15. Aspen

CHAPTER 15

Aspen

November tenth.

I loved New York in the fall. There was something magical about the city in the season where the leaves changed colors and there was a crisp autumn bite to the air. It’d always been my favorite season, ushering in the prospect of an upcoming new year with new goals and new aspirations and it symbolized another year survived.

But as I sat outside, cozy inside a warm jacket, my hands wrapped around a piping hot paper cup filled with coffee as I sat across from my sister on campus, I couldn’t shake the sense of dread building in my stomach.

“Okay,” Brecken said, sitting up a little straighter. “You’ve barely touched your coffee. I know something’s up. Talk.”

The chatter of college students hustling to and from classes created a chaotic energy around us.

“Brec, I don’t want to put my problems on you.”

Brecken rolled her eyes, a slash of anger flaring in them. “That might have worked when I was ten,” she said, planting me with a serious look. “But I’m nineteen now, Aspen. And we’re sisters. At some point you’re going to have to start treating me like an adult and allowing me to take part in this give-and-take. Because for the last all of my life, it’s been nothing but give from you. Let me help you if I can.”

“I know you’re an adult,” I said, emotion clogging my throat. “As much as I would like to still see you as my baby sister who needs me every second of the day, I’m completely aware that you’re a grown woman now. And you’re doing amazing.” I motioned to the awesome campus around us, the one that we’d worked so hard to get her into. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re juggling a more-than-full-time class schedule.”

“And you’ve been carrying double shifts, sometimes triple, plus side hustles, all to keep me here. And that’s never stopped you from helping me if I had outside problems. So, we’re both in agreement that I’m an adult and I’m doing well, so now it’s time for you to let me be your sister and share some of the burden. Whatever’s bothering you, I can tell it’s big. Our parents didn’t reach out again, did they?” Brecken’s eyes flared, worry and fear mixed together.

I quickly waved her off. “No, it’s nothing like that,” I said, wanting to assure her. “I haven’t heard from them in over a year. And I sure as hell hope that trend continues.”

Her shoulders relaxed, and she took another sip of her coffee. “I’m guessing it’s Crossland then?”

My eyes met hers. I could never lie to my sister, despite my desires to leave her in the dark about my current emotional dilemma.

“Crossland then,” she continued, nodding to herself. “I know you usually go to Jesse for this stuff, but I’m here. So talk to me.”

I scrambled around in my mind, trying to figure out where to start. Brecken unfortunately was still in the dark about our arrangement, but today was technically the end of our contract, which meant I was free to tell her whatever I wanted.

Hesitance clung to my insides, making my tongue heavy. But if there was anybody I could trust, it was her.

“I need you to swear not to repeat a word of this,” I said, and Brecken’s eyebrows raised.

She glanced around as if somebody might be listening in on our conversation, though nobody was paying any attention to us or was close enough to overhear. Still, she leaned over the little table we sat at, drawing closer.

“I swear,” she said. “What’s up? Oh my gosh, he didn’t try to induct you into some weird rich people cult, did he? Blink twice if you need help.”

I laughed, the intensity of her words matched by her playfulness was just enough to shake loose some of the heaviness that I’d been carrying around all day.

“No,” I said reeling in my laughter. I took a deep breath and laid out the story for her in the most basic and quick way I could fill her in. Brecken listened with rapt attention, not interrupting or even making faces that would give me pause. And when I came to the end of it, she had practically finished her coffee and was shaking her head.

“You have over a million dollars?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said.

“But you will? And you took this role…all to ensure I could stay here?” She glanced around the campus, baffled. “Aspen, you didn’t have to⁠—”

“I wanted to,” I cut her off. “And even though I may have questioned it in the beginning, you know me. I wouldn’t have stuck around if Crossland had given me any bad vibes. But he never did. He’s amazing…”

“And today’s the day?” she asked, her tone drenched in sympathy.

I nodded, my heart returning to its heavier sensation in my chest.

“And you haven’t told him?” she asked.

I furrowed my brow. “He’s fully aware that today is the end of our contract. He’s a brilliant businessman, and there’s no way he’d forget⁠—"

“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she cut me off.

“Oh,” I said. “No, I haven’t told him that I don’t want things to end. I’m not exactly sure how to bring up the subject.”

Brecken chuckled softly, flashing me an almost pitiful look. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re totally in love with him,” she said without a hint of hesitation.

A jolt went through me at hearing the secret I’d kept spoken out loud.

I dropped my head in my hands and looked at my sister through my fingers. “Is it that obvious?”

Brecken reached across the little table, drawing one of my hands away from my face and gently squeezing it in her own. “Only to me,” she said encouragingly. “You’re my sister, I can read you better than anybody. When did this happen?”

