“Yes, Ma’am.” I felt tears start to well up in my eyes. Ma’am. That’s all it took. I didn’t want to take up any more of Gina’s day, so I squelched the tears, put on a brave face and smiled.
“That’s my girl. At least you’re trying. You so know I can see right through it, though. It’s okay. I still love you. See you later.”
“I love you, too, and thank you, Gina. I don’t know what I’d do without you and Cheryl.”
“No reason to thank me. You’ve been there for us many times. Sometimes payback is a good thing. Look, even the weather is trying to cheer you up. I can see the sun starting to poke out from behind the clouds.”
The sky did seem to be opening up, and rays of light were streaming down around my yard. I watched her walk to her car and drive away. I was almost afraid to close the door. It reminded me of closing the lid to a coffin. I would be alone again.
Chapter Eighteen: Aiden
I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it, but Gina was right, I was willing to try anything to reach out to Aiden. Since I had exhausted all traditional means of communication, I needed to try her suggestion.
So where could I go to feel centered enough to try and contact him? My Zen. Aiden had taken my backyard and made it into a place of Zen for me. The rain had stopped, so it was only a matter of grabbing my papasan cushion and a blanket. I settled myself into my chair, and pulled my knees up to my chest.
“Okay, here goes nothing. Aiden, please, come back to me,” I expressed quite flatly and flopped my hands into my lap.
I felt like a complete idiot. This wasn’t going to work. I might as well ask to win the billions from the lottery gods. I had about the same chance of either request working.
I needed to make this more real. I started to picture Aiden in my head, his warm smile, and the timbre of his voice, his beautiful eyes. Wait, his eyes always seemed to reach into the depths of his soul when I looked into them. I’d focus on his eyes. I imagined he was standing in front of me and I was staring right into them.
“Please, baby, come back to me. I am so, so sorry for asking you to leave. I didn’t mean it.”
I opened my eyes and nothing. I felt a pang of hurt, lowered my head and began to play with the hem of my pants. Maybe if I just told him how I felt, really felt from the heart, he might hear me.
“Aiden, I am so sorry for what happened between us. It’s my entire fault. I was a complete and utter ass. I pushed you away right when I should have been pulling you closer. I wasn’t honest with you.” I said it with every emotion I had pent up inside me.
A breeze blew over me that chilled me right to the bone. I wanted to get up and hightail it inside but I wasn’t done. I was actually feeling connected to him. Well, at least talking to him was making me feel like he was with me in spirit.
“Baby, I don’t know how to find you. But I hope to God you can hear me, or at least feel me. I need you to know how I feel. I don’t want you to be gone, because … I can’t live without you. Please, Aiden, come home to me.”
“Sydney.” It was almost as though I could hear his voice. “Sydney?” I heard it again.
“Please don’t let me be hallucinating,” I whispered under my breath.
“If you’d just turn around, you’d see that you’re not.” He chuckled from behind me.
I jumped out of my papasan, causing it to spin on its base, only to dump me flat on my stomach on the floor. The cushion and cage encased me, making me appear to be some sort of awkward, bizarre turtle. I was staring at a pair of shoes. Normally I might be humiliated at my display of gracelessness, but all I wanted to do was make sure Aiden’s feet were in those shoes.
“Those are some awesome evasive maneuvers you have there. I would have been proud to have you as a member of my platoon.”
I felt Aiden start to remove the cage from my back, but I quickly scrambled out from underneath it, and literally crawled up his body until I was back in a standing position and nestled into his arms.
“Aiden. You came back to me; you’re home,” I said through tears. I was grasping onto his shirt, holding him in place so he couldn’t leave.
The waterworks were flowing so freely I was afraid I was going to drown him as I covered his face with kisses. I hugged him so close I was sure I was suffocating him, too. At this point, I was loving him to death, literally.
“Sydney, babe, I couldn’t stay away from you even if I tried. Believe me, I tried. It took everything I had to stay away, so I could regard your wishes. I tried to give you what you wanted, but it’s not what I want. I came here to beg you to reconsider. We can work this all out. I promise, I’ll do whatever it takes to make you more comfortable.”
“I don’t care about any of that. I just want you here with me. You’re a part of my life I can’t live without. Please don’t ever leave me again.”
“I don’t plan on it. Apparently you get violent when you’re alone. What the hell did you do?” he voiced his concern while cradling my bandaged hand in his. He ran his fingers over my wrist and eyed me carefully.
“It’s not what you think.” I knew his initial impression was that I had tried to slit my wrist. It looked like I had, the way it was wrapped.
“I should hope not, Sydney. That would have been very detrimental to our future together,” Aiden said sternly.
“I would never do that. I stabbed myself while trying to not starve myself.”
“Very interesting way of going about things. I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” I questioned.
“Because if I had been here, that wouldn’t have happened. I hate the thought of you in pain in any way at all. I’m sorry I didn’t come back sooner. Hell, Sydney, I’m sorry I left at all. I should have fought you to stay. I must have made you feel terrible, like I didn’t care about you or want you. It’s been torturing me since I walked out the door. I’m so sorry I hurt you like that.”
