I hoped.

The elevator gave a sharp jerk and the woman screamed as the lights in the ceiling flashed bright for one precious second before going out once again.

Fuck this.

With skills I didn’t even know I possessed, I was up, sliding over Aiden’s knee, and in his lap so fast I had no idea I’d even done it, because if I’d thought about it, there was no way in hell I would have done it. No fucking way. But the fact was, I had.

I was in Aiden’s lap. He was cross-legged on either side of me, each of his muscular thighs cocooning my hips, his chin just behind my ear. I shivered.

Behind me, Aiden straightened; under my butt, his thighs tightened and strained.

It was then that I felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, already lifting up to lunge off him.

“Shut up,” he said as his hands landed on my bare knees, shoving me back down onto him; my back hit the solid wall of his chest and it was right then I realized his shirt was soggy from the rain. I didn’t care. Under me, his legs relaxed, my bottom settling on top of his feet.

It was like sitting on a beanbag. A big, firm, slightly wet beanbag that breathed… and had two hands cupping my naked kneecaps. Immediately and pathetically, I let out a long, deep breath and relaxed in the cocoon of Aiden. One of his thumbs rubbed the sensitive skin on the inside of my knee, just a quick circle-shaped brush that had me letting out another sigh.

The big guy hummed into the shell of my ear, his breath warm and way too comforting. “You want to tell me what that was about?” he asked in a whisper.

“Not really,” I mumbled, clasping my hands in my lap.

He made a tiny scoffing sound but didn’t say anything for a moment until… “You’re sitting on me. I think you owe me.”

I tried to lunge up again, even though I really didn’t want to, but those huge hands clamped down even tighter, that time with his fingers spread wide, covering my kneecaps and part of my thighs.

“Stop it. I’m teasing you,” he commented.

Teasing me? Aiden? Letting my head droop forward, I kept my eyes closed and let a rattled sigh out. “I’m scared of the dark.” Like that wasn’t completely obvious.

He didn’t even let out a single breath. “Yeah, I got that. I would have given you my phone to use as a flashlight but the battery went dead after I talked to you.”

“Oh. Thanks anyway.” I made myself let out another deep breath. “I’m really scared of the dark, like the dark in here when I can’t see anything. I have been since I was a kid,” I explained tensely.

“Why?” he cut in.

“Why what?”

He made that exasperated noise of his. “Why are you scared of the dark?”

I wanted to ask if he really wanted to know, but of course he damn well did. I didn’t necessarily want to tell him—nor had I ever wanted to tell anyone—but he had a point. I was a twenty-six-year-old sitting on his lap after I’d been on the verge of having a panic attack because the lights had gone out. I guess I sort of owed him.

“It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. Okay? When I was five, my sisters” —though I’m pretty sure I would now blame Susie as being the main mastermind behind the incident— “locked me in a closet.”

“That’s why you’re scared?” he had the nerve to scoff before I continued.

“With the lights off for two days,” I finished up.

Aiden’s voice didn’t just react, it seemed like his entire body did too. Inch by inch, what felt like from his toes and up, went rock solid. “Without food or water?”

The fact that he thought about that small detail didn’t escape me. That was the shitty part. At least now, I thought that was the shitty part of the story. “They left me water and candy bars. Chips.” Those bitches, even at seven, eight, and nine, had already been vicious by then. They had planned it. Planned on locking me in there because they didn’t want to watch over me while our mom was gone. They hadn’t wanted to play with me, for God’s sake. They had taunted through the door before leaving me.

I shivered even though I really would rather not have.

“Where was your mother?” he asked in that creepy, calm tone.

I wasn’t sure what it was about all these memories I’d shoved aside for so long suddenly coming back that made me feel like a raw, open wound. I couldn’t control the long breath I let out. “I think she was dating someone back then. It might have been my little brother’s dad. I don’t remember that well. He was in and out of our lives for a few years. All I know for sure was that she wasn’t at home then.” Sometimes she’d disappear for a few days at a time, but that was my burden to bear.

“Who let you out?”

“They did.” They unlocked the door and made fun of me for being a baby and peeing on myself. It had taken me an hour to get myself to crawl out of there.

“What happened after that?” He was still talking in that effortless, patient voice that screamed ‘wrong’ at the top of its lungs.

