He’d painted the room he dreamed in the same colour as my eyes and hair.
My heart pounded, tears burning the backs of my eyes as I wandered closer to the bed. On the nightstand, tucked into a framed photo of Zeus, Curtains, King, and Aaron were two printed-out photos of me. One was the selfie I’d taken in Eugene’s Bar bathroom, and the other was a photo he’d taken of us outside Lin’s Beauty Emporium. His nails were blue on the hand holding my face, and the shape of his smile was pressed against my cheek as I made a silly face into the camera.
God, we looked happy.
I’d never seen myself look like that.
Not once in my twenty-five years.
I thought of Aunt Rita saying she loved the shape of my smile and hoped to God Aaron would feel the same when he saw half my face stitched together.
The shower was huge and tiled in glossy black so it felt like a spa as I cranked the water to scalding and carefully washed without getting my cheek or braced arm wet. Washing my hair took way too long, and my sling ended up damper than I would have liked, but I got it done.
When I stepped into the bedroom in a towel, Aaron had laid out an old Hephaestus Auto tee and a pair of boxers for me.They smelled like fresh laundry and his cologne, comforting and warm as I pulled them over my pinked skin.
I thought about keeping my wet hair down to shield my face but decided at the last minute to twist it into a bun at the top of my head.
There was no hiding from Aaron, and I didn’t want to.
I believed that the kind of love we shared––bone deep, lifelong––would make me palatable to him no matter what. It was just my own insecurities projecting onto him, and he didn’t deserve that. He’d shown me to treat both of us better.
Still, I held my breath as I descended the stairs on bare feet and found Aaron sitting at the round kitchen table doodling in a large sketchbook with coloured pens. He had changed into fresh clothes, his muscle shirt revealing gauze wrapped around a wound he’d taken to his deltoid. He didn’t look up immediately, letting me come close enough to peer over his shoulder.
It was the specs for another neon sign. This one said “asking for trouble” in cobalt blue.
When I looked up from the page into his eyes, they were black velvet and a soft place to land. I went easily when he tugged me gently onto his lap, wrapping an arm around my waist so I was pinned facing him, cut cheek on display.
“You gotta know, Blue,” he said, so serious every word resonated like a struck church bell, like a holy toll, turning his home into a sacred space and me into a reverent relic. “If I gotta go to hell and back, fight the fuckin’ devil himself, sacrifice everyone’a my sins or my life itself, I’ll do it. You think you’re more trouble than you’re worth, but you gotta understand I’ve always been the kinda man who’s not afraid to ask for trouble if it’s worth the effort and there’s no doubt in my mind keepin’ you safe and loved is worth it all.”
“Aaron,” I breathed as he reached up to cup my face carefully beneath the stitched skin.
“All my life, I’ve fought to find beauty in the chaos, to be happy even and especially in the hard times ’cause if I waited for the good, I’d be sad most’a the time. I didn’t even realize how lonely I still was ’til I saw your colour blue and knew I needed it brightenin’ my life.”
I cupped his hand to my cheek and dipped my forehead to press against his so all I could see were those warm, dark eyes. “I didn’t know what happiness was until I met you.”
“Then please,” he started, pulling away to bring the bowl of soup waiting beside his sketchbook to the edge of the table before me. He’d made me Alpha-getti. A laughing sob escaped my mouth because I’d told him once how nostalgic I was for them after raising Red and me on the sweet red soup. “I know it’s dangerous to stay here when your piece’a shit for a father and Hazard are still around, but I promised to keep you safe, and I fuckin’ meant it. Don’t want to live without you, though, so you wanna run, I’m comin’ with you.” He ignored my gasp of shock and barreled on. “You want that, I’m in, Blue. I swear it. But please, consider stayin’. Consider trustin’ me and my brothers to keep you safe. ’Cause you’ve been searchin’ for home and family your whole life just like me, and I want the chance to make you part’a the one I was lucky enough to find here in Entrance.”
Before I could respond, he pushed the bowl a little closer, drawing my attention to the letters carefully arranged in the spoon in the middle of the soup.
Be my Old Lady.
“I belong exactly where you are, wherever that is,” I promised him as tears slid past the rims of my lids and wet my cheeks. It was funny that I’d cried more in the last couple of months knowing Aaron than I had the entire time I’d been stuck with Rooster then Hazard growing up. Hope and happiness seemed to have that effect on me. “And I’d never take you from your family.”
“So you’ll stay,” he confirmed, a huge grin splitting his handsome face and shining on me like unfiltered sunlight. “You’ll be mine.”
“I already was,” I admitted.
He laughed then, bright, bubbling laughter that spoke of relief and hope and joy. It was contagious, and soon I was laughing too, the sound mixing between our mouths as he drew me closer to seal our lips together. He tasted like sweet red sauce, and the familiar burn of his scruff on my chin felt like coming home.
“You should eat,” he murmured against my cheek before brushing a tender kiss below my wound.
“Later.”
He chuckled again but moved his hand to my hair to gently pull me away, face creased with happiness. “No, Blue. Be a good girl so the meds don’t make you sick.”
I pouted but lifted the spoon to eat his message off the metal.
He grinned.
