Page 17 of After the Rain
“I, er…” Fuck! Why is my anxiety choosing this moment to rear its ugly head? It’s only just dawning on me that what I’ve done may in fact be a horrible reminder of the life he left behind and may send him into a tailspin. What if it triggers a bad reaction in him? Like a PTSD response or something? Fuck, I’m such a twat! Why didn’t I just ask him if he wanted this?
“Aidan?” His gentle voice sounds muffled by the rising panic in my ears. I fucking hate this about my anxiety. It can take a seemingly innocuous moment and twist it into something else. “Aidan, sweetheart? Take a deep breath, darling.” I take his instruction and drag in a deep breath as Rain, reading me as easily as he always does, takes a step into my body and cups my face with both of his small yet strong hands. He breathes with me as I ward off my anxiety before smiling at him and trying again.
“I wanted to make something for you that you might like. You can use it anytime. It’s basically just for you, so you can do what you like with it if you hate it, but yeah, anyway. It’s for you.”
“I love it,” he says, his voice sure.
“You haven’t even seen it.”
“It doesn’t matter. You made me something. You. So, I love it already. Whatever it is.”
Swallowing the last lump of anxiety in my throat, I drag my gaze away from Rain’s and twist the doorknob of the work shed. Well, I guess now I should call it the studio.
I reach behind me to grab Rain’s hand again and draw him in front of me.
“Close your eyes,” I whisper into the spot just below his ear. He does as I asked and squeezes his eyes closed, an adorable wrinkle appearing at the top of his nose.
I guide him forward, instructing him when to lift his foot to get over the threshold safely, before I shift my body weight, and with a quiet click of a light switch, the room floods with bright light. I check, and Rain still has his eyes shut tight. I step away from him, telling him to stay where he is, and I head over to the small panel of switches on the other side of the room. With a couple of button presses, I switch on the special lighting Iinstalled. I move to close the door, shutting out the cold night air, before I switch off the big light. I’m glad I left the heater on earlier as the space is very quickly nice and warm again. It smells faintly of paint, but that will soon go.
“OK,” I say, my shadow passing briefly over Rain’s face as I move past him and take my place behind him once more. My rightful place. At his back, him in my arms. At least that’s how it feels. I genuinely don’t know what has shifted today, but I know that things have. My little endearments surprised me at first, but they felt so right, and his gentle touches have been driving me insane all day.
“Aidan, please?” Rain groans, a slight hint of desperation in his voice. “This is like when someone says, ‘you know what?’ and then just says ‘no, never mind’. I want to see!” He’s whining now, but I can hear the smile behind the whine. I can feel it, even from my place behind him. It makes me smile, too.
“OK. Open your eyes, baby.”
Thirteen
Rain
Ido as I’m told, opening my eyes, and what I see takes my breath away. The once dusty, slightly dilapidated work shed that was full of junk and spiderwebs is now solid, gleaming, with beautifully shiplapped – yes, I have learnt a few things since starting to work for DB – walls that have been painted the softest of sage greens. There’s a gorgeous, polished wooden floor, LED lights subtly placed around the tops of the walls to emit a gentle glow into the room, and, what looks like, a very comfy sofa in the corner. There’s even a small table with a Bluetooth speaker all plugged in with its odd blue lights shining. But the thing that causes tears to form in my eyes and a lump to fill my throat is the large, black square of rubber matting in the middle of the floor, surrounding… a pole.
It’s a studio. He built me a fucking pole dance studio. I can’t move. Can’t breathe. And asthe tears spill over and run down my cheeks, I hear Aidan draw in a panicked breath.
“Shit,” he mutters, coming around to face me. He cups my face and wipes my tears away. “I’m sorry, baby. I thought, I don’t know what I was thi—” His words cut off when I place my fingers over his lips.
I remove them after a few seconds before leaning in and slanting my lips over his in a kiss, my arms wrapping around his neck, my fingers playing with the soft hairs there. He takes a moment to respond, but when he does, he wraps his arms around me as he groans in his throat before decidedly taking over the kiss. His lips open, and our tongues meet in a kiss that touches me in every cell of my being. I didn’t know my soul could miss something – someone – after only one kiss. But fuck, it has. My soul has missed his. My lips have missed his. And I think that, just maybe, his have missed mine too.
Aidan is holding me to him so tight that I don’t think he’ll ever let me go. The kiss goes on, but it doesn’t descend into rampant leg humping and desperate clothes-shucking. It simply says everything we haven’t been able to say to each other already.
I slow our kiss down, and, with a few gentle, chaste kisses, I pull away and incline my head. He knows what I want without me having to ask, andhe leans down, resting his forehead on mine.
“Aidan. This is…” I don’t even think I know the words for what this is. “This is everything. Nobody has ever done anything so thoughtful for me before.” I kiss him again because I can’t not. His strong arms are still wrapped around me, and my fingers are still playing with his hair, as he says,
“Do you really like it?” He sounds so unsure and breathless from our kisses. That shouldn’t make me feel as smug as it does. I pull my forehead back and stare at him incredulously.
“Are you fucking kidding me? Literally nobody ever. Honestly, I’m just… I can’t…” I hold his face as I deepen our eye contact. “Thank you, Aidan. Thank you so much. I can’t even tell you how much I miss dancing just for fun!” His grin is back and blinding as he hauls me into a bear hug.
“Thank fuck!” he whispers. “Do you want me to leave you so you can dance now?” Aside from the fact that we just ate, my ribs are still a bit sore, and I’ll definitely need to do some serious yoga and strength training to prepare to get back on the pole, there’s something I want far more than to dance at this very moment.
“No, Aidan. I want you to take me back into the house. Take me inside and make love to me.”
Aidan doesn’t waste any time at my request, wrapping his arms around my legs, just under the curve of my arse, and picking me up off the ground. The move gives me no choice but to wrap my legs around his waist. My arms wind their way back to their new favourite place in the world, around his neck, and I spend the hasty walk back to the house kissing and nibbling on his neck, his jaw, his face – anywhere I can reach. He carries me as though I weigh nothing. I kiss him on the mouth a couple of times, but this makes him stop walking, so I decide that the real kisses can wait until we’ve made it back to the house with neither of us tumbling accidentally into the freezing river.
The walk is interminable, but finally he lays me back on his bed and climbs on over me, my legs still wrapped around him, unwilling to let him go in case this dream evaporates in front of my eyes.
I’ve been through probably the worst years of my life these last few years. At least I fucking hope so. But this? This feels like a reward. A reward for surviving. Aidan and his family have shown me this last month that there are people in the world who are genuinely good. Cole, Archer, and even Nash have all been checking in on me without being intrusive. Wren and I have aWhatsApp exchange discussing the very singular benefits of Alan Ritchson in the role of Jack Reacher – a heaven-sent piece of casting if ever there was one.
But Aidan? Aidan has been sweet, tender, kind – all the good words. He has supported me in seeking therapy. He’s given me a job, a purpose, and a reason to get up each day. More than that, my job gives me independence. I have a little money in my bank account (my new bank account that – you guessed it – Aidan helped me set up) for the first time ever. And yet, he doesn’t push. I know we’ve both been fighting our feelings for one another. At times, he can’t hide it as well as he thinks he does. But he has never pushed. And the memory of that one steamy kiss in the kitchen has sustained me for weeks. Not anymore.
