“Well, that was weird.” I watch him from my peripheral vision as he reclines his head against the seat, brushing some of his dark locks off his forehead. “What are the odds that I made it three years without a single person I know coming here, and bam, two in two months.”
He hums, draping his wrists over the wheel, looking everywhere but at me.
My eyebrows furrow, and I shift, a pinch of soreness sparking between my legs. “Aiden?”
Blinking slowly, his head turns, and he drags his heated gaze up the length of me. “Yes, pretty girl?”
A blush lashes my skin, my chest warming the way it always does when he calls me that or tells me I’m doing something that makes him feel good.
“Are you okay?” One of my hands creeps over the console as his drops onto it, and I run my thumb over the Medusa tattoo on the back of his hand, tracing her serpentine hair as it wraps around his fingers.
He watches the movement, silver eyes softening at the corners. “Are you ready to tell me what happened three years ago?”
My hand stops, and I pinch my eyes closed.
“Riley.” I feel his thumb hook beneath my chin, and then he’s tugging up, his breath cascading over my face. “I deserve to know.”
It feels like an elephant is standing on my chest, making it difficult for my lungs to function. I swallow, hard, and the sound is loud in the confined space of the car.
“I can’t move on if I don’t even know what happened,” he murmurs. “And you can’t move on until you acknowledge it.”
Sorrow burns behind my lids, a fire blazing down my throat and incinerating everything on contact. My mouth opens, but no words come out, and then I feel his lips against mine—soft, tentative, and passionate in a way I haven’t felt.
His tongue invades my mouth, probing and twisting and exploring. Adrenaline rushes to my head, desire spiking somewhere in my thighs and roaming upward, coiling in my stomach until I’m leaning over the console, trying to get more.
He kisses me like we have all the time in the world.
Like this relationship wasn’t doomed at the start.
“Whatever this is, it’s not going to end well.”
The words uttered by the tattoo shop girl that night ring in my head, pulling me from the moment. I sit back in my seat slightly, disconnecting our lips, framing his jaw with my face.
Running my tongue over my teeth, I squint at him, bits of mint cooling my mouth. “How come you always taste like peppermint?”
He pushes one of the spherical candies between his teeth—just like the one he’d transferred to my mouth when he first showed up weeks ago.
“Is that some sort of oral fixation?”
“No.” His voice dips an octave, smoothing over me like satin, and he leans in, pressing his lips to my neck. As he drags his tongue up, alternating between suckling and licking his way to my jaw, he inhales deeply. “It’s a Riley fixation.”
A memory flashes, Aiden’s shoulders between my legs, his nose pressed to my skin.
“You smell so good. Like peppermint.”
“It’s a lotion,” I’d told him, allowing myself to indulge for the first time in my life.
Pulling his head up, I stare deep into his eyes, my heart beating so brutally against my chest that I’m afraid he might be able to hear it.
When he kisses me again, I forget all about his question.
When he pulls me into his lap, grinding me down on his erection, I forget about Mellie down the street, parting my thighs so he can sheath himself inside me. It’s a tight fit, both the position—my back digging into the steering wheel, his legs trapped beneath me—and the act, and yet there’s something strangely freeing about it, too.
We come together, crying out into each other’s mouths, and this time his kiss tastes less like peppermint and more like forgiveness.
Like understanding.
I can almost forget that I don’t deserve it.
41
Vibrations shake my pillow, pulling me from a sex-induced slumber.
Dazed, I lift my head, feeling around for the source of the disturbance. Riley’s tucked tight to my side, a tiny puddle of drool connecting her lips to my ribs, and for a second, all I want to do is lie back down and never move from beneath her.
But the vibrating doesn’t stop, and I don’t want it to wake her yet.
Shoving my hand between the headboard and mattress, I pull my cell up with two fingers, not looking at the screen before I roll over and answer.
I’m expecting my father, or Liam, or maybe even the hotel I booked for the New Year’s show next week, calling to confirm accommodations.
I’m not expecting my mother.
“Hola, papi. Merry Christmas.”
The sound of her voice in my ear this early, before the sun has even risen here, immediately knots my muscles together with dread.
“Callie.” My voice is groggy, but my mind snaps right to attention. “Is something wrong?”
Her laugh chirps through the line. “Does something have to be wrong in order for me to call my son?”
“Well, it’s the first time you’ve contacted me since I left New York.” Silence. I pull back the phone, checking to see if she got disconnected, but her name still lights the screen. “Callie?”
“I’ve never gone a single Christmas without hearing your voice first thing in the morning,” she says finally, and I can imagine her sitting in her condo on the Upper East Side, feet propped up on her glass coffee table as she stares down a glass of red wine.
There’s probably a white tree in one corner, the only one in the house because she can’t stand the needles getting everywhere. It’s likely decked out with white lights and blue ornaments—her favorite holiday colors when I was a kid—though I’m sure it was a housekeeper that got them from the attic and put them on the tree.
She’ll probably host some big dinner, inviting everyone in the area within our tax bracket, and she’ll remain in the living room, looking into her wineglass, wondering how the red liquid keeps dwindling when she swears she hasn’t touched it.