The reality of my adulthood might look different than the one I’d dreamed up, but everything about it was great.
And what I didn’t need was Aiden making me feel like a starry-eyed young girl whose heart was soft enough to be crushed into bits. Been there, done that, and had a T-shirt and abandonment and control issues to go with it. I did not need to put myself in that position ever again.
And sure, it was great if he didn’t turn out to be an asshole, but holding that coffee, it felt far, far more dangerous that he might be more than what I’d built up in my head so many years ago.
That was why I walked that coffee over to the drinking fountain, took off the top, and slowly poured it down the drain. It was a small way to assert control over all the flutteries.
The brown liquid swirled quickly through the holes, and I breathed deeply once it disappeared. Decisively, I capped the travel top back onto the empty cup and tossed them both into the trash can next to the fountain.
“Guess I got your order wrong.”
I froze. His voice came from right behind me, all low and growly. My eyes fell shut because holy shit, I was destined to get off on the wrong foot with this man, wasn’t I?
Blowing out a slow breath, I turned to face him. His eyes betrayed the slightest hint of amusement that he caught me, but everything else about his face was even and steady. In fact, every physical feature that made up Aiden Hennessy seemed carved straight from stone.
Not just his face, which was handsome enough, but his shoulders and arms, the veins running down toward his massive hands.
I’d seen the gracefully inflicted violence his body was capable of, the speed and strength.
And as he towered over me, I hated that I had to lift my chin in order to meet his gaze.
“The order was fine,” I told him. “Drank too much already this morning.”
The sound he made in the back of this throat was so ambiguous that I had to physically chomp down on my tongue to stop from defending myself. When the front door opened and a group of members walked in for Kelly’s class, his attention moved from me to the sound of their bright laughter. Immediately, the pressure on my lungs eased. There was some magic voodoo he had going on, and I did not like it one tiny bit.
“Seems like the classes are always well-attended,” he said. His gaze left the group of women and came back to rest on my face.
I nodded. “Especially on the weekends.” I sucked in a deep breath and held his eyes. “I hope you don’t intend on getting rid of those.”
He shook his head. Nothing else. Just a shake of his head.
“Good.”
His lips twitched just a fraction before they settled back in a firm line. “Glad I have your approval, Ward.”
My cheeks were flaming, and I hated it. My hand lifted in a small gesture toward the door. “I have to … I’ll be back in a little bit.”
Aiden nodded, and as I turned to go, I knew he was watching me.
“So let me get this straight …”
“Yes.”
Molly paused. “You don’t know what I was going to say. How can you say yes?”
Even though I was behind a dressing room curtain and she couldn’t see, I rolled my eyes. “I already know what you’re going to say.”
“You just left?”
“Yes.”
“Isabel!”
Angling to the side, I slid the zipper of the sky blue dress up and huffed when I couldn’t get the eye hook closed. “What? It’s not like I expected him to be standing over my shoulder like a giant hulking shadow, and yes, I just … left.”
“Guess I know who’s not going to win employee of the month …” Her voice trailed off. I stuck my hand out from behind the curtain with my middle finger raised. She swatted it back inside. “I never knew you to be a chicken.”
Instead of arguing with her over something so stupid, I simply rolled my lips between my teeth and tugged one last time at the zipper. As I studied my reflection in the mirror, I couldn’t decide if the dress just wasn’t right for me, or if my body was so used to workout gear that it now actively rejected any finer materials.
“Are you dressed yet?”
My hands fell by my sides. “Yes. I don’t think this color works on me, though.”
“One, I find that highly unlikely, and two, show me.” Molly tugged the curtain aside, and when she caught sight of me, her smile was massive. “Iz, I love it. You look so pretty!”
With a skeptical glance at the mirror, I tugged at the drapey things over my shoulders. “There are frills. On my body.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to choose that style. I’m just trying to decide on the colors. I like the blush pink, but it might be too summery for a fall wedding.”
“The blue,” I insisted. “I will feel naked in that pink one.”
“Definitely blue,” Lia called from across the space.
Our two youngest sisters, Lia and Claire, separated by all of two minutes at birth, were sharing a dressing room. “Come on, you two,” Molly called. “Iz is already dressed.”
“Hang on. Lia’s new mom boobs are huge, and she can’t get her dress zipped.”
Molly and I grinned at each other because really, they were. She’d given birth about eight weeks earlier, and honestly, she had the rack of a centerfold if I’d ever seen one.
While we waited, Molly pulled out her giant wedding binder and made some notes after flipping to a bright pink tab. It was no surprise that Molly was the most organized bride-to-be on the planet, and also no surprise that she had zero Bridezilla tendencies so far, something that was making this whole “watch my big
