Page 53 of Lifeline

“No,” I said, slapping the side of his forehead and making him laugh. “You seemed lost in thought right after we talked about it.”

“My thoughts are all over the place,” he said, wriggling against me, pressing his face into my neck and kissing me. “I’m here with you, promise. All present and accounted for.”

“Good,” I said with a snort, reaching down to give his ass a little jiggle. “Very present.”

His snort was hot against my neck. “I’m actually too tired to follow through on that tease.”

“I…wasn’t trying to start anything,” I said softly, remembering having to clarify that quite a few times in the past so he wouldn’t get defensive and shut down on me.

“I know,” he said. “Or at least I figured you were about as wiped out as I am. I just wanted to warn you, just in case.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told him, trying to make my voice light.

Apparently, I was too tired for that level of deception because he picked his head up and looked down at me with a knowing look that made my stomach twist and turn. “I mean it.”

“I know,” I told him, feeling irritated.

“Do you?” he asked, and when I glared at him to shut him up and make him drop it, he shook his head, making it even more awkward by gently touching my jaw. “I’m serious.”

“Aidan,” I warned. “I get it.”

He let go of my face and took hold of my hand, bringing it down to his groin where I could feel he was half hard. “Do you?”

“I know what you’re getting at,” I told him grumpily. “And I believe you. But I should also point out that you could get hard back then too; it was just the…mental aspect that got in the way. So, that’s not going to help with my thoughts. All I can do is…deal with them.”

He let out a sigh, and I felt him draw away. “Okay, I get it.”

“No, I mean,” I said hurriedly, grabbing him before he could roll away. “I wasn’t…I’m not upset with you, and I’m not disappointed or mad. I just…I can’t not remember, you know? Just as I’m sure you can’t help but remember how I ended our relationship. Hence your comment while we were eating earlier.”

He opened his mouth, maybe to object, but he closed it and nodded. “I get it.”

“So let me deal with it, but that doesn’t mean you have to go away,” I told him, tugging him closer. “I’ll figure out how to get my feelings to fall in line with my thoughts one of these days. But for now, I’m just going to deal.”

“I…okay,” he said, and although he slid back next to me, I could feel a tension that hadn’t been there before.

I racked my brain for something that would make it easier on both of us, and I found, to my surprise, that it wasn’t a distraction, but the hope for some clarity. “So…there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask, or waiting for you to bring up, whichever came first.”

“Clearly you’re beating me to the punch,” he said with a snort. “What is it?”

“I mean, shouldn’t the context be obvious?” I asked, and when he peered up at me, clearly conveying that he was not in the mood to find the brainpower necessary to solve my riddle, I chuckled. “I just…you seem to have got over your issues from the past…how?”

“Seem to,” he said, and I winced at my choice of words, but he shook his head. “Don’t. Like you said, you can’t not remember; I know. But I also can’t not feel some sort of way about the way you’re feeling some sort of way. Like you, I just have to figure out how to get over it. Sheesh, maturity is for the birds.”

I laughed softly. “It is a rather annoying conundrum, though.”

“It was you,” he said softly, and I peered at him.

“What was me?” I asked.

“You were the reason I decided I couldn’t keep going on that way,” he said, laying down so I couldn’t see his face. “I just…I was so mad at you because of how it ended, how you avoided me, but then it was like…I had no one but myself to blame. I could blame you for all sorts of things, but I don’t know, there was a point where I realized I couldn’t keep blaming someone who wasn’t there. Which meant I had to look at the other person in the proverbial room, which was me.”

“And you landed on the sexual things?”

“I mean, there were other things I realized were part of the problem. You know, like keeping things from you. And that was tricky too because I realized that yeah, I did that because you could be a judgmental dick about things you didn’t approve of, but like, why didn’t I stand up and push back? Why didn’t I say, ‘Hey, this might make you uncomfortable, but this is something I really enjoy doing,’ and see if there wasn’t a way for us to come to some sort of middle ground. And I realized I did all those things because as much as I’ve got a bad temper and I can push back…I have a hard time doing that with people I really care about. And…shame. I felt shame and guilt for doing those things, and for not talking to you about them, and for keeping them from you, and for⁠—”

He trailed off, and I kept my peace, letting him work through it, even though I sorely wished I could see his face. Then again, he was probably keeping his face hidden because he didn’t want me to see all the emotions and feelings flashing over his features and betraying what was going on in his head. I wanted to be upset that he wasn’t being open, but…well, we both had a history of misreading what was going on in the other person’s head. Maybe it was better if I let him tell me without trying to translate what he was thinking.

“So I had to work on that, pushing myself to open up, to say what I was feeling and thinking. Which is…well, an ongoing process,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “But the sex thing? That was…well, therapy and bullying myself.”