"Since she was eighteen."
"Jesus."
"Yep. You feel it too, Aidan, I know you do. That’s why you’re so flighty."
"I’m not flighty," I argued. Jesus, she made me sound like a pussy.
"You so are. At least I know what I want. You do too, but you’re just afraid to fight for it."
I scowled at her. "Did anyone ever tell you you’re a know-it-all?"
She smirked. "Yep."
"Figured as much."
Eighteen
Savannah
Having Aidan in my personal space felt right.
Not oddly so, just right.
How could it not be?
I hadn’t lied to Jen when I’d said he was one of my favorite people.
The psychologists called it a parasocial relationship, and though it was a fairly new phenomenon, I’d rubbed up against it throughout my entire life because of my dad.
Much as Conor stanned on my pop, I stanned on Aidan.
Conor wanted to see my dad perform a song, I wanted to see Aidan jack off in the shower.
As long as he didn’t find anything wrong with that, I didn’t either.
I just had to get Aidan to agree to it.
I wasn’t fussed about which exact shower, it just had to involve him being wet and soapy and I’d probably feel like I’d died and gone to heaven.
Thoughts of which stopped me from feeling like I was going nuts.
My apartment had been breached. It was no longer safe, no longer a protected area.
I wasn’t sure if it’d ever feel right again, and though the Points had tried to clear it up—the living room was back to normal. No blood stains, no broken glass. The only proof of what had happened was the missing coffee table—the place was tainted with my fear.
It might as well have soaked into the walls, seeping into the air itself so that every breath I took, reminded me of last night’s attack.
Of how close it had been.
Throat thick with stupid emotions that I really didn’t have time to process right now, it was far easier to imagine Aidan jacking off in a shower.
So I kept that at the forefront of my mind as I tossed things into a couple of suitcases; clothes, tchotchkes, my kindle, then started sorting through the various pieces of equipment I thought were necessary for the upcoming days, potentially weeks, when I wouldn’t have access to my apartment.
The prospect of being glued to Aidan’s side made that less of an ordeal.
Something he picked up on.
"I’m surprised you’re not arguing with me."
"I might have felt a little more constrained if we hadn’t had sex," I informed him as I tucked my laptop inside the special pocket within my carry-on luggage.
"You’ll have to explain that logic," he murmured, poking at one of my zen gardens that I had on a table by the window in my office.
"Now I’ve got you hooked on my pussy, we’ll have to do it again. And again. And again. Why would I complain?"
He shook his head. "I always knew you were trouble."
"You still saved my ass though, didn’t you?" I prodded, pausing my packing to shoot him a look.
"You had answers I wanted to hear." He picked up the little rake and began smoothing through the pebbles in the zen garden to form his own patterns. I didn’t mind him destroying mine. Only because it was him, though.
"Didn’t your dad ever ask if you’d done as he requested?"
"Da doesn’t ask. He just expects. That creates many a loophole that can be exploited." He cast me a look. "Do you want to know what it was that made me come to the coffee shop that day?"
"There was something in particular? Not just a photo of my beautiful self that had you drooling?"
"Well, that too," he joked, his eyes crinkling at the corners a second before, in a flash, he turned somber as he intoned, and I knew he was quoting something, "There’s a sweet kind of abyss in the unknown. In diving headfirst into whatever the universe sends one’s way.
"Whether we confront that unknown or evade it, it remains there, a silent test, one that we ultimately must pass or fail. Whether it be at that moment or in thirty years’ time, the test will never fade for we are that test. We are the sum of many tests that we sit through without even knowing. They forge us in fire, strengthening us like we were steel, and that is why we must embrace change.
"Today is the first change as we pass from adolescence into adulthood, and as we sit here today, or in my case, stand, we face the unknown of the future and rather than fear it, we’re excited for it. Today, we’re passing our first test as an adult."
"Jesus," I rasped, the words resonating with me in a way that made it click in my memory. "Is that my valedictorian speech from high school?"
He hummed, the sound oddly soothing when combined with the gentle raking of the small pebbles in the zen garden.
"How did you remember all that?"
"I like to think it’s fate."
I blinked. "What do you mean?"
"I mistyped your name." He cast me a look. "Savanna Dariel," he spelled aloud. "It threw up a thread from a student forum from 2004. On it, they were discussing your speech."
"Really?" It stunned me to realize my cheeks were burning.
"Yes. Really. I read it and I don’t know why but it resonated." He sucked in a breath. "Okay, that’s bullshit. I know exactly why. It’s just that I realized how right you were.
"At eighteen, you were more self-aware than I was in my late thirties." He shrugged. "I had to see the woman who wrote that speech. I had to know if she’d passed more tests or if she’d failed them."
"I’m not sure if I like that or not," I murmured with a scowl.
He cast me another look as he snickered. "You can’t control everything. Including why I decided to hunt you down rather than have you killed. Maybe you should just be grateful, hmm?"
My nose crinkled. "When you put it like that—"
His brow quirked. "Bet your damn ass I am. That’s what it boiled down to."
"My valedictorian speech saved me? Christ, it was more apt than I could have imagined. Talk about passing tests… sheesh."
He nodded his assent and carried on dragging the rake through the gravel as he said, "Then, of course, I met you. I was glad I decided not to silence you."
"Gee, thanks," I drawled. "You don’t believe in compliments for the sake of compliments, do you?"
"You’re probably the only person I don’t have to lie to, Savannah. That’s more of a compliment than you probably know."
Shit, he wasn’t wrong.
I perked up. "Does that mean you’ll never lie to me?"
"It means I’ll tell you the truth when I can."
"I can accept that," I responded immediately.
"Good seeing as that’s the only option on the table. There’s shit you don’t want to know."
"You say that like I’m not an aficionado."
"Reading it in books, seeing it on TV, it’s not the same as knowing about it." He placed the rake down with a care that told me he didn’t want to fling it even though that was his current mood. "And it’s not the same as fucking a guy who—" He sighed. "Never mind. I’ll tell you what I think you need to know. That’s a hard limit, Savannah. I want to make that clear here and now."