Chapter 19
NINETEEN
Aidan
I lean across the table. “What’s a tagine when it’s at home?”
Doreen, Bernard’s wife, spares me a glance. “Stew, Aidan. Moroccan stew.”
“Oh.” I turn back to my computer, considering the possibility that she might be winding me up. In the all-female office, I’ve somehow become the butt of every joke, and half the time I don’t even realise until I get home.
Still, Google is my friend. I type tagine into the search bar and discover that it’s actually the cooking pot, not the contents, and it’s weird as fuck.
I skim the article and click through to the kind of recipe Doreen, Brenda, and Janet are discussing over tea and biscuits while I sit in the corner like a naughty child.
Chicken, olives, apricots, tomatoes . . . Ludo would love this. And at the bottom of the recipe it says I can cook it in a bog-standard pan and stick it in the oven.
Winner. I take a picture of the screen with my phone and save it for later.
Cooking ain’t my thing, but since the night I presented Ludo with a plate of burnt sausages and oven chips, I haven’t been able to get his answering smile out of my head.
It was light and happy and warm, and such a perfect reflection of how I feel every time he cooks for me that I can’t wait to replicate it.
Shame my terrible kitchen skills are holding me back.
Though I guess if I fuck it up, it’ll be funny, and if there’s anything in the world more intoxicating than Ludo’s smile, it’s his laughter.
The day drags on. It’s been forty-eight hours since I walked Ludo home from my place, since he kissed me every which way possible, and my craving for him hit an all-time high. We text every hour or so, but by the time five o’clock rolls round, he’s fallen silent.
Worry niggles me. I’ve told myself a hundred times to give him the space and time to deal with wherever I am in his head.
That if he feels even half of what I feel for him, then that’s a shit-ton of extra weight on his already overloaded mind.
But I don’t like it when he stops talking, even if logic tells me he’s probably working or napping or old enough not to be tied to his phone all damn day.
“Fancy a pint?”
I frown at Bernard. Somehow I’ve missed him coming into the office to lock up. “What?”
“Beer, Aidan. Your favourite thing, or at least it used to be. No one’s seen you in the pub for weeks. Been drinking alone, ’av’ ya? It’s not healthy, you know.”
My frown deepens to a scowl. “Piss off. I don’t drink no more. It’s for losers.”
I reckon I’d have surprised Bernard more if I’d told him I was pregnant.
His grey eyebrows shoot up, and he searches my face, looking for clues that I’m taking the mick.
But it’s true. Since Ludo found me staggering around outside his house, I haven’t been able to catch a glimpse of a beer can without seeing my dad dead on the couch.
As if I’m taking making an arse of myself in front of Ludo as a warning sign of what will become of me if I carry on.
Simplistic? Yeah, but it works for me. I’m not drinking because I don’t want to, and that can only be good. Plus, getting drunk means forgetting shit, and despite angsting myself into a fucking stroke every ten minutes, I don’t want to miss a moment of my life right now.
The sensation of being dropped into the twilight zone is real.
I punch Bernard’s shoulder and leave the office, my phone burning a hole in my pocket.
Ludo hasn’t replied to any messages since lunchtime, but I push it from my mind and make my way to the posh supermarket that will have the ingredients I need to make something that isn’t scorched freezer food.
I feel out of place the moment I set foot in Waitrose. My first mistake? I’m not wearing tweed, quickly followed up by the fact that I haven’t brought my own hessian shopping bag.
Whatever.
I’ll stuff it down my ripped jeans if I have to.
I trudge up and down the aisles, searching out ingredients and trying not to think about how much they cost. Thanks to Bernard’s generosity after the accident and the dosh I’m not wasting down the pub, I’m the most solvent I’ve been in years, but fretting about money is in my blood.
So much so I’m convinced I’m seeing things when I emerge from the exotic food aisle for the third time to see my cousin Michael perusing the dessert section.
Brilliant. It’s been more than a month since he last turned up on my doorstep and weeks since we last spoke.
For years I’ve been a pro at pushing what remains of my family away, of hiding from them and not feeling a scrap of guilt, but since .
. . Ludo, apathy has been harder to come by.
Old me would’ve ducked out of the shop, head down, hands thrust in my pockets, and not given a single fuck.
