Page 71 of Falling With You
I didn’t haveto wait long at the door before Aiden was pushing Brendon out of the booth and coming towards me. I knew I looked stern and ready for anything, but I was literally shaking in my shoes.
I didn’t want to lose him, I didn’t want to mess this up, but I was still so pissed off.
We got angry with each other all the time, we liked yelling at each other. It was our thing. But it was our thing when the yelling didn’t matter, and it just led us to the next step of whatever we were doing.
When the words mattered, when they hurt, that was when I got scared. Because what if we messed up? What if we were wrong?
What if we couldn’t fix this?
I took a step back out of the doorway, and suddenly Aiden was right there in front of me, the front door to the place closing behind him. He cupped my face and kissed me hard, his lips pressed firmly to mine. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I almost fell into him. Instead, I put my hands around his forearms and held on, letting his tongue touch mine, letting myself feel every inch of him.
“I’m sorry,” he rushed out, leaning his head against mine. “I’m so damn sorry.”
“Okay, that’s a good start. But I had a whole diatribe I was going to go through. Can you let me do that?” I didn’t like how flustered I sounded, but at least we were on the right track. Maybe.
He nodded and let my face go, but slid his hands down my shoulders and arms to grip my hands.
“This isn’t how it’s going to work. Okay?”
His eyes shuttered. “You mean us?”
“Not exactly. We are working great. I’m not breaking up with you.” I said the last part fast, and he just nodded.
“Good, because I’m not breaking up with you either.” He nodded again.
That made me laugh. “Okay, good. We really need to get better at this communication thing.”
“I know we do. My brothers tell me that often. Especially Dillon.”
“Dillon’s the sage one.”
“So he thinks.”
“But we’re getting off track here. I was working, Aiden. I don’t own my own place, and I have to be professional. Plus, these guys trust me to touch their bodies and be professional. I can’t flirt with some random dude in front of them.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I’m not random.”
“Oh, fuck off, Aiden. You are random to them. Get over yourself and see what I mean.”
He tightened his jaw but nodded at me. “I know. I shouldn’t have shown up like that. I should have waited in the hallway, or at least seen when you had time off. I’m sorry. But I wanted to see you. And I’m not good at this whole thing. You know that. You’ve known me forever.”
“I do know that. But we need to figure out how to make this work for us and not just pile things on top of everything that we had in the past. Because we aren’t those people anymore. We aren’t the people that we were when we knew each other so well. We’ve had time apart, and that means we’re different people now.”
“And I like the person you’ve become.”
That made me smile.
“Well, good. However, while I like the person thatyou’vebecome, we also need to figure out how we fit into each other’s lives now. And that means if we want to see each other, maybe we shouldn’t just show up at each other’s places of business.”
I winced and looked up at the bar I was standing in front of. “Well, if we do, then maybe not go to where we’re actually working. I mean, I can be standing in front of your bar, and that’s fine.”
“I get you. Like you don’t come into my kitchen, and I won’t go back to where you’re actually working with clients. But if I want to stop by and you’re busy, I’ll leave a note or something.”
“Or text me. I might not have my phone on me all the time, but I want to see you. And I know our schedules don’t always work, and sometimes you’re working late, or I need to get up early, but we’re going to make this work. ‘Cause I want to do this. We’re doing this. And you don’t get to get all huffy if I need to be at work.”
“Fine. And I wasn’t huffy.”
“You definitely huffed. You huffed and stormed out, and then I had to deal with everything at work after.”