The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

“I always have a flashlight,” I explained. “And except for these last two years, I’ve always lived with someone. Plus, it’s rare that I’m ever in complete darkness. You learn how to avoid it.”

“You lived with a boyfriend?” he asked casually, his breath warm on my hair. If his tone was a little too casual, I didn’t pick up on it.

“Uh, no. I’ve never ‘lived’ with one. I’ve only had three and it never came up.” I locked my gaze on that shiny gold medal draped high over his left pectoral. “Have you ever lived with a girlfriend?”

The scoff that came out of Aiden made me jump just because it was so unexpected. “No.” His tone sounded either disgusted or disbelieving that he would do something so stupid. “I’ve never been in a relationship.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

“Ever?”

“Ever,” the smug-ass responded.

“Not even in high school?”

“Definitely not in high school.”

“Why?”

“Because every relationship will end up one of two ways: you’ll end up breaking up, or you end up marrying the person. And I don’t like wasting my time.”

That had me tipping my head back so I could meet his eyes. His expression said he thought I’d lost my damn mind, but my mind was too busy to be lost. He had a point about the outcome of relationships, but the rest of it… His lack of dates. The religious medallion around his neck. It all suddenly made sense.

“Are you…” I couldn’t get it out. “Are you saving yourself for marriage?”

He didn’t throw his head back and laugh. He didn’t flick me on the forehead and call me an idiot. Aiden Graves simply stared at me in the shadowy room, his face inches from mine. When he was done staring at me, he blinked. Then he blinked some more. “I’m not a virgin, Vanessa. I had sex a few times in high school.”

My eyes bulged. High school? He hadn’t been with anyone since freaking high school? “In high school?” My tone was as disbelieving as it should have been.

He picked up on what I was trying to hint at. “Yes. Sex is complicated. People lie. I don’t have time for any of it.”

Holy. Shit. I watched his face. He wasn’t lying. Not even a little bit. That suddenly explained what the hell he did in his room for hours by himself. He masturbated. He masturbated all the time. I felt my face get hot as I asked, “Are you a born-again virgin?”

“No.” Those lashes lowered over his eyeballs again. “What would make you think I was?”

“You’ve never had a girlfriend. You don’t ever go on dates.” You jerk off all the time. Crap, I needed to stop thinking about him and his hand and all the time he hung out in his room.

Aiden was definitely giving me a ‘you’re an idiot face.’ “I don’t have time to bother trying to have a relationship, and I don’t like most people. Women included. ”

I wrung my hands, which were still between our two bodies. “You like me a little.”

“A little,” he repeated with only a small curve to the corners of his mouth.

I let his comment go and reached forward with one of my index fingers to point at the St. Luke’s medallion around his neck. “Isn’t this a Catholic saint? Maybe you’re religious.”

His big hand immediately went up to touch the quarter-sized object he carried around with him always. “I’m not religious.”

I raised my eyebrows, and he gave me an exasperated expression.

“You can ask whatever you want.”

“But will you answer?”

He huffed as he settled that massive, mostly nude body in front of me. “Ask your damn question,” he quipped brusquely.

I held the tip of my index finger directly above his medal before drawing my hand back toward my chest, feeling uber shy. I’d wanted to ask him for years, but I’d never been confident enough to. What better moment than when he was commanding me to ask? “Why do you always wear it?”

Without a hint of reservation, Aiden answered. “It was my grandfather’s.”

Was that my heart making a racket?

“He gave it to me when I was fifteen,” he went on to explain.

“For your birthday?”

“No. After I went to go live with him.”

His voice was smooth and comforting. Everything about it had me closing my eyes, sucking up his words and giving me this sense of openness. “Why did you go live with him?”

“Them. I lived with my grandparents.” The bristles of his beard touched my forehead again. “My parents didn’t want to deal with me anymore.”

That was definitely my heart making all kinds of horrendous noises. This all felt too familiar, too painful even for me.

Possibly too painful even for Aiden.

What Aiden was saying didn’t add up with the man across from me. The one who rarely raised his voice in anger, hardly ever cursed, rarely fought with any of his opponents much less his teammates. Aiden was a low-level charge—determined, focused, disciplined.

And I knew way too well what it was like to be unimportant.

I wasn’t going to cry.

I kept my eyes closed and Aiden kept his secrets close to his heart.

His breath touched my forehead. “Did you ever go to therapy?” he asked. “After what your sisters did?”

Maybe this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have after all. “No. Well, I went to a psychologist when I left my mom’s house. Well, when CPS took custody. They only asked questions about what things were like where my mom was concerned. Not about… anything else really.” In hindsight, I figure they wanted to be sure I hadn’t been abused by her or anyone else she could have brought into her kids’ live. The psychologist must have seen something in my older sisters that he didn’t like because we got split up into different houses. Honestly, I’d never been happier than I was after that.