Page 24 of Abduction
Chapter Thirteen
Amber
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IFLASHED MY SEASONpass at the aquarium, and Josh and I strolled in to Shedd together.
I couldn’t believe I was actually bringing him here. I mean, I had come here a million times before, especially over the course of the last year, as I had done everything I could to keep from letting my stress levels shoot all the way through the roof, but I had never thought to bring anyone else with me. I had always thought it was a little cringey how much I loved this place, like a schoolgirl entranced by the fish on her first school trip out here.
But as soon as I had seen Josh standing there outside the law department, I’d known I wanted to bring him here. Yeah, I didn’t know if I should have been getting a little worried about how much we were running into one another, but when I enjoyed his presence as much as this, it wasn’t an issue, right?
I knew Aaron would have never come with me to something like this. It just wasn’t his thing—he would have found some way to get out of it, convincing me he had better things to do than spend an afternoon staring through fish tanks at creatures he didn’t even know the names of. Sometimes, I wished he would have had a little more whimsy in his life, but it wasn’t who he was. He liked stuff he could really put value on, and experiences like this weren’t up his street. Stuff like going to Bali? Yeah, that was different, because he could boast about it for the rest of his life. He couldn’t show his colleagues pictures of a trip here and expect them to be impressed by it.
“Shit, this place is way bigger than I remembered,” Josh muttered as he looked around. I grinned. Suddenly, I felt the urge to take his hand and guide him through, but I kept myself from reaching for it. I knew I needed to be more reserved, more careful than that. Just because he had been nice enough to come with me didn’t mean I needed to take this to a level I couldn’t back down from. I had never cheated before in my life, and there was no way I was going to start now, not with someone I barely knew.
But...it felt like I was starting to get to know him. The way he had offered to help me out when he had discovered I didn’t really have an escape plan in place if something went wrong with Aaron and me, it was clear he had some decency in him. Even if he was just saying it to get on my good side, I still appreciated it, appreciated how thoughtful he was. Not many guys would have jumped in to help if they saw something wrong, but he had a streak of kindness in him I wasn’t even sure if he himself recognized.
“Yeah, there’s so much to see,” I agreed brightly. I had been here so many times, chatting with the staff for hours and picking up on a bunch of the history behind this aquarium.
“It’s been around since 1930,” I explained. “And it started off a lot smaller than this, but it expanded twice, and now it’s this. Where do you want to start?”
“How do you know all that?” he asked, a half-smile on his face.
“I just like to chat with people here,” I replied, shrugging, a little embarrassed. I mean, he must have already thought I was a total nerd for choosing to come to a place like this to blow off steam. Students were supposed to be out partying every night, not hanging out at the old aquarium when life got too stressful. He grinned at me.
“So where’s the best place to start?” he asked, raising his eyebrows expectantly. I suddenly felt a little nervous, worried I was going to let him down or something, but I quickly pushed it to the back of my mind.
“I love the touch tank,” I told him. “It’s always really chill at this time of day. You want to start there?”
“Sure,” he agreed, and he let me lead the way. It was strange, being in control like this, given how much I was used to deferring to Aaron on everything. As long as he was paying for everything, I figured, the least I could do was let him call the shots and tell me how it was going to be. But sometimes, I found it frustrating, knowing I had to let him decide what we did and where and how we did it. Hell, he had even chosen Bali for our honeymoon, without much bothering to check in with me first. He had framed it as a surprise, but honestly, there were other places I would have loved to go, too.
I was being ungrateful. And besides, Aaron wasn’t here right now. I was at the aquarium to get away from the real world for a little, and I intended to make the most of it.
I got the feeling Josh was going to be too cool for all of this, but he crouched down on his haunches to check out the touch tank with me gamely. He reached out to skim his fingers over an eel that slithered beneath the water, grinning widely, as though he couldn’t imagine anything in the world better than this. I watched him, trying to contain the fluttering in my chest, knowing full well I was getting a little too invested in this guy and that I needed to take a step back.
But it was hard, when he was showing me this much attention, when he was making this kind of effort to get to know me, to share my interests. I knew it was dangerous; I knew I should have known better, but there was something about him I found just way too charming to pass up, even though I was sure I should.
We made our way through the main exhibits until we reached my favorite room, a large tank that surrounded a walkway that ran through the center, the crystalline blue light from the water shimmering with every step you took. Beautiful, tropical fish cut through the water around us, and I paused to look up above me. When I was here, it was as though everything else in the whole world just dropped away, and there was nothing but me, in this moment, with nothing else to worry about in the universe.
“It’s gorgeous in here,” Josh murmured, and I nodded. This was an almost sacred space to me, and I wondered if it was wrong to bring this man I’d just met here before my fiancé. But it wasn’t as though my fiancé had given me much of a choice in the matter. He had made the call for me, and I had no choice but to just go along with it.
As we gazed up at the tank together, I felt Josh’s hand brushing against mine. For a moment, I thought it was just a mistake, but then, I felt his pinky hook around mine. Okay, he wanted this, he wanted to touch me, and if I didn’t stop it, I was as good as cheating.
But I didn’t want this to stop. His hand against mine, the warmth of his skin, knowing that, despite it all, he wanted me, it was all intoxicating in a way I couldn’t make sense of. I needed this. I wasn’t sure if I was going to regret it or not, but before I could stop myself, I let his hand wrap around mine.
We stood there, not saying a word, as though both of us knew talking would shatter this. I didn’t want this to be over. I didn’t want to let go of his hand, and I didn’t want to admit I was doing this. My head was a mess, but in amongst it all, the soft, sure feeling of his thumb rubbing over my knuckles grounded me. He had been persistent, but I hadn’t shut him down. If I had really wanted to make it so I never had to see him again, I would have done it. But I hadn’t. I couldn’t. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him.
Finally, I took a deep breath, and turned to him. I couldn’t let this slide by in silence. I needed to say something. I needed to tell him this was wrong. I needed to remind him I was engaged, and I wasn’t supposed to be spending time another man, no matter how much fun it was, no matter how much I wanted it to keep going.
“Josh, I—”
