Page 50 of His to Cherish
Holy crap.
My breath stalled inside my chest and then leapt at my rib cage like it was going to jump free.
“I want to be with you, Chelsea. I’ve always wanted that. You help in a way my friends can’t, but besides that, I just like being with you. I can’t make promises about where this is going because it’s too soon. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to see where it can go.”
“I want that, too.”
He dropped to his elbows, his hand went to my hair, and he tugged it gently. Playfully.
“We good now?” he asked, one eyebrow arched in question.
A smile tipped the edges of my lips and I looked up. “We’re good.”
I was better than that. Everything he’d said washed away my nerves and my fears, and I couldn’t ask for more than the honesty he’d just laid out there so blatantly, so easily. He gave it to me, unrestrained, despite the pain I knew it brought him to talk about Derrick.
His eyebrows pulled in really quick before relaxing. Tension faded from his eyes and his lips did the same thing mine had just done.
He smiled. It was small and it was faint, but it lit up the entire room, because Aidan smiling was one of the most fantastically beautiful things I’d ever witnessed.
“Pretty inside and out,” Aidan whispered. “My son had good taste.”
I thought of all the things Derrick was good at—sports, his kindness, his smiles, his grades, the friends he chose. Everything. Derrick was just good and kind.
“He had a good heart, too,” I murmured, my throat clogged with unshed emotion that I refused to let choke me. “Just like his dad.”
This time, Aidan didn’t move slowly or hesitantly.
His hand gave another tug on my hair, his head turned close to me, and his lips pressed against mine.
I felt it burn in my veins down to my toes until I felt myself squirm against him, needing to get close to him, but I stopped myself.
It was just a kiss.
When he pulled back, Aidan dropped his hand from my hair and moved it back to my hip. He readjusted us so we were lying the way we’d been at first, my front to his side, my head on his shoulder, and he sighed.
“Sleep.”
He commanded it as if I had no choice but to listen and my eyes would simply close based on his voice.
He was not completely wrong. After several moments, my eyes began to feel heavy. His breathing evened out beneath me, and just as I began to fall asleep, I did what I’d wanted to do since I’d first been pressed against him.
I moved my hand and draped my arm lightly across his stomach. His muscles tightened and rippled for a brief second before he relaxed.
It felt wonderful. Perfect, really.
And then my eyes grew heavier and I drifted to sleep, with Aidan snoring lightly by my ear, and even though I was half asleep, I knew I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
