Chapter Seventeen #2
I smile. I should have seen that question coming.
“A long time ago.” I’m both relieved and a little sad to reveal the secret I’ve been holding onto since entering their lives.
I kept the memories to myself so that they remained precious.
Revealing that I knew Dax, that I remembered him as a teen and as a young man just starting out, well, I was worried they’d think meeting them now was intentional; that I’d sought him out.
With Frank already griping about me being a gold digger, it seemed best to hide the truth.
I knew it would come up at some point, but I honestly thought it would be Dax asking.
“Do you remember the circumstances?”
I keep the incident concise. “Tom got caught stealing food from a store in the Heights. I covered for him with a lie. Probably because he was stealing lunch. No one deserves to go hungry. Dax was there, and after Tom had gone, he followed me to the park to question me.” I suspect Aiden already knows the details, which also means Dax remembers me.
Why didn’t he say something before now? I kept quiet because I thought he’d forgotten me.
“That wasn’t your first time meeting. That was the second,” he informs me, wearing a smile that’s half apology and half amusement.
“What? No way!” Aiden smirks. “Fine. Then when?”
“Dax said you were very small. Some bigger kids trapped the little ones on the roundabout at the playground and wouldn’t let them off. Just as he was going to deal with it, a spitfire of a little girl came out swinging in their defence. In Tom’s defence.”
The memory is hazy. In my mind, I see a scruffy little boy in a red shirt. There’s an empty juice box and I hear a rumbling stomach. Then there’s my Nana’s shrewd smile and a bigger kid too. “You’ve got a good kick, kiddo,” he’d said, and I’d never felt prouder.
“Kicking. I came out kicking.” I laugh, but it feels numb, like my amusement is a side-effect of my confusion. Aiden nods patiently, waiting for me to see it all. “That was Tom and Dax?”
“It was,” Aiden admits. “There were other meetings too. Some where you both interacted and some where he saw you from a distance. You always appeared at key points in his life. He surmised you were sent by fate.”
“He thinks I’m his fate?” The notion is both overwhelming and romantic.
“If only,” Aiden grumbles, kicking at a loose stone. “Maybe then he wouldn’t feel so guilty all the time, but no. He thinks you’re Tom’s fate. You are always there precisely when that kid needs saving.”
Tom’s fate? Guilty? That puts a whole new spin on Dax’s hot and cold temper. “That’s some karma bullshit right there.”
“I agree…and yet here we are, all tangled up.”
“Where do you come into this?”
Aiden chuckles nervously. He taps his toes on the ground, watching the rubber of his shoes rather than look at me. “Dax wanted to keep tabs on you. Make sure you were doing okay and help you whenever he could. Sometimes I watched over you. Sometimes it was a person I trusted.”
It makes sense and answers a few old questions.
“The textbooks? An entirely new set just for me. I knew it was too good to be a fluke.” A warm sensation fills my chest knowing that each time I read his name on the library card and hoped he was a guardian angel, I wasn’t too far off the mark.
“Yeah,” he confirms and then blows my mind. “The winning scratch card you found on your bus seat. Free ice cream flyers for the Marina. The tickets to the puppet show in Dalton Park, the summer enrolment letter from VCC. You’d have been invited to intern with Trevainne too but…well…shit happened.”
“That was all you guys?”
“They were small things. Useless things. Rewards for working so hard. We had no idea how bad it was for you at home. If we’d known…”
He implied that if they’d known, they’d have stepped in sooner.
I’d still be with the kids. Mum and Carlo might have started their home here.
I could have escaped Eric sooner. No Olive Tower…
no broken elevator…no young man bleeding on the stairs.
Maybe fate really does play a part in all this because I’m no longer sure the exchange would have been worth it.
“Then Tom would have died alone on those stairs.”
“Fate,” Aiden mumbles, his thoughts mirroring my own.
“I prefer to choose my own fate.”
“I was worried about telling you, but you deserved to know.”
“And when did you start…uh…?”
“Acting like a jealous idiot and misusing my connections in UACT to stalk anyone who showed an interest in you?” He grins, but there’s an apology in his eyes and uncertainty.
