Thomas took a step back at Shane’s name, feeling like Aiden had invoked some kind of curse. Did Aiden look like Shane?Hadhe looked like him? He closed his eyes, trying and failing to picture Shane’s face with any level of detail but time had stolen that, too.
He remembered some things. Shane and Aiden had once had the same artificial hair color. The same cocky demeanor. But Aiden had been so broken and angry when Thomas first met him. Nothing like Shane. Shane had been…hollow. Void.
Thomas opened his eyes, almost shocked to see this Aiden sitting before him, not a single trace left of the boy he’d been all those years ago. Aiden was a man, tall and broad, with creases at the corners of his eyes. Older, but still so broken and angry.
Because of Thomas.
“I…” Thomas started but then trailed off, uncertain as to what he wanted to do. Deny it? Reassure Aiden? To what end? What did it matter?
“Is that why you took me in?” Aiden asked, not angry, but…defeated. “I reminded you of him? Is that why you can’t look at me?”
Couldn’t look at him? There were days when Thomas couldn’t see anything but Aiden, when he was the only thing on his mind for hours at a time. But telling him that would do nothing. “What does it matter?”
“So, now the past doesn’t matter?” Aiden spit. “It’s been your excuse forever, but now it doesn’t matter?”
Fuck.As usual, Thomas was getting it all wrong. When it came to Aiden, he just always got it wrong. “I didn’t say that. I don’t know why I took you in all those years ago. But I did. I chose you.” Aiden continued to look at him with that same vacant look. Thomas shrugged helplessly. “Shane’s been dead for thirty years, Aiden.”
“Then why does it suddenly feel like he’s been standing between the two of us this whole time?” Aiden asked, voice raw. “Fuck. I don’t even know what he did, but I’m fucking jealous. Do you know how fucked up that is? I’m jealous of the person you said is the catalyst for the worst thing that ever happened to you. That’s so fucked up, you know? You’ve fucked me up so fucking much.”
Thomas felt like his heart was being shredded at Aiden’s words. He was right. Thomas had fucked Aiden up so much. “He’s not what matters. This isn’t about him. It’s about what I did. It’s about who I am.”
“That’s bullshit. I might be dumb about a lot of shit, Tommy, but not you. That kid meant something to you then, and I know it has something to do with us. You say it’s not about him, but he’s somehow more important than me. This ghost from your past is important enough for you to keep me at arm’s length for decades.”
Thomas’s eyes went wide at his words. Was that what he thought? That he’d been…so in love with Shane or something that he was still hung up on him all these years later? Did he think Thomas had killed him and regretted it? He supposed it wasn’t that far off from the truth, and he couldn’t blame him for drawing conclusions from the crumbs Thomas had fed him, but he was wrong about Shane…and about Thomas’s feelings. About how he felt about him.
“What? No.” Thomas shook his head. “Christ, Aiden. Do you think I’m harboring some—what?—crush on him? Whatever mixed up feelings I have about what happened between him and I when I was a kid have nothing to do with my feelings for you,” Thomas assured him. “The three fucked up years with him are nothing compared to the twenty-three years I’ve had with you in my life.”
Aiden’s lip curled like he didn’t believe him. Not that Thomas blamed him. He’d spent every moment of their lives together assuring Aiden that his feelings weren’t valid, that what they felt for each other wasn’t real, wasn’t right, wasn’t okay. Why should Aiden believe him now that Thomas had finally given him a villain to fight, someone to be mad at other than Thomas?
He shook his head, helpless. “Don’t you get it? The only person who haunts my thoughts is you, Aiden. You’re in my head. Every day. A million times a day,” he admitted, taking a step closer. “At any given moment, at any time of day, you’re the ghost standing just out of view.”
Aiden looked…shell-shocked. When Thomas stepped between his open knees, he didn’t protest. When he pulled him to his feet, he went willingly. Thomas wrapped his arms around him, buried his face in his throat, inhaling his scent like a drug, letting his warmth bleed into his bare skin.
“What are you doing?” Aiden managed, body stiff.
Thomas kissed the spot on his throat, feeling his pulse pound beneath his lips. “I have no idea.”
He wasn’t lying. He had no fucking idea what he was doing, but he couldn’t let him go. He couldn’t stop touching him, kissing him. He wanted to hold him like this more than he wanted to keep drawing air into his lungs. The pull was gravitational. It was selfish and borderline evil to give Aiden what had to be false hope, but Thomas couldn’t will himself to let him go.
This was why they stayed away from each other. Being together was death by paper cut and it would hurt so much worse when it was over, but he couldn’t stop. He wouldn’t.
He needed him to stop looking at him like he’d destroyed him, like he thought someone in Thomas’s life meant more to him than Aiden. Nobody meant more to him than Aiden. They didn’t. They couldn’t. His world started and stopped with him. He just needed him to know that…somehow. And this was all he had.
“Thomas.” Aiden said his name like a warning, or maybe a threat.
“Are you going to stop me?” Thomas asked, heart slamming against his ribs as he pressed the words into Aiden’s skin, relishing the feel of him. “Please don’t stop me. You’re the only one on my mind. You’re always the only one on my mind. Let me prove it to you.”
This time, when their mouths collided, it was Thomas who deepened the kiss, his tongue sliding home with no resistance. Like always, something in him gave way, forgetting everything but the taste of Aiden’s mouth and the heat of his body. How was it possible to feel so instantly consumed by another person, to forget every ounce of sanity?
Aiden’s hands were squeezing his back, then sliding lower, gripping his ass through the towel. Thomas was already painfully hard, his cock trapped between the softness of the fabric and the hardness of Aiden’s hip. Fuck. He felt so fucking good. He smelled so good. There was nothing better in the world than being so wrapped up in Aiden that nothing else mattered.
Thomas’s fingers went for the hem of Aiden’s shirt, and he mourned the loss of Aiden’s hands when he stopped groping him long enough for him to lift his arms. Thomas tossed the shirt aside, already going for the button on Aiden’s jeans.
Thomas’s heart dropped when Aiden slapped his hands away, but then he was shoving Thomas down onto the bed, unknotting the towel before going to his knees on the floor between Thomas’s open thighs. Christ. This was so much more than last time. That was just drunken fumbling, fueled by years of longing and rage.
This…this was something else entirely. He hissed as Aiden’s mouth landed on his inner thigh, sucking a mark there before dragging his teeth over it. The pleasure/pain of it felt right, felt like them. He gave the other thigh the same rough treatment before pushing his legs wider, dragging him down until his hips were off the bed and Aiden had him completely exposed.
“Aiden…”
