Chapter 46
aimee
My brain was on a loop.
A chorus of Oh my God, playing over and over.
A culmination of every single thing I’d been feeling for weeks now bubbled up in my chest, tears slipped down my cheeks, and the feeling of his thumb brushing across my skin, broke me.
Not that I had much control. The moment I saw him all but the tiniest bit dissipated.
Yes, we needed to talk, but right now…right now I just needed to feel his arms around me.
I needed him to ground me, make me feel safe.
Zara and her trial didn’t matter. Nothing outside of him mattered.
I launched myself out of the seat and into him.
I was full on crying now, curled against him, cradled in his lap. My whole body shook, but he was here.
The thing I wanted more than anything else.
One of his hands cradled the back of my head, and the other was rubbing soothing circles on my back.
I breathed in his scent and the tears fell harder.
I buried my face in his chest as I sobbed.
It had all been so much. I’d been so, so, so incredibly scared that day of his accident.
I’d never known fear like that. I thought I did, I thought the worst moment of my life was forever going to be the day Asher died.
But when Lukas didn’t move.
He didn’t fucking move, and I’d never seen a body contort the ways his had.
I clutched at his jacket.
“Sssh, it’s okay,” he soothed.
He kept repeating those words until I had regained some control over myself.
I reached up between us to wipe at my eye and nose.
I was a mess. I felt his arms tighten when I started to sit up, but he relaxed when I wasn’t moving to get off his lap.
Lukas’ hands cradled the sides of my face, cupping my cheeks.
His thumbs wiped the remaining tears away.
“I think I got snot on your jacket,” I said, a little sheepishly.
“I’ll throw it in the wash,” He said, his thumbs still brushing over my cheeks.
“I missed you.”
“I’m sorry for how everything went down that day.”
I wanted to duck my chin, to not meet his gaze because I was ashamed. I regretted it too.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close.
“I was so scared and instead of talking to you, I pushed you away. I hurt you so that I couldn’t hurt you in the future.
And that sounds so dumb, I know. And it’s a horrible, terrible excuse, but I hadn’t been sleeping, I could see how much Petyr disapproved of me, and I just knew that all my personal shit was going to keep you from your dreams.”
“Sshh. Aimee, breathe. Firstly, Petyr disapproves of me on a daily basis, so you’re not special.”
I hiccupped a laugh.
“Secondly, I wasn’t any better. I pushed you away because I got in my head and convinced myself that I would always be competing with his ghost. I was jealous and let that jealousy eat me alive and that wasn’t fair to you.
It wasn’t fair to me and it wasn’t fair to what was building between us.
” He paused. “I will forever regret how things ended between us at The Lodge.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck, holding him close.
“You’re not allowed to leave me ever again,” I said, voice muffled into his shoulder.
Lukas wrapped his arms tightly around me, trapping me against his chest. “What if you get sick of me?”
“Not possible,” I said.
It really wasn’t. The day I left him in the hotel room—that was a mistake.
A huge, massive mistake and I was never going to make it again.
Then, his wipeout reinforced that thought.
I wasn’t perfect, I was still a mess and maybe a little broken, and maybe I would always be.
But I knew that I wanted Lukas to be there, to be in my life. The fear of not having him…
“I thought I lost you,” I mumbled over his shoulder.
“You could never lose me, Aimee.” He pushed me back and made me stare into his eyes. “You own me. You have my heart and my soul. My big ego.”
I snorted at that.
“That day…fuck, that day broke me. And then when the pain meds wore off enough and I could think, I tried to get out of bed to go to you. Zara and Petyr had to hold me down. I have never regretted my words more than how everything happened the day we ended things.”
My eyes started to tear up again and I quickly wiped away the evidence. My chin wobbled, but a small smile played on my lips. I shifted in his lap and his hands moved to cup around the back of my neck.
“I was told that I needed to come after you and hold you tight and never let go.”
“Sounds like sage advice,” I whispered.
“I plan on heeding it if you’ll have me.
I know that I don’t want to spend any more time apart from you than necessary.
I want to be your rock in the middle of the ocean.
I want to be the one you tell all your good and bads to.
I want to be the one you come home to, the one you find solace in.
I want to be the one you let into your messy thoughts.
I just want to always be there for you.”
I wiped at the tears and laughed, “How is it when I first met you, all I could do was cry? It’s like we’ve come full circle.”
He leaned forward and kissed the tears from my face.
“I know we have a lot more to talk about, but tell me, Aimee. Tell me you want me as much as I want you.”
He pressed his forehead to mine and squeezed his eyes shut.
I brought my hands up and brushed my fingers over his jaw, up his cheek until I was cupping them. I tilted his face up, and his eyes opened to meet mine. They were searching, cautious and maybe a bit scared of what I was going to say.
“We do need to talk. But more so, I want you so much. I want everything you want. I want to be your rock. I want to be the one you tell everything to. I want to be there when you get home. I want to feel your arms wrap around me and the kisses you press into my skin. I want to know what’s going on in your mind.
I want to be the only one inflating your fucking ego. ”
He leaned back and laughed.
I grinned, and I didn’t care if we’d suddenly become visible to the others in the rink, or if we’d disrupted the trial going on down below.
“If you don’t fucking kiss me, Lukas Fraiser—”
He cut me off as his lips met mine. I melted into him, and let him hold me closer.
We kissed like we were starving, like it was our last night on Earth.
His tongue swept into my mouth, tasting and devouring.
I let my hands slide up into his hair and get tangled in the strands, and when I gripped them lightly, he groaned into my mouth.
I smiled and felt his lips pull into one as well, before he was back to kissing me senseless.
We would talk.
We would be there for each other.
I would learn to let go of more of the guilt, to live more in the moment, to live for the future and let less of the past haunt me. I had thought I knew the trajectory of my life. I thought I had it all planned out, that I knew what my future held.
But I’m slowly learning that things don’t go to plan, that projected outcomes aren’t always the best things for us—that first loves can be lost and you can be okay.
That sometimes the thin ice has to crack and break.
That someone will come along and things may be messy and chaotic and burn like a raging fire…
but they might be the thing that grounds you the most.
Lukas pulled back, both of us were breathing heavily.
“So, now might not be the best time for this, seeing as Zara is down there glaring at us, and my parents are definitely going to want to meet you, and Brennan looks like he may murder me, but you are not going to be able to get off my lap until we deal with my…ego problem,” he whispered the last part.
He grinned at me, and I stared at him.
And then, I threw back my head and laughed.