I let out a shaky breath. “You’re welcome.”
“What’s your favorite food?” he asked suddenly.
I blinked at the change in topic, the change in tone. It was the only reason I answered honestly. “Strawberry Pop-Tarts.”
Now it was Aiden’s turn to blink. “No, it’s not.”
“You don’t get to argue with me about it.”
“No one’s favorite food is Pop-Tarts after the age of seven.”
“Well, mine is,” I said indignantly. “They’re delicious, and maybe you just haven’t had one in a long time so you don’t remember.”
The smile that spread over his face was warm, and it made me all gooey inside, and I pressed my now-hot face back into the pillow that smelled like him. His warm smile turned into a low, amused chuckle.
“I had no idea you were this judgmental,” I teased. “You better tell me your favorite food now.”
“You’re very demanding when you wake up.”
That was because my filter was gone. That process had been a slow one, pushing through embarrassment, pushing through the first unsteady weeks, then the tiptoeing into a more balanced relationship. He didn’t even realize that this was me, wide open.
But I did. And that was why it mattered, these quiet moments.
“Cranberry juice?” I asked.
He laughed, eyes tracing my features. “Getting warmer.”
I had to bury my face into his pillow to hide my pleased smile.
Aiden moved from a crouching position to sitting on the floor, his back braced against the nightstand, and he turned his head to face me. I tucked my good hand up under the pillow and imagined that this was just … normal. The two of us trading whispered questions in bed. He grimaced, sending a glare over his shoulder at the table.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing. Just the handle digging into my back.” His eyes traced my face. “I’m too old to be sitting in places like this.”
I pulled in a deep breath and decided not to weigh the wisdom of what was about to come out of my mouth. “You can lay up here,” I whispered. “On top of the blanket,” I rushed to add when his gaze sharpened.
After a weighty silence, Aiden finally answered. “You know I can’t.”
My lips pursed thoughtfully. “What if I draw an invisible line you’re not allowed to cross?”
His eyelids fell closed, his chest rose and fell on a slow, steady inhale and exhale. “You are dangerous to my mental health, Isabel Ward.”
I smiled even though he couldn’t see me. I liked knowing that. I liked that he’d said it out loud. Maybe Aiden was just as aware that this wasn’t reality, and we were allowed to make whispered admissions that might never see the light of day.
There were a million things I could’ve said to him, could’ve told him, in this last conversation of our long, sleepless night together. Things no one knew about me, or things I wanted him to know about me. But I kept all those words inside because somehow, I knew this wasn’t the time.
When Aiden opened his eyes and studied me, he seemed to be pondering the same depth of thoughts, judging by the thoughtful look on his face.
“It would confuse Anya,” he said after a few seconds. My eyebrows lowered. “If she walked in here,” Aiden explained.
Right.
I didn’t have to make all my decisions through the lens of a child. And it was a timely reminder that he did.
“You’re right.”
“She already thinks you’re a superhero, especially after today. No matter what invisible line is up”—he paused meaningfully—“if she saw us in bed together …”
I nodded. “I get it.”
My eyes burned hot, though, because it very much seemed like an hourglass had been turned over when I crawled into his bed, and I was watching the last few grains of sand slip through the opening.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
Carefully rolling onto my back, I took a quick assessment of my body. “My head doesn’t hurt as bad as it did last night.”
He held a hand out. “Let me see your wrist.”
I turned again and laid my taped wrist gently in his palm. His face held no expression while he turned it, smoothed his fingers over the area.
“Swelling isn’t too much worse, so that’s a good sign.” He glanced up at me. “No tingling in your fingers?”
I shook my head.
When his fingertip traced the edge of the tape and brushed the skin over my knuckles, I made a discovery that maybe no woman in history had ever discovered: if the right man, with the right fingers, touched the skin on your knuckles, you could feel it spread warm and slow over your entire body.
I couldn’t breathe, let alone answer his question.
My lack of speaking didn’t seem to draw his notice because his eyes stayed trained on our hands. Slowly, so slowly, and so gently, he found the edge of the tape and started unraveling it.
Over the years, I’d seen him inflict incredible violence. Leave his opponents bleeding and sweat-drenched on the mat.
And watching his hands slowly peel away the medical tape like he was unwrapping a priceless gift almost made me burst into tears.
I hated when people took care of me. The last time I had the flu, I crawled my ass into bed with a veritable drugstore set up on my nightstand and told everyone to give me forty-eight hours to ride out the plague in peace.
All anyone had to do was ask the paramedics who helped me what kind of patient I was.
The worst. I was the worst patient in the world.
What was it about Aiden that made me feel safe to be in this position?
I shifted, bringing my arm to a better position for him, and he glanced up with a tiny smile.
It was easily four o’clock in the morning, and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
“What’s your favorite food?” I whispered.
His hands paused in their unwrapping to check the bruising on the underside of my wrist with only the slightest brush of his fingers.
I shivered.
He noticed.
Before he answered, he went back to removing the wrap. “Not strawberry Pop-Tarts.”
I laughed.
His eyes landed on my mouth. “You don’t laugh very often.”
“Neither do you.”
“My brother made you laugh,” he said casually.
Oh, my heart. It wouldn’t surprise me if Aiden heard it thrashing wildly where he sat.
“He said something funny.” When Aiden pinned me with a searching look, I simply raised my eyebrows. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“You still haven’t told me your favorite food.”
His smile was slight and sexy. “I called Paige when you were sleeping.”
As a distraction technique, it was really effective. My mouth fell open. “You what?”
Aiden finished unwrapping my wrist and turned it carefully. But he had no choice but to release my hand when I sat up. My legs swung in front of him on the floor, so I tucked them up crisscross underneath me.
“Why would you call her? The whole point of coming here was so no one knew.”
“No,” he countered, “the point of coming here was so that you didn’t have to go to the hospital. She heard about the tree from Molly and called you multiple times.”