Lina: … and I’m a mess. I’m scared and giddy. Stupidly happy too. And he’s so good to me. So good that it feels like a dream I’m going to wake up from with cold sweat sticking to my skin. And you know how much I hate when that happens. Remember when I dreamed that I was getting raunchy with Joe Manganiello and the fire alarm in my building went off right as he was unclasping his belt buckle, and I was cranky for a whole month?
Lina: This feels a million worlds better than that dream. Galaxies better.
It was, and I wasn’t just talking about the way my body seemed to come alive under his touch. Hell, that was the smallest part of all of this.
Lina: I don’t want to wake up, Rosie.
Rosie: Oh, sweetie.
I could almost feel the hug that would have followed that.
Lina: Anyway, I’ll tell you everything about it tomorrow.
This wasn’t a conversation we should be having via text anyway.
Rosie: You’d better do that. Otherwise, I’ll kick your ass.
A knock came from the door.
“Baby?” said a deep voice from the other side. The word traveled right to the center of my chest. “I’m going to start thinking that you are hiding from me.”
God, I sucked so much.
Aaron continued, “Come out, and let’s go get something to eat. You pick.”
My jet-lagged stomach grumbled at the thought. “Even fish tacos?”
“Especially fish tacos.”
Dammit. He was really going after my heart.
“Okay, one minute!” I called as I typed another message to Rosie.
Lina: Gotta go. We are picking up takeout.
Rosie: Okay. But tomorrow, you and I. We’re talking.
Lina: Sí, señorita.
Rosie: And, Lina?
Rosie: It doesn’t have to be a dream you need to wake up from.
With that thought—no, with that hope because that was exactly what I felt as I read my friend’s message, foolish hope—I left my luscious and tiled hiding spot and went hunting for Aaron.
I found him standing in his living room, looking out the industrial-style windows facing the waterfront.
Aaron’s apartment was in Dumbo, an area of Brooklyn I wasn’t all that familiar with but I was starting to love more and more. The place was incredible. Spacious and stark, elegant but simple.
Walking up to him, I peered out the massive windows myself. “These views of the East River are breathtaking.”
“I’m very lucky to be able to afford all this,” he said, and he sounded thoughtful. More than he usually did.
Turning and angling my body in his direction, I laid my back on the windows and faced him. How could I tell him that this view—him—was just as beautiful? One simply didn’t say stuff like that. So, I limited myself to look and soak it all up.
Aaron stared into the distance, the sunlight coming through the glass of the windows and kissing his skin. His blue eyes glinting under the light.
But there was something on his mind. I could tell.
“Is everything all right?” I reached out and placed my hand on his arm.
Only then did he look at me. “Come here.” In a swift motion, he had me tucked against his chest. He squeezed me, swaying us. “Better. Now, everything is much better.”
I couldn’t disagree with him. Anything that involved being in Aaron’s arms was far better than anything that didn’t. I let him tug a happy sigh out of me, and I relished in the way he hummed when I squeezed him right back.
When he finally released me, his gaze wandered out of the window again, but this time, it did with a small smile on his face.
Baby steps.
My eyes somehow ended on an industrial-style console that perfectly complemented the vibe of the windows—and the rest of the place. The only items on its surface were a framed photo and what looked like a textbook.
Feeling curious about who was in that photo, I walked up to it and picked it up. A woman. A beautiful, blue-eyed woman with raven hair and a smile I was starting to need to breathe a little easier. My heart warmed.
I felt his arm come around my shoulders, and then a kiss was brushed against my hair.
Letting my body fall into him, I asked, “What was your mom’s name?”
“Dorothea.” I felt his voice rumbling in his chest, right against my back. “She used to complain about it constantly. She made everybody call her Thea.”
“Tell me more about her, about your family.”
He released a breath, and it hit my hair with a puff. “It was her grandmother’s name. ‘A pretentious old lady’s name,’ my mom would say. Her side of the family was very wealthy but always unfortunate when it came to their health. They called it a curse.” He paused, sounding a little lost in his memories. “When I was a kid, my mom was the only living member left, so I never met my grandparents. And when my mom passed away, the last one of the Abbots became me. So, I inherited everything. That’s how I can afford this place.”
“That makes sense,” I murmured. I considered myself lucky to work for a company like InTech. For having a good wage coming in every month. But this place belonged to a whole different kind of life. One where studio apartments could fit in bathrooms. “So, you don’t really need to work a nine-to-five job.”
“No, but I love what I do. Even if some might call me a workaholic cyborg.”
I snickered. “Oops, I deserved that.”
I didn’t think anyone at the office knew about this. Aaron had always been so … private. But the fact that he didn’t need to work and yet worked harder than the vast majority of us was commendable. It made me love him—
Whoa. I shook my head.
“I have always admired you, you know? As much as I’ve bugged you for being so pragmatic and hardheaded, I have always, always admired you.”
