I wasn’t sure the normal amount of Canadian snow was a sign of the end times, but I took her point. Even now there was a light fall, gathering on the shoulders of Aiden’s sensible wool-blend winter coat.
And everywhere else, but I was looking at Aiden’s shoulders right now. Some part of me believed that if I didn’t make eye contact with Mandi, she wouldn’t be able to see me, either.
“She’s pretty,” Aiden said, barely more than a breath.
My guts twisted. He was supposed to be on my side.
I knew Mandi was pretty. Everyone said so.
It was easily her best quality.
“Yeah,” I agreed quietly. “Yeah, she is.”
My dad fell in beside me, and it definitely felt like a show of moral support, so I decided to take it as one.
“She’s coming,” he murmured.
All of a sudden there was a hand on my cheek, gloved and warm.
Aiden’s hand, pulling my face toward him.
“Sorry about this,” he said, voice so low I barely caught it in the wind and snow. “You’ll thank me later.”
I didn’t have time to wonder what he was apologizing for before his lips were on mine, warm and soft, a searing point of heat in an otherwise freezing world. A surge of it travelled down my throat and settled in the pit of my stomach, belly clenching around it as senses I hadn’t opened up in a while roared to life at a moment’s notice.
Happy fireworks went off in my brain like it was New Year’s Eve all over again.
My lips parted of their own accord and my brain shuddered to a halt at the thought of what I was doing, but Aiden kept the kiss sweet and disappointingly short.
Wait.
Was I disappointed?
I couldn’t be, could I? Why would I be disappointed about Aiden not kissing me longer?
It wasn’t like I wanted him to do that, except for practical reasons. Holding Mandi off was the whole point, and a quick peck would’ve been enough for that. If anything, he’d gone further than he needed to.
No part of me planned on complaining about it, but that didn’t mean I liked it. Right?
My ears were on fire, but it was dark enough that no one but me had to know.
Aiden grinned at me as he pulled back, dangling the car keys in front of me. They’d been in my pocket pre-kiss.
“You were drinking,” he said. “It’s dark, there’s snow. I’m driving.”
Right. He’d stuck to water all night.
That wine had clearly been stronger than I thought, because my lips were still tingling and my heart sounded like it was beating on the inside of my skull right now.
Mandi was staring open-mouthed as I finally turned to her, my mom looking at me like I’d just…
Well, more or less like I’d kissed my boyfriend, who she didn’t approve of, in public. In front of her.
In front of the ex-girlfriend she was desperate for me to get back with.
“Uh. Mandi, hi. This is Aiden.”
Aiden offered his hand right away, all sweetness and light. “Current boyfriend,” he said.
Mandi shook his hand, a tiny smirk turning up one corner of her lips. I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t like it.
“Ex-girlfriend,” she said. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Aiden’s a tattoo artist,” Dad chirped from beside me, clearly excited to impart that particular detail to corporate career-woman Mandi.
Not that there was anything wrong with a corporate career. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought Aiden had the right idea.
The blazer I’d thought he looked incredible in had come from a thrift store, as had most of the rest of the things he owned, but he didn’t care. Why should I? Why should anyone?
He had something none of the rest of us did—a life he didn’t hate.
“That’s… adorable,” Mandi said, turning an unpleasant, patronizing smile on Aiden.
Aiden shuffled closer to me and rested his head on my shoulder, fingers curling around my hand. “Thank you,” he said, as though it was a genuine compliment. “I do try to be adorable.”
“Is anyone else freezing?” I asked, trying my hand at the same kind of tactful diplomacy Aiden had been practicing all night.
“I’m freezing and exhausted,” Aiden said beside me. “Come on. Take me to bed.”
Clearly, Aiden was all out of tact and diplomacy. The look on Mandi’s face, though, was priceless. I’d never seen her so affronted.
A tiny, unkind part of me did a little happy dance. Like my mom, she’d always run roughshod over me. And everyone else.
But not Aiden. No one ever got the better of Aiden.
“Sorry,” he said, yawning theatrically. “Tired. Totally meant to phrase that differently.”
“You’re young,” Dad said. “No point in pretending you’re not having more fun than the rest of us.”
Aiden beamed at him.
I got the feeling they were somehow conspiring, though they hadn’t been alone together the whole time we’d been here.
“Either way,” I said. “It’s late. And, uh. Good to see you, Mandi, but…”
“But you’re coming back to the cabin with me,” Aiden said, grabbing my hand and tugging me toward the car.
I couldn’t remember being more grateful to anyone in my life than I was to Aiden right now.
8
Aiden
Stupid.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Carter didn’t want me to kiss him. Carter had never wanted me to kiss him in his entire life, and I definitely shouldn’t have done it in front of his entire family.
This whole thing was stupid.
The drive back to the cabin had only took a few minutes, but Carter had been silent the entire time, looking out the passenger-side window and definitely not talking to me.
It’d only taken me a handful of hours to screw this up.
My stomach was in knots by the time I pulled the keys out of the ignition, worry over Carter and what he thought of me and how he felt about all this gnawing at my insides.
Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t have kissed him—or anyone else—without asking first. Not unless I knew for sure they were okay with it.
You’ll thank me later.
Yeah, sure, he’d be thrilled about it. I loved it when strangers kissed me out of the blue, too.
… I probably didn’t hate it nearly as much as he did.
We got through the front door and I hung the keys on the hook beside it so we’d be able to find them in the morning.
If Carter still wanted me to be here in the morning.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as soon as Carter sat down on the end of the bed.
He frowned at me, a tiny line forming between his brows. “What are you apologizing for?”
“For kissing you,” I said, suddenly uncertain. I’d definitely done that and it’d definitely been a surprise for him.
“You were rescuing me.” Carter shrugged. “Like you said, I’m grateful. Thank you for stepping in. I had no idea what to do.”
“But…”
“Way less weird than the time your brother kissed me,” Carter added.
What?
“I…” I began, not sure what to say other than what?
Carter chewed on his lower lip, like he maybe hadn’t meant to say that and regretted it now.
“When did he… why… what?” I blurted out, still trying to work the whole thing out in my mind.
Carter had kissed my brother.
My brother had kissed Carter, which seemed really unfair considering how badly I’d wanted to.
“Uh.” Carter scratched the back of his neck. “The summer before college. He… we… it was…”
Pleading grey eyes looked up at me, real distress written all over Carter’s face. I couldn’t unhear what I’d just heard, but I could drop the subject.
“Never mind,” I said, forcing myself not to think about it or ask any other questions.
>
Maybe I could get it out of Kieran sometime.
“Is it cold in here?” I asked as a shiver ran through me. I was still wearing my coat, but I’d thought the lingering cold was just because we’d been outside for a while and my body was still warming up.
But no. The air in here was cold.
“Did we forget to put the heating on?”
“It’s central,” I said. “Climate controlled. There’s an instruction manual. Maybe they forgot to switch it on for us when we checked in?”
“It was warm before,” Carter said.
“I’ll call the front desk,” I volunteered, striding over to the actual, real-life landline in the corner.
It’d been years since I’d used one of these, but there was a handy list of numbers on a laminated card next to it.
Don’t think about Carter making out with Kieran, I told myself as I dialed the number. Don’t think about Carter making out with you, either.
This was going to be a long week.
“You want the bad news or the bad news first?” I asked as I got off the phone, Carter still perched on the end of the bed like he was afraid to move.
“Dealer’s choice.” Carter shrugged.
“Heating’s out. But on the plus side, it’s out for everyone, so we’re not suffering alone.”
“That’s not as comforting as you think it is,” Carter said. “Means we can’t even go hide out in Dad’s cabin or something.”
I hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility, but now that he mentioned it… yeah, this was worse than it could have been. If it was only us, well, other people had couches we could crash on.
“No, right, okay. So. They’re saying at least a couple of hours to fix it, maybe not until the morning when there’s, y’know. Sunlight to see by.”
“This is sounding less and less promising as you go on.”
“Well,” I said, looking at the dying embers of the fire that’d been set in the hearth when we came in. It was more for show than anything, and I knew that, but it had to be better than nothing. “We bring the fire back, bank it, and then…”
“Share the bed,” Carter said, which was a surprise. That wasn’t where my train of thought had been going at all.
“Come again?”
“We share the bed,” he said. “We won’t both fit on the couch and it’s… it’s die-of-exposure cold outside. We’ll be a lot more comfortable sharing body heat.”
He wasn’t wrong. I was just surprised that he was suggesting it.
“Look at you,” I said, trying not to think about how exciting the thought of curling up next to him was. “Mr. Survivalist.”
Carter rolled his eyes, but the tiniest proud smile made the corner of his lips twitched. “Quit giving your loving boyfriend shit,” he said as he stood up, throwing my own words back at me.
Only my little bi heart wanted them to be sincere so badly that I couldn’t even laugh.
Guilty as I still felt, as Carter’s shoulder brushed against mine while we stoked the fire, adding logs carefully, one at a time so we didn’t smother the flames, I couldn’t stop thinking about kissing him.
About how soft and warm his mouth was and how there’d been wine on his breath but I didn’t really mind, about how warm his body had been.
It was still warm now, so close to me I could smell his aftershave mingling with the wood smoke, warm and inviting. I wanted to press my nose to his jaw and inhale, hold his body close—
If we were sharing a bed tonight, I needed to stop that trail of thought right there.
“It’s okay that you kissed me,” Carter said as we both sat staring into the fire, warming ourselves up before we made the dash across the room to bed. “And I asked Kieran if we could. Y’know. To see if…”
If I liked it.
He didn’t have to say it out loud for the words to hang in the air between us.
“And?” I asked, curiosity getting the better of me.
“Kieran’s like a brother to me, so it was kinda gross.” Carter wrinkled his nose. “Stupid test now that I think about it.”
“Stop me if you don’t wanna talk about this,” I said. “But uh. You ever think to find out how you felt about it with someone else?”
