Alarm

“Are you nervous?” he asked as he gripped my fingers.

“No,” I lied.

“You’re shaking.”

“Um...well, maybe a little,” I admitted. “I’ve never done anything like this.”

“Spontaneity suits you,” he said. He reached his arm up to place it over my shoulders and brushed my cheek with his finger. “It puts color in your cheeks.”

He pulled me next to him and pressed his lips to the top of my head.

“I’m a little nervous, too,” he said quietly. “I just want you to have a good time. I want both of us to have a good time.”

I still wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but I didn’t ask. Instead, I leaned into his body. My mind focused on the feeling of his arm around my shoulders. It was warm and comfortable, but it was something else too. I felt…protected.

Maybe that was the reason women were drawn to muscled guys. I’d never thought about it before, but despite his appearance, I felt safe with him next to me.

Getting through security took forever. Though we didn’t have any of the forbidden items, Aiden was pulled aside and searched thoroughly before we could get past the checkpoint to find our gate. By the time we got there, we only had about twenty minutes before our flight would begin to board. That gave us just enough time to stop at a kiosk to grab some snacks for the flight. I picked out some trail mix and a bottle of water, and Aiden grabbed a bag of Swedish Fish.

“Really?” I asked as I nodded toward the candy.

“I love these things,” Aiden admitted. He looked away from me. At first I thought he was embarrassed, but there was something off about his expression. He looked almost sad, and I wondered if I had offended him.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said as I touched his arm.

“It’s all good.” He took the bag of trail mix from my hand and walked swiftly to the counter. The curve of his biceps increased in definition, and I noticed his hands were clenched around the bags of food. Despite what he said, it obviously wasn’t all good. I wasn’t sure how, but I had definitely pissed him off, and we hadn’t even gotten on the plane yet.

My former boyfriend, Zach, had been a mild-mannered guy. There wasn’t a whole lot that upset him, but over the eighteen months we’d dated, I learned what kinds of things set him off. You couldn’t talk bad about the Catholic Church, even though he no longer attended mass, or you would definitely get an earful. I’d also learned to avoid conversations about Microsoft products because they would send him into a tirade about good software versus popular software.

This was why this trip was such a bad idea. I didn’t know enough about Aiden Hunter to know what his triggers were. I had no idea what I’d said about Swedish Fish that upset him and didn’t know him well enough to be comfortable asking about it. Anything I said might end up being a taboo subject for him, and it would be like walking through a minefield. Then again, he had said the trip was a good opportunity to get to know him better, so maybe I just needed to ask.

Another traveler walked past us and eyed Aiden up and down.

“Does that happen to you a lot?”

“What?”

“The whole security check thing,” I clarified. “I’ve never been searched.”

“Yeah, pretty much every time I fly,” he confirmed. “I guess I’m used to it.”

“Like the people who…well, who stare when you walk by?”

“It happens,” Aiden said with a shrug. “People make their assumptions about you as a person, based on your looks. It happens to everyone, I suppose.”

I thought about it but wasn’t so sure I agreed with him. I never thought people were judging me by how I looked. Of course, there wasn’t anything particularly unique about how I looked, either. Aiden, on the other hand, had gone out of his way to make himself look different from everyone else. That was bound to get people’s attention.

As we sat down to wait for the flight, Aiden’s phone rang before I had a chance to inquire any more about him. He looked at the number, glanced at me darkly, and then stood up and walked a few feet away before answering. He spoke in a low tone, and I couldn’t hear any of the conversation though the desire to eavesdrop was great. He held the phone tightly against his ear and gripped his other hand into a fist as he spoke. He paced a few feet farther away then turned and glanced at me for a moment before looking back to the floor.

A voice over the announcement system called for first-class passengers to begin boarding, and several people around me stood up and grabbed their bags. Aiden continued to pace, and his voice rose in pitch as he started yelling.

“Listen here, motherfucker! You need to get off your ass and do something about it before I show up there and explain to you just how I feel about all this shit!”

I tensed and gripped the arms of the chair as a few other passengers looked up at him. He lowered his voice again, but I could still see the tightness in his jaw as he spoke into the phone for a few more seconds then ended the call.

He took in a long breath and huffed it out before returning to where I sat.

“Everything all right?” I asked quietly.