“Did you get into something? Poison ivy, or…I don’t know what. Other itchy-type plants?”
He chuckles, a rumble in his chest that I feel against my breasts. “No. Just sometimes get itchy at night when it turns cold. I think your soap yesterdaymade it worse.”
“That soap is made with cocoa butter,” I say, annoyed, and he breathes out another soft laugh.
I run my nails up and down his back, pulling him so he rolls partway on top of me. He resettles, hunching down and resting his cheek against my chest. The scruff on his cheek and jaw abrades my skin, but I don’t mind. I keep my hands moving over the muscled planes of him, as far as I can reach in this new position, and Aiden sighs against me, his warm breath tickling underneath the edge of my camisole, blowing against my left nipple, which peaks in response. He notices, lifts his head enough to kiss me there, gently, no intention to it, before resting against me once more. And it’s the perfect kiss, the perfect feeling, somehow. It feels like we’re not in a hurry, like there’ll be time and time again to get back tohim inside me.
And all of a sudden I feel tears well up behind my closed eyes, my throat constricting slightly. I almost recoil at the shock of it, my mind immediately racing to account for the oddity:The last couple days have been stressful. You’re overtired.
But deep down, I know it’s something else. This moment, and this man, and these two twin beds shoved together in this cold, spartan cabin—it’s the most intimate experience of my life. It’s the feeling I chased in those stupid, careless months after my dad died and I’d felt so alone. Of all the things I’ve done for Aiden over the last few weeks, it’s this thing—this small service that makes him snuffle and wriggle in boyish delight—that makes me feel as close to him as I’ve everbeen to anyone.
I swallow reflexively against the tears, and Aiden props himself up, rising over me, his brow furrowed. “What’s wrong?” he asks, and I can’t do anything at first but clamp my lips shut, shake my head in a wordlessnothingwhile I wait for thisstorm to pass.
“Zo,” he says, one hand stroking the hair back from my forehead, the gesture so new that a fresh clutch of emotion seizes my throat. “Don’t look like that.” It’s so abrupt, so commanding, and I smile a little, a few tears that I’d held in springing out of the corners of my eyes. It’s that knife-edge feeling I get with Aiden, all the time, mixed-up emotions he brings right to the surface in me. Anger and lust. Frustration and sympathy. Fear and freedom.
Lonely…and still, somehow, in love.
“I was married once,” I blurt, the only thing I can think to say that will keep me from thinking about what I’ve just admitted to myself about how I feel for Aiden. I’ve said it because I want him to be shocked. Because I want topush him away.
But other than the stilling of his hand, he doesn’t move at all, and I am desperate to fill in the silence. “I’d just turned twenty,” I tell him, and I expect, any second, for him to roll over onto his back, to have to tell him the rest of this without his eyes right above mine and without the heat of his body so close. He doesn’t do any of that, though—he’s turned to stone up there, but surprisingly, it doesn’t feel hostile. It’s just what Aiden does when he’s turned his full attention to something.
I don’t tell it quite the way I did, years ago, to Kit and Greer. Here, it’s messy, not chronological. I start in various places, have to circle back and fill in the blanks, though Aiden asks nothing as I talk.He was much older. It only lasted a few months. His name was Christopher. I met him after my dad died. It was a bad time for me. I gave him my inheritance, to save his business, this shitty little bar where I learned to beat you at darts.It strikes me how little time it takes to tell it, the basic story always the same: I was grieving, and I didn’t know what to do. I was young. I’d inherited money I didn’t want. I made a mistake, lost most of the legacy my father left to me. Then I cleaned up my act andI started over.
When I’m done, Aiden’s stillness and silence start to feel uncomfortable, recriminating. I offer a meaningless, “So,” and roll onto my side again, away from him, the movement awkward—my hair catching under his arm, one of his legs heavy overmine at first.
“How much older,” he says, softly, hard to hear over the movement of my body and the rustle of the sheets. He repeats it when I pause before answering.
