Page 57 of Just a Footnote

“Hmm,” Miles hums. Quiet fills the apartment after that. The air is stifling. Aiden feels a little sick actually. Everything is too much all at once.

Aiden makes the grave mistake of thinking the matter is dropped. It isn’t. If Miles is anything he is a meddler and Archer is an instigator to his bones. So Aiden doesn’t really know why he’s surprised to find Liam standing in their kitchen when he gets home from the gym Thursday evening. The shock of being in the same room with Liam almost overrides all his senses, almost makes him fall to his knees, but Aiden isn’t weak.

“Why?” Aiden asks, looking up towards the heavens.

“Dramatic,” Liam mutters, annoyance clear in his voice.

“Oh? I’m dramatic?” Aiden asks, pasting a fake smile on his face. “I’m the dramatic one between the two of us?”

“Right now you are.”

“Whatever.”

“Aiden,” Liam says his name softly. He steps out of the kitchen, getting into Aiden’s space in the hallway. It’s too much.Liam’s too close. He knows exactly where this will lead. “Why are you being like this? Total radio silence? Imissyou.”

A knife to the gut would have been nicer. Aiden hasn’t ever been one for making good choices though.

“Where are my brothers?” Aiden asks, hoping he gets the right answer back. Praying he gets the right answer back.

“Out to dinner,” Liam answers, smiling in that infuriatingly cocky way he does when he’s about to get his way.

Wrong.Answer.

“Why are you here and not with them?”

Liam lets out a low chuckle, taking a careful step closer. Aiden can smell him, the scent cracking open the door back to his feelings. God, how can someone smell like home? The familiar smell of oranges mixed with the sweet smell of Liam’s skin is enough to weaken all of Aiden’s hard fought defenses. Okay, well maybe this can be the last hurrah. One last time. That’s not an awful thing. Maybe every few years he can have this and just subsist off of it until the next time.

“I told them I’d wait for you,” Liam says, leaning down to brush a soft kiss across Aiden’s jaw. The touch of his lips feels more like a lightning strike than a kiss. “We can catch up to them.”

“Jesus Christ,” Aiden swears brokenly.

Surging up, he kisses Liam with an urgency he’s never felt before in his short life. The taste is so familiar that he can only ascribe it to tasting a favorite food after weeks of eating cardboard. Liam’s hands wander down his back, until they reach his ass to splay over it possessively and squeeze. The touch startles a pleased gasp out of Aiden. Liam gratefully swallows it down with a moan of his own that reverberates through Aiden all the way to the marrow in his bones.

“Let me fuck you,” Liam mumbles into his mouth. The words taste like honey, so sweet. They ring in Aiden’s ears for farlonger than they have any right to before it hits him. Reality hits him like a freight truck. That girl Liam was photographed with. Aiden wants that for him. Not this. Not a quick, dirty fuck before they go out to dinner with his brothers. No. He has to stop this now.

“No.” He pushes Liam away, feeling raw and exposed. Liam pants, chest heaving with deep breaths, looking betrayed in a way that he really shouldn’t. Not when he’s the reason this entire situation is so fucked up. Liam got too possessive, he cares too much, the only way to make a clean break is to not repeat the same mistake. Liam is a mistake.

“What?” Liam looks pissed now. Pissed is better.

“I said no. No. We can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore,” Aiden says desperately, a hysterical edge to his voice. “I don’t wantyouanymore.”

The words taste bitter on his tongue. The worst lie he’s ever told. Absolute heartbreak blooms across Liam’s face. The urge to take the words back is almost overwhelming. Aiden curls his hands into fists so tight that he’s afraid he might hurt himself. But it’s the only thing he can do to stop from reaching out to Liam.

“Oh,” Liam says weakly.

“You should go to dinner with them,” Aiden tells him, nodding weakly towards the door.

Liam nods, eyes glazed, lips still kiss bruised. It takes every shred of his already minuscule self control to not reach out. The urge to shush Liam, pet his hair, kiss over his face is so great that it all but consumes Aiden's body and soul until Liam retreats out of the apartment to leave him bereft. Alone. So alone.

If he had any doubt he was in love with Liam Walsh, it’s gone now. Because he’s never in his life had the urge to care for someone like he just had. To apologize. To make them feel better. He’s not even sure he’s ever felt that for Archer becausehe spends most of his life ensuring Archer never feels any pain at all.

And now he just caused the man he loves pain.

Pain radiates all the way to his very core, slashing away at every single one of his barely there defenses.

But maybe his words will make Liam forget him.

He can hope.

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