Shame and anger made me shake. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“Did you tell your mom?”

“Of course I told my mom. It was her closet they put me in. I’d peed in there. She had to get the carpet replaced because it smelled so bad.” I’d smelled so bad. My hands had been so messed up from banging on the door, and my voice so hoarse from screaming at them to let me out… or to at least turn on the closet light… or if they couldn’t turn on the closet light to turn on the bedroom light… to no avail. I never knew for sure what they’d done in those two days I was in there, and frankly, I didn’t care at all.

I didn’t. Because kids that young shouldn’t have been left alone to begin with.

His chest started puffing against my back as if his breathing was difficult. “She did nothing to your sisters?”

I wanted to crawl into myself. The tone he was using raked at my nerves, pulling the sides of the stab wound called my childhood wide open for inspection. It made me feel small. “No. She yelled at them, but that was it. I mean, she stayed home for a month or two afterward” —that was one of the times I remembered her being mostly sober— “and I slept with her every night. After that, I moved my things and shared a room with my little brother.” I’d started locking the bedroom door after that as well.

The fingertips on my knees kneaded for a second, but I bet my life it was a subconscious gesture, mostly because his labored breathing hadn’t gone anywhere.

“I have to sleep with a light on,” I admitted to him, feeling his chest huff behind me. Dumb, dumb, dumb. “I don’t know why I just told you that. Don’t make fun of me.”

There was a pause. A hesitation before, “I won’t,” he promised effortlessly. “I wondered why you had so many at your apartment and in your room.”

I knew he’d noticed. “Please don’t tell Zac. I wouldn’t hold it passed him to hide under the bed when I’m sleeping to try and scare the crap out of me.”

“I won’t.” His palms shaped my knees. The insides of his arms seemed to frame my shoulders and arms. His breathing was low but not so steady against my ear. “It isn’t stupid that you’re scared. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s everyone else who should be ashamed of themselves.”

The only way I managed to answer was with a nod that I wasn’t sure he knew of or not. Another rattling breath made its way out of my chest like a gust and I touched a patch of skin somewhere around his knee as I kept my eyes closed. “Thank you for helping me calm down, big guy. I haven’t lost it like that in forever.”

“Don’t worry about it,” was all he muttered in return.

I kept my hand on his leg, my fingertips against the coarse dark hairs that covered his legs. My breathing sounded too loud, my heart was still beating a little weird, while Aiden’s was soft and barely audible. I focused on the in and the out of my lungs.

The other woman in the elevator mumbled, “This sucks.”

It did. It really did.

The silence ate up the minutes, and I let my back loosen, the top of it touching Aiden’s pectorals. The insides of his upper arms cradled me. His breathing was so even it made me sleepy.

The elevator gave a jerk that had me opening my eyes in reaction as the lighting flickered twice and stayed on. The woman on the other side squealed, but I couldn’t even be remotely scared. I only cared about the lighting.

And it was right then, not being plunged in the dark, that I finally witnessed with my own two eyes the sight of me sitting on Aiden. Two long, muscular legs circled me, so long that the knees jutted out way passed where mine ended. Two heavily muscled triceps popped on either side of my arms, playing my bodyguards. But it was the big hands on me, the wrists propped up so effortlessly on my thighs, that made something in me react.

He was hugging me. For all intents and purposes, Aiden was hugging me. Surrounding me.

Tilting my head back, I swallowed that thing making its way from my stomach to my throat, and prepared a nervous, slightly shy smile over my shoulder. Except when my gaze landed on Aiden’s face, it was so serious… so damn serious. It wiped the expression right off my mouth.

The elevator gave another jerk and almost immediately, the phone on the wall began ringing.

With a light tap to my knee, Aiden picked me up and moved me off to the side, as if my weight was nothing to him—and it definitely wasn’t nothing. He got to his feet and reached toward the wall, picking the phone off the cradle. His gaze drifted over me in the process, those ultra-sober features making me feel like I’d done something wrong all of a sudden. “Yes… It’s about time… Yes.” Just like that, he hung up, probably in the middle of the conversation. “It’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

Drawing my legs up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and nodded at his comment. He didn’t sit back down; instead, Aiden leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. One ankle went over the other.