I buried my face in my palms and sniffed.
He lifted my face with both hands.
“I can’t do that. Whatever is happening to you is just something we have to get through. I won’t let you feel bad about this.”
“You should stay away from me. It’ll be the most logical thing to do. I’ll understand.”
He laughed and hugged me tightly.
“Throwing my own words back at me, are you? That’ll be most foolish of me.”
I breathed in his musky scent, and I felt calmer.
“I’ve never felt so vulnerable in my life. Yet from this vulnerability, this weakness comes a strong desire to protect you. I cannot… I will not lose you.”
He pulled me down with him, so we both lay on the couch, his arms around me. I clung desperately to him as if the next moment, he would disappear and ended up sleeping like a baby.
The sun slowly rising to herald the morning woke me up. Aiden stirred behind me. I tiptoed from him, and for a whole minute, I stared at his face, which was gently caressed by the warm ray of the sunlight. He looked so beautiful with his hair thrown across his forehead. I could not believe he was on the verge of dying a few hours ago. A smile crept up his mouth, and he licked his lips, an action that made me think of the things he had done with it the previous night.
“Isn't it rude to stare?'’ There was a cheerful note in his voice.
“Didn’t think you were awake.”
He lifted his eyelids, and his smile widened.
“I’ll have to take a shower. Get you off me.”
His laughter rang softly as I took to the stairs.
"I should join you," he offered.
"That is a recipe for more sex."
"You do know you'll just end up back there in a few hours, right?"
He was not letting go, and he was right. Last night had opened up a gateway into something more beautiful than what I had imagined. My life was heading for a turnaround, part of which I liked and the other part I wished would just go away.
The sound of a sonorous breath-taking song drew me to the living quarters after I dressed up. Aiden had changed too and was now staring into the distance.
I enjoyed the view for as long as I could. When he turned around, he flashed white teeth and said, "Agnes Obel, you like?"
"Yes. It's very profound."
He asked me to dance with him. I gladly obliged and for a while shuffled my feet around until he dropped a bombshell.
“I love you, Simi,” he confessed. "So much that I don't even know what to do with myself. I am madly in love with you."
I froze. My hand in the air dropped back down slowly back to my side. I was at a loss for words. ‘Say those words back’ my mind kept screaming at me, but I remained silent, utterly dumbfounded.
Aiden was in love with me. I stood there, unmoving and unblinking.
He waited. His eyes were on me. Heart racing joyfully, a smile, and then an awful wave of panic.
“You don’t have to say it back.”
“Aiden, I...”
“Come on, let’s dance.” I moved along with him. He sniffed my hair and said, “you are so beautiful, Simisola Oladeji.”
I summoned the courage to look up at him. I pushed myself up to my toes and planted a kiss on his lips. It nagged me at the back of my mind why I refused to tell Aiden that I loved him. The reason was right there in our faces, taunting us. I just could not bring myself to admit my love for Aiden for fear of the permanence that it brought. Maybe I was just crazy.
***
Femi knew.
Or I thought he did. The way he kept glancing at Aiden and me was enough to stir suspicions. Or maybe he stared because of the way Aiden stood beside me.
“She shattered a glass cup and set fire to the curtains,” Aiden recounted the horror show. “Then she tried to kill me. Levitated and everything.”
“You levitated?”
I told him about my dream.
“I told you this would happen. This power is not yours. It will corrupt you, and soon you will have no control over it.”
“I’m doing a good job of controlling it now,” I retorted.
“I can see that,” he mocked.
“Fighting will get us nowhere,” Aiden jumped in. “Simi has to get back to work in two days. I told her it would be safer for her to come and work for me, but she said she’d rather die. Her exact words.”
“I’ll keep my job, thank you. This,” I pointed at the Aiden and myself, “does not spill into our careers.”
There was that look again from Femi.
He spoke up. “If there are no incidents in the next 48 hours, then you can freely rejoin the world.”
“Good,” I said with my head held high.
Two days came and went without another incident. It took a lot of willpower, but I did it. Only then was I cleared by Femi to go back to work.
Chapter 13
“What in the world is wrong with you?”
I squinted and groaned painfully in response to Nadia's words.
“So, let me get this straight. You spent your sabbatical at Aiden’s mansion. Supposedly had the time of your life…”
I might have omitted an incident or two about my time with Aiden.
”Then he told you he loved you and you didn’t say it back because of what exactly?”
Her judgmental look was the best. Nadia picked up another meat pie from her plate and chewed meticulously. We were having lunch together at a restaurant, a short distance from St. Cloud.
“You love him, don’t you? Because I know I do.”
“Being with him is like being on a special kind of high. It’s beyond overwhelming the effect he has on me.”
“Then why all the hesitation?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was scared to admit it.”
“Scared? Of what? Love?”
“Yes, maybe.”
I wasn’t scared of love, just of what was happening to me and how it affected him. I loved him and despised him at the same time, and I could not help but feel both ways. I had no control over my feelings of loathing because they were not mine in the first place. It was one of the reasons why I was not ready to jump on the love wagon just yet.
