Troublemaker (Goode Boys Book 1)

by Sean Ashcroft

  “I’m…”

  Aiden’s lips looked so soft.

  “Fine.” I swallowed, tearing my gaze away from him. I knew I was blushing, but I hoped he’d take it as embarrassment over falling off the couch in my sleep.

  Aiden eased me back down, sitting beside me, worry rolling off him in waves.

  Once, I could explain away as a momentary lapse in judgement. But now Aiden was in my subconscious, and I’d liked it.

  Even now, as he sat close enough for me to feel the warmth of his body, the pit of my stomach twisted uncomfortably.

  I wasn’t ready for this. I couldn’t handle it.

  “You do not look fine,” Aiden said. “I’ll get you a glass of water.”

  He was gone before I could protest, leaving me with the ghost of his hand on my arm and the increasingly faint memory of his mouth pressed to mine.

  Yeah, I probably didn’t look fine, on account of being in the middle of the biggest shock of my life.

  Dreams don’t mean anything, I told myself while Aiden poured water into a glass for me, the distant sound of it grounding my thoughts. It was just a dream. It wasn’t real.

  I’d had dreams about all kinds of stupid things in my life, why shouldn’t I dream about making out with a guy who was supposed to be my date at this wedding?

  It was playing on my mind, that was all. The fact that I’d have to keep pretending had been swirling around in my brain before I fell asleep, clearly it’d just… carried through.

  That was all. It didn’t have to mean anything.

  Aiden passed me a glass of water and watched me sip it, and the panic of getting off on making out with him subsided bit by bit. Aiden didn’t know, and he never had to.

  “You’re stressed,” Aiden diagnosed after looking intently at me for long moments. “Naps on the bed from now on, I don’t want you splitting your head open on me.”

  “I fell on a rug,” I said, fairly sure I’d never been in any real danger.

  My neck was killing me, though, and I hissed as I went to turn my head. Aiden was right. Should’ve napped on the bed.

  “Here,” he said, and before I could figure out what here meant in this instance, he was leaning over the back of the couch with both thumbs pressing into the back of my neck.

  The world’s most embarrassing whimper escaped me as he put pressure on the spot that hurt, teeth digging into my lip to stop myself crying out as he worked on stiff muscles.

  “Oh my gosh,” Aiden murmured, warm hands still on my neck, working on sore muscles without a pause. “Holy shit. How long have you been walking around like this?”

  “Uh…”

  Always, I thought. I’d had a stiff neck my whole life, I’d just pushed it past the point where it could cope by falling asleep on the couch.

  “You must be in so much pain,” Aiden said, softer. “Let me get… I saw something in the bathroom.”

  He disappeared again, the bathroom door swinging open a moment later. I stayed exactly where I was, torn between making an excuse to stop him touching me again and being eager to let him.

  Before I came to a decision, Aiden came back. “Go sit at the table,” he said, bottle of thick, amber oil in hand. The label looked boutique, and this was a cabin in a nice hotel intended for sexy weekends away for couples.

  Massage oil made all the sense in the world.

  I stood, whimpering again as my neck cracked, and paced over to the tiny two-seat table tucked away by the coffee maker.

  Aiden broke the seal on the oil, poured some into his hands, and set the bottle down, the heady scent of lavender wafting toward me.

  Too late to object now.

  Another whimper escaped me as Aiden put his warm hands on the back of my neck, soothing away the worst of the pain instantly, a ripple of pleasure rolling down my spine.

  “Let me know if it’s too much,” Aiden said. “We’ll take a break. You’ve got knots the size of tennis balls back here.”

  I wasn’t really surprised to hear that. Long hours, short nights, a pillow I knew I had to replace but hadn’t gotten around to yet, falling asleep at my desk… none of that could be good for my neck.

  Aiden, though, was magic. It hurt, it hurt like hell as he poked and prodded and dug his strong thumbs so deep into my flesh it felt like he was touching bone, but when he got something to give, it was incredible.