Post-Ludo me grinds to a halt a foot away from my cousin and chews on my lip like a distressed cow.
“Uh, hey.”
Michael glances up, a box of cream cakes in his hand. “Jesus. What are you doing in here?”
“Why wouldn’t I be in here? It ain’t just for toffs.”
“Yes it is.”
“What are you doing in here then?”
Michael grimaces. “It’s my wedding anniversary and I forgot, so I’m panic-buying calories to go with the meal I haven’t cooked.”
I laugh, can’t help it, because it’s such a Michael situation for him to be in. Dude is the most diligent fucker known to man, but the flip side is he has so much going on that important shit falls through the cracks. “So what are you having for dinner then? Fish and chips?”
“As if I’m going to get away with that. I’ve got about three and a half minutes to come up with something amazing or I’m sleeping in the shed.”
Michael doesn’t deserve to sleep in the shed. He works fifteen-hour days doing fuck knows what and still finds time to be a decent husband, a good dad, and a far better cousin than I deserve.
I hold out my basket. “Do you know what a tagine is?”
Ludo
Aidan is late. I know this because I’ve checked the time two thousand times, and it’s only Bella sitting calmly at my feet that keeps me from a catastrophic overreaction.
Perhaps you should’ve, like, checked he was coming straight home before you rocked up on his doorstep?
Probably, but my phone is dead, and I’ve misplaced the charger. I’m hoping Aidan, when he finally gets home, will lend me his.
When. If. When. If. It’s not long before the mantra becomes what if?
But I fight it with all I have because I’m tired of dropping my ridiculous anxieties at Aidan’s feet.
He’s late because he has his own life. He could even be waiting for me at my house.
It’s not like we made any concrete plans. What if—
“I hope you’ve got grub in those bags.”
I jump a mile. Aidan is three feet away, leaning on the wall by his front door, throwing a weary grin my way. “I’ve got food,” I grind out through a tongue that’s stuck to the roof of my mouth.
“Good. I had grand plans to cook, but it didn’t pan out.”
Curious, I get to my feet. “Was it sausages again? Cos that was lush.”
“It was burnt.”
“It was lush. I get sick of pasta, you know.”
“What’s in the bags?”
“Penne and twenty tins of tomatoes.”
Aidan laughs and rubs his stomach. “Can’t wait. Come in.”
Bella and I follow him inside. It’s natural by now for me to head straight for his kitchen and bustle around as if I own the place.
So I do, until he comes up behind me and winds his arms around my waist. He doesn’t say anything.
Just breathes deeply and kisses the top of my head.
And then he’s gone, and I hear the shower turn on in his tiny bathroom a scant few feet from the kitchen.
I get the pasta pan out and fill it with water.
I put garlic and olive oil in the only other pan Aidan owns and sling it on the hob.
But I don’t turn the heat on. I stare at it, every sense trained on Aidan in the shower, and I can’t move.
Don’t want to, unless it’s to beat down the bathroom door and join him.
Don’t.
But why? We’re not teenagers. We’ve kissed a hundred times, and I know Aidan wants me. It’s in every heated stare he sends my way when he thinks I’m not paying attention, every light touch he treats me to, and every lingering kiss that will never, ever be enough.
I want more.
I need more.
My feet seem to move of their own accord and carry me to the bathroom door. It’s ajar. I lay my hand on the cool wood, heart thumping, and push it open.
Aidan has his back to the door, the wet outline of his glorious body clearly visible through the translucent shower curtain.
He’s washing his hair, oblivious to my presence behind him, and I take a step forward, hands gripping the hem of my T-shirt.
But doubt hits hard and fast and stops me in my tracks.
What are you actually going to do? Get naked and ambush him? What if—
“Jesus, man. Get in.”
For the second time in ten minutes, Aidan startles the hell out of me, blasting a hole in the self-loathing that has me rooted to the spot. Slowly he turns, fixing me with a gaze that even through the curtain draws a heavy breath from my lungs. He lifts his hand and beckons me forward. “Get. In.”
“I don’t know how.”
“Yeah, you do.”
His expression doesn’t change, and I remember that he doesn’t care if I say weird things or get upset about something he doesn’t understand. It’s . . . freeing. You see, there’s a wildness inside me that will never be entirely tamed, and for the first time in forever, I’m okay with that.
