Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“L et’s order another,” Paige suggested, and across the sticky bar table from me, she slumped her head into her hand. “I need another.”
I shook my head, but the slight movement left me spinning. “I can’t,” I said, and then, inexplicably, repeated, “ Can’t .”
Paige picked up her water, gnawing on the straw. “You don’t work tomorrow. And—ha! Neither do I.” She took a long pull. “Ha. Freaking Alderton-Du Ponte. Freaking Mr. Roberts. Freaking Aaron Astor.”
Honestly, half her words went in one ear and out the other, because my world was a symphony of too much . Peter’s Bar she only thinks she does.” I poked him again. “Because you, Aaron Astor, are a chameleon.”
His eyebrows drew together as he smiled. “I’m a what?”
“A chameleon.” I poked him in the chest again, digging my finger in hard, and leaving it there. “You change to the people around you, to impress them, to woo them. You—you lie, and you pretend to be one color when you’re another. But I see right through you and your color-shifting facade.”
Aaron watched me while I spoke, my words slicing together a bit more than I’d have liked, but I continued to plow forward, refusing to be swayed by his dark stare.
“But you don’t have to be a chameleon,” I told him, softening. “You don’t have to pretend and lie. You don’t have to wear a mask. You don’t need to be a chameleon.”
“Lovisa.” Aaron drew out my name in a murmur, lowering his head. The curl to his lips didn’t vanish. “You need to make up your mind. Are you mad at me or are you not mad at me? You go back and forth quite often.”
“I get mad at you,” I told him. “You make me so mad, like, all the time. And I never get mad. Ever. I’m the calmest, most level-headed person in all of Alderton-Du Ponte, probably. I’m… unflappable .”
“I bring out the worst in you?” he guessed, and the words sounded familiar, but I couldn’t remember why.
I gave my head a small shake. “You make me feel alive again.”
Now, the grin slid from Aaron’s face.
“I’m—I’m always calm, and tired, and a wet blanket. For the past five years, my life has been boring and predictable. Even when I was still with Grant, it was always… quiet .” The last word came out in a whisper, a revelation. My eyes bounced between his. “I’m a musician, Aaron. I don’t like quiet .”
Each time Aaron and I had argued, it was like he’d stoked the dying embers within me, sparking them back into a flame. You’d think arguing with someone would’ve been a bad thing, but it was almost as if it’d woken me up. I’d been stuck in a walking coma, going through the motions, working and sleeping and repeating without feeling .
All those years ago, it hadn’t been just my passion for the cello I’d put into a box. I’d tucked myself inside, too. And Aaron, with his own notes crescendos, drew me back out.
I let out a sharp breath. “And I’m mad at you now because you act like your life is worth nothing if you don’t have your family’s approval. But you have my approval. Just as you are.”
In the grand scheme of things, I knew how little my opinion weighed beside what his family thought, but I wanted him to know that someone supported him. Even if I wasn’t family, even if I wasn’t some rich heiress.
My stream of consciousness wasn’t finished. “And you are made for love, Aaron. You just—you just are. Even if someone tells you differently, you deserve to love and feel loved.”
Aaron’s voice was subdued. “How do you know?”
“Because love is not just for some people .” I wanted to put my hands on his shoulders and shake him. “It’s—it’s just… It’s just love. It’s not some secret club that you’re not invited to, or some ultra hard composition you have to perform. And you—you don’t have to earn it.” Back at the bar, I’d pretended to cup Aaron’s face, and I thought about doing it now. But I didn’t. I held back, just barely. “You have to choose it. You have to choose you .”
Aaron stared at me again instead of answering, and it left me unsettled. The world seemed a bit sharper as the back and forth between us went further, as if my exasperation chased away the lingering haze. I didn’t want him to toy with me now, to tease me, to act like this was all one big joke. Acting like his life was one big joke. For once, I just wanted him to listen to me.
“Your skin is hot.”
I looked down at where I still poked into his chest—when did I poke him again?—only then realizing that I’d missed his shirt this time. My finger was digging into him—into his bare, tanned skin. Before I jerked back, Aaron grabbed ahold of my wrist and tugged me closer, forcing my palm to lie flat against his chest. His bare chest. His cold, bare chest . My five fingers were splayed over his pectoral, fingertips brushing the firmness of his collarbone, palm covering his heart.
His skin was like ice, and a small shiver caused his shoulders to tremble. “Why are you so warm?” he murmured.
“Why are you so cold ? Do you not have the heat on in your room?” Impulsively, I reached up with my other hand and laid my palm against his cheek. Aaron’s dark lashes fluttered, half-lidding before lifting again.
With him holding my hand to his chest, and my other pressed to his face, I realized all at once at how intimate it must look if anyone were to walk past. As I stared into Aaron’s dark eyes, seeing the slivers of a lighter brown in them, I felt it. It was, I imagined, how it’d feel like to draw a bow across cello strings again. Something raw and unsteady unlocked inside me, eliciting a shaking, low hum that spread to every inch of my body.
It might’ve looked intimate, but it felt intimate. Forbidden, but not wrong. I wanted to close my eyes, both afraid of this moment and… eager for it.
“Why did you take it back?” Aaron asked, and his voice was much quieter than it’d been a moment ago, as if our physical connection made it so he had to nearly whisper. “Telling me to marry you. Why did you take it back?”
I swayed a little, more of my weight pressing into the palm against his chest. My heart thundered, a rapid stampede that caused my head to swim. “You said… it was an easy choice. Me or Fiona.”
“It was easy.” Now his voice did drop to a whisper, and he reached up to hold my wrist of the hand that pressed to his cheek. “So why did you take it back?”
Tomorrow, I’d blame it all on the green tea shot. My thoughts, my feelings, the craziness that was this snapshot in time. In this moment, I couldn’t stop thinking about how his cold skin siphoned my warmth—how I wanted him to take it all. “Because I care about you.” I searched his face, but my vision was too blurry to see any trace of expression. “And that… scares me.”
Aaron looked at me then, straight on, stealing the breath from my lungs. “If I proposed to you, would you say yes?” His fingers tightened around my wrist, slightly, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to hold on or let go. “If I made the crazy, reckless, catastrophic choice of proposing to you, what would you say?”
I swallowed hard, but it was like the saliva in my mouth wouldn’t go down. “Marrying me is catastrophic ?”
Even when I’d touched Aaron’s skin and found it cold, I hadn’t felt warm myself. But now? Now I was burning. The back of my neck prickled with sweat, my tangled hair sticking to damp skin. Heat curled under my ribs, spread to my fingertips, and the frantic drum of my heartbeat only tightened the pressure in my chest.
“Not marrying you,” he murmured. His voice hooked into me, pulling something loose, something I wasn’t ready to name.
Just as the taste of green tea shots crept up my throat, the whiskey and peach suddenly too bitter, he said it—words that barely reached me before the ground tilted beneath my feet.
“ Falling for you .”
And then I threw up all over the hotel hallway floor.