Barrett lifts his hand and rubs his jaw where Aiden punched him, his eyes blazing with anger as he pins the other man with a glare. “Nice jab. Hit harder next time, will ya.”
“I told you to stay the fuck away from her,” Aiden yells as the rain continues to pour down. I’m now soaked through, my arms covered in goosebumps, and yet I stand with my arms wrapped around myself watching two men fight over me. News flash—not as hot as you’d expect. Is this karma?
Barrett ignores Aiden and turns his eyes to me. “Lys, I need to get you away from here and to somewhere safe.”
“I bet you fucking do. You probably helped the son of a bitch screw her over.” Aiden takes another threatening step his way. With a purple bruise already marring Barrett's jaw, I step between them, putting my palms on Aiden and pushing him back. He puffs up his chest and frowns as his gaze drops first to my hands and then drags up to my face, his eyes wide.
Looking around, I realize we’re making quite the spectacle, and the crowd gathering around to watch the scene unfold aren’t hiding their interest. Some even blatantly hold up cellphones, others just stare.
My head drops and I shake it from side to side. “This can’t be happening,” I murmur, my cheeks burning at the spectacle we just made—are still making. I need to get out of here for the sake of my dignity at the very least.
I move back from Aiden and spin around to stare at Barrett. His eyes bore into mine and the draw of him pulls at me again. But when he goes to lift his hand to my face, he must read the despair in my expression because his arm drops back down just as fast.
“I can’t do this. I need to go somewhere. Anywhere…” I say, shaking my head as my body starts to shake.
Barrett automatically reaches for me. “Okay. My house is safe and they’ll have a hell of a time tracking you down there. We can get you dry and warm and then work out what our next move will be.” My heart aches to take him up on his offer, his instinct to protect me and make sure I'm kept safe and secure. But behind me is a man who has also staked his claim on me, and standing between the two men who each own a piece of me is tearing me apart.
I shift back, more for self-preservation than anything else. There’s no missing the hurt and surprise in Barrett’s expression. “Lys?” he rasps, the edge in his tone unmissable as he glares at Aiden.
The man who misinterprets my uncertainty and seizes the opportunity to claim me, moving his hand to the small of my back. “Let’s go.”
“You need to fuck off, Lawrence, and leave Alyssa with me. Taking your hands off her would be a good start, too.”
Aiden’s dry laugh cuts through the thick air. “You’re fucking delusional if you think I’d ever leave her with you. Never again, Lucas. Not now. Not ever. And definitely not her.” Aiden grabs my hand and turns us around, tugging me with him as he storms toward a blue Honda idling at the curb.
Jerking the passenger door open for me, he urges me to get in but I stop, standing firm as I look back to where Barrett stands, his hands loose at his side, his eyes tracking me, his face stoic and unreadable to anyone else but to me, I see it all. He's angry, he's hurt, and he's fighting the urge to stop me, I could tell that no matter how far away I am. But there's also an intensity in his gaze that I've seen before, when he was telling me that I have a part of him that no one else gets.
That's how I know that this thing between us is not over. Not by a long shot.
I don’t fight Aiden though, and I don’t run into Barrett’s arms. I’ve already suffered so much loss in my life, and today has almost broken me already. That’s why I take the easy out, trusting the constant that is Aiden rather than the unknown of Barrett.
Aiden’s growl and gentle pressure on my shoulders, urging me to get inside the car, breaks the spell. The door slams shut behind me and Aiden slides into the driver’s seat before starting the engine and pulling into traffic.
As we move away, I look out the window, Barrett’s gaze never leaving mine. His body may have stayed in place and he didn't try to stop Aiden from taking me with him, but there's one thing I did not miss—the return of that anguish and conflict in his deep blue eyes. That affects me more than I thought possible. My life is falling apart and yet it's Barrett and that look on his face that is at the forefront of my mind as we drive away.
“Why are you here?” I ask as Barrett disappears from view and the city whirls past. Instead of heading for my apartment building, Aiden gets onto the highway, heading South.
“Harrison gave me a heads up that something was going down with Gavin. He tried calling you but couldn’t get through either last night or this morning. Guess I now know why,” he retorts harshly.
I haven’t been checking my phone or my messages because I’ve been purposely burying myself so deep in work to avoid my mess of a life. It didn’t help though, I’ve still been preoccupied with thoughts of Barrett and Aiden and being torn between the two of them.
I know Aiden; I know how he is. He probably dropped everything to come to help me. He’d have taken personal leave from work just to hop on the first plane to Seattle. He’s always helping me. But maybe it’s time for me to help myself.
As much as I care for Aiden, I know now that there is no way I deserve him or his protection, especially not after being with Barrett again.
And Barrett. I still don’t know much more about him than I did in Vegas. To his credit, he did answer my questions, but I haven’t spent enough time with him to know the man outside of a dream rooftop date and spending hours naked in his bed. He’s good with his mouth—both talking and… other things—and he worshipped my body like he was born to do it, but that is all.
My breath hitches when the events outside the Jacobs Publishing building come back to me. Aiden saw Barrett kiss me. He would have seen me melt in his arms and lose myself to the man, the same man I let take me to his bed just days after Aiden had left to go home. A man Aiden called Lucas… Something nags at the back of my brain, and suddenly it’s like I’m connecting dots I never knew were there.
I’m facing the most unlikely of conundrums at the most inopportune time. I have a company to win back and a mother to help annul a marriage, and both of those things should take priority over deciding which of the two law enforcement officers in my life I want to be with—or even if I deserve to be with either of them.
