Chapter 19

19

O wen's lips touch mine, and I don't know how to make sense of it. I don't want to be kissed because he heard my sad story. I don't want to be kissed because he feels like he needs to comfort me in this way. Only his hands climb up into my hair, holding my head on either side, and he groans the second his lips part mine and our tongues touch. Like a groan that speaks to his level of need and desperation and fucking desire.

Like going months without kissing me has cost him everything, and he's tired of paying instead of taking.

I never felt safe with Claude. He was always a wild, unpredictable storm. Initially, that's what drew me to him. Like his wildness made me reckless, and it was sexy and freeing. Owen is the opposite. His cool certainty and protective strength not only make me feel grounded but cherished.

He'd rather die than hurt a hair on my head and wants to destroy anyone who ever has.

That's what this touch is. That's what these sounds are. That's what this kiss tells me.

That it's not just lust. It's life. A necessity .

This entire night has been a clusterfuck of madness. Rory, my Rory , is hurt. She's having surgery . I reacted in a way I hated in front of her. So, when she's physically recovered, I'm going to have a real sit-down with her. I owe her that.

But Owen listening to me, hearing about my past, and still being here with me…

I don't know what this is between us, but I fucking want it.

I trusted a man I was in love with, and he destroyed that trust with a betrayal unlike any other. I turned inward. I withdrew, not knowing how to be around people or trust them. But I trust Owen. And that… God, that trust… I'm not sure how I could ever go without it again.

His lips ravage mine, his tongue moving in a seductive, devouring dance.

All too soon he pulls back, his forehead pressing to mine.

"My sweet thing, I need you. I crave you. I am consumed with you. You must already know that as I've done little to hide it."

"But?"

He blows out a heavy torrent of air. "You are easily the most desirable, undeniably forbidden thing in my world. You don't belong to me. You belong to everyone else but me. I'm thirty-four, and you're twenty-two. I have a child and a career. You're just starting out with an endless sea of possibilities ahead of you. Not to mention, your brother would fucking gut me for touching you, and Rory needs you. I don't know what I have to offer you that you'd want to take, given all that."

"Then why kiss me?" I ask, trying to hide the sting of rejection from my voice.

He cradles my face and stares straight into my eyes. "You are impossible for me to resist, and I'm tired of trying. But I don't know how that works for us without us risking everything."

He's right, of course. Our lives are too intertwined. The entanglements between us too high to traverse. But I want him, and he wants me, and maybe that's enough .

"I don't care," I tell him.

"Estlin—"

I shut him up with a kiss. "I know what you're saying. I understand it fully. I'd be your lover not your girlfriend. We'd stay a secret. And eventually, with no real option for a future between us, it would run its course and fizzle out."

He licks his lips, tasting me on them, and shakes his head. "No. That's not how I want you to be with me?—"

"But it's reality, isn't it? We both want this, and we both know it doesn't make sense and could never work. So we'll have some fun with it and keep it separate from everything else. It'll exist in the darkness of night and stolen moments. And because of that, it won't be real, and when it ends, it won't break us apart. As long as we're open and honest about it all with each other, then we'll be fine."

He gives me a sad sort of smile, one I can't fully read the meaning behind, but then he's kissing me again. Over and over into drunken dizziness. His teeth scrape my bottom lip until, out of nowhere, he shoots himself back and sits on his haunches, scrubbing his hands up and down his face.

"We should call your family. And Jack." His forehead falls to my thighs, and his arms wrap around my back. "Fuck. Jack. I never thought I'd be the sort of friend to lie to and betray another, but?—"

"Whoa. Slow down there about Jack. Yes, you're his friend, and Wren is mine. But I am an adult, and I decide who I sleep with, not my brother."

"While I appreciate that, it's not how friends work, and definitely not how older brothers operate."

Yeah, again, he's right. Jack won't like it, and I have a feeling Wren wouldn't either. I'd remind him that it worked out for my parents as well as Rina and Brecken, since they had a similar best friend's sibling situation, but Owen and I aren't talking about forevers. We're talking about hot, sweaty, and temporary .

Maybe that should bother me, but it doesn't. It feels safer somehow. Like I have some power and control over how we do this. I run my fingers through his soft hair. It's so strange to be here with him after weeks and weeks of dancing around this.

"Do you regret hiring me?"

His head pops up and his bloodshot eyes meet mine. There is so much that weighs on this man's soul. A perpetual burden he carries that he's never learned how to shake or adjust.