“Again, why are you apologizing to me? I’m the one who hurt you. I made you leave. I told you to. I turned my back and listened while you cried over me. Please say you forgive me, Aiden. Please. I can’t stand what I did to you. And I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but if you could find it in your heart …”
He placed his finger in front of my lips and shushed me. I felt like licking it. The feel of his skin touching mine was more than I could bear even from just his little finger alone.
“Have you eaten? Gotten any sleep at all? Does your hand hurt?” I was overwhelmed by his compassion for me after everything I had put him through.
“Gina came here and made me eat and shower. She took care of the cooking. Cheryl drugged me so I got at least three hours of sleep. Yes, it hurts, but I’ll survive. How about you?” I smiled and waited for his reply.
“First things first.” He took my hand, raised it to his mouth and placed a gentle kiss on it. All the pain seemed to melt away. “Yes, I’ve eaten. No, sleeping was not an option without you beside me. I’ve become spoiled in that respect. Does it feel better now?” he explained.
“Yes, actually it really does. Do you want to go inside? I can put on a pot of tea. Maybe we can talk things out or just hold each other for awhile.” I didn’t care where we were, really.
“I’d like to do all of it. I just want to be in your presence. Does that sound strange?”
“No. I completely feel the same way.” And I did.
He took my good hand in his and led me inside. He brought me to the couch in the living room and sat me down.
“I’m making tea for you. I don’t trust you in the kitchen right now,” he teased. “You’re hurt. I want to pamper you. Wait right here, I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
I nodded and watched him walk to the kitchen to begin making tea. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I was actually afraid to. I needed to be sure he was really here with me. I was also making sure he didn’t ever leave again. The thought of barricading the door crossed my mind.
He returned while the water
boiled, sitting right up against me and placing his arm around my shoulder. He pulled me close to him.
“Can I ask you a question?” I requested.
“You can ask me whatever you want. I won’t hide anything from you ever again. I realized how it must have made you feel, my being so secretive.”
“I shouldn’t have pried,” I told him.
“You had every right to, both personally and professionally. I was wrong to not be open with you.”
“Where did you go? I mean, were you with anyone I …”
“Stop right there. I would never run out and into the arms of another woman. So no, I was not with anyone. I went to a twenty-four hour diner. I spent a lot of time there. Sal, the owner and a very nice old gentleman, and I had a very long talk. You can thank him for helping me work some things out in my head. Very knowledgeable man.”
My sigh of relief was probably louder than it needed to be. He smiled in response.
“I know the feeling. Gina missed her calling as a psychologist.”
“I’m glad she was here for you. There’s another reason why I didn’t get any sleep. They don’t take kindly to sleeping in diners,” he joked. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t call you to let you know where I was. I just wanted to give you what you asked for. Space.”
“I’m a fool. I had the best thing that ever happened to me right in front of me and I threw it away. I won’t ever do that again. There is no me without you.”
“You have no idea how true that statement is, Sydney. There is no me without you, either. Now I’m going to make that tea. Are you hungry?”
“No, thanks. I don’t want anything but you. If the tea wasn’t on the stove already, I’d say forget it, too.”
The expression he had on his face was just so damn cute I couldn’t resist pulling him into a kiss. His lips lingered on mine before he tore himself away to head into the kitchen. He returned shortly with a tray holding the pot of tea, two mugs and cookies. He poured us each a mug and handed mine to me.
“Ask me anything. What do you want to know?” I eyed him while trying to determine if he would sincerely answer anything I asked him.
“You don’t have to do this,” I told him.
“Yes, I do. Now ask.”
“All right. Do you come from a big family?”
“I have two older brothers and my parents. Neither of my parents had siblings, so no cousins. So not really, just a very small family.” That seemed painless.
“Do you miss them?”
“I miss them, but my parents weren’t fond of my choice to join the military. It was really quite sad. They were opposed to war. They said if I partook in it, I was no longer their son in their eyes.”
“Oh my God, that’s terrible! How cruel. Whether people believe in war or not, every soldier deserves the respect and gratitude of their fellow man. Especially their family! You’re the reason they have the freedom and lives that they do. If it weren’t for our soldiers, we would live in a world of dictators and tyrants, unable to express who we are. Why can’t people see that?”
“Yes, it’s very sad that the very people we protect turn their backs on us.”
“It’s a crime. Treasonous, actually.” I felt his pain. I was disgusted at the lack of respect for all soldiers by many.
“Maybe. The world we live in isn’t what is used to be,” he said.
“How about your brothers? Do you speak to them? Do you look like each other?” I was imagining two other beautiful men both resembling Aiden.
“No, we all look quite different. My brothers each went their own way. As time passed, we lost every day contact and soon it became a call for a birthday or a card for Christmas,” he explained, disheartened.
