“I was the one who went from letting my mother tell me what to like and do to letting Ben tell me what to like and do.” A sneer curled my lip as I felt emotion rising in my throat. I hadn’t let it come out with Adriana or Em and I hadn’t meant to let it out here, but Aaron’s presence, his voice, his earnest eyes drew it easily out of me. “Honestly, who spends the years eighteen to twenty-one not seeing her friends and doing the things normal girls do at that age? I haven’t even figured out my passion or what I want to do with my life. There’s nothing I love the way you love teaching, nothing that puts that spark in my eye because all I’ve ever done is serve other people’s lives instead of my own.”
My fingernails hooked onto my lower teeth as I realized how much time I’d truly wasted. And for whom.
“God,” I exhaled, eyes bright with but with awe at my own stupidity. “The best part is that they’re people that I can’t even stand to think about now. Ben, obviously. My dad, since it drives me insane that he’s let my mother get to this point without speaking up. And my mother — she chose money over me. These days I honestly wish she weren’t blood. I want to pretend she doesn’t exist. It’s insane. The person I did all of this for isn’t someone I even want in my life anymore. I threw away some of my most important years and only to realize that I have no family to really call mine.”
I felt Aaron’s fingers on the back of my neck as he pulled me in to kiss my forehead. “Hey.” He brushed my cheek. I hadn’t even noticed the tears. “You either love the family you were born with or you choose the one you want to live with, and your friends have obviously chosen you already. The people from the restaurant, they can’t help but love and care about you because they know the real you, they know what you’re worth.” My mouth parted slowly to speak but Aaron interrupted me, tipping my face towards his. “And don’t say that you weren’t worth it. You got out of it. You could’ve easily stayed. You were three years deep in this and you pulled yourself out when a lot of others would’ve been long gone. Especially if they had family telling them that this was the way to live. After twenty-one years, the odds were against you, Nina, but you stood up and said no. Give yourself credit for that.”
I exhaled, feeling his words flood my body with warmth, comfort. And awe. Not a minute ago, I’d felt so colorless, sick to my stomach. But his words flowed through me like a cleanse and suddenly, I was enlivened. Or at the very least, I felt good. “Thank you,” I sniffled in a way that compelled him to bury a kiss in my hair. I luxuriated in the comforting feeling of his hand on the back of my knee, of having his strong body to lean on. “I’m glad you’re here,” I breathed. I hadn’t thought about how it might sound, all I knew was that I meant it.
I could hear his lips parting into a smile. “Me too,” he said softly. “I’m glad I get to see you start over.”
I smiled. “Are you going to?” I asked.
“To what?”
“Start over too. Do everything you weren’t allowed to do before. Or haven’t gotten to do in awhile. You could make a list of the things.”
A sexy smile curved his lips. “I think I already checked several things off that list last night,” he said a look cast over his eyes. His hand squeezed my leg, seemingly unconsciously, as if he were reliving our romp in my apartment. I blushed.
“Had it been a long time? Since you and Cara — ” I cut off, realizing the rudeness of my question. Eyes wide at myself, I blushed harder.
“Really. You’re suddenly shy about asking revealing questions after what you did to me last night?”
I looked to see Aaron grinning big. “I… apparently,” I laughed at myself, recalling the things I’d asked him last night at the restaurant.
“Quite the transformation,” Aaron teased.
“Well, if you’re implying that I should go ahead and ask those questions, I’ll remind you that one of them went unanswered yesterday,” I said, impish.
“Oh boy.”
“I asked you what things had become off-limits.”
Aaron shook his head at me while swigging the last of his beer. “You’re really curious about that, aren’t you?”
“Admittedly, yes.”
“Why?”
“It fascinates me that someone who looks like you can have trouble getting what he wants sexually.”
Aaron raised his eyebrows at my honesty. “Well, when you’re in a relationship and not one to stray, it can happen.”
“I know.” Silent for a few seconds, we simply looked at each other. “So… are you going to answer the question?” I asked with a grin that made him put his beer down and lean back against the wall with a somewhat scornful little laugh. He let me wait for a few moments of silence before finally answering.
“I broke up with Cara in May. We hadn’t had sex since early February.”
Whoa. Five months. I tried not to look too shocked since I wasn’t sure if I really knew what was considered a long time was for men. Though nearly half a year certainly seemed like an eternity, especially for someone like Aaron. He was athletic, muscular, pumping with higher levels of testosterone than the average male who was already pretty horny and hungry for sex. Ben had sure been. When we’d visited his family in North Carolina, I’d been so preoccupied with meeting his relatives that there was really no time for sex, especially since we’d been put in separate rooms in his parents’ home. But Ben still made sure that he got off daily, pulling me from conversations during the most formal dinner parties, making me give him head in a bathroom if my outfit was too hard to take off.
“So, if sex was off-limits, did you at least get… anything else?”
Aaron let out a bitter laugh. “Say the word, Nina.”
Well. His tone sent a thrill up my spine. “Head. Blowjobs,”
I said, cocking an eyebrow as if to say, happy? He kept staring, as if challenging me to say more. “Did she ever suck your cock, Aaron.” God. I was never this person, but there was most definitely something he possessed that just made me talk like a foulmouthed nymphomaniac.
“Those were definitely under the category of off-limits.”