“No,” he said simply. “At that point, I took anything you were willing to give me, Catalina.”
Something staggered in my chest.
“The story I told your sister about how we met? I was only speaking the truth.”
My eyelids fluttered shut, and I thanked the heavens I was currently leaning on Aaron, that he was holding me against his chest, because I would have tumbled to the floor otherwise.
“By the time I realized how much of an idiot I had been by pushing you away, you already hated me.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “I heard you talk to Jeff. Accidentally.” That knot wouldn’t go away, squeezing my throat tight. “You said you’d work with anybody else, anybody but me. And I felt as if you had just pushed me aside. Deemed worthless as a professional because you didn’t like me. Because I had crossed some line I hadn’t known existed. I … how could I look at you and not think about it after that? I blacklisted you.”
“And I deserved it.” Aaron turned me around delicately, f
lushing our chests together very slowly. He looked down at me. “I meant what I said. When you brought that welcome gift to my office, something tore inside of me. You … distracted me. You stole my focus, Lina. Like nothing I had ever experienced before. So, I panicked. I refused to let that happen. When Jeff suggested I work closely with you, I convinced him that it would be a bad idea. I convinced myself of that too.
“But then I got to know you.” Aaron looked down at me intently, something weighing behind his eyes, pushing me—pushing us—closer and closer to an emotion that took more and more room in my chest with every second I spent looking into his eyes. “I watched you work, laugh, be this bright and kind woman that you are. And the crack that had opened that first day widened. It only kept growing. Making me realize how much of a fool I had been. By the time I knew I didn’t want to push you away anymore, that I couldn’t do it, it was too late. So, I took whatever you had for me even if that was hatred, antagonism, your obvious dislike, anything if that gave me a few minutes with you every day. If that put me on your mind, even for a little while.”
“Aaron …” I trailed off, everything inside of my chest, my head, my memory stirring into a loud and raging thunderstorm. “All this time.”
“I know.”
I watched his jaw twitch, his features hardening impossibly.
“You let me antagonize you. All this time, you sat there and let me do that.” My voice shook with emotion. With the loss of a time that we could have had. But it also shook with the lie that hid in my own words.
Had I really hated him at all? It didn’t seem possible at this point. Hadn’t I done the same and convinced myself of that because he had hurt me?
“Why?” The question left my lips in a whisper, for him but also for myself.
“Because it was all you were willing to give me. And I’d rather have you hating me than not have you at all.”
My body trembled; it shuddered under the weight of his words. With the truth underneath the ones rising to my lips.
Love. It had to be love—the uproar causing havoc in my chest. Realization grew in me as quickly as lightning hit the ground.
“I didn’t hate you,” I breathed. “As much as I wanted to, I don’t think I ever did. I was just … hurt. Perhaps because I had always wanted you to like me, and you made me believe you didn’t.”
Something flashed across Aaron’s face. The space between our mouths crackling with electricity and an emotion I had never, ever felt before.
“I want your heart, Catalina.” Both of his hands rose to my shoulders, trailing up my neck and cupping my face. “I want it for myself, just how I have given you mine.”
It’s yours, you beautiful and blind man, I wanted to tell him. Take it. I don’t want it anymore, I wanted to scream at him and anyone that would listen.
But I didn’t. I didn’t think one could be petrified by pure, sheer joy. It never seemed a possibility. Yet there I was, standing in front of him, just as he laid his heart in my hands, and all I could do was stare at him with a thousand unsaid words waiting on the tip of my tongue.
So, I showed him. My hands reached for his face, just as he had been doing, and I brought him to my lips. I told him with a kiss that I was his. Gave myself to him with those lips that didn’t seem capable of articulating any words.
Aaron lifted me off the floor and took me in his arms with a tenderness, a reverence that left me breathless, just how I imagined him doing with my heart. My legs went around his hips as his lips parted mine, his tongue taking, governing mine.
With long strides, he crossed the open space in his loft, carrying me in his arms as neither of us came out to breathe. He placed me on the countertop of the kitchen. The cool granite caressing the part of the backs of my thighs that weren’t covered by my shorts.
Aaron’s mouth dragged down my neck, his teeth scraping my skin, finally catching on the neckline of my tank top and pulling it down until revealing my bra. He grunted, and I felt the noise reverberate against my skin.
Hands on my hips shoved me against him with roughness, leaving me right on the edge of the counter. God, he was unleashed. My man was ravenous as he pulled at my top, briskly tugging it down to my waist, and then popped open my shorts, almost bursting the zipper. He didn’t care, didn’t seem to realize he had come undone.
I did that. I cracked him open at the seams.
The same kind of urgency hummed under my skin, under my fingertips, as I pulled at his T-shirt. In a swift motion, it lay on the floor. The warm, sizzling skin of his bare chest came against mine, his hips nestling between my legs, as those strong arms fused me against him, merged me with him.