Bared (21 page)

The reminder of
why
was not something he wanted to revisit.

He exited the car and approached her, forcing air from his lungs. She sat on the grass near the tombstone. Her arms were wrapped around her legs and her chin rested on her knee. When he entered through the open gate, Cora looked to him. His chest ached under her troubled stare, and he grabbed the gate for support.

She wasn’t hiding her pain.

Her soul was bared.

While a wrinkle marred her forehead, her gaze remained undeniably gentle. A far different look than any he’d seen lately. Usually, she smirked with attitude or glared in irritation. He preferred those looks on her. The damaged soul exuding from her features shattered him all the same.

He released the gate, sat down on the cement bench, and stretched out his fingers. “You’re ready to talk?”

She dropped her head, sighing dejectedly. “I don’t think I have a choice anymore.”

Aidan agreed. The only thing that would save her now was getting whatever plagued her out in the open, so she could deal with it. Though it relieved him to know that soon the air would be clear, her puffy eyes made it impossible to imagine a positive outcome to this conversation. The place she had requested to meet him brought on a wave of nausea.

He refused to look at the tombstone. “Why did you come
here
?”

Cora regarded him before she glanced to the tombstone. “I brought you here to tell you that your plan backfired.”

He processed, still at a loss. “Cora, I don’t understand.”

“I agree about being at an impasse.” She stared at the grave, avoiding his gaze. “Something has to change, and I realize that now.” Turning to him, her voice softened. “I know
you thought that spending time together would make me feel closer to you. And you were right. That’s exactly what it did.”

Aidan noticed the dark circles under her eyes and her pale complexion. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who’d had a rough time these past days. Weakness overtook his muscles and dullness stormed into his chest at what she said, since she hadn’t smiled with those words.

She paused, her puffy, red eyes searching his. “We can’t ever go back. Now everything is different.” She pushed off the ground and came to kneel before him. “You want to know what my problem is.”

“Yes, I do,” he asked, regardless that her measured look tightened his fingers around the stone bench.

She pointed to the tombstone. “It’s Lily. It’s a ghost that’s haunting you. It’s not me that’s the problem, Aidan.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she whispered, “It’s
you
.”

Speechless, he stared at her, and his heart nearly exploded from his chest.

“When I came to Club Sin I was so happy and excited to be there. Then I met you and you trained me.” She heaved a long sigh, placing her hands on her knees. “At first, I was so focused on pleasing you and learning your rules, I didn’t even know it happened.”

He swallowed deeply, forcing his voice out of his dry throat. “What happened?”

“I fell in love with you,” she said with a shaky voice.

His mouth parted to say something, but he found himself without words.
You’re in love with me?
Why had she not told him that before? Cora had never shown a deep and passionate love for him. They were friends.
Although she cried when you made love to her …

Caught up in his thoughts, he watched another tear escape her eye before she brushed it away. “I knew you weren’t ready for a relationship. I guess I accepted that. I kept stuffing down how I felt, so that I could be there for you.” She gulped, clearing more tears off her face. “I cared about you so much that I wanted to make you feel better and not be so sad. So I turned into what
you
needed me to be.”

Aidan blinked, thinking back to that time of his life. He wouldn’t have noticed she had feelings for him or that she had changed. Christ, he hadn’t noticed anything except his own pain. “Cora—”

She raised her hand. “Please let me finish.” She hesitated and he stayed silent, so she added, “Part of the problem is that you’ve always been good to me, a perfect Dom and an
amazing friend. A Dom any submissive would love to have, and that used to be enough.”

When more tears rushed down her cheek too fast for her to brush away, Aidan gripped the bench tighter. His fingers twitched to wipe her tears away, but he couldn’t begin to accept that
this
is what had been wrong with her.

No, he didn’t want to deal with what that meant.

She continued after a long sigh, “Through all this, I forgot the hope I once had that you’d love me back. I want the Aidan I went camping with, not the Dom who touches me out of duty alone.” She held his stare, her gaze drowning in sadness. “Now that I’ve experienced the real you, I can’t have you any other way. I don’t know if that makes me selfish or if it’s wishful dreaming, but I can’t keep doing what we’re doing.”

