Page 37 of Egg Me On
Dylan's expression softened fractionally. "Look, I've known you, what, four years now? Seen you rebuild engines most mechanics wouldn't touch. Seen you work thirty-six hours straight when a client needed their bike for Sturgis. Never seen you look at anything or anyone the way you look at him in those photos." He pushed off from the workbench. "Just thought you might want to see it for yourself."
He walked away, leaving me with my phone and the hollow feeling expanding in my chest. I wanted to call him back, ask him what he meant, what he saw that I didn't. Instead, I stared at the thumbnails, thumb hovering over the screen.
Fuck it.
I tapped the first photo. It was from the first night, taken at the campfire. Me sitting on a log, looking off-camera, my expression unreadable behind the usual mask I wore. Next photo. Group shot, everyone holding beers, Aiden standing slightly apart, eyes finding the camera, smile not quite reaching his eyes. Next. Aiden cooking breakfast, spatula in hand, laughing at somethingsomeone had said. The morning sun caught in his hair, turning it to burnished gold.
I swiped faster, pulse quickening. Aiden and me by my bike, him adjusting the glittery helmet I'd bought him, my eyes—Christ, my eyes were fixed on his face, not the helmet. Another campfire shot, Aiden mid-story, hands animated, everyone around him laughing.
And then.
The photo stopped my breath. It was from the second night, after I'd fucked him so thoroughly neither of us could walk straight. We sat around the fire, slightly apart from the others. Aiden leaned toward me, saying something no one else could hear, eyes bright with mischief. And I was smiling, my eyes soft. I looked younger. Lighter. Like someone had removed a weight I'd been carrying so long I'd forgotten it was there.
Like he had removed that weight.
But it was my eyes that shocked me most. They were fixed on Aiden with a tenderness I'd never seen in them before, had never felt capable of. It was naked, that look. Raw. Unguarded in a way I never allowed myself to be.
But it wasn’t just me. He was leaning in, staring up at me as he talked, like I had him captivated. Like he was feeling it, too. And somewhere, deep down, I had started to hope he did. Was it just that I was too afraid to ask? That anxiety coiled in my throat tootight that the hard questions and the revealing answers couldn’t work their way out?
I could remember that moment, the story he’d been telling had been a funny one. It was just a silly story from early in his food truck days that made everyone laugh. But Aiden always made everyone laugh, even me. Especially me.
And Dylan was right. It was all there on my face, plain as fucking daylight. What Aiden did to me. What he meant to me.
I swiped again, faster now, hungry for more evidence of this person I became around him. More evidence that he wanted me as much as I wanted him. More campfire shots. Aiden teaching Liv how to flip an omelet. Me watching from nearby, that same softness in my expression. Aiden stretched out on a camp chair, beer in hand, head thrown back in laughter at something Dylan had said.
Then the one that stopped me cold. Us on the Harley, coming around a bend in the mountain road. Someone—probably Marcus, who'd been riding ahead and stopped at a pull-off to photograph the group—captured it perfectly. My body leaned into the curve, Aiden molded against my back like he'd been built to fit there, his glittery helmet visible in profile. His arms were wrapped around my waist, face turned toward the view, and I felt the pure joy of the moment bleeding through the photo.
The joy he expressed every time he was on the bike with me, even that very first time, when he’d been scared shitless. Joythat I gave him, that I shared with him. My face wasn't visible behind my visor, but I’d let go of the handlebar to touch him, and there was something in the way my hand covered his on my stomach, something protective and possessive and strangely gentle. Something that made me feel the way he’d pressed even closer and told me that he loved riding with me.
"He looks good on the back of your bike. Like he belongs there. Like he wants to be there."
I jerked my head up to find Dylan had wandered off, and now Silas was standing beside my workbench, arms crossed, expression thunderous. I hadn't heard him approach, too lost in the photos, in the evidence of something I'd been too stubborn or scared to acknowledge.
"Thought you were at the supply run," I managed, lowering my phone.
"Just got back." Silas's eyes flicked to the disassembled carburetor, then back to my face. "Saw Aiden at that new brewery."
My stomach clenched. "And?"
"Said he's considering relocating. Permanently."
The word hit like a physical blow. I set my phone down carefully, afraid I might crush it in my suddenly white-knuckled.
Silas stepped closer, lowering his voice. "Look, I don't know what happened between you two in that bathroom yesterday—"
"Nothing." The lie tasted sour on my tongue.
"—but whatever it was, you fucked up." Silas continued as if I hadn't spoken. "And I don't care about your love life, Cash. If you want to be single and fuck around, that’s fine by me. But I do care about those breakfast sandwiches, which are the best goddamn thing to happen to this shop since we installed the espresso machine. So fix whatever you broke, because there's no way I'm giving up my breakfast because you can't get your emotional shit together and tell that adorable boy that you’re head over heels in love with him."
He was right. I knew he was right. But admitting it felt like swallowing broken glass.
Silas crossed his arms, studying me with the same critical eye he used on engines. "Look, I know you have some kind of trouble with talking. But if a person you like asks you all kinds of questions and you don't answer, he thinks it means you don’t care. And I think you do care.”
I swallowed, not sure how to explain that I couldn’t fix it.
"Maybe you're so afraid of saying the wrong thing that you say nothing at all. It’s too bad, because, in the end, silence is its own kind of answer."
The words hit too close to the truth. I looked down at my phone, at the photo still visible on the screen—Aiden and me on the Harley, fitting together like we'd been designed that way. The evidence of what I felt for him, what I'd been too afraid to name.
