Protectors of the Veil

by Dawn Matthews

  Even now, though Aisling was away at college and Nikki was months away from graduating high school, they spoke several times a day. Aisling knew when she got back to the dorms that night, she’d have several messages waiting for her.

  How did it go with lover boy?

  Did you do it yet?

  OMG. You did, didn’t you? You slut!

  J/K. Call me. NOW. I want details.

  As if there was anything to tell. Aisling and Hayden had known each other for less than six months but had been together for most of that. There was something more than like there but Hayden was taking it slow. Painfully slow.

  His fingers teased the sensitive skin at her wrist, making Aisling’s head spin. Too slow. He was taking it much, much too slow for her tastes. She would love to have something to tell her sister. Soon. His long fingers circled her wrist. Any day now. Hayden raised her hand to his face, pressed the palm against his cheek, kissed the inside of her wrist. Now. Now would be good.

  Hayden sighed and closed his eyes then, very deliberately, lowered Aisling’s hand, shifting so that she was forced to move her head from where it rested on his lap. She tried very hard not to groan as she moved into a sitting position on the battered leather sofa. It was always the same with Hayden; he would pull her close, touch her, even kiss her—quick, fleeting kisses that drove her mad and made her long for more—then he’d pull away before things could go any further.

  Aisling was ready for things to go further. A lot further. Like, all the way.

  She didn’t understand why Hayden wasn’t ready. Weren’t guys supposed to be the ones who thought about sex all the time? Weren’t they the ones who were always trying to rush things? Not this guy, Aisling thought, a little miserably.

  “Hunter is...” Hayden said, drawing her attention back to the conversation they were having before his touch sent Aisling’s hormones right through the stratosphere. “Difficult.”

  “Difficult how?”

  Hayden passed a hand over his eyes. A thin line formed between them. Aisling had never seen him look so tense.

  “Hunter is easily bored. Distracted,” he told her. “He’s the type who goes looking for trouble, just to have something to do.”

  Aisling thought she knew what he meant; there’d been kids like that at her high school, the type who thought chemistry was a class about blowing things up and shop was about cutting things in half. The kind who smoked pot behind the building during lunch and got caught fooling around in the auditorium when they should have been in class. She tried to picture Nikki doing any of those things, tried to imagine how she’d feel if her sister were the one looking for trouble, but couldn’t. It was laughable.

  “He doesn’t just look for trouble,” Hayden said, dropping his hand to look at her. “He is trouble.” His winter gray eyes begged her to understand. She didn’t, but he was worried enough to worry her.

  “Can’t you tell him not to come?”

  Hayden shook his head. “It’s... complicated.”

  He reached for her hand, using it to pull her close again. She nestled into his side, nearly sighing with delight when he wrapped an arm around her.

  “When is he coming?”

  “I don’t know. A couple of weeks, I think. I’ll text you,” he said. “It would be best if we didn’t see each other while he’s around.”

  Aisling was silent while she chewed over a thought that his words had created. It wasn’t like her to be quiet for so long; Hayden was the quiet one, the reserved one. Aisling was the riot of energy that exploded into his life one rainy night, six months ago.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked when she remained silent.

  She didn’t answer right away, making him nudge her chin up until their eyes met.

  “What is it?”

  Still, she looked uncertain.

  “I- You’re not ashamed of me, are you?”

  The doubt clouding Aisling’s brown eyes made Hayden hate himself. He wanted to tell her the truth—about him, about his brother—but he couldn’t. Not if he didn’t want to lose her. And he didn’t think he could stand to lose her. Not now, not ever.

  He stroked her cheek with the pad of his thumb, not trusting himself to take the caress any further, to do what he’d been craving from the moment he saw her. Hayden sighed.

  “No,” he told her, hoping she’d see the truth in his eyes. “Please believe me. It isn’t you, it’s Hunter. He’s the one I’m ashamed of.” It was difficult to stay in the present, with Hunter’s history to haunt him, but Hayden did. He clung to his present, to Aisling.

  “He should be ashamed of himself,” he said bitterly. “But he’s not. He never has been. That’s why I don’t want him anywhere near you.”

