Chapter 32 Aria
ARIA
“Where are we going?” I ask, the panic uncoiling in my chest the moment I climbed into his car. I’m relieved he came, but still thrown by how fast the cop let us go. A part of me still lingers back there, watching the officer’s mouth move, wondering what Ledger told him.
It might’ve been irrational, but I was half-expecting him to pull out the handcuffs, somehow nailing his identity through thumbprints, secret photos, or whatever covert tech they use to catch people like him.
As if that’s part of their job, standard protocol for every broken-down car and routine stop.
He pulls into a vast, empty parking lot, the wheels coasting over pebbled ground, gravel cracking beneath us as headlights skim over a rough-hewn wooden sign nailed to a crooked branch, flanked by boulders. “I’ll handle your car later,” he says. “Don’t worry about it tonight.”
Then parks in a handicap space in the front and cuts the engine. The lock clicks open as he unbuckles. “Follow me.”
My pulse kicks, but I do as he says, pushing the door open with trembling hands and climbing out. Falling in line behind him, I track his path around the car.
He pops the trunk open and pulls out a rolled-up bundle of black and red plaid, tucking the blanket beneath one arm before slamming the trunk shut.
With his free hand, he swipes at his phone, casting a glow of light across the fragmented path and onto the wooden sign ahead. The letters come into focus.
Stoney Creek Park.
The light drifts forward as he moves, and with a jolt in my step and a flip in my chest, I follow, matching him heel for heel. “We can’t go inside after dark,” I call out. “Isn’t this illegal?”
He exhales through his nose, quiet but pointed. More of a scoff than a sigh. “Do I look like someone who follows the law to you?”
I chew on my lip, silencing myself. He has a point.
In another life, I wouldn’t have dared to follow a man this far into the dark, the rough rasp of crickets the only sound around us.
Danger lurks everywhere. I’ve learned that personally, the hard way, up close and too personal.
But Ledger isn’t the biggest monster out in the world.
The most dangerous are deceptive. Hidden.
Cosplaying as family members and loved ones.
You don’t need to seek them. They reside with you at home.
My trace of thought evaporates when he comes to a stop in the center of an open field, breaking away from the shaded branches that led us in. He unravels the blanket in his arm and gives it a quick shake, laying it on the ground where the corners lift and lie uneven on the patch of grass.
I stand there with my fingers twisting the sleeves of my shirt, the light draft billowing into them, carrying the scent of freshly mowed grass and faint cedarwood. He lays himself out over the blanket, head propped on one of his arms as he sets his phone down and crosses the other behind his head.
“This is where I come when I don’t want to face Frankie’s scrutiny back home. Gazing at the stars helps clear my mind. I thought you’d benefit from it, too.”
He tilts his head toward me, his gaze sharpening as it drags over me from head to toe.
The intensity builds, heat sweeping across my skin, leaving a flush in its wake and something tighter in my chest. It’s like he can’t get enough of looking at me.
His eyes, like laser beams, pierce through fabric, skin, and bone, scanning the very core of who I am beneath it all. It’s deeply intimate.
I finally exhale when he rips his attention away, fixing his eyes back on the vast sky instead. “I don’t bite, you know,” he says, a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. It fades when I lower myself beside him, the blanket soft against my back as I stretch out next to his frame.
“I know. I followed you out here after all, didn’t I?” I reply, smoothing my hair over my shoulder before resting my head back down again.
He breathes out a low chuckle that settles deep in my stomach, his broad shoulders shifting with the vibrations. His body heat transfers over to me from where our arms brush, the connection sending electric sparks over my skin, charged and breathtaking.
My tongue slicks over my lips, and I take in an uneven breath. My heart skitters as I abandon the fabric at my wrist to tug on the hem of my shirt instead, twisting and fidgeting with it as the breeze sweeps beneath, chilling the bead of sweat I’ve already begun to exude.
“So, what’s been plaguing your mind so badly you had to come all the way out here to clear it?” I ask, feeling an overwhelming urge to fill the space between us before it grows silent and he can catch the tremendous gallop that’s taking place in my chest.
His breath hitches, but he doesn’t hesitate with his answer. “You.”
My heart stops. The word is deafening, ringing in my ears in a delirious tune that makes me feel strung out high, stars tilting above me as the echo resounds again.
You.