"No," he answers quickly and easily without even a hint of hesitancy. "Rory loves you, and you've been so good not only with her, but for her. I won't lie and say this wasn't what I was afraid of and why I initially didn't want to hire you. That said, I think this was inevitable. We were always going to get here. It's what comes after this that scares me and fills me with worry. I'm not sure what sort of father planning to fuck my nanny makes me other than a cliché, but despite it all, I want you and don't know how to say no or walk away from this or from you."

"I don't want to walk away either, and I want you too." My fingers trickle across his five o'clock shadow and then up to flatten the crease between his brows. "Relax. It'll be fine. And no matter what, Rory will always be our priority."

Just then a text comes in. He jumps away from me and practically smashes his phone to the floor as he scrambles for it. He reads the text on the screen and sighs, rubbing a weary hand across his forehead.

"Surgery is going well. Kaplan thinks I'll be able to take her home tonight."

"That's great!" I exclaim.

He dives back at me, his lips claiming mine, working me up into a frenzy, and just when I'm panting and needing, he pulls back and helps me stand. "It is. Okay, call your parents, and I'll call mine."

Owen goes out into the hall to call his parents, and I call mine as I start to pace his office, looking around. He has a picture of Rory on his desk, and off to the side on a cabinet thing, he has pictures of his parents with Rory and another of Katy, Rory, and him in his backyard.

I was right about my mother birthing a kitten. She is totally nuts, even as my trauma surgeon father tries to talk her down.

"Oh my hell!" my mother screeches into my ear. "Eddie Estlin Kincaid, what the absolute fuck do you mean you were in a car accident after you saw Claude?"

"Breathe, Mom. My CT was normal. It's just some stitches." And likely some bruising, though I haven't seen how bad off I am.

"Breathe? You want me to breathe? How can I possibly do that after my baby was in an accident?"

"Dad," I whine like a teenager. "Tell her to breathe."

"Breathe, Aria. Actually, chill the fuck out. If she says she's fine, she's fine. Though I would like to talk to Owen or at least see your CT."

My mother makes a disgruntled noise into the phone. "Does your head hurt?"

"Not yet, but if you keep screeching at me, it will."

She's not amused. "Not funny, Eddie. My baby is hurt."

"It's fine, and I'm fine," I promise. "Owen numbed me up, so we'll see once that starts to wear off. I'm sure he can give me something if I need it."

"I just can't believe Claude did that."

"He didn't," I explain, dropping into Owen's desk chair and spinning around to look out the window at not a whole lot. "I got upset when I saw him. It was a total shock since I didn't expect him to turn up out of the blue, and I wasn't prepared. A guy ran a red light and plowed straight into the side of the car."

"Flippity fuck nuggets. Come home. Please?"

"No. I'm honestly okay, and I want to be there when Rory goes home and wakes up tomorrow."

"Fine. I'm not happy about it, but I get it and I respect it. Tell your boss we're coming over tomorrow morning. He'll have to deal."

The door opens and Owen walks back in. I roll my eyes in that teenage way while I make a face that conveys my mother's level of sanity. His lips twitch and he walks over to me. "I'm sure Owen will be okay with you coming over to check on me tomorrow."

"May I speak with them?" he asks, and I hand him the phone. He does his best to put them at ease and relays my CT results. Before he hangs up, he says, "I'm having it taken care of."

My eyebrows scrunch and my eyes narrow, but he ignores me, listening to whatever my parents say in reply. The moment he hangs up, I poke his side. "What was all that, I'm having it taken care of stuff?" I mock his deep, surly voice.

His arm wraps around my waist, and he hauls me up into his chest. "You're my girl now, and I take care of what's mine. But even before you were, there was no fucking way I wasn't going to handle this situation with your ex."

I squint even as I swoon just a bit at him calling me his girl. "What does handle mean?"

He kisses me. And kisses me. And kisses me. Damn him! I was trying to ask stuff here and now… ugh, fine . He can handle it.

"We should grab something to eat and then get you and Rory home." His words end there, but there is no mistaking the promise in his expression or tone. He plows his lips back into mine, his hands twining up into my hair, until I'm once again breathless. "I love your hair. I can't stop touching it. And your body…" His palms rake down my sides, skimming past my breasts and over my round hips. "There is no woman alive who is sexier to me than you are."

And I'm dead. Officially.

