“You’re like me,” he replied. “We lie to ourselves to make everything else bearable.”
My throat tightened with something that wasn’t just anger. I hated how he could say that and not sound smug. He stood there like someone who’d already had this argument with himself countless times, and was now simply bringing me in on the revelation.
“You don’t know the first thing about me,” I said.
“I think you love what you do,” he answered. “But I also think you’re good at it because you don’t give yourself permission to question it.”
I stepped toward him before I could reconsider the choice. “Thanks for the— whatever this is, but I’m leaving now. I’ll go to my therapist if I want a diagnosis.”
“I’m not diagnosing you.”
I was halfway to the door when I whirled round, heat flooding my veins. Whether because of the kiss or his downright stubborn refusal to let me have a point, I wasn’t sure. But I was burning up from the inside out.
“Then what are you doing, Aiden? Because from where I’m standing it looks a hell of a lot like you’re mansplaining my life and life choices to me, the person who’s actually making and living those choices.”
“I’m talking.”
The simplicity of that reply annoyed me more than any insult could have.
Aiden wasn’t trying to be antagonistic. He really was just talking, holding his ground with calm persistence that made it impossible to dismiss the things he was saying.
“That slap,” he said, “wasn’t about the kiss.”
My breath caught on the edge of a reply, and I found myself mute.
He continued, “You slapped me because you wanted me to kiss you, and that surprised you. Didn’t it?”
My silence was more of an answer than any of my words could be in the moment, and I let out a slow breath.
“Sage, I just—”
“I don’t need you to tell me who I am,” I said. “Or why I am, for that matter.”
“I know, and I’m not trying to,” he added. “I was just asking if you wanted more than you’ve allowed yourself because that’s how I feel sometimes. I was… I think I was looking for—”
“For what?”
He sighed and shook his head, a hand coming up to rake through his hair. “I guess I was looking for the thing that makes you feel like we’re the same. It’s there. Don’t say you haven’t felt it either.”
There it was.
The question I’d been avoiding since the day he sat in my chair and talked about building things that lasted.
“That’s none of your business.” My voice was quiet. The fight in me, gone. “We’re not friends, Aiden. There’s no secretconnection or whatever, demanding we acknowledge it. You’re just a guy who came for a tattoo, and I’m—”
“Wrong,” he finished for me. “You’re wrong.”
The anger was still there, but so was the attraction. Neither one cancelled the other.
“And another thing,” I went on, my chest burning with unchecked desire and also pure shock at his audacity. “You don’t get to call me out like that, and then kiss me.”
His eyes flicked briefly to my mouth, then back up. “You didn’t seem to mind.”
He reached up slowly, giving me space to move away if I wanted to. His fingers stopped at my jaw, lightly testing the precarious boundary.
I didn’t pull back.
Instead, I closed the distance.
