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“Yeah. Well. I’d better get to bed.”
“Sure.” He starts to move from his side of the counter, and I have to try to not let my eyes drift south when I am reminded that he still isn’t wearing a shirt. “I’ll make some calls in the morning so I can be here for breakfast. And I’ll talk to Iris. I promise.”
“I definitely think Sophie will be—”
I forget everything I was about to say when Aiden rounds the corner, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he isn’t wearing a shirt. I can barely make it out in this light, but even having never seen it before, it makes my heart start to pound in my chest and my blood start to rush in my ears. I don’t know how long it takes Aiden to realize I’m staring at the place to the left of his navel, his skin darker there, more raised.
“Oh,” he laughs. “I know it looks weird. I’ve had it forever.”
“It’s... a heart.”
“Yeah, it looks like one, doesn’t it? I got it in culinary school.” He touches the scar absently. “I dropped hot oil on myself. Damned pan slipped right out of my hand. Not my best moment as a chef.”
I don’t think I’m actually breathing; everything he’s saying only makes my panic worse. It seems impossible, what I’m seeing, what I’mhearing—the coincidence of it all too much tocomprehend. My eyes remain glued to the heart-shaped burn on his abdomen for longer than is appropriate, and I finally tear them away to meet Aiden’s increasingly confused-looking face.
“I’m tired,” I blurt out, my knees feeling oddly weak. “I’d better get to bed.”
“Oh... kay,” he says slowly, probably wondering why I’m acting weird all of a sudden.
I can’t help it. I need to getaway.
“Good night, Aiden,” I say quickly as I turn away from him, his scar still fresh in my mind along with all the memories attached to it.
No, no, no, this can’t be happening.
If he thinks me half sprinting down the stairs is strange, he doesn’t come after me to ask about it. I don’t slow down until I’m safe in my room, my heart beating out of my chest as I cross to sit at the edge of my bed in a daze.
“I have a scar, too, you know.”
“Really? I bet it’s not as bad as mine.”
“It’s pretty big. And it looks like a heart, which means it doesn’t even look cool.”
“How did you get it?”
“I dropped hot oil on myself a few years ago while I was cooking. Not my best moment.”
It’s a story I’ve heard before. A story I’ve heard murmured through a computer mic from a man whose face I’ve never seen. A man who—until he suddenly disappeared from our message threads and subsequently my entire life—had almost made me believe he might have cared about me.
I’d known him asA.Isn’t it ridiculous that I could have misplaced his voice in only a year? That I didn’t make the connection until right now? I thought when he disappeared it was just a bad experience I was going to have to chalk up to naïveté, theconsequences of allowing myself to grow too close to someone who was ultimately paying to watch me come. And here I am, a year later, still unable to unsubscribe from OnlyFans emails because of some silly fantasy that he will somehow try to find me after all this time, even though it would be nearly impossible evenifhe wanted to, given that I nuked my account in some pitiful post-breakup-like depressive episode. Which makes no sense, since we were never actually together. He was just some guy I deluded myself into thinking I knew better than I did. Just someone I had never seen and thought I neverwouldsee. Which I’m realizing now isn’t the case at all.
The truth is obvious, I think, as terrifying as that is. That my time online that I thought was well behind me has brought itself front and center in the form of the very reason that made me leave it in the first place. The man who had made me feel something and then made me feel utterly stupid for doing so when he logged off and never came back.
Because Aiden Reid, very-hot-but-very-off-limits boss, used to watch my channel.
He used to watch ita lot.
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It was everything I wanted.
Glad you liked.
I might be getting addicted to watching you come.
CHAPTER 8