  Aisling’s heart swelled at Hayden’s words. He really did care about her—even if he couldn’t say it, even if he couldn’t show it. She knew that guys felt differently about using the “L” word. Guys were either terrified of it, or made it meaningless by using it to get sex. Hayden definitely wasn’t the latter so she guessed he was the other type: terrified.

  That was okay, though. She’d known that she was head over heels for him from the moment she blundered into him outside the campus coffee shop. Aisling had been in such a rush to get in out of the rain that she hadn’t seen Hayden coming out. She’d knocked his text books into a muddy puddle; he’d stolen her heart. Aisling wasn’t the type of girl who needed to hear the words to justify her own feelings. Hayden would tell her how he felt—when he was ready.

  “Hunter hurts people,” Hayden told her, revealing more of the truth than he would have liked. He needed her to understand. “If he hurt you...”

  Emotion clogged his throat, made it impossible for Hayden to finish the sentence. He was on the verge of telling Aisling something he’d never told anyone. Something he couldn’t take back. As he opened his mouth to speak, she looked up at him. Her chocolate eyes were full of warmth and affection.

  “I love you.”

  The words spring from his lips unexpectedly. It was impossible to say who was more shocked by them, Aisling or himself. They were the wrong words. Honest. Heartfelt. But wrong. He had meant to tell her the truth before he spoke those words, had always intended to offer her the chance to reject him before he offered her his heart.

  Too late. Much, much too late—but, then, he’d known that, hadn’t he? He’d loved her as long as he’d known her. His heart belonged to Aisling. Forever.

  I have to tell her, Hayden thought. She has to know now, before things go any further.

  But then Aisling’s eyes filled with tears and she gave him the most glorious smile he’d ever seen and said the words he never thought he’d hear.

  “Oh, Hayden. I love you too.”

  He didn’t deserve it. He had to stop it now, before it went any further. She had the right to know.

  Aisling rose to her knees on the sofa. Her weight pushed the tired old cushion down, bringing them even closer. Hayden could feel her heat as she leaned toward him. Bracing one hand on his shoulder, where it burned through him like the heat of the sun, Aisling kissed him. It wasn’t anything like the careful, chaste kisses they’d shared before; she opened her mouth to him, invited him in, and devoured him there.

  His mind exploded with the taste of her, the feel of her. He couldn’t get enough. Without making the decision to do so, he found himself dragging her onto to his lap and pressing her hot center against the hard proof of his desire. It wasn’t close enough. He wanted—needed—her closer, needed for there to be no clothes between them. His touch became desperate.

  "Hey. Hey!”

  It took a long moment for Hayden to realize that Aisling was pushing against him, trying to speak against his demanding lips. Too long.

  “Me too,” Aisling said with a laugh that didn’t quite manage to sound genuine. “But I’m pretty sure I have to be able to feel my legs for this to work.”

  Her words were light but Hayden could hear the fear behind them. Her arms, rigid
as iron beams, held him at a distance. Hayden closed his eyes and drew in a shaky breath. Bad idea. It carried the scent of her: her honey shampoo, the caramel lattes she couldn’t get enough of, the sweetness of her perfume. She smelled like innocence. Like youth and sunshine.

  Things that Hayden wanted very, very much.

  His fingers had dug into Aisling’s thighs. It took a colossal amount of willpower to force first one finger, then another to release her. An eternity seemed to pass before Hayden was able to slide out from underneath her. Even that simple movement drove him close to the edge. Closer than he’d been in a long time. Closer than he ever wanted to be with Aisling.

  “Hayden?”

  Ignoring the concern in her voice, Hayden walked to a bookshelf on the opposite side of the room. He pressed his forehead against the uneven surface, drew in deep breaths as he tried to replace the scent of the woman he loved with the smell of dust and decay. A floorboard creaked. Aisling was moving toward him. Not a good idea.

  “Are you okay?”

