She didn’t say a word, but in only a few sentences, I noticed her movements change again, packed to the brim and overflowing with emotion, whatever my words were triggering in her showing in the ferocity of how she came at me.
“You don’t want that job,” I repeated, and this time, I felt my own reaction coloring the delivery of the words. I sounded, to my own ears, less steady and calm. “And I don’t want you to take it either.”
And just like that, whatever we were doing became less choreography that we were expecting and more instinctual. The moment she broke out of whatever pattern we’d established, the more I had to anticipate what she might do next. This wasn’t about hurting each other because it wasn’t a battle. What it felt like was a test.
But I was at a disadvantage wearing the mitts, not my typical gloves, but still … I blocked and spun, catching each offensive strike before she caught me. I almost smiled when she missed her opening, and when I saw her eyes flash, I knew I was in trouble.
She yanked my arm out with her own and tried to sweep my leg out from underneath me, and I caught it midair. With her shin tucked between my arm and side, she muttered a curse under her breath and lost her footing.
Isabel hit the mat with an oomph, arms splayed out and her rib cage expanding on deep, greedy breaths. I leaned over, mitts braced on my knees, doing some deep breathing of my own.
“You okay?” I asked.
She nodded, but didn’t move to get up.
I pulled off the mitt and held my hand out to her. Isabel visibly swallowed, and I had a moment of pause about whether this entire interaction with her was the dumbest thing I could have ever done.
Her eyes, in the overhead light of the gym, were a deep, midnight blue, something I hadn’t really registered before tonight.
I didn’t want to know the color of her eyes or the smell of her hair, but the feeling coursing through my veins at what had just happened was too potent for me to ignore.
Because it was life. When you lose someone you love, a part of your brain and a part of your heart believes you’ll never, ever feel again. That forever, you’ll walk around with numbness in this one portion of who you are. And for the past two years, it held true.
When Isabel sat up and slowly tugged her gloves off, tossing them to the side, I almost pulled my arm back. But then she took it with hers, and as I curled my fingers around her hand, that numbness was absent.
Pushed aside.
Completely erased.
In its place was ferocious need.
I pulled her to standing, and it was the closest we’d stood all night. She was taller than average, and when she lifted her chin to stare at me, I noticed that her inhale was a little unsteady. And her eyes, they dropped to my lips.
There was no one around us.
No one to see.
And for the first time in two years, I wanted to slide my hands over a woman’s body to see what her skin felt like under my fingertips. No, not just any woman. Isabel. She’d be warm and soft. She’d hold the evidence of how hard she just worked, and it made my skin tighten and my heart pound.
This woman, with all that banked fire inside her, had me holding my breath to see what she’d do next.
Because I would not, could not, be the first to move in closer.
Even if I wanted to. Even if I’d think of her like this later, imagine what we’d be like together, no matter how much I shouldn’t.
Not just because she was too young, because she was.
Or because she worked for me, which she did.
Because in two years, no one had ever made me want anything, and in a single interaction, she redefined everything, had me imagining her split wide underneath me, sharp nails, soft lips, wet tongue, and the taste of her in my mouth.
That was when Isabel licked her lips, eyelids fluttering. I sucked in a breath.
Then she yanked on my arm, sweeping her leg under mine, and I landed like a giant fucking boulder onto the ground.
She leaned over me with a grin, black braid falling over her shoulder. “You’re right,” she said breathlessly. “I don’t want that job.”
I exhaled a laugh as she walked away.
“See you tomorrow, boss,” she called over her shoulder.
Chapter Eleven
Isabel
My confident exit—which I was very proud of—lasted as far as the parking lot.
“Holy shit,” I whispered, hands shaking as I unlocked my car and slid in the front seat. For all I knew, Aiden was still lying on the gym floor because I’d put him there. “Oh, what did I just do, whatdidIdowhatdidIdo?”
But for as much as I wanted to dissolve into panicked laughter in that parking lot, a naughty little voice in my head was patting me on the fricken back because I’d had a glorious twenty minutes where he and I existed in this strange little suspended state of sexual tension.
Was it training? Foreplay? I wasn’t even fucking sure.
All my awkwardness gone.
He was talking.
I was talking back.
He knew exactly what I needed to settle the snarling angry version of me that I hated so much.
It wasn’t the boss and the manager. There was no awkward version of me on display. It was something else entirely. It wasn’t something that just played out in my vivid imagination. It had been real.
Because Aiden Hennessy stood over me, staring at my lips, and I swear on the benevolent spirit of Muhammed Ali, I almost died on the spot.
He was so big and tall and strong, his hands so broad and capable-looking, and if he kissed even a fraction as well as he did anything else, I’d never survive it. Forget sex, I’d perish from his tongue in my mouth.
I couldn’t even start the car because I wasn’t sure I was steady enough to drive home. Adrenaline let down or something. Whatever the comparable version was when you had unrequited lust pumping through your body instead of blood.
My phone was in my hand before I could blink, words crowding my throat before I could even make sense of what I wanted to say.