“That’s insane. He's a good man, I know it. It doesn’t even make any sense,” she said, her expression completely grim.
“I’ve had a bad rapport with the male folk since time immemorial. Something keeps popping up to end it all. Most of my relationships just tend to commit suicide. “
Nadia absorbed what I was saying and asked, “Then why drive Aiden away? He seems like a perfectly good guy.”
“He is. He’s perfect."
I needed to explain to Nadia my complicated feelings and ended up telling her a fraction of the truth. "It’s just that when he told me he loved me, I just thought it was too good to be true. It’ll just end like the others. Brief and with a broken heart.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve never heard any bad report of him with women, and I have double checked. I mean there’s little news about him because he tends to keep his private life out of the media, but there’s no scandal. Any relationship he’s had is non-existent, so he being so open about his feelings for you tells a special kind of story.”
There was a brief moment of silence.
“I’ve never told you this Oladeji, but I loved someone once.”
“Are you even capable of that emotion?” I giggled.
“Yes, once a long time ago. He was a nice enough guy, and I loved him, but I wanted other things; soul enriching things.”
“You mean money.”
“Yes. After being exposed to this world, I got to know that money makes iron float.”
'’Do you miss him?”
“Sometimes, but I have my expensive shoes and clothes to keep me company. You definitely have to tell Aiden how you feel.” She paused for a moment and asked, “How was the sex?”
“Nadia!”
“What? You kn
ew I was going to ask.”
I knew that.
“It was, out of this world.”
There was a series of giggling from her which stopped abruptly.
“Guess who just walked in here?”
“Who?”
. “Danny.”
He saw us and waved. Ever since Danny brought his cousin to the hospital, he kept on showing up at the hospital at odd times even though his cousin had been discharged. He was what you'd call a pervert with a heart of gold. He usually says the first naughty thing that pops up into his mind but other than that he was alright.
“I didn’t see you girls in there, so I asked and was directed here.”
“Danny, what are you doing here?”
“As usual I wanted to say hi to both of you. I was just passing through.”
“Liar,” Nadia hissed. “You better leave. I’m about to resume my shift.’
“Your lips are moving, but your seductive eyes are doing all the talking.”
“I don’t have time for this. My shift has ended. I’m leaving,” I told Nadia.
Danny’s eyebrows flew up.
“Why? I was going to invite you both to my house for a sandwich; you, me and her in the middle.”
“Just be glad it's us you said that to,” I said and stood up, “and not other women who would chew you up and spit you out like spoiled food. One of these days you’re gonna be hit with a lawsuit Danny. When that happens, I think you’ll learn to filter your words. Nadia, I’m off.”
“I’ll call you. Tell him.”
“Tell who what?” I heard Danny ask Nadia as I walked out into the afternoon. The clouds gave signs of an impending downpour, and people hurried about their businesses trying not to get caught in the storm. I had noticed the two men behind me as I ran to get to the tram station on time. They were in long-sleeved shirts and plain trousers hoping to appear inconspicuous, but I knew who they were; bodyguards sent by Femi. As if the ones hired by Aiden were not enough, I was resigned to my fate, not wanting to stir up any trouble.
While in the tramcar, Nadia’s voice kept echoing in my head ‘Tell him.’
“Adams Avenue,” I told the driver of the cab changing my direction from home to Aiden.
Henry answered the door and scrutinised me thoroughly with his dull calculating eyes before letting me in.
“He’s upstairs.”
“Aren’t you going to announce my presence?”
“We both know that’s not needed,” he said, taking to his right and leaving me with my own blurry thoughts.
I took calm decisive steps up to Aiden’s room and pushed the door open. He had a towel wrapped around his waist. His tie, shirt and suit were placed across the bed. His bare body glistened from all the wet.
“Hey,” I said, taking a stepping over the threshold.
His smile lit up his clean-shaven face. It was his weapon of destruction to my sanity.
“I was just thinking of you, and here you are.”
“Are you on your way out?”
“Yes,” he replied, planting a kiss on my neck.
“Then it can wait.”
“I would miss a thousand meetings for you. What is it?” his eyes probed. “Come sit.”
He took his clothes from the bed and placed them on a chair. We eased to the edge of the mattress.
“It’s nothing serious. I ... I just wanted to thank you, for everything you’ve done for me; for saving my life more than once. For being you. And also for seeing me as someone worthy of your love.”
That was not what I wanted to say. I had sounded like a machine. It felt rehearsed. But Aiden gave me a charming smile and held my hand in his.
“I have a feeling that was not what you wanted to say."
"No, not really."
“It's alright if you don't want to tell me now, but I'll let you know this. For a long time, I was alone, and that ceased to be so when you came into my life. You are the centre of my world Simi, and I have no other choice than to orbit around you.”
There it was again, a declaration of his affection and I came up with squat.
He tilted my face up to him and kissed me. My fingers knotted into his hair, pulling him closer. He gave a deep-throated groan and bit my lower lip.
"You will be late," I whispered.