He unclenched his fingers, resting his forearms on his knees and breathing past his knotting stomach. Never had he dreamed she sensed a difference between him in the dungeon and out of it. Nor did he want to believe that her tears on their camping trip weren’t about a
problem
. She had cried because he had cared for her, not out of duty but out of want. His vision blurred. “What are we doing?”

“Loving each other, but pretending we’re not. Living this act that what we feel isn’t happening or that it doesn’t matter.” She leaned up on her knees, and her mascara ran down her face. “It matters to me, Aidan.” Pressing her hand against his chest, she added, “This, in here, matters. And now that I’ve seen all of you and seen the man who isn’t shielded by his pain, I can’t take anything less.”

Say something …

He knew he needed to talk to her about this, but his mind failed him. All his Dom instincts flared to protect her, but, damn it all to hell,
he’d
been the one hurting her. He had kept himself at a distance, and there were good reasons for that.

Reasons he didn’t want to face.

She’d portrayed happiness in their D/s relationship. He had no idea she recognized his pain but submitted to him as a way of easing it.
Fuck
, she had taken care of him, and he hadn’t seen it.

“When you touched me the other night in the dungeon, it felt all wrong.” Her nose scrunched. “It was fake.” Tears flooded her splotchy face. “When we were camping, how you touched me then, I wanted
that
, Aidan. I need
that
.”

Staring at her, he didn’t see her beauty; he saw only her loving soul. How had he not known she had taken care of him these past two years? What kind of Dom was he that a submissive had buried her feelings?

She wiped her tears, and her long exhale sounded rich with exhaustion. “The saddest part in it all is I cared enough for you, I sacrificed my happiness for any little piece of you I could get. I didn’t look for another boyfriend because I waited for you. I was so desperate for
you
that I became okay with only getting half.”

“Cora,” he managed.

Her voice shook. “I understand, Aidan, I do. You loved once and you lost her. But I’m tired of being jealous of a ghost. Of wishing I was her, or that I was what she had been so I could make you happy.”

You don’t need to be Lily …

Before he could say as much, Cora inhaled a harsh breath. “I’m tired of waiting for you and hurting.” She hesitated. “I thought I could heal you through love. I thought that would be enough …” Wiping the moisture off her face, she added, “But it didn’t, did it? Our relationship never changed. All that changed was me.”

Aidan stretched his fingers, crippled by what she’d told him, even horrified by it. Cora saw right into his pain. Hadn’t he shed those demons? She exhaled slowly and glanced to her fiddling hands. “The first year we played together, I kept hoping and wishing you’d come around and see the connection between us. Then I realized you weren’t ready, so I shut down and kept everything casual, feeling nothing. I forced myself to ignore parts of me. Now that I faced those parts, I can’t go through that again.” She pinched her eyes shut, shaking her head. “I won’t.”

When her eyes opened, mascara surrounded them. “I need for your touch to have meaning. I need to be with a Dom who wants that, too. I can’t wait for you any longer, Aidan.”

At the longing in her expression, he reached for her. “Please, Cora, come closer.”

His fingers wrapped around her trembling arm and she pushed off her knees, stepping back. “You asked me to be honest.” She lifted her chin, and her features firmed, erasing all traces of vulnerability. “You asked me to tell you what’s going on. Now it’s your turn. Do you have nothing to say?”

The warm sun above overheated his body. He couldn’t think straight, emotions clouding his mind. What she had told him made him spin. Two years they had played together. Two years
she had apparently loved him. She had neither said anything nor done anything about it.

She’d shut down, she’d changed, she’d hurt … 
all for him
. How to even process that? He’d thought she had a problem. He couldn’t accept what she’d done for him.
Christ
, what had he done to her?

“See.” Her eyes widened, showing the whites. “If you hadn’t gotten all nosy, things wouldn’t have changed. Now everything is different and we can’t ever go back.”

