Chapter 12 Getting out of line #3
“Aurora,” I snap. I don’t mean to snap, but what is she thinking, walking alone in the dark and on such a cold night too?
They’ll freeze. They’ll get killed. They’ll be gone. Again.
Aurora stops at the sound of my tone and looks over her shoulder, her brows furrowed. “What?”
“Where is your car?”
“I thought you didn’t consider it a car.”
“I still don’t,” I scowl. “But it’s better than walking.”
“We like walking,” she says defiantly, at the same time as Emett pipes up, “It ate all the gas already. We don’t have any more.”
Aurora sends a scowl Emett’s way, but my body starts vibrating. She doesn’t have enough to fill up her car, yet I insinuated she should get a new one because that one is shit.
Fuck.
I take my keys out, the truck waking up with a small beep and a flash of headlights.
“Get in the truck.” I know my tone is too gruff, but it’s the best I can do when the blood in my veins is simmering.
Aurora throws me a look, and I already know that whatever comes out of those perfectly plush lips won’t be something I like.
“We don’t need your charity.”
“Aurora,” I snap again, louder this time and she narrows those magnetic eyes on me. “Get in the truck. Please.” When she makes no move to do so, I sigh. “I’m going there anyway, aren’t I?”
When was the last time I had to beg a woman to get into my car?
My wife. At the very beginning of our relationship when she was playing hard to get. I had to beg and chase around her like a lost puppy.
Is this history repeating itself? A silent shudder runs through me at the thought.
“Come on, Mommy. My little toes are getting a little cold. I think I put on the wrong pair of socks today,” Emett pleads, and that does it because Aurora’s face softens, despite both of us being well aware Emett just made it up.
Reluctantly, she crosses the street to where I’ve parked my truck, and Emett squeals with excitement. “It’s so big!”
I have no idea where I find the humor inside myself, but I start to laugh, my mind coming up with the most basic male response to that statement, and Aurora cuts me a look. “Don’t even think about it.”
“What?” I ask, mock innocence dripping from the word and she rolls her eyes.
“No wonder you and Emett get along so well. The maturity level is clearly about the same.”
Well, I can’t even blame her for that one.
She opens the back door before I can and stops. “There’s a car seat in here,” Aurora states with a frown, looking at me. “I didn’t know you have kids.”
“I don’t.”
“Then wh—”
“It’s for Emett. He uses a booster seat, right?”
Aurora’s soft lips part, then close as a hard lump works itself down her slender throat and part open again.
My cock thickens inside my jeans, instantly, painfully pressing against the zipper.
The fucker doesn’t care that we can’t like the woman, or that right now is not the time, and I don’t either, not when my eyes are fixed on those soft lips.
Not when my body is burning with the need to draw close, to feel her warmth and bathe in her scent.
Not when I want to wrap my hand around that slender throat and feel that wild beat of the heart that doesn’t belong to her as she takes me again and again. As I mark her and consume her until no secrets could draw us apart.
My eyes drop to her heaving chest that betrays her thoughts like a lie detector, and I’m a second away from snapping and taking what I want when…
“Sweet!” Emett’s excited squeal douses us both with a bucket of ice-cold reality, and we shift, almost bumping into each other as we both try to help him into the seat.
Aurora shakes her head, taking the lead, and I walk around to the driver’s side, starting the car as she buckles him in before getting into the passenger’s seat herself, and despite the silence, the tension is very loud.
Emett starts his own conversation with Kevin the police bear, explaining to him what’s going on.
“It was the wrong bear?” I ask quietly.
Aurora wets her lips but doesn’t look my way. “The last one was about seven inches tall and resided at a local gas station before I bought him for Emett.”
“Oh.”
“You didn’t have to get him anything, but thank you, it made his morning, and I’ll pay you back when—”
“Go ahead, Lychik, finish that sentence. Give me a reason to put my hand on your ass.”
I hear the sharp breath she draws into her lungs but will my eyes to stay on the road.
They need to fucking stay on the road because if I look at her, I’ll lose it. And we have a kid in the back and a chest of secrets between us.
Aurora promptly clamps her lips shut and joins me at staring out the window as we drive through the small town to the sound of Emett’s chatter.
Not five minutes later, we’re entering the private road leading to their house.
Without uttering a single word, Aurora gets out, unbuckles Emett, and directs him into the house, but before I can enter as well, she stops me, and my eyes drop to the blush covering her cheeks.
“Why do you have a booster seat for Emett in your car?”