I blew out of breath and cast my mind back over the last three months I’d been with Crossland. When had I fallen for him?

“I’m not sure of the exact moment,” I said. “It’s like little instances over the last three months when he’s given me pieces of himself that nobody else has ever seen before. It’s the times where we’re laughing all day, just enjoying each other ’s company instead of upholding some rules we laid out in the beginning. He’s everything I never knew I wanted. Funny and smart and just cocky enough to pull off every smirk, every bold claim. And he cares,” I said, my eyes glittering. “He cares about those around him. He’s a genuinely good man.”

“Then tell him,” she said. “Why wouldn’t you just tell him? He obviously cares about you too or he wouldn’t be in this situation.”

“I’m afraid,” I admitted, even as pathetic as it sounded. “What if I tell him, and he says that everything that’s happened the last three months has just been part of the contract. It’s just been some role he’s immersed himself in, a fun little challenge in order to win a bet against one of his best friends?”

“Do you really think he’ll say that?” Brecken tilted her head.

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so. He’s not cruel. He’s never once been cruel to me. It’s just a fear I have. The more realistic fear of mine is that when I meet him for dinner tonight, he’ll either thank me for my service, saying that he isn’t the monogamist type and he doesn’t want things to continue unless it’s in a super casual way, or...” I swallowed hard, the real and true crux of my fear bubbling to the surface.

“Or?” Brecken urged me to continue.

“Or,” I continued. “Tonight at dinner he’ll present me with another contract. An extension of our time together with rules laid out for another ruse, complete with more money and more bonuses as long as I continue to uphold my role as an employee in his life.”

“Speaking from somebody who has been studying family law, I can attest that contractual relationships, while unconventional, can be beneficial for both parties. And especially protect the assets each one has.”

“I don’t have any assets,” I said.

“Clearly you do, or he wouldn’t have entered into a contract with you in the first place.”

“I don’t want another contract,” I said. “I just want him. I want him so badly that I’m afraid if he did offer an extension to the contract, I would take it despite knowing it’s not what I genuinely want. And that scares me most of all. What I’m willing to do in order to keep him in my life.”

Brecken nodded, understanding shaping her features. “Then you have to tell him. There’s no other way around it.”

“That simple, huh? Just lay my heart on the table and hope he doesn’t rip it to shreds? You know I’m not good at that.”

“I know,” she said. “But he isn’t our parents. He isn’t the exes you’ve had. He’s nothing like any of those people who have taken your compassion for granted and used it against you. If he was, you wouldn’t have lasted this long. You wouldn’t be sitting here agonizing over this dinner tonight. You wouldn’t have introduced him to me.”

She wasn’t wrong. I never introduced her to any of my other exes, some part of me never fully trusting them enough with something as precious as my little sister. But I had introduced her to Crossland, which had to count for something.

Some buried instinct inside of me that told me it would be okay. That it wouldn’t end badly. But even knowing that, even feeling that in the very marrow of my bones, I couldn’t imagine putting myself out there completely for him to crush.

“What if he feels the same way?” she asked. “What if he’s with one of his friends right now, having the same exact conversation we’re having? What if he’s worried that you’re only in it for the money? What if he’s worried that tonight at dinner you’re going to ask for more money in exchange for more time?”

“I would never,” I quickly said. “Honestly, I’m already feeling awkward enough as it is about the money situation at the end of all this. If I didn’t need it so badly, I would tell him to keep it.”

“I know,” she said. “But you signed a contract, Aspen. You fulfilled your obligation and now that paycheck is due. But the next decisions are up to you both. You just have to talk to him; it shouldn’t be this difficult.”

I sighed, laughing a little darkly at myself. “You’re right,” I said. “It really shouldn’t be this complicated. But it’s me and it’s my history and it’s all the instincts screaming at me to protect my heart at all costs. Instincts that failed me the minute Crossland and I blurred the lines between fake relationship and casually intimate friends.”

“I get that,” she said. “Probably better than anybody. I know that you’ve been betrayed one too many times by people you were supposed to trust. But honestly, wouldn’t it be better to know now? If he is going to do that to you?”

“I guess you’re right,” I said. “Doesn’t make me any less terrified.”

Brecken squeezed my hand again. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met,” she said. “The last thing I want is for you to get hurt, but then if anybody can survive it, it’s you. And then in the end, it would be much better to know than to continue living in a perpetual state of unknown.”

“When did you get so insightful?” I said, swiping at the two tears that had escaped.

Brecken laughed, shrugging. “I learned by watching you.”

My heart expanded in my chest, and I got out of my seat, rounding the table so I could hug her. My baby sister was no longer a little girl I had to take care of. Although I would always take care of her, she was her own person, her own woman, crafting her own future that was genuinely so damn beautiful. I didn’t know how I’d gotten so lucky to get a sister like her.