We were so close to getting somewhere. I knew exactly what Carter wasn’t saying—that he was still curious, and I was piquing his curiosity.
But I couldn’t say it for him. This was the kind of conclusion he had to come to himself, or it wouldn’t mean anything.
“If you’re gonna interrogate me, I get to interrogate you,” he said.
Avoiding the question.
Fine. He wasn’t ready for this conversation, and I wouldn’t make him have it.
No matter how much I wanted to offer myself up for experimentation purposes.
“Quid pro quo?” I asked, prodding the fire.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Damien,” Carter said. “Now you’re starting to sound like a lawyer.”
“I was actually thinking of Hannibal Lecter,” I said.
“Same difference.”
I laughed. Where did he get off being so funny? Not class clown funny, not everyone pay attention to me funny, but the kind of person who made other people laugh because of his sense of humor.
It was a shame to see a man with so much to offer so wracked with self-doubt. He clearly had no idea how attractive he was and he didn’t go to any trouble to make the most of his best assets.
“You’re so mean,” I said, still laughing. “Who knew you had a razor-sharp tongue?”
“Hey, you kissed me earlier,” Carter said. “You should know.”
“Not with tongue,” I pointed out. “If you want tongue, you gotta ask.”
There. I’d said it. Even if it did sound like a joke, at least Carter knew I was comfortable joking about it. Maybe that’d be enough to make him comfortable thinking about it.
“So do I get the first question?” Carter asked.
“Go for it. Can we make a rule that we decline to answer instead of lying to each other, though?” I asked. Playing a game was one thing, and I had so many questions for Carter, but there was a tiny little seedling of trust growing between us and I didn’t want to stomp on it.
“That sounds like a good rule, and you’re probably gonna use it right off the bat,” Carter said. “But I guess it can’t hurt to ask. Why do you have a cock piercing? Because you told me everything else about it, but the why is still tripping me up.”
I laughed again, thrilled to know that Carter had been thinking about my dick this entire time. Maybe I was in with a shot, after all.
“I can tell you,” I said. “But are you sure you wanna hear it?”
“I’ll risk wanting to bleach my brain,” Carter said. “I’m just… dying to know what the point is.”
“Well, firstly, weighs it down a little so I don’t have to adjust myself so often,” I said, which was true, but it wasn’t the real reason. “On my first trip to Belgium I met a guy who had one. Took him back to my hotel room and… y’know.”
“Slept with him,” Carter finished for me. It felt like a good idea to let him pick the euphemisms.
“Sure, that. Anyway. Came so hard I passed out, got him to do it for me the next day. Good guy. Last I heard he was living in a triad in Portugal.”
Carter blinked into the fire. “How did his piercing make you—oh.”
“Did you forget about anal?” I asked, laughter welling up in my chest again. I didn’t want to laugh at Carter, but he was adorable.
“For like a second. I dunno, I’ve never done it,” Carter said, cheeks flushed. Not from the heat of the fire, either.
“Well, you should,” I said, which I probably shouldn’t have, but I would’ve recommended it to anyone. What was the point of having a body if you didn’t get to play with it? Otherwise we might as well all be brains floating in jars.
“That good?” Carter asked, and he was trying to laugh it off, but there was that c
uriosity again.
“For me? Definitely. Can’t promise you’ll like it, but it also never hurts to try.”
Carter licked his lips, and I could practically hear him thinking again. “Guess it’s your turn to ask me a question,” he said.
I could’ve asked him about whether he’d ever enjoyed kissing a man since making out with my brother when he was eighteen, but I’d seen how distressed he’d been about answering the first time.
People weren’t kind to Carter. His mom, his ex, the few people at work he’d complained about to me while we’d been driving here.
I could be kind.
“What’s up with Mandi?” I asked, leaving plenty of leeway in the question so Carter could tell me what he wanted to say, and nothing he didn’t want to.
“That… that’s a huge question,” Carter said.
“Pick an angle,” I offered, sure now that I’d phrased it perfectly.
“She’s… very driven. Corporate ladder mountaineer. Assertive. None of those are bad things and I don’t mean to sound like they are, but…”
“She seems intense,” I said.
“Intense is a good word,” Carter agreed. “Too intense, y’know? She told me once that she planned to be married by thirty.”
“You don’t think that was maybe a hint?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, it was,” Carter said. “No question, Mandi meant I should marry her. But not because she liked me. Because it was a milestone to tick off. Like buying an apartment and getting promoted to C-level management. I was the quiet, meek, moderately successful husband who got paid okay but whose career would never overshadow hers. And like… none of those things are unreasonable, exactly, but they’re not…”
“What you want,” I finished for him.
“They’re what my dad had.” Carter chewed his lip. “I want to be loved. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”
“It’s not,” I said, swallowing past an ache in my chest. “Kind of the bare minimum.”
“She’s not a bad person,” Carter said. “She’s really not, she cares so much about so many things. But not… me. I’m not the easiest man in the world to love, but I’m hoping one day someone might be able to anyway. Mandi left me, but Mom won’t drop it.”
Troublemaker (Goode Boys Book 1) Page 5