10 - Sage
Sage
I felt it before I processed it. The heat of him, the pressure, the sudden claiming of space that was neither his nor mine. My back met the storage unit door with a light rattle, the metal cool through my jacket while his hand on my waist ignited something inside me.
For a breath, my mind tried to argue with my body. Tried to line up pride, logic, and annoyance into something usable. But it failed the instant his fingers tightened slightly at my side, and his other hand slid to the back of my neck.
The kiss wasn’t polite or tentative. Aiden knew what he wanted, and when his tongue came out to nudge my lips apart, I was weak to resist.
My pulse reacted first, then my mouth.
Our tongues slid over each other, warm and wanting, my fingers curling in his hoodie. I wanted him closer, so impossibly close.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a faraway, numbed-out thought wriggled free. It reared its ugly head and forced me to notice.
He’d called me out. He’d questioned whether I was building my life or simply defending it. And now he thought a kiss could wrap that all up in something pretty that’ll make me forget.
My hands pressed against his chest and shoved, instantly breaking the contact. Aiden blinked through his breathless confusion and was about to say something when my flat palm struck his cheek.
His head turned with the force of it, but he stayed exactly where he was, eyes on me, jaw tight, one hand still hovering near my waist.
I felt the sting in my own palm more than the shock of what I’d just done.
“You’re way out of line, and off base, and— and several other analogies that describe how totally and absolutely messed up this is.
And you think you can smooth it over with your mouth?
You think kissing me will make it okay?”
“You think that’s what that was?” he asked, catching his breath. God, the confusion now gave way to hurt, and I wasn’t ready for it.
Surprisingly, my voice didn’t shake when I said, “What was it then, Aiden?”
His gaze stayed locked on mine, and for the first time since we walked into this unit, I felt like I was the one standing at the edge of something. That I was the one holding myself up, open and vulnerable, for him to dissect.
“I wasn’t trying to smooth anything over,” he said. “I was just done talking.”
“That’s convenient.”
He exhaled through his nose and fought to contain whatever wanted out of him all at once. “You asked questions. I answered them. The point I was trying to make is… sometimes there’s no difference between choosing our path and defending the one we ended up on.”
“That’s not the same thing.” I folded my arms across my chest, and hugged my jacket tightly. “It’s not.”
“It is if you’re honest.”
The word ‘honest’ hit like a spark against dry wood.
“So now I’m a liar?”
“You’re like me,” he replied. “We lie to ourselves to make everything else bearable.”
My throat tightened with something that wasn’t just anger. I hated how he could say that and not sound smug. He stood there like someone who’d already had this argument with himself countless times, and was now simply bringing me in on the revelation.
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” I said.
“I think you love what you do,” he answered. “But I also think you’re good at it because you don’t give yourself permission to question it.”
I stepped toward him before I could reconsider the choice. “Thanks for the— whatever this is, but I’m leaving now. I’ll go to my therapist if I want a diagnosis.”
“I’m not diagnosing you.”
I was halfway to the door when I whirled round, heat flooding my veins. Whether because of the kiss or his downright stubborn refusal to let me have a point, I wasn’t sure. But I was burning up from the inside out.
“Then what are you doing, Aiden? Because from where I’m standing it looks a hell of a lot like you’re mansplaining my life and life choices to me, the person who’s actually making and living those choices.”
“I’m talking.”
The simplicity of that reply annoyed me more than any insult could have.
Aiden wasn’t trying to be antagonistic. He really was just talking, holding his ground with calm persistence that made it impossible to dismiss the things he was saying.
“That slap,” he said, “wasn’t about the kiss.”
My breath caught on the edge of a reply, and I found myself mute.
He continued, “You slapped me because you wanted me to kiss you, and that surprised you. Didn’t it?”
My silence was more of an answer than any of my words could be in the moment, and I let out a slow breath.
“Sage, I just—”
“I don’t need you to tell me who I am,” I said. “Or why I am, for that matter.”
“I know, and I’m not trying to,” he added. “I was just asking if you wanted more than you’ve allowed yourself because that’s how I feel sometimes. I was… I think I was looking for—”
“For what?”