“I think I can spare some time,” he said with a low moan.
Thirty minutes later, Aiden was out of the door to my disappointment. He had asked me to stay the night, so I could have dinner with him, and I said yes.
I was accosted by Henry on my way to the infinity pool. There was something eerie about him. Maybe he could never smile.
“I’m here just for tonight.”
I did not know why I was so eager to tell him the truth.
“I know. Master Aiden already told me.”
“Oh, alright, then.”
“He loves you. I doubt you can fully comprehend the meaning of those words.”
I doubted it too.
“Master Aiden is very different. I have a strong feeling you understand what I mean by that word.”
“Yes, he told me everything.”
“He may have chopped off a bit or two of the unpleasant part. It’s not easy for him being what he is. And telling you his most precious secret must mean that he trusts you. Can I trust you, Miss Simi?”
It felt like I was having a conversation with Aiden’s father.
“Yes. Yes, you can.”
He opened up. “His transformations leave him tired and weak for a long time, and as he gets older, it gets worse. One time he tried to control his hunger. He tried with all the strength he could muster to keep the monster at bay. But when he knew he could no longer do it because he was losing his senses. I mean literally seeing things. He had to let go, and I got him under chains just in time to stop him from ripping my throat out.”
There was a sudden pain in my chest as I pictured Aiden going through a torturous event like that occasionally.
“All night he howled and growled and tried to break free, and when morning came, he had broken most of his ribs.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I want you to know what you're getting yourself into, not to scare you away but to caution you. If you know all this and still want to be with him then I can work with that.”
“I want to,” I told him without thinking.
He responded with something similar to a nod.
“If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen. Have a wonderful evening, Miss Simi.”
I found a bubble chair by the pool and slumped into it. Aiden had deliberately left out details of his other side, but I could understand why. It was heartbreaking to think about all he’d been through ever since he came to know his otherworldliness existed. I could not begin to imagine the pain.
I was out there on the terrace, watching the sun slowly sink into the western horizon. The dark clouds were gone. The orange and red hue smeared across the sky looked like the work of a child playing with paint.
“I came a long way hoping to find my son here, but it seems I came at the wrong time. Typical.”
Turning the chair around, I met the gaze of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. She was in a brown sheath dress that hugged her body and revealed her long straight legs. Around her neck was a pink shawl wrapped elegantly to fall on her shoulders. She really was Aiden's mother no doubt. To me, she looked more like Aiden’s sister than his mother. Her blond curly hair hung away from her oval face. The only thing that showed her advancement in age was the wrinkles around her eyes when she forced a fake smile.
What kind of genes did this family possess?
The wind lifted part of the shawl up, and I saw the scar on her neck. I pitied her. To be reminded every day of what her son almost did to her. Of what her son was.
She clutched her heart-shaped purse in a manner that propagated the presence of royalty.
“Hello,” I said, not knowing what else to say.
“I’m Simisola Oladeji, ma’am.”
“You are prettier than she described.”
‘She’ I knew was Emmeline Zimmerman.
“Thank you.”
“That was not a compliment young lady. I'll get straight to the point." She was no longer feigning a smile. "You’re treading out of your league here. You have no idea what you’re playing with.”
‘'I beg to differ.”
“I see.” She looked around. "If you’re here then that must mean you know about him.”
I straightened up. “Yes.”
“You may be happy with him now, but one day when you’re not looking, he’ll hurt you, and he’ll hurt you deeply.” She sounded impatient. “Part of him is a monster.”
I wanted to shut her up. I felt that surge again. She cleared her throat again and again and coughed slightly. Then she coughed louder. I realised I had balled my hands into a fist and immediately opened them. She cleared her throat one last time, a puzzled look on her face.
I lifted my shoulders and faced her.
“You may see him as a monster, but he is not. He’s a beautiful, wonderful person.”
Her steel blue eyes dimmed a little.
“You're right. I see my son for what he actually is. He did try to kill me, and because of that, I pushed him away, but I see too a great man with a lot of potential in the business world. You look like a smart girl." She walked closer. "My son has a certain path chosen for him, and it unquestionably does not collide with yours. As C.E.O. of Jaeger Group, he has to forge bonds with a lot of people if he’s to move to greater heights. That bond includes getting married to someone of equal calibre who can take him there. Aiden is spoken for, and like a smart girl, you should know what that means.”
My evening had been instantly ruined by two words.
“Make sure to let Aiden know I was here and tell him Charlotte sends her love.”
She turned around gracefully and walked away.
Aiden was spoken for. It was the punch line to the whole joke. I knew it had been too perfect to be true. What had I been thinking?
I thought it would be unwise for me to just give a conclusion without hearing from Aiden, so I decided to wait for him instead of running away like my heart begged me to. I headed for the library, unable to think clearly. It was dimly lit, just like the first time I saw it. Nothing had changed except there were no books on the table. My eyes wandered to the white door. Behind it was a holding cell for Aiden. I tiptoed toward it and stopped some steps away. I wanted to go in but refrained myself. What would I gain by seeing such a place?
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