Paige hardly managed a hello.
“I need your advice,” I interrupted.
“Holy shit, finally,” she breathed.
Under my breath, I laughed, but really, I was still just … freaking out.
“Have you ever like”—I paused, running a hand through my hair—“wanted something, but you never thought you’d have it.”
Paige didn’t miss a beat. “Your brother when we first got married.”
I folded my arms on the top of my steering wheel and laid my forehead on them, staring down at my lap. I couldn’t do this. I closed my eyes and blurted out the first thing that came to my head. “Cake. There’s a cake you imagined eating. You know exactly what it looks like, you had every part of that cake’s existence memorized, and you dreamed about it for a really long time, even before you knew what cake tasted like.”
“I …” Paige hesitated. “I’m just gonna run with this. Okay, sure. Yes.”
Sitting up, I stared at the front of the gym, tried to imagine what he was doing since I’d walked out. “So the cake, suddenly, is right in front of you. You never, ever thought it would get taken out of the case. Display only, no touching, pretend the cake … isn’t yours because it’s not,” I said. “And then it’s just … there.”
Holy hell, I was confusing myself, but I’d committed to the analogy, and I was not dropping it now.
“Cake is there, excellent.” She cleared her throat carefully. “And have we taken a bite of the cake yet?”
“No!” I cried.
Paige breathed out a laugh. “Okay. That’s okay.”
“What if … what if the cake tastes like shit, you know? What if you’ve thought of it for so long, and never had it before, and your first bite is awful or just, isn’t what you expected?”
Silence dropped like a friggin bomb.
“Wait, you’ve never …?” Paige stopped. “Isabel, I cannot even believe I’m about to ask this
, but are you a virgin?” she whispered.
My face flamed surface-of-fucking-Mars hot. “That’s not what this is about.”
“I know we’re not talking about dessert, Isabel Ward.”
“Yes, we are!” I shouted, the tingling edge of panic coloring my words. “I said we’re talking about cake, so we are talking about fucking cake, okay?” I covered my face even though she couldn’t see me. “It’s all I can handle, Paige. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” she soothed. “So, you’re worried he—it,” she corrected instantly, “will disappoint you?”
Oh, holy shit, I was going to cry. This was awful.
“Or worse,” I whispered.
“Oh, Iz,” she said gently. “How can it be worse?”
Through the windows, I saw Aiden turning off the lights. With each one, he disappeared from view. For a moment, I thought I saw his silhouette by the front desk looking out at my car, but I closed my eyes so that I’d stop trying to see him.
He’d lost something—someone—incredibly precious to him. And I was the fumbling girl with a vivid crush and a temper, a decade younger than him. There were so many reasons I could think of why he might not be seeing that the same way I was.
That was always my problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t even really clear what he wanted from me, but there I was, prying open an impossibly big barrier because that was what he was already doing to me.
Aiden was opening me up, and he had no idea.
“What if …” I swallowed “What if it’s the most perfect, delicious, amazing thing I’ve ever experienced, and the … cake … doesn’t want what I want in return? How would you ever get over that?”
Paige exhaled heavily. “Well, I think that if someone shows interest in you—and why wouldn’t they because you are a fucking treasure, Isabel—then you should trust that. And trust that you know when it feels right.”
Finally, I smiled. “Why does it sound so easy when you say it like that?”
“It’s not easy, my dear girl. Relationships are never, ever easy.”
“It’s not a relationship, Paige.” I shook my head. “It’s a crush come to life. I feel like a child when he’s around, and I hate it. Or I did until tonight,” I amended.
“You would,” she said, voice full of love. “None of this surprises me about you, Iz.”
I sighed.
“Look at it like this, having big feelings for someone doesn’t mean you’re weak or asking to be hurt. But if you don’t want to do any biting right now, then don’t.” Paige’s voice took on a soft quality. “You’ve been hurt, kid. That makes opening yourself hard. But for the right person, you will want to.”
“I don’t know how anyone measures up to him,” I admitted in a quiet voice. The words hurt coming out. “After getting to know him. I don’t see it, Paige.”
Paige answered carefully. “I don’t think we need to borrow trouble just yet, okay? One day at a time.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
For a moment, we were both content to stay quiet, even if my reasons were different than hers. Paige, no doubt, was processing all the horrible baked good analogies I’d just tossed in her lap like a grenade. And I was quiet because I could no longer ignore how far down this rabbit hole I’d gone.
Protecting myself from possible pain came at a steep cost.
Besides my sisters and Logan, Paige was the only person in my life who I trusted with anything. The only other person who’d earned that trust. But tonight, Aiden walked in, and without flinching, he knew exactly what I needed from him to smooth the raised hackles along my back.
The more he pushed me, prodded me, the more I’d calmed.
He met me where I was instead of trying to smother the flames.
And not once, despite my growing feelings for him, had I attempted to reach out in the same way.
What he might need in this new season of his life would look completely different than what I’d just needed from him. And all I’d done was avoid. Deflect. Hide.
