Dear Aaron(73)

“Ruby, what’s wrong?” came his concerned question as I looked down at the ground, fisting my hands at my sides.

I swallowed. I told myself to keep it together. Reminded myself that I’d known this was going to happen and that I wasn’t going to be disappointed. So I lied as I wiped at my face again, forcing myself to look at him as I spoke. “I thought you changed your mind and I was deciding what to do…”

Those dark eyes, so at odds with his coloring and hair, widened. There was no hesitation on his face when Aaron took another step forward, a frown growing across his mouth and practically radiating throughout his entire body. “I wasn’t going to change my mind,” he claimed, steadily. His irises bounced back and forth between one of my eyes and the next, the line of his jaw going tight. “Are you all right?”

I sucked in a breath through my nose, shrugging, and gulped, reaching up to rub my palm over my breastbone. I couldn’t be having a panic attack. I couldn’t. But I tried to take another breath and there was nothing there. There was nothing there and my hands had begun sweating at some point and feeling like they were covered with ants, and my heart was beating like crazy and— “I feel like I can’t catch my breath…”

Aaron’s head jerked, and I’d swear his face paled. The four steps he took forward were immediate, leading him to stop directly in front of me before I even realized it. Aaron Hall, who was even more gorgeous than I ever could have imagined, was in front of me and I was freaking the hell out.

I was freaking the hell out.

Because I was frustrated and let down and trying so hard not to be. I wasn’t good at this crap. I should never have come.

When his hand reached for my arm, he didn’t hesitate for a second as his fingers wrapped around the delicate skin on the inside of my elbow, and before I knew what was happening, he was steering me toward a bench I hadn’t seen, one arm going over my shoulders like it was the most natural thing in the world. And the entire time he did that, he said, “You’re fine, Ruby, you’re fine. Breathe, breathe…” over and over again until my butt hit the bench and he was stooping in front of me.

And I was still losing it.

I made a circle over my heart, swallowing, feeling like an idiot but at the same time like not an idiot because this guy who said he was Aaron, and acted like Aaron and sounded like Aaron, was crouching by my knees after making me think I was on my own in a city I’d never been before because he’d changed his mind.

Hands I hadn’t even realized were cupping my knees, gave them a squeeze. “Hold on, okay? I’ll be right back.” Another squeeze. “Right, right back,” he promised me as I sat there. I blinked and felt a third squeeze, and then he was up on his feet and gone, jogging somewhere I wasn’t sure of because I didn’t keep watching him.

I rubbed the skin over my heart, my fingers clammy over the exposed skin above my shirt. My hands weren’t shaking, but it sure felt like the rest of me was. A part of me wanted to decide I’d changed my mind, go back inside the terminal, buy another ticket, go home and pretend this hadn’t happened. I could just tell everyone— I just barely thought of “everyone” before the word fell like a wet blanket over my entire nervous system.

I couldn’t go back home. No way. My family would never let me live this trip down. They’d think something bad happened or think that I couldn’t handle going somewhere by myself and that would be it. No one would ever let me forget it. Most importantly, I would never, ever do anything that made me squirm ever again. That was the whole purpose of this trip. I wanted to do this. I’d wanted to come. I wanted to be here, and it had nothing to do with them.

I didn’t want to go back.

If I did…

Everything was fine. It was okay. I hadn’t been left. Maybe I wasn’t what he was hoping for, but he was here. Aaron was here.

Aaron who was so good-looking my eyeballs could have started hurting in the three minutes we’d been face to face if I hadn’t been flipping out internally. And it wasn’t a big deal that he didn’t look like what I’d pictured. That if I’d known he looked the way he did, maybe I wouldn’t have been making jokes about his butthole.

And then I wondered why I didn’t have boyfriends. Why I couldn’t get one person to love me like more than a friend. Why I’d given my virginity to some guy I’d thought I would marry one day and all it had done was make him apologize and blush and beg me not to tell my brother because it had been a mistake. I had been a mistake.

Aaron was my friend. I’d always known this, and I’d liked him before I’d seen him. I’d known nothing more would come of this friendship. Mostly though, I knew that none of this had anything to do with Hunter. Aaron was as different from that idiot as one could get.

I saw green Nikes and light brown hair on a pair of male legs first. Aaron’s steps were fast as he jogged slowly over to me before dropping back into a crouch. The next thing I knew, he was shoving a bottle of water at me, one hand going to the spot right above my knee where it met my thigh. He cupped it. Me. Squeezing over the tights I’d put on under my brown skirt in case I got cold on the plane.

“Drink some,” he told me in a low, insistent voice, as he shoved the bottle closer to my chest.

I raised my eyes to meet his. His face was right by mine, maybe six inches away. I hadn’t noticed that I was leaning forward, that my elbows were on the middle of my thighs even as one hand rested between my boobs. Aaron’s face, this face I’d never seen before five minutes ago, was open and worried. That mouth that was almost too full for a man’s mouth was strained, and he looked like… well, he looked like he didn’t think of me as a stranger he’d felt bad for and invited on this trip. He didn’t look let down. Because you couldn’t look at someone you didn’t care for the way he was watching me, eyebrows knitted together, lines at the corners of eyes, and a pursed mouth.