Page 27 of His to Cherish
My brain was moving too slowly to process the sudden shift in him.
“Aidan,” I said, reaching out for him.
He dodged my touch and spun on his heels. “I gotta go.”
He walked away without looking back, jumped into his truck, and peeled out of my driveway, spinning his tires and leaving traction marks on the street as he raced the hell away from me.
Aidan
Fucking hell. I kissed her.
And I liked it.
No,likewasn’t a strong enough word for the reaction that had coursed through my body the moment my lips touched hers. With one hand gripping a beer, I sat on my back patio, and stared out into the darkness, but all I saw was Chelsea.
She was all I’d seen for years, even if I tried to date other women to forget about her. It wasn’t the time for us. It still wasn’t.
Jesus. She’d been nothing but kind to me for the last several weeks, and not only did I take complete advantage of her earlier, I’d acted like a fucking prick afterward.
If she showed up at my house and smacked me I wouldn’t be surprised. I’d toss her my other cheek. I fucking deserved it after tonight.
But damn it. It was Chelsea. Two years ago I saw her at the middle school, looking lost and sad, and holding herself apart from all the other parents while they helped sign their kids up for their fall semester classes. She laughed and smiled, but I knew even then it was all an act.
She was a shitty liar. I didn’t think she actually had it in her to tell a lie. But she hid the truth well enough behind fake smiles that still stole my breath and made my dick hard. We’d left that night and Derrick had looked back at her, pushing me in the shoulder. “She’s hot.”
I’d told him to shut up.
He’d told me to go for it.
I told him to mind his own business. He was only eleven and didn’t know anything.
Tears fell down my cheeks at the fucking memory. Of all the conversations I wished I could take back, that one wasn’t the worst. The times I’d yelled at him, told him to stop being such a little shit. When I had taken away his phone for not cleaning his room and we’d argued. When I had grounded him over who in the hell knows what and he screamed he hated me. Who gave a shit about any of that now?
Who fucking gave a shit about messy rooms and dirty dishes and missing curfews and not doing chores when now, all I wanted to fucking do was throw my arms around my kid, pull him close, and fucking kiss the hell out of him. He was too old for it, but damn I wanted that.
“Shit,” I muttered, and tossed my beer out to the backyard where at least another dozen littered my grass.
Teenage laughter rang out in the distance, echoing through the dark night, and I clenched my jaw as more tears fell. Broken. I was so damn broken. I had no business going to work yet, even though I did. I had no business doing anything. Every day felt like one foot in front of the other, going through the mindless motions, getting shit done until I could crawl into bed and bawl like a fucking baby.
No one saw my emotions. I never let anyone see them.
That first time I stopped at Chelsea’s house, I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing. I couldn’t go home. Didn’t want to go to one of the guys’ houses so they could all sit around, staring at the dad whose kid just died while we all acted like everything was fine.
It wasn’t fucking fine.
It was never going to be fucking fine.
Somehow, Chelsea’s soft voice, the lack of pity in her eyes, and the way she just put me to work helped. It kept helping. It gave me something to do when I wanted to pull out my hair and rage like a fucking beast at the unfairness of the whole damn world.
Laughter rang out again and I pushed to my feet, unable to bear listening to someone else’s happiness. Fuck them.
I trudged through my house, barely noticing the growing mess in the kitchen I didn’t give a shit about cleaning up. Messy kitchen, dirty dishes…it didn’t fucking matter anymore.
None of it mattered.
Yet when I climbed into bed, tears didn’t fall like they always did. Instead, I wrapped my hand around my dick, closed my eyes, and pictured soft pink lips that were fuller on the bottom than on top, hair that fell around shoulders and shone in the sun making it look like gold. I saw large blue eyes, slightly too large for a face, and a nose that was slightly turned up at the end. A body that was tight and firm with breasts smaller than a handful. None of it seemed proportioned just right, but it all fit together perfectly.
When I came, with a grunt that filled the air in my room, and my seed shot all over my stomach and clung to my fingers, I fucking groaned her name,Chelsea.
I cleaned up, climbed back into bed, and for the first time since she left my house after Derrick’s funeral, I didn’t cry. I closed my eyes and wondered what in the fuck I was going to do.
Nothing could happen with Chelsea. Not now. I didn’t have shit to give her, and anything I could try to give was fucking empty, like my heart had become. I’d always been attracted to her, but could never bring myself to act on it.
Doing it now would make everything worse.
It would be best if I stayed the fuck away. She deserved someone better. Someone whole. Someone who had the ability to fuckingfeelsomething.
And that man wasn’t me. Would never be me again.