As the realization came, Paige spoke again, plucking thoughts from my head. “The only thing I’ll say—my darling girl, one of the great loves of my life—is that if you want to know what he wants, you may have to ask.” She paused, continuing when I didn’t raise a protest. “And I’m not just talking about wanting a bite of your own cake, you know? You may know the version of him from behind the glass case, but is that really him?”
What had I asked him in the first couple of weeks?
Nothing.
Because the idea of Aiden—and now, the reality of who he was—had me off-balance and at a disadvantage, even if the disadvantage was in my head.
I tried not to feel ashamed because he’d gone out of his way to make me feel comfortable.
Sometimes you had your guard so far up, you blocked the good stuff too. And I was better than this. I was sure as fuck stronger than I’d been acting. So what if I tripped in front of him and spilled some coffee?
I liked who I was, even if it was hard for other people to get a real glimpse.
One of us was a locked box, and the other was on display for the world to see. Neither made it easy to make real connections.
A shadow moved away from the windows, and he walked out of the building. Across the parking lot, even though it was dark, I knew he was watching me.
With a deep breath and pulling from a well of self-control I didn’t know I had, I turned the key in the ignition and started my car. As soon as the headlights went on, Aiden dropped his head and walked to his truck.
“One day at a time,” I repeated.
Chapter Twelve
Aiden
“Did you hurt yourself?” my mom asked.
Of course, she caught the wince. Anya was sound asleep on their couch, and when I leaned over to make my first attempt to pick her up, I must’ve made a face.
My sister, Eloise, perched on the kitchen counter with a spoonful of peanut butter in her mouth, nodded slowly in agreement. “He did look very old and slow just now.”
I speared her with a look.
She smiled.
Deciding to leave Anya where she was, for the time being, I stood quickly, like I was young. “Just fell hard at work when I wasn’t expecting it.”
My mom’s face wrinkled in concern. Eloise grinned.
“You okay?” Mom asked.
“Yeah. I was … training with my manager and …,” I paused, trying to decide if it was wise to even tell them a little bit of this conversation. No part of my interaction with Isabel felt safe for consumption yet. I wasn’t even ready to process what it meant, let alone spoon-feed it to my mother and my younger sister, who’d devour it with the same unfettered glee as she was attacking that peanut butter straight from the jar. “I just fell,” I finished lamely.
Eloise narrowed her eyes, but I knocked her legs sideways when I passed into the kitchen of our parents' house. She kicked out at me, catching my hip when I cleared the island, and she was lucky I didn’t dump her off the counter.
I’d already been kicked at enough by one feisty twentysomething tonight, and I didn’t need my little sister added to the ranks.
And dammit, like I needed the reminder that she wasn’t that much older than Eloise.
“When did Anya fall asleep?” I asked.
My mom grabbed a spoon of her own and snuck the container from Eloise. “’Bout thirty minutes ago. Colored a picture with El after we had some dinner. Clark was here for a while and played Uno with her. Her forehead was a little warm, and she said she was tired, so I told her to cuddle up on the couch. She fell asleep as soon as I turned the TV on.”
I rubbed my forehead wearily. “I wondered if she was getting sick. She was a little off last night too.”
Mom’s face, as usual, took on that look of concern. “She still getting finicky at bedtime?”
My laugh was dry. “Yeah. Last night we hit a new variant, though. She asked if she could sleep in bed with me, which she hasn’t done since Beth die
d.”
Eloise stared down at her lap, and my mom clucked her tongue. The lack of immediate reaction was nothing new to me.
This was my life on a loop.
Sometimes they piped up with suggestions, but for the most part, no one in my family had ever dealt with a loss at this level until my wife died. Their silence was a glaring admission. This sucks, and we don’t know what to tell you.
It was the largest piece to moving through life-altering grief. Making peace with that unfulfilling truth.
It sucked. And no matter what people said, their words didn’t make it better. Better came with getting through each day.
“Did you let her?” Eloise asked. For as much as she gave me shit—that was part and parcel with being the youngest of five and the only girl—my sister always trod carefully in this area.
I shook my head. “I can’t move backward now. I’m not really sure what triggered it, but I’ll keep an eye on it.”
“She climbed up on that armoire in our bedroom,” Mom said. “Had to bribe her with cookies to get her down.”
“How’d she get up there?”
She shrugged. “I think she used the small end table from your father’s side of the bed.”
I sank onto a stool at the island and rubbed my forehead. “That’s happening more again too.”
“Your house?” Eloise asked.
“The gym.” I blinked a few times, an unwitting smile pulling at the edges of my lips. “My manager was pretty impressive in trying to bargain her off the steel beams holding up the heavy bags.”
Eloise cleared her throat delicately. “The same manager you sparred with tonight?”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I don’t know, Aiden,” she said. “You tell us. You just”—she waved her spoon at my face—“smiled. A little. Sort of.”
“I did not.”
“You did,” Mom chimed in. “Sort of.”
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