“I love you,” I said, finally releasing her from my near suffocating hug.

“I love you too,” she said. “See, that wasn’t that hard, was it? Now just go tell him.”

I knew she was right. I knew honesty was going to be the best way to move forward, one way or another.

I just had to hope that when the time came, I had the courage and the voice to do it.

Turns out that I needed longer than a two-hour dinner, which had been incredibly delicious at some secluded little restaurant downtown, and more than the car ride home in order to find my voice.

And I wasn’t the only one. Crossland had spoken about everything but our contract. He’d talked about the upcoming poker game, and the antics of Ethan’s relatively new dog. He talked about his restlessness and even brought up those small-town dreams we joked about in his kitchen the other day. Not once had he even tiptoed toward the conversation he had to know that we were due to have.

There was no way he didn’t know that today was the last day of our contract.

“Do you want to order in dessert?” Crossland asked as he slipped off his suit jacket and laid it over the armchair in his bedroom.

I was doing the same after-dinner routine, slipping out of the cocktail dress I’d been wearing, and the incredibly beautiful strappy heels as well, reaching for my pajamas like this was any other night. Like this wasn’t the last night that I’d be spending with him according to the piece of paper we signed at the beginning of this whole thing.

I settled into my pajamas, turning to face him, my nerves on edge. “I don’t think I could eat another thing,” I said, willing the adrenaline in my body to calm.

Ask him, ask him, ask him, the voice inside my head was begging me to put us out of our misery. But coward that I was, I was desperate for him to bring it up. I felt like if he would just open that door, I’d be able to walk through it with a little bit more strength, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to be the one to open it.

“Okay,” he said, reaching for me from where he’d settled on the edge of the bed, a pair of dark blue silk pajamas the only thing covering him.

I went to him without hesitation.

He tugged me between his thighs, the two of us eye level even though he was sitting and I was standing. My fingers fluttered to his bare shoulders, greedy as I savored each touch in case it was my last chance to do so.

His lips found mine in a lazy sort of connection, one that screamed we had all the time in the world to do exactly this. And I swear I almost whimpered at the familiarity in it.

Crossland pulled back, that effortless smile on his face. “Is there anything in particular you’d like to bring tomorrow?”

I furrowed my brow, tilting my head.

“I mean, you haven’t packed, so I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to pack for you or if you wanted me to bring in the team so you’d have something special to wear,” he continued, shrugging. “I don’t care what you wear,” he added. “I was just wondering what you wanted?”

When I still stared at him blankly, he laughed softly, his hands gently squeezing my hips.

“You didn’t forget, did you? Tomorrow, upstate New York? You, me, Bristol, and her husband, the level one trauma center dedication?”

“That’s tomorrow,” I said, my mind churning around his insistence. “As in November eleventh,” I said, stating the date out loud thinking it might jog his memory that November tenth was the end of our contract. November eleventh would mean that there was no contractual obligation for us to continue seeing each other.

One of his hands slid up my body to cut my cheek. “Yeah,” he said. “November eleventh. You didn’t make plans, did you?” Those Arctic blue eyes of his almost looked worried, so I quickly shook my head.

“Of course not,” I said, leaning into his embrace. “I just...”

God, just say it. Just bring it up.

But it was so hard. It was just so damn hard to bring up something as drastic as that when he was holding me so intimately, that hope in his eyes that I would be by his side tomorrow for something that was so incredibly important to him.

Maybe I didn’t need to bring it up right now.

Maybe with how important this dedication was to him, he’d forgotten about the deadline.

Maybe bringing it up would only cause him stress that he didn’t need, especially when this was going to be honoring his parents.

The more I thought about it, the more relaxed I felt.

I could ask him about it after the dedication. I could do that for him.

“I just didn’t realize what day it was,” I said instead of laying my heart out and forcing a choice on him that he probably wasn’t in an emotional state to make. “What would you like me to wear?” I asked, shifting easily into the role I’d played the last three months. The role I was quite certain I could play every day for the rest of my life.

Crossland’s smile was brilliant. “Whatever you feel most comfortable in. There will be media there, but I don’t care if you wear yoga pants and a sweatshirt. It just means everything that you’ll be there for me.”

My heart fluttered in my chest, and I smiled at him before kissing him softly. “Of course,” I said. “Of course, I’ll be there for you.”

Because that, at the heart of it, was the truth. I would be there for him. Whenever he needed me. Because Brecken was right, I loved him. And maybe I didn’t know where he stood right now, but maybe I didn’t need to. And just the mere fact that he wanted me there gave me hope that I was overthinking the situation in the biggest way.

