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I was privately convinced that she wouldn’t be able to. That everyone would look at her and know we’d just spent the night together. But the idea of my shirt on her soft skin was so appealing that I couldn’t care to worry.
CHAPTER19
LAYLA
Igot away with wearing Aiden’s t-shirt with my jeans and blazer that first day. After that, we were more careful. I went to my place first to get a change of clothes, and then after a couple weeks, I began keeping things at his place. We were careful in other ways, too. Careful not to be alone together at the office, careful not to let our gazes clash for too long. It was easy enough during the workday—it was the happy hours, working dinners, and the last baseball game of the season that made things tricky. Inhibitions lowered. Stolen glances lingered for too long. More than once, we found ourselves sneaking off to find a place to be alone.
Still, we got away with it. Liv and Bran were the only other two souls in the world that knew about us, and even Aiden didn’t know about that. I wanted to tell him, but he had been so adamant that we had to keep this a secret just between the two of us that I didn’t know how to tell him it wasn’t. I’d never been a particularly secretive person, so it was strange to suddenly have two big ones from the people who mattered most to me in the world.
Aiden was a secret from the rest of my family.
Bran and Liv’s knowledge was a secret from Aiden.
Both stuck in my heart like burrs. Every time I bumped up against one, I felt a short, sharp jab.
Not quite pain, but an uncomfortable sensation that something was wrong. I shouldn’t be lying to any of them, but that was what I’d signed up for when I pursued my father’s best friend. And even though it didn’t feel right to deceive them, everything else felt too good to stop.
The reality of being with Aiden in every way I’d ever imagined as a lovelorn teenager eclipsed the fantasy. When he touched me, the dazzling array of feelings and emotions were so intense it made me wonder how I’d ever thought I was really in love with Christian. That pallid, washed-out version of a relationship felt like something different from what was happening between Aiden and me.
One night, as Aiden worked on his laptop on the balcony and I sat out there with him, drinking a glass of wine, he brought up what we’d been careful not to bring up.
My dad.
“I’m getting a beer with Jack this week,” he said without looking up from his screen. The harsh blue light brought the hard planes of his face into a strange relief. I could see his frown clearly enough, but the look in his eyes was lost to shadow.
Jack. He never referred to him as my dad anymore. It put distance between us and the overwhelming problem of my parentage. I twisted the wine glass in my hands and took another sip. “Why?”
“Because I haven’t seen him in a bit.”
“Isn’t that normal?”
Aiden shrugged his shoulders. “We catch a game or grab a beer every month or so.”
I did the calculation in my head. I’d been working at Cross Media for just over two months now. They were overdue. “What are you going to talk about?” I asked.
Aiden cut a quick look at me over the top of his screen. “I’m sure you’ll come up.”
My breath caught.
“Because he’s going to want to know how it’s going, you know. You are working at my company.”
Of course. I was caught in the eddying forces of relief and disappointment. I couldn’t imagine my father knowing that Aiden and I were together. But it was getting equally hard to imagine how we’d get away with not telling him eventually. This thing between us wasn’t going away. It wasn’t burning out or fading. If anything, it was getting more intense by the day.
Reading my mind–or maybe my face–Aiden said, “Do you want me to tell him?”
His tone was unreadable and his expression in that blue light was opaque. Looking at him gave me no clues on how to answer, and I needed clues. I myself was caught dead center between ‘hell no’ and ‘yes, might as well get it over with’. I took another sip of my wine to delay answering, then said, “Do you want to tell him?”
Aiden blew out his breath in a short, explosive sigh. “Yes. No. Fuck, I have no idea, Layla.”
I laughed, the tension easing. “I feel exactly the same.” I stood up, and when Aiden closed his computer, I slid into his lap. He was still wearing the clothes he’d worn at the office. The maroon V-neck shirt that everyone teased him about because it was a rare spot of color in his wardrobe. I slipped my hand underneath the hem and felt his strong stomach muscles tense. I curled up on his lap and explored the rigids of his abdomen, feeling his breathing change.
“I don’t know if you should do that while I’m talking about Jack,” he managed.
I kissed the side of his neck. “I don’t know if you should talk about Jack while I’m doing this.”
Aiden slipped his hand underneath my shirt, and I felt his broad hand span the width of my back. “That’s a good point.” He cocked his head to get a better look at me. “I’ve wanted to unbutton this shirt all day.”
My breathing quickened, but I kept my voice light. “I could tell by the way you were on your laptop when I got here.”
