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His eyes never left mine. They were wide and curious, which surprised me. I’d half-expected them to be filled with anger and betrayal.
I pressed the journal into one of his hands and noticed they were red and chapped.
“Ash, why aren’t you wearing gloves?” I asked.
His head tilted in confusion. “What?”
“Here, take mine. I have another pair at the office.” I began to remove my gloves before he could argue with me. He studied me like an anomaly before seeming to shake himself out of it.
“What? No. Keep your damned gloves. Tell me why you read my journal,” Ash snapped. “You had no right to do that. It was private.”
I let out a breath before reaching for one of his hands. He yanked it back and met my eyes with a blaze of annoyance.
“Let me put these gloves on you first, and then I’ll tell you. Deal?” I kept my voice low and calm in an effort to convince him I wasn’t going to fight with him or leave him. I don’t know why it seemed important to convey that to him, but I did it anyway.
I could see the wheels turning in his head before he finally held out the hand for me. “Fine. Start talking.”
I took his freezing cold hand in mine, trying so hard not to notice how fucking good it felt to touch his bare skin. He sucked in a breath as my hand cradled his, and I began to slide the glove on and talk at the same time.
“I saw it on the table at the coffee shop. The initials— my initials— caught my attention and I flipped it open only to see if there was a name in it. I saw a drawing of the ocean and words about… about forgetting… about being happy and then being sucker punched by a reminder of something darker from your past.”
I finished putting the first glove on and reached for his other hand, but when he didn’t offer it to me, I looked up.
“Don’t mock my words,” Ash hissed. His glare was a cross between anger and fear, and I hated to see it.
“I’m not, Ash. I swear. I know the exact feeling you wrote about. It happens to me, too… the night before I found the journal, actually. I’d had this dream and…”
I let my words drop off because I really didn’t want to tell him about my fucked-up dream. But how to explain why I hadn’t stopped reading the journal after that one page? “I just… I thought it was just me, you know? I thought I was the only one who felt like that and… and then I see someone who’s got the guts to write it down— to put it out there and accept that it’s real and I just thought how fucking brave that was…” I whispered, letting my words drop off because I couldn’t stand the vulnerability sliding through me.
He slowly lifted up his bare hand as a kind of peace offering to me. I began to slide the second glove on and was surprised by what he said next.
“It’s like a Ferris wheel you can’t get off.”
The words were so quiet, I found myself leaning in to hear him better. “What do you mean?” I murmured.
“Forgetting how bad it is and then having the reminder hit you square in the goddamned face.”
His voice carried such grief in it, I wanted to grab him up again. Open my heavy winter coat and secret him away inside until I could get him home in front of a blazing fire. Home and safe.
With me.
I bit the inside of my cheek to wake myself up from the daydream of a warm and snuggly Ash Valentine at home with me.
“Aiden?”
“Hmm?” I finished tugging on the glove and looked up at him.
“What’s your something darker from your past that you wish you could forget?”
I realized I was still holding his gloved hand and released it, crossing my arms over my chest and tucking my own cold hands into the folds of my coat sleeves.
“I lost someone a long time ago.” I felt my teeth grind together at the memory and my mouth’s reluctance to speak of it out loud. But I knew that if I ever stood a chance of having Ash confide his dark thing to me, I’d have to give him something of myself first. “In the water. The ocean… by drowning.”
A small groan of sympathy escaped Ash as his hand came out to squeeze my arm quickly. “I’m so sorry. Jesus, Aiden.”
I tried to give him a smile of reassurance. “So, you see? Your drawing of the waves and words about the water just… I don’t know. I couldn’t not connect with the writer of the journal. But never in a million years did I think I’d actually meet them. I figured I would just give it back and never know who it was, and they wouldn’t know I’d read it and no one would get hurt. But then I realized it was you and I panicked because I didn’t want you to hate me and—”
