Aaron’
s sneer, the way his body was all stiff and impossibly tense, told me that he was about to lose his restraint.
“Aaron, stop.” My voice faltered. I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t do that. Not right here with half the people in the company staring.
But Aaron wasn’t budging. He remained a marble statue, awaiting Gerald’s answer, as if he had a whole lifetime to do so.
“Aaron, please.” I willed my voice to harden. But he was transfixed. Unmovable. “You are making it all worse.”
Was that the truth? I couldn’t be sure, but it was what had left my lips. It was what seemed to make it through and hit him like a physical blow, making him flinch.
I watched him turn slowly, and he—the man I had come to need and want in my life—faced me, hurt embedded into his eyes.
It broke my heart, putting it there, but what was the alternative?
I should have known better. I despised myself for putting us both in this situation when I knew firsthand what could happen. And it was happening.
Unable to take a single second more of it—of myself, the hurt in Aaron’s eyes, everything—I turned and walked away. I saw myself leaving the room and striding across a long hallway. I kept going, taking turns and climbing down stairs without a course of direction. I was on automatic, and cowering was my default.
“Catalina, stop running away.” Pure, unfiltered desperation governed Aaron’s voice, and it sickened me.
I despised myself even more for putting on him yet another ugly thing.
“Talk to me.”
I kept walking, not wanting to turn and not knowing where we were in the building. An empty hallway somewhere.
“Catalina, would you stop fucking running? Please.”
My legs came to a sudden halt, my eyes closed. I heard—sensed because that was how it worked now; I could feel the warmth of his body, crave it—Aaron walk around me, and when I opened them back up, I was welcomed by an angry, miserable man.
“Don’t do this. You hear me?” His voice didn’t crack or waver. “Don’t you even think of it. I won’t let you quit.”
God, he knew me so fucking well. Better than I did myself because his words only solidified what had been bubbling inside of me in the last few minutes.
But I was furious, so mad at the world and at myself. “Easy for you to say,” I snapped. Unfairly. But Gerald’s poison was eating away at my skin. Blackening everything in its way. “I’m the one whoring out anyway, right? You’ll brush it off and move on.”
He blinked, his features contorting with outrage and pain. “Easy for me to say? I’ll brush it off?” he hissed. “You think it was easy for me not to break his face on the spot? Maybe fuck up his mouth enough, so he couldn’t utter a word for a few weeks? Not to fucking end him for being a worthless pig?”
I believed Aaron would have done that. I knew he would have. And that… dissipated my anger, giving way to only anguish. How could I ever have anything for him that wasn’t adoration?
“I won’t let you do any of that,” I whispered. “He’s not worth the trouble you’d get into.”
“But you are. You are worth all that trouble. You are worth walking through a fucking fire. Don’t you see that?” He exhaled roughly through his nose, his hand coming to my cheek, making me lean on his touch on pure instinct. “Whatever shit Daniel put in your head about you not being worth fighting for is wrong. Love is worth fighting for. And I am not him, Lina. This is not the past either.”
I shook my head, but his palm held on to my face harder.
“When there’s a rock on the way and you fall, I tumble down with you. We fight our way up together.”
“It’s not that easy, Aaron.” I wished it were. I wanted so bad for the world to be that goddamn easy. “Those are just idealistic, beautiful words. At the end of the day, you can’t protect me from everything, hold my hand, and fire whoever disrespects me.”
“Maybe I can’t. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. When someone mistreats you and I have the power to do something about it, I’m going to speak up. I’m not going to wait on the sidelines and watch you take the hit of it on your own.” His chest heaved, moving up and down almost violently. “Just how I know you would fight tooth and claw against anyone who tried to hurt me. We protect and heal each other. That’s how this is supposed to be.”
“This is not only life we are talking about. This is my career. Yours too, Aaron.”
“It is, and I would never do anything to jeopardize it.”
“But what about everybody else? They might. Look at what happened with Gerald.” I fought the sudden urge to lean on his chest and break down. “What happens from now on? Every time I accomplish something, I will fear the possibility of someone pointing a finger and accusing me of sleeping my way to it.”