“Yeah! Shit!” I say, still not done laughing.
“Listen, I’ve changed a good deal but I’m still a Vanderwell. I wanted you to have the job you were dreaming of, on a beach somewhere, so I tried to make it happen. I…I make no apologies about that.”
“Did you tell your therapist about this?” I ask him.
“I, uh, did not,” he says, blushing so badly even his ears are red.
“Because you knew he’d tell you you are insane!” I yell at him. The nearby seagulls scuttle back a few feet from us.
Aiden just shrugs, “Love makes us crazy.”
“I can’t believe this,” I say, pacing again. “You broke my heart and made us live in agony for two months! And for what!”
“Well, I bloody hope it was for you! For us!” He paces too. “So you could get away from everyone—including me—and just think, just be, and that now that you have, you’ll say yes, that you’re sure now, and yes, that I can take you to lunch and yes, to dinner, and yes, to coming home with me every night for the foreseeable future!”
I cross my arms. “I’m still mad at you for leaving.”
“Understandable,” he says, planting himself across from me in the sand.
I roll my eyes and shake my head, “I can’t believe I’m saying this but…I’m willing to negotiate.”
At that, he beams, so I quickly add, “I’m only agreeing to lunch! It’s not my fault you bought a house here.”
“Lunch and dinner and I can stop by the cafe in the morning.”
“Lunch and dinner today only. And you have to sell the Coffee Cabana. Or, the building or whatever. You can’t be my boss’s boss.”
“Done, what else,” he says slowly working his way closer and closer to me.
“You stop being a smug know-it-all.”
He wraps his arms around me slowly, looks away like he’s considering it, then back at me, “I’ll…try.”
“You can’t just come in every day like a neanderthal and say ‘go to dinner with me,’” I add, grasping at anything now. His perfect, smirking mouth is drawing closer to mine and I can’t stop him. I don’t want to stop him.
“I’ll ask nicely, every time,” he says, whispering the words. And then, right as I lift my chin and start to close my eyes, he adds, “I’ve one more condition.”
“What! Ugh!” I grow and start to pull away but he holds me to him and laughs, “Tell me you still you’re sure about me.”
My turn to laugh, “Absolutely not! You bought a bunch of buildings along the coast! You’re pushy and bossy and ridiculous.”
“All true,” he says in cracked, almost scared voice that kills me. “So, tell me you’ll give me another chance?”
“I’m giving you lunch and dinner and that’s it,” I say, but the fight’s left me now. His eyes are pleading, warm, sweet, even. “Lunch and dinner and a kiss,” he says into my lips, barely.
“Oka—”
Yes.
He takes hold of me before I can finish the word, one hand holding my head, the other around my back. I whimper with relief and he shifts us at the sound, deepening the kiss. His tongue owns me, with long disparate strokes I can feel in my soul. Like he’s been dying of thirst the last two months and I’m his fountain in the desert. He groans and I shift into him right as his hand dips lower.
“Bloody hell, I want to lay you down right here in the sand and show you just how much I’ve missed you.”
“Aiden!” I laugh his name. He kisses me again, hard.
“Score another one for menotdoing exactly what I want, exactly when I want it,” he says as he shifts away to lead me by the hand again.
“I think that might have at least something to do with being arrested,” I say.