  Aisling’s stomach felt like it had dropped right through five floors of apartments and into the ground. She wished she could join it there. Embarrassment made her face flame. She couldn’t believe that she’d thrown herself at Hayden! And, judging from his behavior afterward, driven him away. Good going, Aisling.

  “Hayden, please.”

  She approached him cautiously, with one hand out, the way one would when approaching a skittish animal. He didn’t answer her, didn’t turn in her direction; just stayed there, with his face pressed against a row of old books. She couldn’t imagine what he must be thinking, what he thought of her. There were a few choice words that her mind was unhelpfully supplying—like slut, and desperate, and pushy.

  Hayden shook his head.

  “Don’t,” he said, stopping Aisling halfway across the room. “You should go.”

  A lump caught in her throat. Her eyes started to burn.

  “What?”

  “Please, just go.”

  Pain made her footsteps slow and heavy as Aisling walked to the door. She looked back over her shoulder just once before she left. Hayden hadn’t moved. He didn’t move until the door shut and the distant sound of Aisling’s step on the apartment steps echoed through the hallway. Only then did Hayden sink to his knees and bury his face in his hands.

  Hunter arrived the next day.

  It was two weeks before Aisling saw Hayden again. The first day that passed without hearing from him made Aisling feel sick. By the end of the first week, she was what her sister referred to as “a blubbering mess.”

  “Come on,” Nikki said in a teasing voice that they both knew was false. “He couldn’t have been that bad of a kisser.”

  Wrong thing to say. It only made Aisling cry harder. Nikki rubbed her sister’s back while the older girl sobbed into the flowery pink comforter that Nikki loved but their mother hated. At that moment, their mother was with their father at some restaurant downtown under the pretense of having a romantic evening. They gave their daughters the space they needed to work through whatever youthful emergency brought Aisling home in the middle of a semester.

  They hadn’t made a whole lot of progress in the working things out department—but Aisling was giving crying it out a good go. She had never been in love before so she had never been forced to endure the pain of a broken heart. Until now. Until Hayden.

  “I just don’t understand,” she said again. It had been one of the most persistent thoughts racing through her troubled mind since the day Hayden kicked her out of his apartment. Right behind “he doesn’t want me” and “I love him so much.” She never thought she’d be the kind of girl to get bent out of shape over a guy before. Either she had deluded herself her whole life or...

  Or Hayden was the kind of guy worth getting bent out of shape over. She was terrified that it was the latter—and that she had been the one to screw it up.

  Of course, it was you, you idiot! Was anyone else there trying to jump his bones?

  The thought made her wail into the hideous bedspread that her sister loved so much and refused to part with, even though the rest of the family hated it.

  Nikki continued to rub her sister’s back in a way that was supposed to be reassuring but went largely unnoticed. Truth was, Nikki had squat. She didn’t know how to handle a situation like this. She’d never been in love before (unless members of boy bands counted) and had no idea how to mend someone else’s broken heart. She was also more than a little terrified herself.

  Aisling was her big, tough, touch-me-and-you’re-gonna-be-sorry sister. Her best friend and lifelong protector. She wasn’t supposed to be broken! She was supposed to be the one doing the fixing. It made Nikki feel both terrified and sick to see her sister in such a state.

  Think, Nikki. Think! What would Aisling do?

  Cry uncontrollably on her little sister’s bed? No, that didn’t help...

  Nikki worried her lip between her teeth as she let her eyes roam absently around the room, her mind searching for something to say. Her eyes fell on an art print that Aisling had given her a couple years back. On it, a little cartoon girl in a mask stood in a pair of pants several sizes too large for her. It read “Put on your big girl pants and deal with it!”

  Perfect!

  “Really?”

  Aisling blinked blearily up at her as Nikki stood and stepped away from the bed, a stern expression fixed on her glossy pink lipped, glitter eye-shadowed teenage face. The change in her sister’s attitude was so sudden that it started her tears into silence.

  “Huh?”

  “Is this the kind of example you should be setting for your baby sister?”

  Pushing herself into a seated position, Aisling rubbed a hand against her wet cheeks, dashing the tears away.

  “What?”