I shift onto my side to face him, catching the edge of his profile. His lips pressed thin, lashes barely moving as he stares straight ahead, tension drawn tight in his face like he didn’t mean for the word to slip out.
The world tilts slightly, spinning on its axis as I swallow down the grit in my throat, my voice low as I ask in a whispered breath, “You think about me?”
“More than you know,” he admits.
Something flutters in the pit of my stomach. My lips part, a response rising to the edge of my tongue until he squanders it with what he says next.
“But I shouldn’t be. It’s wrong. So fucking wrong.”
“It’s not wro—”
“It is,” he clips. My eyes catch the way his jaw locks, the tendons in his neck straining when he turns to glance at me, all riven and taut. “You’re just…too young to get it.”
“I’m eighteen,” I interject.
“Exactly,” he says quietly, the heaviness in them weighing me down. “You still have your whole life ahead of you. College. Dreams.” He swallows hard. “There’s so much out there for you to explore. I shouldn’t be tainting the experience for you. I shouldn’t be here at all.”
“Then why’d you come back?” I quip, pressure building in my chest as I trip over my words.
In a futile grasp for control, I bite down on my lower lip, teeth sinking into the soft flesh. My chest cinches tighter when his eyes flick to my mouth, holding it there, like he’s waging a silent war with himself.
A war I desperately want him to lose.
Untamed hunger begins to rise behind his gaze, animalistic and all-consuming, pulling a stifled, ragged breath out of me.
Heat doesn’t trickle—it crashes into me. Sharp and consuming. My body responding to the unspoken intensity between us, pulsing through my chest and searing down my spine.
When I finally catch my breath, my voice snags on the way out, the back of my throat singeing tight. “Tell me why, Ledger.”
His gaze doesn’t budge. It lingers a beat longer, reluctant, until finally, it lifts to meet mine.
I pray the darkness conceals the heat flooding my cheeks, the warmth trailing down my neck and spilling through me, coiling tight in my stomach and stealing my breath. Every fiber in me yearns for him to succumb to the carnal desire festering between us, to cross the line I’m helplessly toeing.
“Because I’m a weak man,” he says with a lump in his throat.
“Because each time I edge closer, I risk breaking off another piece of you, and I’m too fucking selfish to resist the pull that keeps dragging me back.
Too weak to stay away. You need to cut me out, because I can’t do it myself.
Because you’re just as much my downfall as I’ll be yours. ”
My heart aches, swelling with emotion as I shake my head. “I don’t want to. You can’t make me.”
He stares at me, his chest heaving, eyes darkening into a lustful glaze, though pain still etches between his brows. “You’ll regret it,” he says, his voice thick as gravel.
“I don’t care.”
Suddenly overcome with the brazen disregard for anything else, I give in to the unrelenting pull to inch closer, bridging the sliver of space between us.
I press myself against the hard ridges of his chest and inhale that woodsy scent that’s always clung to him, letting it sink into my core. Reminding me that this moment is real, not just a memory. That we’re both real and here.
“I’ve spent my whole life being too careful. It’s exhausting. To live that way…closed off, always anxious, anticipating the worst. Like if I could just intercede before the inevitable pain, I’d be better off for it.”
Reaching the pinnacle of my speech, I audaciously ignore my usual timidity and sit up, swinging my legs over his torso and lifting myself over him, craving closer contact. His whole body tightens, the muscles in his arm flexing when he reaches out to grip my hips, steadying me.
“And you know what it taught me?”
His jaw flexes, eyes pinned to mine in a battle of ice and fire.
Resistance and desire.
“It taught me that life is fragile. Fleeting.”
A tepid breeze sweeps through my hair, sending the strands into a tizzy, but I keep my hands firmly planted on his chest. Feeling the way it tightens beneath my touch, his entire body stiff and rigid.
“All we have is this moment,” I say, my pulse thumping madly.
I trail a hand higher on his chest, up his neck and jaw, until I’m cupping his face, feeling the freshly grown stubble prickle my palm.
“This right here…This is all we get. It’s either a cataclysmic, life-altering change, or we play it safe and live pretending the ache of what could’ve been doesn’t bother us.
That we don’t regret not taking the risk. ”
My mouth feels dry, stuffed full of cotton, my tongue sluggish as it slips out to wet my lips. His hooded eyes track the movement, spiking my heart into a slow, deafening spiral. The air around us thickens.