“Yeah, that.” I smile to let him see I’m not mad, and then another thought occurs. “Uh. How long has it been going on?”
“Since the night you met Dax in the gallery.”
“That’s a long time.” I think back to the last time I saw Dax before that night at the Tower.
He’d looked so handsome and so defeated.
A beautifully dressed ghost escaping the rich people gathered at the grand opening of a new art exhibition.
I’d behaved coldly. I recognised him but saw such a huge change in him.
He went from rags to riches, and for people like us, the only way to do it so fast is to sell your soul.
I didn’t trust him, and yet I couldn’t stop myself from talking with him.
I should have admitted it sooner. “Too long not to have seen what was right in front of me.”
“As soon as I knew about your memory skills, I wondered if you knew and were staying quiet or if it hadn’t triggered somehow?”
“I recognised him and I didn’t too,” I admit. “The boy I met was Vale, like me. The man in the Tower was Heights. I couldn’t reconcile the two.”
“The shock wouldn’t have helped either. You were a mess. Walking muscle memory and wide eyes. When I walked in the bar, I wanted to reach out and hug you,” Aiden admits.
“By the time I realised, it was better to stay quiet. If he didn’t remember me, then I didn’t need to bring it up. With all the misunderstandings between us already…”
“It felt safer to just stay quiet?”
“Yeah.”
“But now you know we were with you…?”
“By with me you mean privy to all my crappiest moments?”
“You do have a habit of being a trouble magnet. The number of times I had to stop people following you home after your shift at the bar. That little toad Gresh being the worst offender.”
“Ugh. He is a toad. Thank you. It might be late but thanks for looking out for me.” Aiden nods. Another thought occurs. One that has me writhing in humiliation. “Sooo…umm…does that mean you know about Michael?”
“That dipshit boyfriend who thought romance was driving you to a secluded spot and showing you his backseat?” Aiden pushes off the wall, his shoulders square, and his tone dips into anger.
“Yeah, I knew about Michael Tailor. I know he ditched you at the end of the high street in the middle of the night and expected you to make your own way home too.”
He growls out the words, still furious about it after all this time. Was that why me made sure our first time together was so gentle? We’d woke and screwed twice more after that, but he’d made serious efforts the first time to—how did he put it? —romance me?
No matter his reasons, he knew all my secrets now.
I try to play it off. “Well, shit. Welcome to all my embarrassing moments.”
Aiden grabs my shoulders. He shakes his head vehemently. “No, that was HIS embarrassing moment; not yours. If I hadn’t picked you up, God knows—” He stops talking.
Oh God! He really did know about all of it. I lean into him, placing my forehead against his chest so I don’t have to see the rebuke in his eyes. “The taxi driver? You were the, this-is-my-last-drop, taxi driver?”
He kisses the top of my head and admits it. “I couldn’t let you just walk home in the Vale.”
“Shit! I should have realised.” Holy fuck. How didn’t I know? I was always so self-aware and tuned in to what was happening. My success relied on looking for threats. Maybe that’s the problem; these guys would never have registered as threats.
“You were a bit distracted.”
He’s not wrong. I considered it a miracle that I made it home at all that night.
My head had been all over the place. I look up into his eyes.
“Distracted? I was livid. Humiliated. He’d just taken my…
” I almost spilled the secret that my ex somehow sweet-talked me into losing my virginity in that backseat before dumping me in the middle of the Vale, way too close to Hanson’s for comfort.
Then I collect myself before I appear any more na?ve than I already am.
“Let’s just say that free cab ride home was the highlight of my year. ”
“He didn’t deserve you,” Aiden blurts, looking oddly guilty.
“Yeah, I figured that out.” The hard way.
“We probably don’t deserve you either.”
Now that I don’t believe. I wrap my arms around his waist and turn my head to the side, my cheek against his chest.
“If you think about it, we all keep saving each other. You probably didn’t know, but that lottery card bought medicine for Casey that Eric refused to spend ‘his’ money on.
The textbooks came just when I was thinking of quitting.
The cab ride got me home before curfew and saved me from a beating.
What if Dax is onto something with this fate thing?