He sighed and shook his head, a hand coming up to rake through his hair. “I guess I was looking for the thing that makes you feel like we’re the same. It’s there. Don’t say you haven’t felt it either.”
There it was.
The question I’d been avoiding since the day he sat in my chair and talked about building things that lasted.
“That’s none of your business.” My voice was quiet. The fight in me, gone. “We’re not friends, Aiden. There’s no secret connection or whatever, demanding we acknowledge it. You’re just a guy who came for a tattoo, and I’m—”
“Wrong,” he finished for me. “You’re wrong.”
The anger was still there, but so was the attraction. Neither one cancelled the other.
“And another thing,” I went on, my chest burning with unchecked desire and also pure shock at his audacity. “You don’t get to call me out like that, and then kiss me.”
His eyes flicked briefly to my mouth, then back up. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
He reached up slowly, giving me space to move away if I wanted to. His fingers stopped at my jaw, lightly testing the precarious boundary.
I didn’t pull back.
Instead, I closed the distance.
I slid my hand up the front of his hoodie, and pulled him toward me. The move surprised him. I felt it in the way his body shifted, recalibrating.
He cupped my face in both his hands and when his mouth met mine, I didn’t pause to think about pride or consequences. I kissed him back, finally giving in to the urge I’d been fighting for weeks. Aiden slid his tongue into me again, and I melted into his mouth with a breathless, intoxicated hum.
The air in the unit felt charged by proximity, by unfinished cabinets and half-built dreams, by the knowledge that we were both standing in spaces we’d carved out for survival. Among other things.
His hand returned to my waist, firmer now, and mine moved to the back of his neck, fingers threading into his hair.
The argument didn’t disappear. It folded into the background while our mouths moved with increasing urgency. His hands never stopped exploring my body, and I felt the shift in him from restraint to something less contained.
My inner voice tried to warn me. Tried to remind me of timing, of risk, of everything that came after a moment like this.
But my hands were already holding him.
And I wasn’t stopping.
Not this time.
When his mouth moved against mine again, it wasn’t about winning or proving anything. It was about being here, inside this storage unit filled with his craft, inside the truth we’d just dragged into the light, and choosing it anyway.
I sighed softly into his mouth as my tongue ran along his. It’d been too long since I’d been kissed deeply like this, choosing to keep my attention on work and getting into school instead.
Now that we were alone, I could show him just how much I wanted him, devouring his mouth while my hands roved over his body. Mischievous fingers slid under the hem of his hoodie and shirt, taking ownership of the inked planes beneath.
He chuckled against my mouth, amused by my eagerness. “You’re the most infuriating person I know.”
“You like it.”
“I like you,” he shot back without missing a beat, and found my mouth again, just as hungrily as I did his.
Our teeth clashed as we fought for dominance, devouring each other with a want that was matched in every breath, each stroke of our greedy tongues. Aiden closed his arms around my waist, and I lifted onto my tiptoes, dizzy with the feel of his muscular body pressed so close.
“You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this.” His voice was rough with arousal.
My pulse thundered under the promise of it, my body like static. His mouth ghosted over mine—barely a kiss—more a testament to his earlier confession.
“I really do like you, Sage.”
A soft smile teased on my mouth, and I said, “I really think you’re kind of okay, Aiden.”
The laugh spilled out and mixed together as our lips met again, hard enough to make me gasp with it. My fingers curled into his hair as if I had every right to touch him this way. And maybe I did. Maybe I always had.
Aiden backed me up step by step, our mouths never parting for more than a breath.
His hand slid to the small of my back, firm and commanding, guiding me until I met the edge of his workbench.
Even then, he didn’t break the kiss. Didn’t say a word.
Just pressed closer, caging me in with his body and the bench behind me, as if nothing in the world existed beyond the shape of me in his arms. His lips traced my jaw and neck; his fingers ran down my waist and over my hips.
My thoughts dissolved into heat and want. I met him with equal fervor, lips parting, matching his urgency, my hands roaming his shoulders and chest, memorizing every line, every breath, every desperate sound he made against my mouth.
There was no doubt, no hesitation, no misunderstanding anymore.
We both wanted this.
Enough to ruin us both.