“You, Stella,” I laugh, tipping her chin up with my finger. “You did. I’ve been bending over backwards trying to make them happy for years. You were right. They don’t want to be. Not right now. I wouldn’t have loosened my grip on that responsibility if you didn’t give me that to think about. All right? You’re as responsible for what happened today as I am.”
“That’s a stretch,” she whispers, visibly processing my words. Taking them to heart despite her obvious hesitation to do so. “But if you insist.”
More than life itself, I want to pin her down on this couch, ruck her up skirt and make love to her in front of the Christmas tree, but my heart might as well be on the outside of my body right now, after the way she opened up to me. After the trust that took on her part. And if I get inside of her when I’m feeling like this, I’m worried I’ll try to push our tenuous boundary even further and scare the bejeezus out of her. It takes an enormous effort to tamp down on my hunger for Stella. For more. More physical and emotional connection—all of it, everything she’s got—but I force myself to have patience. “What I insist on…” I clear the growl from my voice. “…is making a popcorn garland and eating so much of the materials that we have to pop the whole box.”
A smile blooms across her beautiful face. “You make it on the stove, don’t you? Like an old-timey gentleman.”
“Is there any other way?” I lunge to my feet without warning her, lifting her in my arms and drawing a squeak from her mouth. “Come on. Let’s Stella-fy my Christmas tree.”
*
Stella
I wake up in a mountain of bedding. Early morning light.
Soft sheets that smell like peppermint.
Aiden. I’m at Aiden’s apartment.
Sitting up in the bed, I glance to my right. The indent of his head is there on the pillow, but he’s not asleep beside me. I remember him being there, sort of unconsciously. Holding me in his arms in the darkness. He snores. Why am I pressing my knuckles to my mouth and smiling over that little nugget of information?
Then the night comes back to me in a flood and I clap both hands over my face.
I fell asleep. Curled up at the foot of his one-of-a-kind Christmas tree, head in his warm lap, listening to stories about Aunt Edna, surrounded by foot after foot of popcorn on string. We’d been talking for hours. Favorites. Likes and dislikes. His honey company. Growing up in Tennessee versus Pennsylvania. How I sketched store window designs in Bedford Hills to pass the time. His favorite spy movies. We even speculated on the state of Jordyn and Seamus’s romance, which Aiden has been pretending not to notice—as if I could like him any more than I already do. I’ve never been so relaxed in my life as I was last night. Not that I can remember. And I just kind of…drifted off.
But not before I asked Aiden about his perfect Christmas.
“What would be your perfect Christmas?”
He takes a moment to think about it and I use the opportunity to study the strong line of his jaw from below, growing drowsier by the second as his fingers thread through my hair, stroking it from the roots to the very—probably split—ends. “You promise not to laugh?”
“I promise,” I sigh, half asleep.
So close to giving up the fight and letting oblivion claim me.
“Matching robes,” he says, shaking his head at himself. “I think of having a family around the tree in matching robes.”
“That’s nice.” I yawn. “I like that.”
Waking up a minute ago is the next thing I remember. Did he carry me in here?
Undress me?
I’m already shaking my head. Not Aiden.
I don’t even have to feel for my tights to know they’re still on.
Wiggling my way out from under the mound of covers, I stand up and stretch my fingers toward the ceiling, frowning when my back and shoulders feel completely different. Relaxed. Free of knots I didn’t realize I had. Have I been waking up sore every morning from sleeping on the old mattress in my own apartment? I might as well have slept on a cloud last night. There is some definite tenderness between my legs, but that ache has been there since our office sex adventure yesterday afternoon. The memory of that—and perhaps the fading feeling of Aiden’s hard body against mine throughout the night—sinks a ticklish weight low in my belly.
I walk to the window and take a moment to marvel over the glow of orange and gray rising behind the buildings of midtown. Waking up like this is so far outside of what I consider ordinary that I might as well be flying through the rainforest on a zipline. Spokes poke upward from beneath my skin, trying to dissipate the warmth and safety cocooning me. There’s a sense that I’m in the wrong place. I don’t belong here in this luxury high-rise with a man who obviously has a lot of money. You always did think you were better. Ironically, it’s that taunt, that sneer straight out of the past that makes me determined…to stay.
Makes me determined not to finger comb my hair, run out the door with a brief goodbye and return to my dark apartment that, truthfully, has always just felt like a holding cell between prison and real life.
I’m going to allow myself this morning with him.
I’ll take on tomorrow when it gets here.
With a deep breath, I shed my clothes. Dress, underwear and tights. I trade them for one of Aiden’s Tshirts, a white cotton one with a little bumble bee over the pocket above some script reading Aiden and Hank’s Honey Bank. Breathing through the tug in my middle, I make a pit stop in the ensuite bathroom to pee, wash my hands and finger brush my teeth. After making some kind of sense out of my hair, I follow the scent of coffee toward the kitchen.
Where I find a shirtless Aiden cracking eggs into a bowl, his hair wet from a shower.
Who knew so many muscles were required to flex to perform that domestic activity?
His back is wide up top. Thick with muscle, along with his upper arms. Smooth. There’s a scattering of freckles down his spine that makes my mouth water even more than the coffee. From my vantage point, the breakfast bar is blocking him from the waist down, so I take several steps to the right until, dear sweet Jesus, his derriere comes into view in a seriously thin pair of pajama pants and heat coils up inside of me like a spring.
“Wow,” I whisper.
Aiden does, indeed, have a bubble butt and that fact is so much more obvious without the advantage of dress pants and a jacket to hide it. Until meeting this man, I never fully understood the human fascination with butts, but I get it now. I’m a believer. At least in this particular set of taut, brawny buns. He should enter it into some kind of booty pageant.
A twinge of jealousy catches me off-guard.
Oh great, now I’m jealous of the imaginary judging panel of a butt contest.
My life has taken a serious turn.
And when I walk into the kitchen and Aiden greets me with that gigantic heart in his eyes, I decide I don’t hate the turn it has taken. Not one bit.
I’m deciding whether or not to kiss him good morning—is that too much too soon?—when he sucks in a breath and drops an egg on the floor. Splat. Yoke and egg whites everywhere. “Shoot. Sorry.” He turns in a circle, eventually locating a roll of paper towels. “I just…you did something to your hair. Your bangs are pinned up.”