Another step, like the slowest dance of all time. “No.”
“This is what I mean when I say ‘practice’. Let other people help. Especially if they want to, or they offer.”
I open my mouth to object, and he shakes his head.
“Not finished. Remember when you had demands, before you agreed to marry me?”
“Yes?” I squeak out.
My breaths are more ragged now, and I’d blame it on the humidity in here, but it’s this gruff man staring down at me, his dark hair damp at the temples.
It’s intoxicating.
“I’ve got one: stop hiding from me.” The words are so low they’re practically a growl.
The last step—I stopped counting—has me up against a wall. Literally.
“What if I don’t measure up, Aiden?” I whisper. “What if I’m not the same girl you remember from back then, all starry-eyed and naive?”
“Chloe,” he grits out, like holding back is physically hurting him. “I fell in love with that girl. Sure. But the woman you’ve become?” His hand caresses my face like I’m a piece of glass, and he knows this moment—all of these moments—are just as fragile.
“The woman I’ve become is too much,” I choke out.
I hate being this honest with anyone, but especially Aiden. Maybe because I love him more than I can breathe, and the thought of losing him—this—is crushing.
He’s always been passionate. I fell in love with him over an over-excited monologue about Fraser firs because the energy simply pulsed out of him.
But now that same energy is focused on me, and of all the people I could disappoint, he tops the list. I don’t know when he claimed that role, and it doesn’t matter.
I’m so deep into this now that it feels like I’m only surrounded by darkness, and Aiden is the only light I can see.
“Never too much,” he rasps, reaching past my shoulder to press the button for the steam again. Fog still hangs here thick, but now it’s billowing.
Every nerve in my body is attuned to how close Aiden is standing, and the gentle caress of his fingertips down my arms.
My breath stutters. “How do you know?”
I’m not reaching for an ego-boost here. I’m grasping for certainty. That if I let him all the way in, let him see every part of me—especially the parts that are the most broken and bruised—that’s it for me.
“Chloe Marie Wheeler,” he murmurs, my name like velvet in his mouth. “I pay attention. I collect every glimpse you let sneak through before you cover it up again. Like the way you always give people your full attention when they’re talking to you. The notes you hide under my pillow.”
A smile curves my lips. “You like those?”
“I keep my favorite in my wallet, next to the first picture we ever took together. See?” He shrugs in what might possibly be the sexiest way ever. “I can be extra, too.”
He presses a palm to the wall by my head and fully leans. Not a casual lean, a mind-melting, steamy lumberjack lean.
My mouth goes dry.
“It’s not about being too much, Chlo,” he murmurs, leaning so close his mouth brushes my ear. “It’s more like ‘never enough’. I love you so much, and all I can think about is how there’s a possibility I could love you even more than I already do.”
Moments like this are beyond what I could’ve ever imagined for myself. Having a handsome manleanin a steamy shower stall is probably something a lot of women dream about.
But when that man is your husband?
When he’s pleading for some of the emotionally vulnerable pieces of you?
It’s mind-melting.
