Page 35 of Beautifully Complicated

“You look exhausted. You should take the rest of the day off. Do you have anyone who could come get you? One of your roommates?”

I shake my head curtly.

“Are you still having a problem with one of them?”Is that concern I hear in his voice?

My eyes snap to his. “You remember that?”

He averts his gaze as he says, “I remember you were avoiding one of them for some reason. Are you still?”

This is the last thing I want to be talking about with Kier, but wearetalking, so I lick my lips and nod. “Not for the thing that happened before, right around when I met you, but yeah.”

“Are you, um, in danger or anything?” Kier glances nervously at me before looking away again.

“No. Bennet would never hurt me. Not physically.”

“He has though? Hurt you?” There’s a growly edge to Kier’s voice that doesn’t match the skittish way he’s avoiding my eyes.

“Not intentionally.”

“How do you unintentionally hurt someone?”

“By being oblivious to my feelings and dating someone else,” I snort, slapping a hand over my mouth as soon as the words are out.

I can’t believe I just admitted that. I blame my… I blame Kier. Words just spill out of my mouth when I’m around him.

Kier’s still not looking at me when I find the courage to look at him, but his lips are moving slightly, in the absent-minded way I’ve come to realize they do when he’s thinking. Doing math. Then his jaw seems to tense.

“You were hung up on someone else when we met.”

“I—thought I was, yeah.” I sip my water, the sound of my swallowing the only noise in the room for a beat.

“So, I was a rebound?”

Is he…jealous?

“You were the reason I figured out what I felt for Bennet was appreciation that I misinterpreted as something more.”

“Meaning?”

I worry my lip while I search for the right words. “Before you he was the only other person who made me feel seen. But not in the same way. He’s a popular jock who accepted that I’m a gay nerd, and because of his example other people accepted me. I had a hero worship thing going on as a result. I was a little infatuated. Only I thought it was something more.”

“And you realized you misinterpreted that how?”

Fuck it. This all started because I said I wouldn’t hide my feelings if I was into someone, I’m not going to back down now.“Because it’s not even a fraction of what I feel for you.”

Kier squeezes his eyes shut and holds his breath for a count of three. “Aiden—”

“I know. But you asked. And anyway, it’s the truth.”

He nods almost imperceptibly, acknowledging but not agreeing with me. “That night was intense, I’m not going to pretend otherwise, but remember why it happened in the first place. You knew who I was. You’d been following my work. How do you know what you feel now isn’t rooted in the same kind of hero worship you just admitted you misinterpreted once before?”

The question stings even though it’s a fair one. What’s worse, I’m not even sure I can give him an answer he’ll accept since it’s all based on feelings, and we’re trained to rely on facts. Still, I may never get another chance, so I give it a try.

“Before we met, I admired your work. I thought you were brilliant, and yes, I found you attractive, but I wouldn’t characterize it as hero worship. You were a model for my career aspirations, nothing more. And yes, I asked to buy you that drink because you’re someone I admire, but everything that happened after that was a result of two people making an organic connection. I’ll admit to being a little shocked that someone as brilliant and accomplished as you was interested in me, but I’m not confusing how I feel about Kier the bio-mechatronics expert and Kier the man because only one of them was in the room that night. That’s how I know my feelings aren’t being misinterpreted.”

I hold my breath, waiting to see how he’ll respond. And for several, agonizing minutes, he doesn’t. Then he looks at me with tortured eyes. “I needed to hear that, but at the same time I wish I didn’t know the truth because—”

“Because it doesn’t change anything,” I finish for him.

---