The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

“That’s cool.”

I was too tired to try and make a joke about how not cool it was while I was on the verge of dying. “What have you been up to since school?”

We hadn’t seen each other since the end of the spring semester of our freshman year. Cain had transferred schools the next fall, and even though I didn’t remember whether he’d ever called or text messaged me afterward, he might have. I’d been in the middle of recuperating from my accident and those next six months had gone by hazily, a mix of pain medicine and anger. I hadn’t been anyone’s friend then other than Diana’s, and that was mostly because she wouldn’t let it be any other way, and truthfully, I hadn’t given Cain much thought after that.

“I’m in Philadelphia now. I was in San Diego before that for a few years, but everything is great,” he said as he bent over to set the dish in the lower rack of the dishwasher. “How long have you and Graves been together?”

Considering I wasn’t sure how much Chris and Drew had told Cain, much less what Aiden told them, I was going to wing it. “Well, I worked for him for two years. We’ve been living together for five months now.” That way I didn’t have to get too specific.

“For real?”

“For real.”

“Huh,” he kind of muttered under his breath. “That’s… surprising.”

A faint reminder of what I had told Aiden in the bedroom earlier flicked through my brain, and I had to keep from snickering.

His elbow touched mine again as he took another plate from me, his green-eyed gaze reaching mine for a moment. “You look fucking great by the way.”

Everyone telling me I looked greatly recently only made me really self-conscious about what they used to think of me before. Did I look like shit? “Oh, thanks.” My weight had always yo-yoed depending on how much exercise I was doing. I gained it really easily and lost it really easily, but I couldn’t remember freshman year where I was, but it might have been at one of my heaviest periods.

Yeah, the silence after that was just plain weird. Luckily, it didn’t take long to finish rinsing everything off and setting the dishwasher to clean. Cain headed out while I wiped the counters off. I was so tired, but it was only nine o’clock at night. I grabbed a glass of water and chugged half of it down before trudging outside to see the guys for a little bit longer.

Pushing open the French doors leading to the patio with the last little bit of strength I had left, the heat from the stone fire pit hit me in the face immediately. In the second it took for my eyes to adjust, I found all four of the guys sitting around it in various stages of wide-open legs and slouches, hanging out.

“You finally made it,” Drew, the nicer of the two, exclaimed. On his lap was the blond ball of fur, completely passed out. Apparently, Leo had won someone else over in no time at all.

“Yeah,” I said pretty weakly, dead on my feet and realizing there were only four seats and they were all taken up.

“Here, take my seat,” Drew said quickly.

“Oh, that’s okay.”

“Sit with me,” Aiden suggested, or maybe demanded, without hesitation.

I stared at him, squeezing the cool glass lightly between my hands, debating whether to excuse myself or take a seat because there wasn’t another option. What was I going to do? Offer to take the floor when there was a perfectly good leg I could sit on? A leg that belonged to the man his friends believed I’d married out of love. Okay, come on.

For a moment, I thought about dragging out one of the dining room chairs, but it would just seem weird. And I really didn’t want to walk any more than I needed to.

I mean, it wasn’t like this was the first time I’d sat on someone’s leg. Friends did that kind of stuff. Married people snuggled, at least that’s what I reasoned with myself. Not because I wanted to sit on his lap or anything. Nope.

I dodged around the only set of long legs in my way and stopped right by Aiden’s knees, watching as he spread them. I let myself glance at his face, shadowed by the fire, and took a deep breath. It was his idea, wasn’t it? Turning my body so my back was to him, I slowly lowered myself onto the middle of his thigh, forever conscience that I wasn’t exactly ninety-eight pounds heavy. My butt hit the middle of that intensely muscular leg, and just as I started to get comfortable so my back was straight, he lifted his foot. With one big palm to the side of my waist, he pulled me in so that I slid all the way up to where his hip met his leg, off to one side of the cradle of his groin. My entire side pressed into his chest.

My face didn’t go hot or anything, but my pulse went nuts in reaction as I took in our positions. I appreciated the arm that happened to sling low across my back, his palm resting on my hip, cupping it over the flannel material of my pajamas. His other hand was busy, the thumb wrapped around the inside of my knee while the four other fingers framed the outer side of it.

My entire body lit up, aware of the sweet smell to Aiden. How big the muscles under my bottom were. How warm and well developed the muscles searing into my arm and chest were. And how close his face was to mine.

He was looking at me, that subtle side inspection that I could feel into the deepest part of my belly. The corner of his mouth was tilted just slightly up in what was half a smirk and half a smile, all Aiden.

I smiled at him nervously and maybe a little shyly as I slowly pulled my arm up from its space between our bodies and slipped it around those wide shoulders I noticed at least five times a day every day.