  A low moan rumbled in my chest as he loosened one of the worst knots, a rush of pleasure flooding my stomach.

  “That was a nasty one,” Aiden said, satisfaction in his voice. “Bet you feel way better.”

  I wanted to answer, but all I could get to come out was a desperate little whimper.

  Aiden laughed, keeping up his work without pause, and before I knew it I was sitting with my face pressed against the table, panting for breath and tingling with pleasure, another low, deep moan escaping me as he ran the pads of his thumbs up and down the back of my neck, knots all worked out, muscles relaxed and pliant.

  Arousal tugged at my belly button, my cock stirring in my pants as all the pain faded back and the pleasure kept building, Aiden’s strong fingers playing my body like a fucking flute.

  Did he know what he was doing? One part of me hoped so, and the rest of me dreaded getting caught with my dick half-hard from a simple friendly neck massage.

  “You look relaxed,” Aiden murmured, voice settling over me like a warm blanket.

  In an ideal world, I would’ve crawled into bed, jerked off, and then passed out right now. The only tension in my entire body was between my legs, a deep throb of arousal that I figured was a natural side-effect of not being in excruciating neck pain anymore.

  Nothing to worry about. I definitely wasn’t turned on because it was Aiden, just because there was no other possible response to this much physical stimulation.

  That made perfect sense.

  “Hadn’t realized how much pain I was in until I wasn’t,” I said, squirming as the massage turned into Aiden scratching the back of my neck lightly, a shiver running down my spine.

  “You do this for all your clients?” I asked, focusing on not giving away that I was getting harder by the minute under the table.

  “Nope,” Aiden said. “Do it for all my boyfriends.”

  I swallowed. Right.

  This was Aiden being good to me despite the fact that no one else could see us all over again, wasn’t it? Why did he keep doing that?

  Except for the part where he apparently thought I was hot, I didn’t get it. Where was the benefit to him?

  “Even temporary honorary ones,” he added.

  “Honorary?” I asked.

  That didn’t sound like fake.

  “Honorary,” Aiden confirmed. “Like an honorary doctorate. You’re not really my boyfriend, but you still deserve your own place in the lineup.”

  Why? What had I done for him?

  And why did I like the sound of it so much?

  “Because…?” I asked.

  “Because you’ve taken me away to a family destination wedding,” Aiden said. “Introduced me to your folks. Want me to watch your sister get married. I’ve never had anyone that serious about me before. Kind of exciting.”

  But it’s not real.

  Even as I thought it, it seemed petty to argue. Aiden sounded happy, and he knew why I’d brought him here, what my motivation was.

  This wasn’t Aiden fooling himself. It was Aiden enjoying himself. Making the best of current circumstances.

  I envied him more and more the longer I spent with him.

  “I can live with honorary boyfriend,” I said, sighing as he finally took his hands away from my neck.

  “Good,” Aiden said. “You’re very rewarding to take care of.”

  That was a new one. I wasn’t even sure what it meant.

  “Thank you. I think.” I forced myself to sit up, although I wasn’t about to stand while Aiden was still looking. “And umm. Thank you for fixing my neck. I owe you.”

  �
�You don’t,” Aiden said. “It’s nice to do nice things for people.”

  I wondered if he knew he was one of a kind.

  14

  Aiden

  More guests started arriving Wednesday morning, a trickle at first, mostly on Hallie’s side, and then a whole flood of Damien’s family at once around noon.

  I’d picked up a jelly donut for Carter this morning just so I could watch him eat it, and I had not been disappointed by the filling spilling down his chin, the way he licked and sucked on his fingers, or the happy noises he made while he ate.

  He’d been sticking close to me all day, and since there was nothing on the schedule until tonight—Hallie’s bachelorette party—we’d hidden ourselves away in a corner of the hotel coffee shop, Carter catching up on work, me with a sketchbook out.