“Cora.” Again, he reached out to her. “Please …”

She recoiled and snapped, “Don’t touch me. Your touches are lies.” Her skin molted, her voice cracking on a sob. “I can’t stand it any longer.”

Aidan pushed off the bench, taking a step forward. He craved holding her, making them both feel better. His scalp prickled as he tried to find the right words to soothe her. His mind betrayed him. “Please, come here—”

“No,” she shouted with her bright red cheeks. “I’m done listening to you talk but saying all the wrong things. No more, Aidan.” She took another step back and her chin quivered. “I can’t fucking take it.”

She paused, and at his silence, her shoulders dropped. She covered her face with her hands, letting out a cry so consumed with misery that ice laced Aidan’s veins. He fought to breathe and stepped toward her, but, in that same second, she turned and ran toward her car.

The cemetery spun around him and blurred his vision. He battled against himself.
Go after her
. Yet his body held no strength to follow her. Demons buried in his soul pinned him to the spot. He turned to the tombstone.

Lily Hartsworth

She walked in beauty
.

A longing so intense ripped through him and stole his strength. He dropped to his knees, unable to draw air into his lungs, and pressed his hands against the soft grass below. Reality smacked into him like a freight train hitting at full speed.

The pain Cora had seen developed the day he’d buried Lily, and it was still there. He’d thought he’d overcome it. But he hadn’t beaten his demons …

They had consumed him.

Chapter Twenty-one

In the four days that had passed since the cemetery, Cora had immersed herself in work. She had received dozens of texts and telephone calls from Presley and Kenzie. Cora had told them pieces of what happened with Aidan but left off the fine details.

She needed to accept what this all meant before she could spell it out to someone else. She had to cry before she could even think. Aidan had crushed her that day at Lily’s grave, and Cora wasn’t ready to talk about anything just yet.

Though she wanted time to process, she promised she’d let them both know tonight in the dungeon what happened between her and Aidan. After the first dozen conversations, both friends let her have the time she asked for. They’d checked in daily, giving her strength. But all that seemed to matter to them was that she was okay, and Cora was slowly pulling herself back together.

While she had locked herself away from the world, she wasn’t foolish, nor was she naïve.

Life was tough.

She was tougher.

Just because two people were so right together didn’t mean a relationship was good. Mentally she accepted this, but her heart ached as if shards of glass cut into her. She’d given Aidan two years of her life. Over the past nights she’d sobbed away her pain as she’d dealt with his dismissal. A life without Aidan was upon her, and she had finally accepted it.

In the dungeon and facing the night she’d dreaded, the erotic scenes didn’t capture her attention. Cora didn’t want sex, she needed her friends. Two of her closest came to her rescue the second she entered the dungeon. She needed to admit to them what happened, so she could, in fact, face the reality of it all herself.

As she sat with Presley and Kenzie on the couch in the far corner of the dungeon, she’d told them what had happened at the cemetery. Even though she had reconciled it, she still couldn’t believe she’d misread Aidan. It wasn’t that she thought he didn’t care for her, it was that he couldn’t move beyond Lily’s death—that’s the part she’d totally misread.

He didn’t want to get over it. That couldn’t be helped. And she’d be an idiot to stick
around and be hopeful anymore. The conversation at the cemetery told her all she needed to know—to wait for him any longer would only hurt her.

With a long sigh, she looked from Kenzie to Presley. “I stood there in front of him”—she glanced to her hands—“and told him exactly how I felt. He said … 
nothing
.”

“Nothing at all?” Presley asked.

Cora lifted her head, giving a halfhearted shrug. “Barely a word.”

As a pair of Doms strode by Kenzie, she gave them a wave before she flicked her strawberry-blond curls over her shoulder. “I think it’s good that you finally told him how you feel.” Her brows rose over her sparkly hazel eyes. “How we all knew you felt.”

“I just can’t hide from it anymore.” Cora lifted her chin. “I couldn’t stand him touching me in the way he used to. I needed it to be real—hell, I needed that and more from him.”

Presley regarded her with a long look, fixing the lacy shoulder strap of her lingerie. “You deserve more.”