“I didn’t have any siblings. I guess you don’t miss what you’ve never known or had.”
“We were never really that close. They were quite a few years older than me. They were already in college when I was only in grammar school. Were you close with your parents?”
“Yes, very. I loved my parents. We were very close. I shared everything with them. This is their house. You already know they’re both dead now. They died in an auto accident when I was only twenty-one.”
“Syd, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s cool. It was a long time ago. And anyway, I feel them here in the house sometimes. Their presence, you know? I haven’t felt it for … well, for quite some time now.”
“Maybe they moved on because they saw you were going to be all right and knew you eventually wouldn’t be alone.”
“I like the idea of that. Yes, that’s the way I’m going to think about it from now on. I wish they could have met you. I bet they would have loved you. My father was in the military, too. I had their total support in everything I did.”
“You’re very lucky to have had such loving and supportive parents.”
“Yes, I really was. More, please. Where did you grow up?” I was thoroughly enjoying our sharing.
“I grew up in a very small town on the west coast. I don’t even think it would show up on a map it was so small. I did grow up by the beach, though. Spent a lot of my youth there surfing.”
“You surf? That’s so awesome. I’m jealous. I wish I were coordinated enough to surf. Plus I’m pretty sure I’d be a shark magnet.”
“Well, this shark sure wants to take a bite out of you,” he said in a sultry smooth voice.
And that one small statement changed the entire dynamic for the rest of the night.
“Oh? You want to eat me?”
He growled, took my tea and dropped it onto the tray. His hands were on me in a second and I was soon underneath him.
“You have no idea how tasty you look.”
“I’m sure those cookies weren’t as filling as I could be. What’s stopping you?”
“Nothing!” I was expecting a feverous kiss, but what I got instead was the most tender and sweet pressing of his lips to mine. He held himself up on one elbow while petting my cheek and caressing my hair. Our eyes were locked, and the familiar hum was more intense than ever before.
“Sydney,” he whispered my name reverently.
“I love you, Aiden.”
“Sydney, you don’t have to—”
“Yes I do, because I do. I love you, Aiden. I don’t ever want to live without you. Please say you feel the same way.”
“You know the answer to that already, don’t you? How deeply I feel for you with everything I am. Without you, I’m nothing, so I have no plans of ever leaving you again. I told you once before, I can’t exist without you, but it has to be because you want to be with me. Because you choose to be with me forever.”
It made my heart hurt slightly that he didn’t say the words back to me. Who could blame him? The last time he did, I pushed him away. It was my turn to tell him how I felt.
“I do choose you. I only lost you for one night and I could barely survive. You’re like air to me. I can’t live without it or you,” I told him.
He reached over, pulled me close to him, and placed a sweet kiss on the top of my head. We stayed wrapped around each other, no words needing to be said. Each other’s presence alone was all we needed.
Chapter Nineteen: Cheryl
Around seven, the phone rang. I already knew it was Cheryl and Gina checking in on me.
“Are you going to get that?” he asked.
“It’s the girls making sure I’m still alive.”
“Then you should answer it. They deserve to know you’re fine. They were there for you. I want them to know how grateful I am to them for that. Please, tell them.”
“Okay.” I answered the phone and both were on the other line.
“How are you, Sydney? We’re both very worried about you. Do you want us to come over or do you want to come stay with us tonight?” Cheryl asked.
“I love you both so much. But no, right now I have company.”
“Oh? Do tell?” Cheryl said.
“I took Gina’s advice and called him to
me. And it worked. We should change your name to Gina-eous. He’s here with me now. We’ve been talking things out. Everything is good, so good right now.”
“Yay! I’m so excited. See? Everyone makes fun of me, but when you have a connection with someone that’s too strong for the boundaries of this world we live in, you can touch them with your soul. Cheryl knows. She might not admit it, though. Sometimes I send messages to her with my heart and it never fails, she always calls me within ten minutes.”
“Stop doing that, Gina. I’d call you anyway.” Cheryl was laughing as she said it.
“Well, sometimes I’m in a class and I need you to stop and get milk, so I tell you with my head. You always come home with milk,” Gina revealed to Cheryl.
“Now you’re just freaking me out. If I get thoughts about buying you expensive things, I’m going to ignore it.”
“Ladies, listen. I have a message for you both from Aiden. He wanted me to tell you how grateful he is that you were here to take care of me. He was very touched by your love and concern.”
“Tell them that I never would hurt you intentionally like that. I was only following your wishes,” he whispered to me.
“He also wants you to know he would never hurt me like that. That he was only doing what I asked. And that he will never hurt me again.”
“Well, let him know we appreciate that and we would never let our girl hurt through something like that alone. And we understand his side and we forgive him.”
I opened my mouth to repeat their words, but Aiden waved me off. We were sitting close enough he could hear them. They were both loud talkers.”
“Okay, we’re going to let you two have some more time to talk. Call us if you need anything, babe.”
“I love you both so much. Thank you.”
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