one of the trees in question.
He stretches his legs out in front of him and massages his thigh.
I want to do it for him, but I don’t know how, so whether he’d want me to or not seems irrelevant.
“They’re not defaced,” he says after a while.
“But I’d flip my shit if I saw someone doing it to a healthy tree. ”
I believe him, and I don’t want to think too hard about what he means by flip my shit. Even with his bum leg, Aidan is built for scrapping. “We can go back, you know . . . if you’ve had enough walking.”
“Go back where?”
“My house.”
Something indecipherable flickers in his dark gaze. “I wasn’t sure you’d want me to come over again.”
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t like people in your house, and I pounced on you when you came to mine.”
So we are talking about it. The anxiety-ridden monster in me kind of hoped we could pretend the kiss never happened and is permanently at war with the parts of me—the rest of me—that wants to do it over and over again.
“I told you already that you’re different, and I really didn’t mind when you pounced on me. ”
“You didn’t?”