Do you think that’s why we’re all tied up in it together?
Perhaps we deserve each other because we’ve earned it along the way? ”
“You’re not mad?” He stokes my hair, his chin resting gently on my head.
“Furious.”
Aiden pushes me away to look straight into my eyes. “We’re sorry, Tiger. We—”
“I’m mad because it feels like wasted time. I’m also pissed that I wasn’t as observant as I thought.”
He holds me tight against him again. I like it here, in his arms.
“We can train that. With your memory and how smart you are, you could be formidable.”
“Could be?” I pinch his side.
His chuckle rumbles through the space. “Fine…you’re already formidable.” He steps back and bends to kneel before me, bowing in a mockery of a Victorian gentleman. “Forgive me for my mistake. Allow me to worship at your feet, my lady.”
I fan my face and stick my nose in the air, playing along. “Why, good Sir, while worshipping your lady is an admirable notion, I do believe you would be remiss in starting at her feet.”
Aiden grips the backs of my thighs and pulls himself into me, resting his chin against my abdomen and looking up at my face. “Tiger, are you asking me to keep my promise?
“Keeping your promises is a great way to earn good karma,” I reason.
“Then we should go back upstairs.”
“Or we could start right here?”
“On the cold concrete?”
“This is where it all starts, right? The building blocks of your future?”
“Our future.”
“I like that. So, let’s make it ours.” I barely finish speaking and he’s undone my jeans and is pulling them down along with my panties.
He buries his head between my legs then growls in frustration when he notices I’m still penned in by my clothes.
One by one I lose my shoes, jeans, panties, and then he pulls me to his mouth, his fingers digging into my butt cheeks and hooks my leg over his shoulder.
I’m forced to lean into him for stability, but he just uses my weight as an excuse to thrust his tongue deeper into the heart of me.
My panting fills the space. The windows expose us on every side. We are an exhibit of lust and love and everything in between. His mouth is heaven and hell. Between his tongue, the exposure, and my desperate want, I come in a wave of shivering bliss.
When my legs can no longer hold me up, he moves us to lean against a pillar.
Wrapping my legs around his waist, he tells me I’m beautiful.
I’m brave. I’m his. Convincing me with long, deep kisses.
My nipples peak as he sucks at my throat and raises my arms above my head to remove my blouse.
He slides his fingers between the lace of my bra and my skin, pulling the cups down and tucking them under the globes of my breasts.
The cold is a cloak that kisses the fire Aiden stokes beneath my skin.
I unbutton his shirt and drag it over his shoulders when he leans in to nip at my nipple. Reaching for the button at his waist, he makes me moan as he plunges a finger into my heat and glides it in and out in a damnably slow rhythm.
He pulls a condom from his pocket. I shuck his pants and grip his cock in one hand before licking the other and reaching down. I pump him in the same rhythm that he fingers me. When he realises, he increases our twinned pace, breathing heavily against my ear.
“Just like that, Tiger. Fuck.”
Five little words and am alive. I want him to come. I want to see his release. Watch his breath catch because of me. Because I pleased him.
Just as the pressure builds, just as my own orgasm blooms to completion for the second time, he pulls away and spins me to face the pillar, my cheek pressed to the wall.
I hear the packet tear, feel him adjust himself as he sheathes his cock, and then feel his fingers gliding through my heart.
He bends his knees, giving him the height he needs to reach between my legs and notch the head of his cock at my opening.
He pushes slow. The sensation of him filling me like this is primal.
Pressed between his fiery, muscled body and cool, unyielding concrete.
He crowds me, and it feels right. Claimed.
When he’s fully seated, he stands a little taller, forcing me to tilt my arse to keep him deep.
His chest heats my back. His lips suck my earlobes.
His fingertips dance upon my skin; little brushes and tingles that heighten everything.
He nuzzles at my neck and whispers, “I love you, Juliet, Joslyn Girard, my tiger. I love every iteration of you. Who you were, who you are, and whoever you will be.”
I want to tell him that I feel the same, but he kisses my open mouth, eating up my words and fucking me until words no longer make sense.
So instead, I commit it all to memory.
This moment is mine. Forever.