I wasn’t going to let the chance slip through my slightly intoxicated fingers or legs—
A pair of big hands cut my trajectory, holding me by the waist.
“Easy there. Let’s keep the standing to a minimum,” Aaron said as he effortlessly returned me to my former position, right beside him. Perhaps a little closer to his body. Which I wouldn’t complain about. “Do you want to know that badly?”
“Yes. I want to know everything,” I confessed, following no-filter Lina’s lead again.
A humorless laugh left him. “I never planned for this to happen this way.”
My hazy brain didn’t really understand that, but before I could ask, he continued, “I always played football. That was all I knew for almost two decades. My dad was sort of a big deal in the coaching and management world back home, in Washington.” Aaron shook his head, those disheveled, short locks almost flickering under the soft light of the street. “He knew how to spot potential, had done it a million times. He was known for that. So, when he realized I had that raw talent he talked about so much, it was as if all those years of his career had been preparing him for that. For having a son he could mold into the perfect player from the very beginning.”
“He coached you since you were a kid?” I murmured.
Aaron flexed his legs and leaned his elbows on his knees. “More than that. He turned me into his own personal project. He had this kid with potential for becoming everything he had dreamed of, right at home. And he had the tools and the experience to make that possible. There was no room for failure. He worked hard on turning me into this flawless football machine, which he had carefully assembled together since the moment my legs were strong enough to run after a ball and my hands were large enough to hold one.” Aaron paused. He was facing the gloomy street in front of us, and I could see how his profile turned hard. “We both worked on that. And for the longest time, I thrived in it.”
I found myself shifting closer to him until my arm and shoulder were completely flush against him.
“How did that change?” I asked, letting my body lean a little on Aaron’s side. “When did you stop enjoying playing?”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, something softening in his expression. “That photo you mentioned earlier?” he asked, and then he faced away from me, staring into the empty street in front of us. “That was the last game I ever played.” Aaron paused, and I could tell he needed a moment to gather himself from the way his voice had sobered. “That happened exactly one year after my mom passed away.”
My heart squeezed in my chest, and I felt this urge to wrap my body around him, so I could shield him from the pain in his voice. But I limited myself to grabbing his warm hand and slipping my fingers between his. Aaron brought our interlaced hands to his lap.
“In that moment, as I stood there, watching the crowd and my teammates celebrate a victory I couldn’t bring myself to care about, I decided I’d pull out from the draft. And I did.”
“That must have hurt so much,” I told him, my thumb caressing the warm skin on the back of his hand. “All of it, losing your mom and letting go of something you had worked all your life toward.”
“It did, yeah.” His head dipped, and I watched him look at our intertwined hands. “My dad couldn’t understand it. He wouldn’t even try.” A bitter chuckle left him. “My football career had turned into the perfect escape, following Mom’s diagnosis. Instead of that consolidating our father-and-son relationship, it turned us into coach and player instead. Nothing more than that.”
More loss. My heart broke for Aaron. I squeezed his hand and then very slowly leaned my head on his arm.
He continued, “He said I was throwing away my life. My future. That I would fail. That if I did drop an opportunity that would change my life, he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. So, I graduated and left Seattle.”
Aaron still held my hand in his lap; his fingers had tightened around mine as he talked. I kept the side of my head on him as I felt my other hand fly to his forearm. It was the only way I could express how sorry I was for what he had gone through without engulfing him in a tight hug I wasn’t sure I’d be able to let go of. At least, not for the rest of the night.
“It must have been so hard, growing up, limited by someone else’s idea of what you should and should not be.”
He absently played with my fingers, the soft caresses of his skin against mine causing tingles to crawl up my arm. “I realize that now, in hindsight. I never noticed while it happened; it was just how things were. I was given a set of goals, and I simply went with it,” he explained, his thumb trailing up my wrist. “I was never unhappy—at least, not until I realized that perhaps I wasn’t completely happy either.”
“And now? Are you completely happy now, Aaron?”
Those soft brushes of his fingers against mine came to a stop, and he didn’t hesitate when he answered, “Completely? Not yet. But I’m working my fucking hardest on getting there.”
Chapter Nineteen
For anyone witnessing my foolish attempts at reaching the bedroom, it would have been pretty obvious that I was about to face-plant on the floor. And they wouldn’t be wrong. It was a wonder I was able to move at all, considering my feet barely lifted off the ground with all the dragging they had been carrying out.
Ironically, and contrary to the story my body told, I didn’t think I had ever felt more awake than I did as I crossed the threshold of that door.