  Nikki planted a hand on her hip in a way that was frighteningly like their mother when she was angry and leveled a narrow-eyed stare at her sister.

  “Here I am, months away from going to college and my big sister, who is supposed to be teaching me that it’s such a great life experience, is crying like someone stole her Barbie doll.”

  She flounced—really, flounced—across the room to lean against the wall, crossing her arms across her chest. The girl was five-foot-four-inches of attitude, if you ignored the tee-shirt featuring a kitten in a flying taco which, really, wasn’t easy to do. Aisling felt her lips start to pull into a grin even before she saw the pointed looks Nikki was throwing at the poster behind her on the wall.

  Put on your big girl pants and deal with it.

  Good advice.

  “Okay,” she said with a shaky laugh. “Okay. I get the point.”

  “Good.”

  Nikki returned to the bed, throwing an arm around Aisling’s shoulders.

  “It’s gonna be okay,” she promised, resting her head against her sister’s.

  Aisling didn’t believe her, but Nikki was right: she was supposed to set an example. She didn’t ever want to think about her sister, her friend, getting her heart dashed to pieces. The thought of Nikki lying in bed, crying her eyes out over some guy, made Aisling want to beat said imaginary guy over the head with something heavy. Or sharp. Or heavy and sharp. For Nikki’s sake, she had to pull herself together, had to set an example.

  “It is.”

  It was an empty promise, but it sounded good.

  “You’re gonna go back to college and show that Hayden guy what he’s missing, right?”

  An invisible hand squeezed Aisling’s heart at the sound of Hayden’s name. She doubted that she’d even be able to look at Hayden again, much less show him anything but Nikki was looking at her expectantly so she faked it.

  “Damn right,” she lied.

  Aisling wished she didn’t have to head back to campus—and not just because of Hayden. She missed this, missed the comfort and support of her sister. Which made her ask, “Hey, you wanna come with?”

  Nikki’s eyes lit up. She’d been dying t
o go stay at Aisling’s dorm but their parents had insisted that Aisling didn’t need a high schooler tagging along, even though she’d be a student there herself in less than a year.

  “Can we go to a frat party?”

  Aisling grinned but shook her head.

  “Not a chance.”

  “Can we play beer pong?”

  “Nope.”

  “I’ll go pack.”It took some convincing but their parents finally agreed to let Nikki stay with Aisling—the next weekend and not a minute sooner. Six days. She just had to go six days without losing it. Aisling thought she wouldn’t make it six hours but, because she had promised herself that she’d set a good example, she smiled and said she couldn’t wait.

  She didn’t make it six days but she did make it to her car, on the road back to campus before she let the tears return. Back at school, she focused on getting to class on time and counted the days until her parents dropped Nikki off. And tried to only cry in private. Aisling thought she was doing pretty well, too, until the night she walked by Hayden. Or, rather, he walked past her. Without even looking at her.

  Aisling hadn’t even had time to stitch her poor heart together and here it was, being crushed again. Trodden on by a pair of size ten Chucks. She was so startled that she forgot that she was supposed to be walking. While she was busy staring in shock at Hayden’s disappearing back, someone crashed into her from behind, unleashing a stream of obscenities that Aisling was deaf to.

  “Hayden?”

  People jostled her, bags knocked into her, someone stepped on her foot. Aisling didn’t notice any of it.

  “Hayden!”

  She broke into a run as she shouted his name. Time felt like it moved in slow motion. Hayden stopped, then turned. Aisling stumbled to a halt in front of him in time to see the look settle across his face. It was blank, uncomprehending and so, so much worse than anything she had imagined. Aisling had thought that seeing Hayden again might be awkward. She knew it would be painful. A hundred different scenarios had gone through her head the last two weeks, when she pictured this moment, but none of them had gone down like this.

  Sometimes he was angry. In some of them he was amused, laughing at her for being dumb enough to fall in love with him. Others, he acted like nothing had changed. In more than a few, he fell to his knees and begged her forgiveness. Aisling had pictured him in many ways but never —not even in her worst heartache-fueled nightmare—had he looked at her as if he didn’t even recognize her.