Stay With Me (She's With Me #2) - Jessica Cunsolo Page 0,95
safe, but maybe some rules can be broken; maybe I won’t have to feel like I’m drowning.
After I finish up in the bathroom, I crawl back into bed with Aiden.
“Hey,” he says in a deep, sleepy voice.
He shifts so that I can rest my head on his shoulder as he wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer.
“Did your phone ring earlier?” he asks as I trace mindless patterns on his chest with my finger.
“Yeah, it was Agent Dylan.”
I tell him about Tony’s real name and about his past, but leave out any mention of my leaving.
“It’s going to be okay, Thea,” he reassures me.
I choose to not respond to that statement, instead checking the time on my phone.
“Hey, it’s almost four o’clock. What time is the meeting with Vivienne?”
Aiden sits up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “It’s at six. I guess we should get up and get something to eat now.”
Aiden jumps in the shower, and I go to my room to do the same. Since Aiden’s room is right off of the living room/kitchen area, everyone turns to look at me as I leave his room in his oversized T-shirt and boxers, my clothes from last night crumpled in my hands.
Annalisa sends me a knowing smirk. “Looks like someone made up.”
I self-consciously fix my hair, as if that would make it look like less of a walk of shame. “I guess.” I blush, even though we were completely innocent last night.
“Your face looks worse,” Noah, ever the gentleman, points out.
Annalisa swats him on the arm in response.
“Thanks for the observation, Noah,” I say as I walk up the stairs to shower and change.
Mason didn’t look at me the entire time.
When I’m ready I head back downstairs, and the atmosphere is tense. Aiden is on one side of the house and Mason’s on the other. Chase and Noah aren’t talking to each other, either, so it’s just an awkward atmosphere in general. Tonight is New Year’s Eve, too, and we’ll probably all be too mad at each other to properly celebrate.
Mason is the first one to notice me. He stands up immediately from the kitchen island where he was eating with Chase.
“Amelia. I’m so sorry. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you and I didn’t mean to hit you last night, I just—”
“It’s okay, Mason,” I interrupt. “It’s not your fault, I basically walked into your elbow.”
He comes closer to me, stopping a few feet away from me. Aiden turns his intense gaze on us, but he stays where he is.
“I really am sorry, k-bear. Seeing your face like that kills me,” Mason says.
“Geez, you guys are making me feel like such a pretty, pretty princess right now,” I joke.
“No! That’s not what I meant, you’re still gorgeous,” he adds quickly, and I swear I hear Aiden clear his throat.
“I know, Mason. It’s all right, really.”
I already forgave Mason. If Aiden forgives him, that’s a different story. But I don’t blame him for my swollen and bruised face. His arm was swinging back and I walked into it in classic Amelia fashion. He didn’t try to hit me. He tried to hit Aiden, but again, that’s kind of for him and Aiden to sort out, and by the looks of it, they haven’t.
“We should get going,” Aiden cuts in, standing up and looking at me expectantly. “We’ll stop and grab something to eat first since we have no food here.”
“Yeah, we should go shopping,” Julian, who’s currently looking in the fridge, adds. “Might as well go now. Keep me company, Mason?”
I’m assuming Julian is trying to get some one-on-one time with Mason so he can see what’s going on in his head, and talk some sense into him. Maybe he and Aiden will make up before dinner, and Chase and Noah will make up, and we can all start the new year as best friends again.
Is that hoping for too much?
23
Since it’s winter, even though it’s only five o’clock, it’s already starting to get dark outside. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of Aiden’s car as he pulls out of the driveway, Julian’s truck right behind us since he’s heading the same way into town.
“What do you want to eat?” Aiden asks me.
To get to the main part of town from the beach house, you have to drive through about twenty minutes of deserted, hilly, open road. What restaurants do they have in town? They don’t have what I really want.