Pulling back, he grins as if he knows exactly what saying that just did to me. His thumb wipes along my bottom lip before he sucks it back into his mouth.

"You taste like candy. Like you're fucking mine."

"That's because I am yours." It's true, and denying it or saying anything else is pointless.

Especially when he snarls, "You better fucking be. Your lips are swollen. I only wish I had all night to appreciate them. And make the other set just as swollen and wet. But you hit your head and need to rest, so it'll have to wait."

Je-sus .

"You can't say things like that to me and then expect me to rest and not either sit on your face or use all my vibrators."

He chokes. " All of your vibrators?"

I give him a cheeky smirk. "You'll meet them soon. We can play a game with them. Who can make Estlin come harder and faster?"

He shakes his head but walks me toward the elevators. I make a pitstop in the restroom and nearly shriek in horror when I see myself. My hair is a hot mess of stringy chaos, half of it chunked with blood, the other half all over the damn place. My face looks like something out of a dark romance novel, with mascara crusted beneath my eyes and streaked down my cheeks.

Why didn't Owen tell me I looked like this, and what was that man doing kissing me the way he was kissing me when I did?

Because he doesn't care about that, he cares about you , hits my brain and I try to shut that bitch down since I'm trying to be his lover and not in love.

I clean myself up as best I can, and as I exit the bathroom, he's texting on his phone, but when he looks up, he chuckles at my perturbed expression. "What? You're beautiful," is all he says with a shrug like it didn't matter how scary I looked.

We get into the elevator and head downstairs. The elevator is crowded, and he keeps his distance now, the harsh reality of the real world versus fake and forbidden versus accepted bearing down on us.

"Jack is working a shift tonight," he explains as we reach the cafeteria. "I told him you're okay. He's going to come by tomorrow with your parents and mine."

"Sounds like a great time," I deadpan. We eat quickly, anxious to get upstairs to the surgical waiting room. The moment we step into the elevator and find ourselves alone, he presses me against the wall and kisses me. His tongue slips into my mouth like I'm his first drop of water after weeks of drought before he drags his lips along my chin and the column of my neck, where he starts to suck on me. "You better not give me a hickey," I pant, my hands holding onto his shoulders, so I don't collapse.

"Nowhere visible," he promises with a dark roughness to his voice. "But your body is going to be covered with the evidence of my hands and mouth."

Shivers chase down my spine, fighting against the heat of my skin. Every brush of his fingers, every swipe of his tongue, every flutter of his lips only makes me crave more.

"I should have known it that night."

"Known what?" I murmur, my eyes closed, utterly lost to him.

"That once was never going to be enough with you."

My heart hiccups in my chest, but I refuse to give it credence. He said it before. What we're doing is forbidden, and with that, it can only ever be this.

My eyes open, and I suck in a breath when the car slows, and we reach the surgical floor. He releases me and stands, his expression giving nothing away as we enter through a back way, Owen swiping his badge and navigating us along. Just before we reach the Post Anesthesia Care Unit, or PACU, Kaplan stops us .

"They're wheeling her in now. I was going to text you, but I wanted them to get her settled before you see her."

Owen looks like he's about to burst through the doors, but Kaplan steps in front of him.

"She did great, okay? The surgery was very successful with minimal bleeding. They did dissolvable stitches and put a cast over it to keep it stabilized since we all know kids will outsmart splints and slings."

"She's really okay?"

"She is. Go see for yourself."

Owen throws his arms around Kaplan, hugging him fiercely. "I owe you and Stone."

"Right. Yeah. We'll be sure to collect on that," he teases sarcastically and smacks Owen's back. "No sailing."

"No sailing," Owen agrees, stepping back. "I'll have to do something else with her."

Kaplan says good night to us and then walks off, leaving us to enter the PACU and find Rory.

"Why no sailing?" I ask as we walk through the long, rectangular, brightly lit room on our way to her bed.

"She has a cast, and since it's over a surgical site, they couldn't use a waterproof one. Not to mention, she'd need two good hands for sailing."

"She's going to be pissed about not being able to swim or do gymnastics."

"Yes, she will be." We reach her bed, and his breath dies in his lungs at the sight of her small body, pale and tucked under the blanket with a large pink cast on her arm. "Oh, Rory." He slides into the seat beside her bed and kisses her forehead so tenderly my heart aches with a sudden, unexplainable pang.

I want them to be mine.

And I'm not sure they ever will be.