But for as much as I wanted to dissolve into panicked laughter in that parking lot, a naughty little voice in my head was patting me on the fricken back because I’d had a glorious twenty minutes where he and I existed in this strange little suspended state of sexual tension.
Was it training? Foreplay? I wasn’t even fucking sure.
All my awkwardness gone.
He was talking.
I was talking back.
He knew exactly what I needed to settle the snarling angry version of me that I hated so much.
It wasn’t the boss and the manager. There was no awkward version of me on display. It was something else entirely. It wasn’t something that just played out in my vivid imagination. It had been real.
Because Aiden Hennessy stood over me, staring at my lips, and I swear on the benevolent spirit of Muhammed Ali, I almost died on the spot.
He was so big and tall and strong, his hands so broad and capable-looking, and if he kissed even a fraction as well as he did anything else, I’d never survive it. Forget sex, I’d perish from his tongue in my mouth.
I couldn’t even start the car because I wasn’t sure I was steady enough to drive home. Adrenaline let down or something. Whatever the comparable version was when you had unrequited lust pumping through your body instead of blood.
My phone was in my hand before I could blink, words crowding my throat before I could even make sense of what I wanted to say.
Paige hardly managed a hello.
“I need your advice,” I interrupted.
“Holy shit, finally,” she breathed.
Under my breath, I laughed, but really, I was still just … freaking out.
“Have you ever like”—I paused, running a hand through my hair—“wanted something, but you never thought you’d have it.”
Paige didn’t miss a beat. “Your brother when we first got married.”
I folded my arms on the top of my steering wheel and laid my forehead on them, staring down at my lap. I couldn’t do this. I closed my eyes and blurted out the first thing that came to my head. “Cake. There’s a cake you imagined eating. You know exactly what it looks like, you had every part of that cake’s existence memorized, and you dreamed about it for a really long time, even before you knew what cake tasted like.”
“I …” Paige hesitated. “I’m just gonna run with this. Okay, sure. Yes.”
Sitting up, I stared at the front of the gym, tried to imagine what he was doing since I’d walked out. “So the cake, suddenly, is right in front of you. You never, ever thought it would get taken out of the case. Display only, no touching, pretend the cake … isn’t yours because it’s not,” I said. “And then it’s just … there.”
Holy hell, I was confusing myself, but I’d committed to the analogy, and I was not dropping it now.
“Cake is there, excellent.” She cleared her throat carefully. “And have we taken a bite of the cake yet?”
“No!” I cried.
Paige breathed out a laugh. “Okay. That’s okay.”
“What if … what if the cake tastes like shit, you know? What if you’ve thought of it for so long, and never had it before, and your first bite is awful or just, isn’t what you expected?”
Silence dropped like a friggin bomb.
“Wait, you’ve never …?” Paige stopped. “Isabel, I cannot even believe I’m about to ask this, but are you a virgin?” she whispered.
My face flamed surface-of-fucking-Mars hot. “That’s not what this is about.”
“I know we’re not talking about dessert, Isabel Ward.”
“Yes, we are!” I shouted, the tingling edge of panic coloring my words. “I said we’re talking about cake, so we are talking about fucking cake, okay?” I covered my face even though she couldn’t see me. “It’s all I can handle, Paige. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” she soothed. “So, you’re worried he—it,” she corrected instantly, “will disappoint you?”
Oh, holy shit, I was going to cry. This was awful.
“Or worse,” I whispered.
“Oh, Iz,” she said gently. “How can it be worse?”
Through the windows, I saw Aiden turning off the lights. With each one, he disappeared from view. For a moment, I thought I saw his silhouette by the front desk looking out at my car, but I closed my eyes so that I’d stop trying to see him.
He’d lost something—someone—incredibly precious to him. And I was the fumbling girl with a vivid crush and a temper, a decade younger than him. There were so many reasons I could think of why he might not be seeing that the same way I was.
That was always my problem, wasn’t it? It wasn’t even really clear what he wanted from me, but there I was, prying open an impossibly big barrier because that was what he was already doing to me.
Aiden was opening me up, and he had no idea.
“What if …” I swallowed “What if it’s the most perfect, delicious, amazing thing I’ve ever experienced, and the … cake … doesn’t want what I want in return? How would you ever get over that?”
Paige exhaled heavily. “Well, I think that if someone shows interest in you—and why wouldn’t they because you are a fucking treasure, Isabel—then you should trust that. And trust that you know when it feels right.”
Finally, I smiled. “Why does it sound so easy when you say it like that?”
“It’s not easy, my dear girl. Relationships are never, ever easy.”
“It’s not a relationship, Paige.” I shook my head. “It’s a crush come to life. I feel like a child when he’s around, and I hate it. Or I did until tonight,” I amended.
“You would,” she said, voice full of love. “None of this surprises me about you, Iz.”
I sighed.
“Look at it like this, having big feelings for someone doesn’t mean you’re weak or asking to be hurt. But if you don’t want to do any biting right now, then don’t.” Paige’s voice took on a soft quality. “You’ve been hurt, kid. That makes opening yourself hard. But for the right person, you will want to.”
“I don’t know how anyone measures up to him,” I admitted in a quiet voice. The words hurt coming out. “After getting to know him. I don’t see it, Paige.”
Paige answered carefully. “I don’t think we need to borrow trouble just yet, okay? One day at a time.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
For a moment, we were both content to stay quiet, even if my reasons were different than hers. Paige, no doubt, was processing all the horrible baked good analogies I’d just tossed in her lap like a grenade. And I was quiet because I could no longer ignore how far down this rabbit hole I’d gone.
Protecting myself from possible pain came at a steep cost.
Besides my sisters and Logan, Paige was the only person in my life who I trusted with anything. The only other person who’d earned that trust. But tonight, Aiden walked in, and without flinching, he knew exactly what I needed from him to smooth the raised hackles along my back.
The more he pushed me, prodded me, the more I’d calmed.
He met me where I was instead of trying to smother the flames.