Page 49 of His to Cherish
God, I was such a fool. I shifted my weight, unclasping my hands to push away, suddenly needing my space—a whole lot of it—when he stopped me.
He turned his head and his eyes met mine.
His eyes flicked to my lips then back up.
“My whole head is messed up right now, my life is messed up.” He blinked, and I watched all his pain, so clear on his face, harden him. “But he wasn’t wrong about you.”
As if that said everything, he leaned forward and brushed his lips across my cheek.
I pushed against his chest again, despite wanting to lean into the feel of him, as everything he’d said finally registered. I had promised him whatever he needed, and despite knowing that whatever he gave me would be good, I couldn’t be used again. Not like this.
Cory might have made me feel like a half a woman when he left, but he hadn’t taken my self-respect.
I turned from his lips on my cheek, pressing against his hands slowly sliding up my back, and ignored the goosebumps that followed in the wake of his touch.
My mind spun with questions and I settled on one. The only important one. “Am I just a place holder?”
“What the hell does that mean?” he growled.
With a quick grunt and a roll of his hips, he pinned me beneath his muscular frame. This time it was his legs that straddled my hips and he instantly rocked into me.
I tightened beneath him. Despite the sudden change in his emotions, he was still delicious. It took work to remain focused on my concern.
“Am I, you know, holding a place right now in your life because you don’t want to be alone?” He silenced me with a glare.
“Stop it.”
“You just said you’re here because of Derrick, Aidan.” I shook my head, tried to figure out how to explain my concern. “I can be your friend. I can help you and be there for you. But I can’t be used, not in this way.”
“Shit.” He flopped onto his back, pulling me with him until I was once again pressed against his side. One hand held me against him while his other hand draped over his eyes. “God, that’s not what I meant. It’s not even okay that you think that…that you think that of yourself, or that that’s the kind of man I am. I don’t use women, Chelsea.”
He dropped his hand from his eyes. With his narrowed, serious eyes holding my gaze, his voice so tight with tension, I felt his honesty pour from him.
His eyes searched mine, flicking back and forth between them, and I knew he could see my conflicting emotions there. The desire to trust what he’d just said over his earlier words. The mixture of lust and doubt. Fear.
I hesitated to speak. He seemed to need a moment, and when his fingers began sliding beneath the waistband of my pajama bottoms, I forgot what I was going to say anyway. It was tantalizing, mind-numbing, fire building.
“When Derrick was a kid, I always pushed him. Pushed him to do better, to do more, to try his hardest and then try harder. I wasn’t being a dick, but I told him that life’s too short for regrets. I wanted him to experience everything he could and enjoy the hell out of it. I wanted him to study as hard as he could so someday he could have his choice of schools. I wanted him to work harder at sports so he could find his passion and pursue it.”
My throat burned as his voice cracked. I waited in silence, assuming he wasn’t done talking but needed a moment to gather his thoughts. He twisted and rolled onto his side.
“Life’s too short to live with regrets. That’s what I told him, and yet for years I refused to go after what I wanted. Maybe today…tonight…earlier, I don’t even know when, I started thinking about that. How I’d pushed him to go after what he wanted, drilled these life lessons into his head, and at the same time I’ve been holding back on what I wanted.”
His hand lifted, and he pressed his fingers to my temple before pushing back my hair. His eyes followed the movement, softening in a way I hadn’t yet seen.
“Aidan—”
“I’m so fucked up, Chelsea. So broken, damaged so much that I’ll never be the same man I once was. I have no fucking clue what I’m doing most days anymore and I’m not lying here, making promises to you. I’m saying that I’ve wanted you, that Derrick wanted you for me, and that I’m tired of sitting back, not living in the way I preached to my son. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I want to live for him. Doesn’t mean I want you because he did. Doesn’t mean I’m here because he would have liked it, but I can’t say it doesn’t bring me some semblance of peace to know that he’s looking down at us right now, fucking thrilled for me.”
A burning ignited in my throat and tears dripped from my eyes. I cupped his cheek with my palm and whispered Aidan’s name, unable to say anything else.
In a moment, he’d shattered my heart with the way he spoke of his son and erased my doubts about what he was doing here.
I dipped my chin, pressed my forehead to the base of his throat, and let him hold me while we both lost control of our emotions. Tears silently slid down my cheeks while his shoulders trembled. When I was able to inhale a shaky breath and stop my tears from falling, I pulled back.
He rolled us again, pressing his weight into me. I felt him everywhere. The strength of his shoulders while my fingers wrapped around them, the warmth and width of his hips. His erection he didn’t seem to feel the need to hide. The way his legs pressed against mine as he settled between them.
“I don’t have anything to give anyone and I don’t know when or if I will, but being around you, you giving me what I need, which sometimes is just another breath in the room when I want to punch the hell out of everyone and everything I see…that helps. I wish I would have done something sooner—taken you out properly or some shit, but I didn’t. And I didn’t give Derrick the chance to see me with you, giving him something he wanted that he thought would be good for me.”