But most of all, I feel the sudden need to escape my life and bury my head in the sand to avoid all of the turmoil and trouble that seems to follow me right now.
“I’m sorry,” I say, turning my head back to look out the window.
“What are you sorry for?” Aiden's voice is tight and low and devoid of the warmth I've come to expect.
“For kissing him.”
“He kissed you.”
“But there’s more—“
Aiden sighs loudly and takes the next exit, pulling off at the first safe place a little while later before turning the car off and spinning his body to face mine. “Aly, right now I have a very loose grip on my emotions and I’m barely holding it together. And that’s not just because of Lucas—although he’s definitely not fucking helping.”
“I’m sor—”
“Don’t apologize, Aly. I’m not ready to hear any of the reasons why you feel you owe that asshole anything.”
“Then what do you want me to say,” I implore, my own frustrations rising to the surface.
“Nothing. I’m torn between taking you back to San Francisco and getting you away from Gavin and Lucas and your life.”
I stare into his eyes, studying him as I roll the idea of leaving everything behind for a while around in my mind. “You have no idea how good that sounds but I should stay and fight Gavin . . .”
His head jerks back then a look of determination transforms his features. “Let’s do it then.”
I blink when his words register in my brain. “What?”
“Let’s go straight to the airport and get out of here. We can be at my house in four hours give or take.”
“You can’t be serious, Aiden. I know things are fucked up right now, but I can’t just jump on a plane and leave?”
“I’m dead serious, beautiful. You should know me well enough by now to know that I protect those I care about. It’s not just my job; it’s the man I am. Ever since you called me from Vegas, I’ve been wanting to take you away from all of this and look after you. I couldn’t before, but now that I can, I’m two bad decisions away from kidnapping you and taking you anyway.”
“Aiden, we should talk about this. I know a lot has happened. But—"
“Not now we don’t,” he says with gritted teeth. "I may have let you go, Aly, but I also said I'd fight for you. I need to be in the right head space—and hundreds of miles away—before you tell me anything about what Gavin has done to you, but especially about Mark fucking Lucas.”
Then those dots I couldn't connect before finally all click into place. “You and Barrett know each other, don’t you? Even before you saw him on the plane,” I wait with bated breath for his answer, but it doesn't come. Instead, he clenches his jaw and averts his eyes. I keep pushing. "Ok, then. How did you know where I was?”
“I came to find you. Harrison and I worked out something was going to happen when we tracked Gavin to Seattle.”
I don’t forget that he skipped answering my question about knowing Barrett but the impression I’m getting is that when it comes to that man, Aiden does not want to talk about it. Avoidance, guilt, arrogance, or some misguided possessive caveman shit, I do not know. Maybe it’s all of the above. But it doesn’t take away from the blunt truth that I have nowhere I have to be because Gavin has turned my life upside down, and Barrett Matthews has turned it inside out. What is there to keep me in Seattle right now?
“Okay,” I say softly, leaning my head against the passenger window, closing my eyes and hoping that I can be like Dorothy and tap my feet three times to have everything go back to normal, before this morning when Gavin fired me, before two weeks ago when Mom married the vile man, and maybe even before my trip to Vegas. But then I wouldn’t have met Barrett, wouldn’t have realized I had feelings for Aiden, none of it…
Twenty minutes and two packed bags later, we lock up my apartment and head back toward the airport. Four hours after that we’re landing in San Francisco.
My mind is still a blur, my emotions seesawing between despair, guilt, confusion and worry. Forefront in my mind is my Mom. I tried calling her again before we boarded the plane, and again as soon as I could when we had landed, but both times it went straight through to voicemail.
All the notifications I received when I turned my phone on were from Barrett. Text after text, call after call. The problem is, I don’t know what to say to him, so instead of answering him, I send a text saying that I simply need time and space but assuring him that I am safe.
I don’t know what else to say to Aiden either. And as if he senses I need space, he hasn’t pressed me on anything other than surface-level, as-needed information. To be honest, I don’t feel capable of much else right now. Half of my heart is in Seattle, my mind is on Vegas and my Mom, and my body is operating on auto-pilot. I can’t even think about what I should do—what I need to do—to try and get my company back and out of Gavin's clutches.
With everything crumbling around me, there’s a nagging feeling that we’ve yet to reach the eye of the storm. No matter what I try to do, the dark clouds looming over me continue to get lower and thicker, making it impossible to see a way back to clear skies—or a normal, drama-free life.
“Are you okay?” Aiden murmurs, breaking the silence that had stretched between us since we left the airport. He turns the car engine off, having come to a stop outside a two-level duplex in Oakland.
I hesitate for a moment, wondering whether I should tell him the truth or not. "Would you be?"
“How about we get you inside and settled? Hopefully then you can switch off and at least try to relax."
“I don’t think I’ll be able to relax until I can get in contact with my mother. I have a really bad feeling about all of this.”
I press my cheek into the headrest and look across at him. His eyes soften as he reaches over and gently squeezes my knee. That’s when I get a glimpse of the man I know as his lips quirk up into a sexy smirk. He waggles his brows. Then the Aiden I know reappears as he reaches out his hand and gently squeezes my thigh. “I can help you with that, too.”
Except the wicked thought doesn’t quite reach his eyes and I know that there are going to be some difficult questions to answer when he’s ready to face facts and I’m ready to tell him the truth—or the current state of my heart, anyway. Most importantly, there are some missing parts to this whole story that Aiden needs to explain to me—especially his history with Barrett and why he kept that from me.
And until either of us are ready to sit down and be honest with one another, I’m not sure anything is going to be relaxed and settled. Then again, I’m not convinced I could if I tried.