“I just do.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Well, that’s the only one I’ve got.” And ain’t that the truth, because I still don’t understand what possessed me to make that stop at the department store on the way here and get the damn car seat, but I did.
She goes to say something else when the front door flies open. “Hey, what are you guys doing out here? Come on, I’m hungry,” Emett says, and Aurora swiftly moves inside with me on her heels.
The place is tiny and beat up, but it’s clean and smells like home.
“Betsy! We have guests for dinner!” Emett runs down the hall screaming as Aurora takes off her shoes, ignoring my presence.
A moment later, the same nurse with a short blonde bob streaked with gray walks out, her coat and bag in hand. “Hello there, Severin, right?” she asks with a smile but it’s a cautious one and I nod, greeting her. “Well, you guys have a good dinner, I’m off.”
“Thank you for coming by on such short notice,” Aurora says. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay for dinner?”
“No, no, honey, thank you. I just got to a good part in this thriller, I need to know if Simone did it.”
Aurora chuckles. “Well, I wouldn’t want to keep you from your thrillers.”
The two women exchange a few more words and Betsy leaves.
“All right, Emett, go change, please, and wash your hands. I’ll heat up the soup. Um, make yourself comfortable,” she says to me and goes into the kitchen.
And apparently, my new comfortable is following Aurora, which I do.
She doesn’t comment on it, and a moment later, the little guy comes running from the same hallway he disappeared to a moment ago. “All done. Do you want to watch some hockey? Mommy records some games for me if she’s not home.” He takes my hand and drags me into the living room.
It takes me by surprise that I haven’t thought of hockey the whole evening, when usually, it’s always on my mind. But I nod, and Emett turns on a game. Thank God, not one of ours. I wouldn’t be able to re-watch that failure again.
A moment later, I feel a small, warm body burrowing into my side as Emett settles right next to me, resting his head against my chest and I stop breathing.
Another piece of my control crumbles to the ground right here and now. By all means, I should pull away, but I can’t. Instead, I pull him closer, draping my arm over his body as we settle in.
I can feel Aurora’s eyes on us, but she doesn’t say anything.
Emett comments on every play, noticing far more than even I would. He’ll make a phenomenal player one day, and with a startling pinch in my rib cage, I realize that he might’ve never gotten the chance.
That day…if that day went any differently, he might’ve died without having a chance to breathe.
I pull him in even closer, swallowing a thick lump that has formed in my throat.
“Well, well, well, who do we have here with us tonight?” Aurora wheels in an older man, his speech slow and somewhat slurred.
Seth Johnson looks frail and very sick. His skin sagging and there are visible dark circles underneath his eyes. What a difference five years made in his condition. Who was once an imposing man is now a shell of his former self.
“Good evening, sir. Sorry to barge in on you guys.”
“Grandpa! It was me.” Emett jumps up excitedly. “I invited Mr. Brick for noodle soup.”
Mr. Johnson chuckles but it shortly ends in a choked cough. “Dad.” Aurora runs up, pulling a straw into his mouth. “Let’s not do any laughing right now, okay?”
He looks tired and dejected but nods solemnly.
“This is my father, Seth. And you know who Severin Minaev is, Dad,” she introduces us.
“That I do.” He smiles.
“Okay, I’ll leave you to your hockey for a bit while I warm up the soup,” Aurora says and walks across the open floorplan toward the kitchen.
For a few minutes, we watch the game in silence, just wincing every time one player checks the other into the boards but soon enough Emett can’t help himself and starts talking about everything under the sun, making both Seth and I smile.
“He’s a good kid,” Mr. Johnson rasps, and I nod in agreement.
“That he is.”
“You’ll take care of him? And my Rory girl?” He pins me with a look that says more than his words. “All these years later…” He trails off, coughing.
Seth Johnson remembers.
He doesn’t take his eyes off me until I nod.
“Always,” I tell him, and find that I’m not lying for the sake of a dying man.
To say this dinner is opposite from what I used to call family dinners is saying nothing. No evening wear or a million utensils around your plate. No sour faces that know every dirty detail about one another but smile and talk about the weather. And the food is meant for comfort, not show.
“Sorry, it’s nothing fancy here tonight,” she says as I sit down, biting her lower lip.
Aurora might think this is nothing, but it is the best dinner I’ve had in my thirty-one years of life.
“It’s perfect,” I tell her, our eyes linking as she tries to draw out more from them than I’m allowing.
I should’ve known my rules would never work on her.