Page 57 of Ensnared
Aiden’s expression shuts down immediately. He puts the car, a stick shift, into reverse and backs out of the parking lot. A muscle ticks in his jaw, and he doesn’t reply to my questions.
I turn to stare out the window, watching the drab gray buildings rush past as we make our way back toward the airfield. We can’t keep doing this. I like Aiden and I think he’s super hot, but I won’t make a fool out of myself by trying to seduce him if he keeps shutting me out. It’s not fair to me, or to Jack and Ty.
I try to convince myself that I don’t care whether he wants me or not, but I’m not very successful at it. At some rational level, I recognize that I’m a people-pleaser at heart, raised that way because I was always trying to make my family love me despite my magical shortcomings. Idealist that I am, I still believe that a parent’s love for their child should be unconditional, but my experiences show otherwise.
If I was good, if I obeyed and tried my best to be both invisible and helpful at once, my mom took her time to check my homework or listened to me as I practiced the piano. My dad would bake cookies with me or take me with him to the library where I played hide-and-seek while he picked up his latest collection of academic journals.
If I let myself get out of control, though, and destroyed shit with my magic, I’d get grounded, ignored, and sent to my room for hours at a time. They never really yelled at me or beat me, so I guess I didn’t have a bad childhood as such, but their indifference was just as hard to bear.
Then I dated Cameron, who never actually cared about me. I was the convenient girlfriend who stayed at home while he went and made great strides in the magical community. I could have disappeared one day, and he might not have noticed. It’s now hard to see why I stayed with him for so long. A therapist would probably have a field day with my childhood trauma—only I’d have to find one who wouldn’t have me locked up the moment I told them I was really, truly a witch.
I don’t want to be ignored anymore. I hate Aiden’s angry silences because there’s an impulse inside me to fill them up with hopeful chatter, to change my behavior to please him. I can’t build a relationship on that, not as an adult.
“Listen,” he says suddenly. “I’m not good at this. It’s just… You’re a part of our clan now, you know? And I don’t like some human sniffing around you.”
Aw.“I’m a part of the clan?”
The thought kindles a warm glow in my belly. I never really found a place for myself in my own family, and my years in college were spent flitting from one social group to another. But hearing that Aiden considers me a part of his clan, which seems to be like a huge, extended family of sorts, means a lot. He probably doesn’t even know how happy he’s made me.
“Sure,” he grumbles. “I don’t think Jack and Ty would like it much if you ever left. So you’re stuck with the rest of us as well.”
I snort. “Thanks. Sounds like you’re thrilled to have me.”
He fixes me with a quick, hard stare. “If I didn’t want you here, you’d be gone already.”
Well. There’s not much I can say to such a declaration. We drive to the airfield in silence, and Aiden greets the security people on duty with easy familiarity. I wonder if they’d be so cordial with us if they knew we were really a sea dragon and a witch. Humans are so strange sometimes. They only see what they want to see.
There’s something strange and wild about Aiden if you study him closely, and I can’t believe I didn’t figure out what he was sooner. But I’d been afraid of prying into his life for fear of him doing the same to me. Sure, he’d known I was a witch from the start, but he didn’t know how messed up my family really was.
Then it hits me. Over the course of the past two months, I’d slowly let Aiden in on my secrets. With every conversation, he listened patiently while I told him more and more about my parents, my sister, and my powers. How strange it is to think that he knows so much about me.
Especially since I barely know anything about him at all.
A wave of guilt swamps me. Here I was, dumping all my troubles on him and assuming he was prepared to listen. I’ve been a bad friend—I haven’t been paying attention to him at all. I’m still not sure why he’s so dead set on putting a protection spell over the village, and I can’t even imagine how much work he does every day as the leader of the clan. He took over the leadership so young, too.
Aiden parks the pickup truck in the hangar and comes around to my side to help me down.
I don’t let go of his hand immediately. “Hey, if you ever need to talk or whatever, I’m here, okay?”
He looks down at me, his blue eyes so damn beautiful. “Thanks.”
There it is again, that spark of heat between us. His eyes darken, and I inhale sharply, dragging in a lungful of his delicious scent. But this is the worst possible moment for us to kiss. I just offered friendship to him, so I can’t jump him now.
With a sigh, I step back, out of his arms.
Aiden clears his throat. “I, uh, brought you four boxes from the post office. From your sister. You have to decide which two you’ll take today—we can’t fit them all.”
“Oh!”
I turn to the back of the truck, where four cardboard boxes sit among the sturdier plastic and metal crates that Aiden and the guys use for groceries and other necessities for the clan. There’s no way of knowing what’s inside the boxes without digging through them right here in the hangar, so I end up picking two at random.
“It’s mostly summer stuff anyway,” I tell Aiden. “I won’t be able to wear any of my prettiest clothes.”
He sets the two remaining boxes on some shelves to wait for the plane’s return here. “They’ll be safe enough in the hangar. No one comes in but us, and they’ll stay dry.”
It’s surprisingly hard to leave the boxes there, even though I didn’t have any trouble leaving my clothes and books behind at Alice’s place when I first left for Alaska nearly two months ago. Now, I feel as though they might get lonely here in the cold hangar, and I have to force myself to turn my back on them and climb into the plane. It’s not until we’re flying over the Anchorage suburbs that the weird, itchy feeling lessens.
It’s a pleasant, if quiet flight. Aiden seems lost in thought, and I don’t want to bother him. It’s a different kind of silence from before, though: he’s not punishing me with indifference now. I like that we’ve progressed to a point where we can be silent with each other.