I strip my T-shirt and toss it away. My jeans take longer, but with the weight of his stare supporting me, I don’t hesitate. He’s naked. He has scars. Perhaps we’re not that different.
Aidan draws the curtain all the way back. I take his outstretched hand and step into the shower. Hot spray hits my skin. “You like scalding showers too?”
“For real.” Aidan keeps his gaze on mine for a moment, but then it travels lower, roaming my torso. He drags his thumb along the vertical scar on my abdomen. “Spleen?”
“Yeah.”
“What about your ankles?”
“I broke them.”
“How?”
“I fell.”
“On purpose?”
“Maybe.”
From the jagged white line on my jaw to the neat surgical scars on my ankles, I see him putting together every mark on my body, adding them into a sum I’ve never attempted. I wonder what answer he’s looking for and if . . . when he finds it, the way he looks at me will change.
Faith tells me it won’t.
Fear tells me it surely will.
“Hey.” Aidan returns his wandering hands to my face, tilting my chin, forcing me to look at him as water plasters my hair to my cheeks. “We don’t have to do anything freaky. It’s nice to just . . . see you.”
“Nice?”
“Yeah, nice. Don’t say it like it’s a nasty word.”
Nice isn’t a term I’ve ever associated with Aidan, but I try it out for size, absorb how it feels to have his bare skin against mine, his hard length digging into my belly. It’s hot but sweet, so . . . yeah, maybe it is nice.
I kiss his chest, then lean back to do my own inventory of scars.
He has more than I thought he would—both angry and neat. I drop to my knees and touch a small gouge mark on his inner thigh. “What happened here?”
“The bone came through.”
“Ouch.”
“Yep.”
“How far did you fall?”
“Far enough to die, but I hit Bernard’s van on the way down. Fucked my lung, but I’m still here.”
Imagining a world without him is frightening enough to call off my game of chicken with his scars. I don’t need to document them to know he’s suffered every ounce of pain that I have. More. Because Aidan didn’t try to fly, he didn’t want to fall, and right now, he wants . . . me.
His cock is inches from my mouth. I should warn him that I’m going to swallow him whole, but I don’t, and a shudder—the good kind—runs through me as he staggers back against the tiled wall.
“Fuck.” His hands tangle in my sopping wet hair, and he thrusts forward the tiniest amount before he catches himself. “Sorry.”
I’m not down with him being sorry for taking the pleasure I want to give him. I work him hard and deep so there can be no doubt of how ready I am to take him apart.
He gasps, quietly at first, as though the turn of events has shocked him, but as I dig blunt nails into his strong legs and scrape my teeth along his dick, gravelly moans fall from him, louder and louder.
“Fuck, I—”
He doesn’t need to finish the sentence for me to know he’s close to the edge. His legs are trembling, every muscle strained tight, and his breath is short, sharp pants.
I love this.
And to know he’s shaking this way because of me is the best feeling in the world. I don’t want it to end, but I do because I have to see the ending.
I need it as much as he does.
A strangled sound escapes Aidan. He seizes and comes with a yell, shooting down my throat as beautiful convulsions rock him.
Next time I want to be in bed or somewhere without water cascading between us so I can see his face, but there’s no time to solidify my plans.
Aidan yanks me to my feet, and his hand is around my dick before I can gasp out my surprise.
He has big hands, rough with hard work but a light touch that throws me off balance. I brace myself on the wall, transfixed by the artful way he’s working me, how every pull and twist adds sparks of light to my vision.
I screw my eyes shut and then force them open again. This is insane. I’ve never felt pleasure like it, and I’ve never wanted it so much from someone. “I’m going to come.”
Aidan’s grip tightens. For a protracted moment, I think I can handle it, but I can’t. The dam bursts. I shatter into a million pieces, and come all over his hand.
White noise fills my ears. I’m dimly aware of Aidan speaking, but not what he’s saying. His arms around me make more sense, and I lean into his embrace, burying my face in his chest. I don’t know how much time has passed when the hot water runs cold.
Startled again, I laugh and duck out of the way as Aidan scrambles to turn it off.
He’s laughing too, his so-often-stormy gaze bright with mirth. “I think we fell asleep standing up.”
“We should try it lying down some time.”
He kisses me. “I’d like that.”