Page 19

Nineteen

Aiden

I know the moment I spot her coming down the escalators that something is seriously wrong.

But I also know she’s here, so it likely doesn’t involve me.

Or not completely anyway.

She wheels her suitcase behind her, face a mask of icy calm that I want to chip through.

She’s intent on the exit and I realize she hasn’t spotted me so I hurry over, wrapping my fingers around the handle of her luggage.

“Wh—?” She starts, then I watch some of the ice melt.

Without me having to break my way through.

I can’t lie, that feels fucking great.

“Hi, tiny tornado,” I murmur, brushing the backs of my knuckles over her cheek. “I take it your day didn’t go smoothly?”

A furrow forms between her eyebrows. “How do you?—?”

I snag the suitcase from her, tug the tote off her arm and hang it over my shoulder.

Then I take her hand. “I can tell, Luns.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Considering we’re in a busy airport about to catch a taxi down to The Strip, I don’t push it. This isn’t the time or place. We can talk later. Right now, she’s here. “How are the feet?”

The furrow deepens, head tilting to the side as she studies me. “What do you mean?”

“We’re getting hitched tonight, Luns,” I say, drawing her toward the exit. “Are those tootsies getting cold?”

She glances up at me, lips twitching. “Tootsies?”

But the last of the ice melts away as I squeeze her hand, say, “Yup. Tootsies .”

A snort. “They’re toasty warm.” She lifts a sneaker-clad foot. “And warmer still because we’re in the desert.”

Laughter in my chest. “Thankfully, the autumn nights are pleasant?”

“Exactly.”

We pause at the end of the taxi queue, inching forward as the crowd snakes around the metal barriers up to the line of waiting cabs. It’s noisy, everyone excited to start their weekend, to party and drink and fuck themselves into oblivion.

All the Vegas things.

Blow money. Get lucky.

And leave it all in Sin City.

“I feel like I need to say again that you don’t have to do this,” she murmurs and the excitement surrounding us almost drowns out her voice.

I stifle a sigh—stubborn woman. I thought we’d already talked this shit through.

Or that I’d promised to fix it, battled her stubborn streak, and came out on top.

Because she agreed.

Because she’s here.

I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

“Luns,” I say quietly.

She takes a long time to look up at me.

But eventually those gray storm-cloud eyes come to mine, hold.

And I see it’s not stubbornness. Her gaze is filled with worry, with guilt, with fear, with hurt—and beneath all of that, I realize, my heart skipping a beat—with longing.

It’s the same longing inside me, the same longing that was a constant ache after I left, that never really went away even when life took us on separate journeys.

Because I didn’t have her.

Now I do.

Now she’s in my life.

She thinks this is something temporary, a hurdle to clear to get those stocks, a means to an end before we’ll part again.

But I have no intention of ever letting her go.

I fell in love with her as a thirteen-year-old boy. And that love has always been there, always floating right beneath the surface.

Now I have the chance to turn that into something more.

Something that can grow, can mature, can feed us in the years to come.

So no, I don’t have to do this.

We can be smart, go slow—date and learn each other, fall in love—real, lifelong adult love—again. We can play it safe, cautious, move incrementally, step by step by step.

But I’ve spent my whole life being smart, going step by step.

And that meant I lost Luna when I was a teenager.

It meant I had all these years without her.

I should have kept in touch. I should have told her how deeply I felt back then. I should have done everything I could to keep her in my life.

I didn’t.

I fucked up.

So, it may not be smart. It may be wildly out of character for me.

But this is Luns.

She’s been my heart since sixth grade.

Ignoring the slowly creeping line, I turn her toward me, cup her jaw, tilting her head up so our gazes align. “Luns,” I say again.

“What?” she whispers.

Flowery things flow through my head, big sentiments that I want to declare, but it’s too soon for that childhood love and too soon for huge declarations. I need to time to bind her too me, to make her understand, for that love beneath the surface to grow.

Then I realize that’s the old me talking.

So…

I embrace the full fuck-it vibe of Vegas and say, “I loved you back then and I let you go.”

Her mouth falls open and I take advantage, kissing her deeply, stroking my tongue over hers, tasting her long enough that I hear a cough behind me, that I realize the space in line in front of us has grown to epic proportions.

So, I draw her forward again.

And when we pause again, I bend, murmur in her ear, “That was the biggest mistake of my life, sweetheart.”

She sucks in a breath.

“Now, knowing that—” I brush my mouth over hers again, making sure to keep it short and sweet and hot. “So do you honestly think that now that you’re back in my life I’m going to ever let you go again?”