My head was working at full speed. Processing everything Aaron had told me about his past. I kept spinning and turning even the tiniest pieces of information until I was completely sure I had them pinned down securely so they wouldn’t flee my memory.
Never mind that my legs wobbled with every step I took and exhaustion throbbed through my body. Aaron’s confession—because it had felt like he was unveiling something he had kept guarded and locked away from sight—had created a little riot in my head.
And my chest. Definitely my chest too. The organ that resided there had constricted and squeezed, and I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t supposed to feel that way. Or to act on it. A part of me missed being drunk or tipsy enough not to care, but after all the water Aaron had insisted on me gulping down and the fact that I hadn’t touched a drink after we went back inside the infamous bar, I didn’t have the luxury of that excuse anymore. It was past five in the morning, and the effect of the alcohol had faded to a very low buzz that indicated tomorrow wasn’t going to be much fun.
I didn’t realize I had been standing in the middle of the bedroom, staring into empty space, until Aaron closed the door behind him. When I turned, my gaze immediately fell on the glass of water in his hand.
I watched him walk to the nightstand, where I had placed a few of my things, and set the glass there.
“That for me?” I knew the answer, but the small gesture turned something inside of me to mush. Just like every time he had watched after me tonight. It just … didn’t feel all that small anymore. “If you keep taking care of me this fiercely, it’s going to be really hard to go back to real life.”
Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have phrased it that way, but after everything that had happened tonight, the careful grip I tried to maintain around Aaron seemed to be loosening.
Aaron nodded, his expression turning somewhat more serious. But he didn’t comment on what I had said. Instead, he unbuttoned the top of his shirt and then changed his mind and started fumbling with the wristband of his watch.
Feeling my legs wobble—for all the wrong reasons—I walked to the edge of the bed and sat on top of the simple and silky comforter. Stopping my body from melting into it right away, I exhaled tiredly, releasing some of the tension in my shoulders. But before I could completely relax, my spine stiffened with a realization.
The bed.
We would be sharing this very same bed tonight.
That fact had somehow fled my mind until now. And its return did strange things to my belly. Things that were not strange in a funny way, but in a rather exciting way. Things that heated my skin.
Well, if I was feeling this way and we hadn’t even gotten into bed yet, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what would happen when I found myself tucked under the same comforter as Aaron. His large body and my much smaller one sharing and crowding the modest space the mattress offered.
And I … shit.
In an attempt to distract myself, I occupied my hands, taking the flats off my hurting feet. Once I was done with that, I rubbed my temples, telling myself to chill the heck out because this was okay. We were adults. About to share a bed. So?
“How bad is it?” Aaron asked from where he stood still at the other end of the bed.
I chuckled, but it came closer to the sound that someone who was choking would make. “Well”—I cleared my throat—“I feel like I was run over by a stampede of very angry and very heavy antelopes that were in a rush to get somewhere.”
Aaron appeared in my field of vision, coming to a stop in front of me. “Are you referencing Mufasa’s death?”
My fingers stopped working, hovering above my temples. “You like The Lion King?”
“Of course.”
“Any other Disney movies?” I was tempting my luck here.
Aaron’s expression remained serious. “All of them.”
Shit. “Even Frozen? Tangled? The Princess Frog?” I asked, and he nodded.
“I love animated movies. They take my mind off things.” He dipped his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Disney, Pixar … I’m a big fan.”
This was too much. First, he’d opened up about his childhood earlier today, and now, this. I wanted to ask how and why, but there was a more pressing issue. “What’s your favorite?”
Please don’t say the one that will send my heart into cardiac arrest. Please don’t say it.
“Up.”
Fuck. He had said it. My heart struggled there for a moment. And that little spot that had been softening throughout the night got a little bigger.
“Oh.” The word breathily left my lips. It was all I managed.
My eyes closed, and my fingers resumed massaging my temples. Although maybe I should have been massaging my chest.
“That bad, huh?” He seemed to be gauging something when I looked back at him. My sobriety most likely.
“Don’t worry.” I waved my hand. “I’m okay. I’m not drunk by now. I promise I won’t puke all over you tonight.”
That didn’t earn me much of an answer, making me cringe over my choice of words.
Without further comment, Aaron disappeared in the tiny en suite bathroom, leaving me to deal with my awkwardness and thoughts.
Which mainly centered around Aaron—watching animation movies in the privacy of his home, particularly Up and perhaps finding a kindred spirit in Carl—and the damn bed again.
I stood up slowly.