Crossland returned my kiss, the sweet innocence in it turning carnal as his hands roamed over my body in a way that sent sparks shooting across my skin

I splayed my hand on his chest, gently pushing him until he laid on his back on the bed. I climbed atop him, barely breaking our kiss as we shifted on the bed, a tangle of lips and tongues and need.

Rocking against him, I let go of every doubt, every question spinning in my mind, losing myself to the visceral sensation of being touched by him.

I took off my top, then shed my pajama bottoms, him doing the same until there was nothing between us, our mouths crashing together once we were free of the clothes.

I kissed him with everything I had, just in case it would be the last time.

I showed him with my hands, my lips, my body how badly I’d fallen for him.

I rolled my hips, shivering as his hard length slid through my wetness, teasing us both.

His hands roamed over my body, cupping my breasts as I ground against him, not taking him in and instead delighting in stretching out the moment.

“Aspen,” he groaned. “Fuck, kitten.”

I smiled down at him, feeling drunk from the way he unraveled beneath me. He made me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. Made me feel like I was the only one capable of making him shudder like that, groan like that. I fed off of that bliss, that power, reaching between us and guiding his cock inside me an inch before lifting up again.

Over and over.

I teased him, putting him in and taking him out. The tease making me liquid, making me ache so sharply it almost hurt. My thighs shook on either side of his hips, but I relished every muscle that clenched, every groan he let slip, every grip of my hips in an effort to get inside me.

Exquisite.

The torture was purely exquisite.

I leaned down, pressing my lips against his before licking into his mouth. He sighed between my lips, then playfully smacked my ass, making a shiver of delight ripple up my spine.

“Tease,” he groaned, nipping my bottom lip. “You love doing this to me, don’t you, kitten?”

“Yes,” I said, breathless as I rocked over him, his hard cock grinding against my throbbing clit. “I love…” I gasped as he thrust upward, the move making him slide in an inch before I moved to make him pull out.

“You’re drenched for me,” he said, squeezing my ass and moving me over him, back and forth until I trembled. “But you’re making me wait.”

I grinned, kissing him harder before pushing against his chest to rise up. “I never want this to end,” I said, allowing myself that admission, even if he didn’t understand the full context.

He bit his lip, thrusting upward again, and I moaned at the way he slid in so easily before I lifted up again. “It doesn’t have to,” he said. “You can ride my cock all night.” He squeezed my hips again before drawing his hands up and tucking them behind his head, smirking up at me with pure male pride.

“Cocky prick,” I breathed the words, digging my nails into his chest with just enough pressure that he hissed, pure lust churning in his eyes. “You want this?” I asked, dropping down on his cock so he was fully seated, rocking against him once before pulling all the way out again.

“Fuck,” he groaned, but kept his hands behind his head. “Yes.”

“How bad?” I asked, anticipation curling beneath my skin as my pleasure built. I was already riding that sharp edge, but I was content to keep drawing it out.

Crossland wet his lips. “I want to watch you ride me. Now, Aspen.”

I shivered atop him, the dominance in his tone making me grin in delight. “Like this?”

I sank atop his cock, lifting up and down on it a few times before stopping.

“Goddamn,” he growled. “Yes.”

“Or like this?”

I took him all the way in, rolling my hips, the move allowing my aching clit to grind against him.

“Yes,” he said, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “Like that. Any way. Just ride me, kitten.”

I caught his gaze, holding it, the moment charged between us. Being his sole focus was like nothing else in the world and having him beg for me? Jesus, it took my breath away.

“Please,” he said.

I lost the game, sinking atop him.

I moved on him, alternating between lifting up and down and rolling my hips to grind against him.

“Cross,” I gasped when he finally let his hands free, gripping my hips as I rode him. “You feel so good. I love…” I was breathless. “I love the way you make me feel.”

“I love making you come,” he said, his voice strained as I increased my pace, chasing that release I could feel building like a storm inside me.

Heat curled beneath my skin the harder I rocked against him, everything in me tightening in the sweetest way.

“Aspen,” he groaned. “Fuck.”

I watched the strain ripple over his face, relishing the way he was already there. I’d done that. I’d driven him to that point.

I loved it.

Loved him.

“Cross,” I gasped as my release sharpened. “I’m coming,” I breathed. “God, I’m coming.” I rode him harder, giving my throbbing clit all the attention it needed.

“Yes,” he said. “Fuck, yes,” he groaned as he came right along with me.

“Ohmigod,” I sighed, my entire body shivering as my orgasm rolled through me in waves of pleasure that made me absolutely liquid above him.

Little jolts of pleasure made me shake as I leaned down, kissing him as we caught our breath.

He smoothed my hair back, looking up at me like I was the only thing in the world that mattered to him.

And I knew in that moment that he’d thoroughly ruined me for any other person. Just like he told me he would.