“He wasthirty-eight.”
This strange intimacy we’ve forged means I canfeelhim thinking, even though we barely touch now, just the faint brush of the hair on his legs against my smooth ones. I lie there, my eyes open, staring across the room, my gaze level with the exposed pipes beneath one of the sinks.
“You were too young,” hesays, finally.
“I know,” I snap back. Maybe I expected his censure, but it still hurts to hear it.
He sets a big hand on the curve of my shoulder, stroking down to my elbow, which he cups in a tender, unfamiliar gesture. “Zo,” he says, his voice soft, the way it was in those first minutes after I’d fainted in his driveway, how I imagine he talks to the sick and scared people he picks up to put in his ambulance. “I mean this guy, he shouldn’t have married you. He should’ve known better than to marry someone your age.”
Kit and Greer said this too, when I’d told them—making Christopher the predator, absolving me of responsibility. But I’m defensive of my own guilt, of the shit I deserve to eat for that time in my life. “I asked him. I gave him the money of my own free will. He was—is—a good person.” I mean, I guess he is. I’ve never spoken to him again, not after the divorce.
He strokes his hand back up to my shoulder, tugs lightly so I roll onto my back. “So are you,” he says, simply.
I close my eyes, not realizing until he’s said it how much I want to hear it, from him more than anyone else. “Your brother,” I whisper, so he doesn’t forget—or maybe soIdon’t forget—why this isn’t permanent.
“You’re not responsible for what happened to my brother. You know that.” He leans down, rests his forehead against mine. “Iknow that too.”
“I am sorry. You’ve never wanted to hear it fromme, but I am.”
He’s quiet again, and I try not to let the disappointment pierce me. Aiden will never give me anything of Aaron. He won’t even give this camp anything of Aaron.
“We should sleep,” I say, just to say something, and anyway, it’s true—we’ve had a long couple of days, and tomorrow’s so important. When Aiden rolls onto his back so that we’re now awkwardly side by side, untouching again, I know he’s agreeing implicitly, and my face feels hot with embarrassment at having taken the night in this direction—spoiling the easy familiarity of backscratching and teasing. I begin to shift into a more comfortable position, but before I can move, Aiden moves back on top of me, his skin hot and tight, like his muscles have all bunchedup underneath.
“Didyou love him?”
I almost repeat the question, to stall. After all that, I want to give him the long answer, the answer that makes me look better—I thought I did, but I was young, and grieving, and I got love mixed up with movement, withdoingsomething.But I shear it of these platitudes. They don’t really matter, in the end. “No,” I say.
He kisses me then, his tongue licking into my mouth, and before long it’s heated—his hand under my camisole, cupping one of my breasts, one of his legs pushing between mine, nudging them apart. I wrap my arms around him, using those nails he likes so much to dig into his back, until he grunts in pain, or pleasure, or both. I’m as desperate as he is, arching my back off the bed to get closer to him, tensing in frustration when he pushes my hips back down. He curls his fingers around the waistband of my pants and underwear, tugging them down over my hips to my knees, where I kick them off the rest of the way. I reach my hands into his shorts, squeeze his ass, force his erection against me, and he leans down, sucks at my neck. I register dimly that it will leave a mark, and all I can think is,More of that, leave more of those, make sure I feelthis tomorrow.
I bend my wrists so I can press his waistband away from his body and get his shorts off, but he plants his knees and reaches around to stop me, lifting my hands from him and pulling off my top, then circling each of my wrists in his hands. He tugs them up, setting them on either side of my head, and lets go, kneeling between my legs and looking down at me, his stare telling me, somehow, what he wants me to do. I slide the backs of my hands up until I feel the cold steel of the bed frame and I curl my fingers around it. He nods, one quick duck of his chin, and the movement thrills me, my hands gripping tighter until there’s a sound—a tiny clink against the metal bed frame that indicates I forgot to take off the ring tonight. I know Aiden hears it. I see his mouth tighten, but I don’t have time to wonder what that means.
