Riding Curves (9 page)

"I'll go on more," I repeated. "But
why you did it, I don't care."

I stopped talking and started panting,
too much adrenaline coursing through my body for me to
control.

"Selfish?"

I heard the lock on the door engage
and then he stroked the back of his fingers against my cheek. My
pulse rate tripled and I started to shake.

"Manipulative…" His other hand lightly
covered my hip as he continued to batter me with his deep, taunting
voice. "Someone who gets what he wants…"

The words curled warm and moist
against my neck as Aiden lowered his head. His fingers moved down
to my throat in a soft caress.

"Aiden--" I couldn't say anything more
than his name. My throat constricted too tightly and I couldn't
stop shaking. I wanted to leave, but I wanted him to keep touching
me. I'd spent weeks and all of the prior night fantasizing about
him touching me again.

The pressure of his body against the
shield of my arms slowly increased until I dropped my hands to my
side and let his broad chest crush against my breasts. He continued
stroking my throat and my hip, his mouth leisurely tracking toward
mine.

"What I want," he started, a rough
edge to his words. "Is you, fucking me one last time. We'll make it
our good-bye, little girl."

A sob left me, but I didn't tell him
no, didn't push at him. Tears streaming down my face, I let him
lead me to the bed and undress me, my eyes shut the entire time. I
heard his clothes fall to the floor then felt the slight give of
the mattress as he climbed onto the bed. His body resting alongside
mine, he stroked my cheek again.

"Your keys are in the top left dresser
drawer if you want to leave."

I licked my lips once as I fought to
bring the tremors running through down to the level of a small
quake. I was wet, aching -- didn't want to leave before I felt him
inside me one last time. That would finish it for me, knowing he
could fuck me at a time like this when he had been
exposed.

Aiden didn't offer to let me leave
again. He kissed his way down my side, stopping for a few,
delicious moments to suckle my breasts while his hand worked to
ensure that my pussy was drenched and ready for him. When he had me
so wet my arousal leaked onto the mattress, he pushed my thighs
apart and settled his face between them.

I continued to keep my eyes shut, wet
moans exploding from me as he grasped my labia to thumb and lick me
until I squirmed and my hands reached down for him. He shook them
away, not allowing me to stroke his hair or knot my fingers in
it.

How could he do this? How could he
suckle at my clit as if he worshipped the damn thing but not let me
touch him, not offer the barest excuse for what he'd done with
Pamela? I tried to get angry, bashed my thoughts against the facts
over and over, but his sweet kisses and soft touch persistently
erased the anger like gently lapping waves erode the
beach.

Crying his name, I came.

He rolled from me and I could tell by
the way the mattress dented that he was sitting up. I kept my eyes
closed, my lips growing raw from my biting at them as I waited for
him to roll on a condom or tell me to leave.

He did neither, just placed my clothes
on the bed and went into the bathroom while I dressed and
left.

********************

Daddy had his surgery the following
week. I knew I would have to visit soon. I didn't want to talk to
either of my parents. Daddy might want to discuss his conversation
with Pamela, and my mother might ask me whatever became of the
weekend at the lake house. So I mostly stuck to email and kept any
calls short.

Three weeks after the surgery, just as
I had foolishly started thinking I might get over Aiden and
relented to a third date with Harold, my mom called with bad news.
Money had been embezzled from the shop.

A lot of money. More money than we
could afford to lose.

"Who did this, mom?" I asked, trying
to process the information. All the operating capital was gone and
a large portion of my father's retirement account.

"That bimbo your fa--" She interrupted
herself with a slight cough and I guessed that my dad was in the
room with her. "But don't worry about tuition or anything,
sweetie."

"I can take a student loan until you
get the money back." A dreadful thought popped into my head. "You
will be able to get it back, right?"

"We hope, but Aiden doesn't want you
taking out a loan." A quiver ran through my mother's voice and I
knew she wanted to cry. From the sound of her voice, she had
already cried over this mess for hours. "He's covering the missing
capital, too. It will be okay, sweetie."

I choked on the knowledge that the man
I had called a manipulative asshole and accused of fucking Pamela
Marks intended to pay my last semester of school. "I'll take a
loan, mom. Aiden can't pay--"

"It's already paid, Cecelia. He
insisted it be done before we broke the news to you."

I sighed, not the least surprised.
"I'll pay him back, but tell me how this happened."

"She kept making what looked like
processing errors. Aiden corrected her a dozen times over, even
wrote her up the next to last time, about ten days before your
father's surgery."

I stopped listening for a few seconds.
Had Marks been trying to create discord between my dad and Aiden as
part of her plan?

"…her last
processing error
was a
whopper and then she skipped town," my mother continued. "She
wasn't even married, can you believe that! Made up a husband and
two children and a bunch of sh -- lies about him being out of work
and the youngest child having asthma."

My mom continued venting until my
father took the phone away and asked her for an ice pack for his
knee.

"Hey, sunbeam."

I dug my nails into my palm, knowing
what he was about to ask and wanting to cry because I knew I would
agree to the request.

"I feel just awful believing…" He
trailed off.

"I know daddy. I feel awful,
too."

"He doesn't have to know…" He groaned,
the sound wet and miserable.

"No, he doesn't," I agreed, the memory
of those same words passing my lips during my last visit to the
lake house when Aiden worried our relationship would hurt my dad.
Certain I was seconds away from bursting into tears, I made a hasty
good-bye and hung up.