  I was on my third sketch of the little forest friend I’d made yesterday with Carter’s dad when he looked over, our shoulders brushing together.

  “Wow,” he murmured. “I guess I knew you were good, but…”

  “These are just sketches,” I said. “I’d take more time with a finished piece. Although, the first client I had who asked for a deer, I’d never even tried to draw one before. Took me a week to come up with something I was comfortable showing them.”

  “A week?” Carter asked.

  “I would’ve liked two,” I said. “But it was a small, stylized piece and she loved it. Still comes back to me. There are people in the world who only have my work on them.”

  “You know. It’s just occurred to me that you don’t do your own tattoos,” Carter said. “Sorry, maybe that’s slow of me.”

  “You’ve never thought about it,” I said, laughing. “I designed some of them, but most of them are other people’s. A few of them are freehand, and I am not brave enough to do that on other people yet. I like my stencils, they make me happy and sure my client won’t hate me later.”

  “I guess it’s a huge responsibility,” Carter said. “If you mess up…”

  “It’s as permanent as anything ever is, yeah,” I agreed. “Expensive to remove and more painful than getting it done in the first place, I’ve heard. Have had to correct a few, uh. Less than perfect jobs in my time, though.”

  “You said you do scars, too?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded, sipping the coffee I’d been neglecting for the past twenty minutes and finding it still drinkably warm. “There’s a lot of crying doing that. The client and me. It’s a big emotional thing for a lot of people. But when they look in the mirror when I’m done, I can see a weight lifting off their shoulders. I see that a lot, actually, even if there’s no visible scar.”

  Was this too personal? Did Carter want to hear it? I knew it was okay to talk about with other tattoo artists, people who’d seen the same thing, that magical moment when a person really owned their own body, maybe for the first time.

  “That sounds incredible,” Carter said, eyes so soft and warm I couldn’t breathe for a moment.

  I was never particularly out to impress anyone, but I liked that Carter was impressed with me. When I’d been young and stupid, I’d wanted his approval more than anything—even if I’d gone the wrong way about it.

  Now, I was starting to think I had it.

  “There you are!” Carter’s mom called out across the coffee shop, striding over to the two of us with purpose.

  I clapped my sketchbook shut, suddenly anxious about letting her see anything in it. The more time I spent with her this week—and the more I saw the damage she’d done to Carter and his dad—the less comfortable I was around her.

  Even now, my stomach was clenching in anticipation of whatever she was about to do.

  “I need your help decorating for the party tonight,” she said, looking right past me as though I wasn’t even there. “I’m neither young enough nor tall enough to do it myself.”

  “Uh.” Carter glanced at me. Was he hoping for a rescue?

  I wasn’t leaving him alone this time. Hallie had never done me any harm and I didn’t mind doing something to help her out.

  “We’d love to help,” I said, offering his mom my brightest, most cheerful smile.

  If all I could do for Carter was take the heat from his mom for him, then I planned on doing it.

  The bar in town where Hallie was having her bachelorette party turned out to be cozy and expensive looking, the kind of place I wouldn’t normally have gone into voluntarily. If I was going into a bar at all, I liked my feet to stick to the floor a little.

  It was to Hallie’s taste, though, and that was what mattered. Especially since she was having a joint party with Damien and his friends, treating it more like a mixer than a last night of freedom. I liked that idea. The whole point of a wedding was to join two families together.

  “You ever getting married?” Carter asked, passing a length of bunting up to me. Standing on the ladder was my job, because I hadn’t gone pale the moment it was pulled out.

  Carter, it turned out, didn’t cope well with heights.

  I’d wanted to make a joke about him being so tall that another few feet wouldn’t matter, but firstly, he wasn’t all that tall—six feet even to my five-nine—and secondly, I could see the idea genuinely freaked him out.

  He didn’t even like looking at me up here.

  Which made it worse that his mom had been planning on letting him do this by himself. She either didn’t realize or didn’t care, and I wasn’t sure which one was worse.