“I …” He trailed off, sounding at a loss for a moment. “Thank you, baby.”
My lips curled up as I put the frame back on top of the console. “Your mom was beautiful. I can see where you got your looks from.”
Aaron chuckled softly. “You think I’m beautiful?”
“Of course. You are more than just beautiful. Don’t sound so shocked. You know you are.”
“I do, but I never thought you were all that attracted to me. Not for the first few months at least.”
I snorted. If he only knew. Then, I thought about how he had phrased it. “What gave it away? What changed after that time that made you realize I was not made of steel, Mr. Oblivious?”
His hold on me grew a little tighter, and then he exhaled. “Remember that colloquium InTech hosted for high schoolers a few months after I started? We realized there weren’t enough chairs when the kids started filing in. I saw you sneaking out, and somehow, I knew where you were going.”
I remembered that day. Jerkface Gerald had miscounted the number of attendants. “Folding chairs.”
“Yes, you shot out of there to fetch the folding chairs we kept in storage.”
Aaron had appeared out of thin air that day, exactly how he always did. Then, he had given me shit about wanting to carry the chairs on my own, that it wasn’t my job to do that.
“So, what gave it away? Was it how I almost smacked you with a chair for being an overbearing jackass?”
“It was how you shivered when I came behind you to help you with one that had been stuck to a shelf. You know, right before you pulled again and went toppling down to the floor.”
Oh. Oh yeah. I remembered that precise moment exactly.
I had felt his body behind me. His arms came around me without touching me, and I stared—and shivered and flushed and gotten all worked up—at how they flexed under his dress shirt as he tried to disentangle that damn chair. It had been like a slap on the face, how hot and bothered that left me.
“That gave it away. I just knew that the red spreading through your neck and cheeks had nothing to do with you calling me a stubborn, heartless robot.”
“Did it …” I trailed off, unease growing in my stomach. “Did it ever bother you, everything I called you? Everything I said when we butted heads?”
My heart raced, as I feared his answer.
“No,” he said simply. “At that point, I took anything you were willing to give me, Catalina.”
Something staggered in my chest.
“The story I told your sister about how we met? I was only speaking the truth.”
My eyelids fluttered shut, and I thanked the heavens I was currently leaning on Aaron, that he was holding me against his chest, because I would have tumbled to the floor otherwise.
“By the time I realized how much of an idiot I had been by pushing you away, you already hated me.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “I heard you talk to Jeff. Accidentally.” That knot wouldn’t go away, squeezing my throat tight. “You said you’d work with anybody else, anybody but me. And I felt as if you had just pushed me aside. Deemed worthless as a professional because you didn’t like me. Because I had crossed some line I hadn’t known existed. I … how could I look at you and not think about it after that? I blacklisted you.”
“And I deserved it.” Aaron turned me around delicately, flushing our chests together very slowly. He looked down at me. “I meant what I said. When you brought that welcome gift to my office, something tore inside of me. You … distracted me. You stole my focus, Lina. Like nothing I had ever experienced before. So, I panicked. I refused to let that happen. When Jeff suggested I work closely with you, I convinced him that it would be a bad idea. I convinced myself of that too.
“But then I got to know you.” Aaron looked down at me intently, something weighing behind his eyes, pushing me—pushing us—closer and closer to an emotion that took more and more room in my chest with every second I spent looking into his eyes. “I watched you work, laugh, be this bright and kind woman that you are. And the crack that had opened that first day widened. It only kept growing. Making me realize how much of a fool I had been. By the time I knew I didn’t want to push you away anymore, that I couldn’t do it, it was too late. So, I took whatever you had for me even if that was hatred, antagonism, your obvious dislike, anything if that gave me a few minutes with you every day. If that put me on your mind, even for a little while.”
“Aaron …” I trailed off, everything inside of my chest, my head, my memory stirring into a loud and raging thunderstorm. “All this time.”
“I know.”
I watched his jaw twitch, his features hardening impossibly.
“You let me antagonize you. All this time, you sat there and let me do that.” My voice shook with emotion. With the loss of a time that we could have had. But it also shook with the lie that hid in my own words.
Had I really hated him at all? It didn’t seem possible at this point. Hadn’t I done the same and convinced myself of that because he had hurt me?
“Why?” The question left my lips in a whisper, for him but also for myself.
“Because it was all you were willing to give me. And I’d rather have you hating me than not have you at all.”
My body trembled; it shuddered under the weight of his words. With the truth underneath the ones rising to my lips.
Love. It had to be love—the uproar causing havoc in my chest. Realization grew in me as quickly as lightning hit the ground.
“I didn’t hate you,” I breathed. “As much as I wanted to, I don’t think I ever did. I was just … hurt. Perhaps because I had always wanted you to like me, and you made me believe you didn’t.”
Something flashed across Aaron’s face. The space between our mouths crackling with electricity and an emotion I had never, ever felt before.