Aiden didn't have to know -- but I
did.

********************

My heart didn't heal. Not by
Thanksgiving, when I made up a fake, critical project that kept me
from coming home. Not by Christmas when I said I was spending it
with Harold's family, even though I had backed out of that third
date and never spoke to him again. Certainly not by late January
when my mother slipped in news of Aiden's current girlfriend in our
weekly conversation, or in February when he had a different new
girlfriend.

I cried alone in my dorm room all the
weekends I was supposed to go home. Somehow, I managed not to cry
through the interview that landed me my first job two states
away.

I cried at graduation, but almost
everyone with ovaries was crying and even a few of the male
graduates and fathers. And I cried as my parents drove away from
campus believing that I really did have to show up a week early at
my new job and that I really would come home for a couple of days
before the summer was up.

Returning to my dorm room, vision
blurred and the salt of my tears coating my tongue, I almost sat
down on a small package someone had left on my bed. I pushed it up
by my pillow and grabbed the box of tissues on my
bookshelf.

When I could finally see straight, I
plucked the yellow Post-it note stuck to the top of the
package.

Sorry! J

I frowned, wondering what my now
ex-roommate Josephine had to apologize for. Looking at the plain
brown wrapping paper, the first thing I noticed was the date. Two
weeks old. I looked at the return address -- my dad's
shop.

I scratched at the tape, not wanting
to open it and find a present from one of the other worker's at my
dad's work who merely forgot to put his name on the package. I
didn't really want to open it and find something from Aiden,
either. I wanted the box to magically disappear and take the memory
of its existence with it.

That wasn't going to happen, so I
pulled the package to my chest and just held it for a few minutes.
The box of tissues was empty. If I started crying all over again,
it would be me and my sleeve.

"It's not Aiden," I whispered to the
empty room as I peeled the tape away, my chest hurting from his
absence at the graduation ceremony. I repeated the assurance again
as I unrolled the brown paper.

Then I saw the metal box the plain
brown paper had covered and knew that I was wrong. I didn't need a
return address, didn't need a card with his name on it. The last
thing I had looked at before leaving that hotel room so many months
ago was the small metal box sitting atop the other gift box on the
dresser. It had hurt so bad seeing the acid-etched butterflies as I
left. It hurt a hundred times worse seeing them again in my dorm
room.

I lifted the lid, pretending to myself
that I really was admiring the smooth edges of the box until I was
ready to look inside. Silk colored the same creamy white as the
roses that day cushioned a metal pin shaped as a
butterfly.

A flutterby…

I put the box with its pin untouched
on the floor and returned to crying.

********************

It took a few more hours, but I
finally pulled myself off the bed and loaded my car. That fuck in
the hotel room hadn't been our good-bye. And I wouldn't let the pin
be our good-bye, either.

I didn't reach Aiden's house until a
few minutes past 8 pm. Then I spent another fifteen minutes staring
at the purple PT Cruiser in the drive. Another girlfriend,
probably. He'd had at least two flings since the start of the year.
Only maybe this one wasn't a fling, maybe she was
permanent.

Closing my eyes, I took a few slow
breaths, reconciling myself to the fact I was about to be
humiliated in front of a woman I didn't know. She might never
realize it, either. But I wouldn't wait for her car to leave the
drive, didn't want the confirmation of whether or not it remained
overnight.

Grabbing the metal box, I went up to
Aiden's door and knocked. He opened without looking, then froze
when he saw me.

"This is unexpected, Cecelia." He
looked at the box in my hand. Taking a step back, he gestured for
me to come inside.

I entered cautiously,
expecting some negligee-wearing woman to pop out and yell
Surprise!
Instead, I
found an attractive woman somewhere in her late thirties sitting on
his couch with a portfolio of some kind open on his coffee
table.

Aiden stepped around me when I didn't
move beyond the entryway. "We'll need to finish some other time,
Rachelle."

The smile plastered on her face
faltered. She managed to pull it up, tighter and brighter. "These
lake properties will have contracts by the end of the week,
Aiden."

My heart, already pounding like a
jackhammer inside my chest, kicked up another notch. They were
buying a piece of property together?

The room started to spin and I took a
step toward the door.

"Cece." Aiden barked my name before
bringing his voice under control. He flipped the portfolio closed
and handed it to the woman. "Mrs. Deschaine is leaving. You're
not."

He saw her out then locked the door
before hooking my elbow and drawing me across the threshold into
the living room. Letting go, he moved to the fireplace and stared
at me. When I remained mute, he folded his arms across his chest
and started to glare.

I closed my eyes. I couldn't bear to
see him angry at me. The sight was almost as painful as seeing him
hurt by me. But he expected me to tell him why I was at his house
and the glare wouldn't go away until I did.

Even then, it might never go
away.

I sucked a breath in and looked at
him. So beautiful, the anger I wanted to shrink from adding to his
raw appeal. I had to speak before looking at him froze my
tongue.

"I wanted to apologize for what I said
at the hotel -- for what I believed. Daddy told me that
Pamela--"

"I know," he interrupted.

I felt my gaze go wide and I sucked a
little more air in. "You know?"

"He told me in January," he shrugged.
"Not that he asked you to stay quiet, but who else would you
protect like that?"

I nodded. He was right. The only other
people I would protect like that were Aiden and my mother, and
neither would have asked me to stay silent. So Aiden knew in
January when he was sporting a new woman on his arm and in February
when he had yet another one.