  “You asking?” I teased, tacking teal, white, and gold bunting to the wall. The wedding colors, it turned out. I hoped no one was expecting me to coordinate my tie or anything, because I’d brought the only one I owned, and it was purple.

  “Have you seen how much work this is?” Carter said, gesturing at the room. “I’m never getting married at this point.”

  “Can’t believe you won’t make an honest man out of me,” I tutted, turning back to the bunting.

  “What does that even mean? What’s dishonest about not being married, exactly?”

  “I think it’s the part where women used to have to lie about not screwing their boyfriends if they weren’t married. I also guess they didn’t really have boyfriends. Suitors?”

  “Suitors is a nice word,” Carter said.

  “You wanna be my suitor instead of my boyfriend?” I asked, grinning down at him.

  “Does sound a little classier.” Carter stepped back so I could get down from the ladder. “I feel like it might involve a chaperone, though.”

  I opened my mouth to respond as I stepped down, but my stomach dropped as the final step under me gave out, breaking away from the frame with a sickening crack, and suddenly I was in free fall.

  I stumbled back, hoping like hell that if I went down I at least wouldn’t crash into the edge of one of the marble-topped coffee tables and die the stupidest death ever recorded.

  Something warm and solid got in my way, and it took my panicking brain a half-second to realize it was Carter, and I wasn’t falling anymore.

  A sigh of relief welled up in my chest as he wrapped his arms around me, steadying me while my heartbeat pounded in my ears.

  “See,” he said, close enough for his breath to tickle my neck and send a little shiver running down my back. “This is why I don’t like ladders.”

  A bark of laughter escaped me, head still spinning and heart still trying to beat its way out of my chest.

  Carter’s grip on me tightened for a second, a reassuring squeeze that pushed back the worst of the residual panic, his familiar scent catching my nose and reminding me that I was safe.

  He had no right to feel as safe as he did, but I’d felt that way about him since he’d rescued me from a fight on the second day of high school.

  Carter probably didn’t remember that day. I didn’t think he’d realized what was going on, even. All he’d been doing was looking for me so he could drive Kieran and I home. All he’d done was call my name, but it’d been enough to scare the other boys off.
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  I’d always been easy to impress.

  “You okay?” Carter asked, low and soft. He still hadn’t let go of me, and I didn’t really want him to.

  “What the hell have you done?” Mrs. K shouted before I could get a word in.

  Carter let go of me like he’d been burned, backing a full pace away.

  My guts twisted. He hadn’t minded touching me until his mom interfered.

  “Got into a fight with the ladder,” I said, forcing myself to grin at her like everything was okay and she hadn’t just set my pulse racing again, undoing all the gentle care Carter had taken of me in the space of a breath.

  “You broke it,” she hissed, looking from the dangling final step to me, then to Carter. “You were supposed to be doing this.”

  “I volunteered,” I said, shuffling sideways to put myself between her and Carter.

  I could take her yelling at me, but not at him. She couldn’t hurt me.

  “And look where that got us.” Mrs. K gestured at the ladder. “What do we do now? You have been determined to ruin this wedding since you got here,” she added with a sniff, still looking directly at Carter as though I wasn’t there.

  “Hey,” I took another step sideways, putting myself squarely between them so she couldn’t just look past me. “Is that any way to talk to your son?”

  Mrs. K’s nostrils flared, anger flashing in her eyes. “How would you know? Between your mother’s hands-off parenting and your father running off to God knows where, you have no idea how a parent should talk to their child. You weren’t raised, you were barely even dragged up, and now you come to my family wedding and make a spectacle of yourself at every possible opportunity and embarrass my son. You never grew up, did you? Always a troublemaker. Your father probably left because he couldn’t stand the sight of you.”

  I went to say something—anything—but the words caught in my throat. Every word I knew seemed to be stuck in the back of my throat right now, choking me, lungs burning for air and eyes stinging as tears welled up in them, panic and pain filling my chest.