chapter five

Chapter five

Aidens pov

The café door clicked shut behind me, but Damien's words refused to stay inside with him. They followed me across the pavement, settled beside me as I unlocked my car and climbed into the driver's seat, then lingered in the suffocating silence while I stared through the windshield without seeing a single thing beyond it. My fingers rested loosely around the steering wheel, yet they felt strangely numb, as though my body had driven away while the rest of me remained sitting across from Damien, still trying to understand how a simple conversation had unraveled into a confession I never saw coming.

I should have started the engine immediately. Instead, I sat there until another customer squeezed past my car with an apologetic smile, snapping me back into the present. The engine finally rumbled to life beneath me, but my thoughts refused to move with it. Streetlights slipped past the windows in blurred streaks of gold, traffic lights changed from red to green without my noticing and, more than once, an impatient horn reminded me that the rest of the world had no intention of slowing down simply because mine had tilted sideways.

Damien loved me.

The sentence felt foreign no matter how many times it echoed through my head. I had walked into that café expecting advice, maybe another lecture about letting my emotions cloud my judgment, perhaps another argument about Kieran Ashcroft. Love had never been on the list. The confession should have occupied every corner of my mind, yet somehow it only forced another truth to the surface—a truth I'd buried so deeply I had almost convinced myself it no longer existed.

I wasn't thinking about Damien.

I was thinking about Kieran.

A bitter laugh escaped before I could stop it. Seven years. Seven whole years, and somehow that infuriating blond idiot still occupied parts of my heart that belonged to nobody else. Every time I convinced myself I was finally moving on, he appeared again with those impossible grey eyes and that arrogant smile, stripping away another layer of the walls I'd spent years building. The cruel joke wasn't that I still loved him. It was that he looked at me as though we'd never shared a single memory worth keeping.

By the time the mansion came into view, exhaustion had settled somewhere behind my ribs. Music drifted lazily through the open windows, no longer loud enough to shake the walls, just loud enough to tell me the party was limping toward its inevitable end. Cars were parked in places that made absolutely no sense, empty bottles decorated the front steps like forgotten ornaments and, floating peacefully across the swimming pool, was a hockey stick that definitely hadn't been there when I'd left earlier.

I closed my eyes for a brief second.

"Rowan..."

Only Rowan could host a party that somehow involved sports equipment ending up in a swimming pool.

The front door flew open before I reached it.

"There he is!" Rowan announced dramatically, pointing at me with a half-eaten slice of pizza. "Ladies and gentlemen... well, there aren't any ladies or gentlemen left, but if there were... you have officially missed the party of your life."

I stepped into the entrance hall, taking in the spectacular disaster surrounding us. Empty cups covered nearly every surface, someone had somehow managed to leave a shoe hanging from the chandelier and a guy I'd never seen before was asleep beneath the grand piano, hugging a decorative cushion like it had personally saved his life.

"I can see that," I replied, one corner of my mouth lifting despite myself. "You're pretty wasted."

Rowan gasped as though I'd insulted his ancestors. "Wasted? Excuse me, I am... exceptionally balanced."

"You almost walked into the wall."

"I was greeting it."

"You apologised to a coat stand."

"It accepted."

I couldn't help it. A quiet chuckle escaped me.

Rowan grinned triumphantly, clearly deciding he'd won whatever competition existed inside his head. "See? I knew you'd laugh eventually."

I shook my head, glancing around the now strangely empty house. "Is that everyone?"

"Yep." He nodded proudly, fishing a set of keys from his pocket before tossing them toward me. I caught them one-handed without thinking. "I'm the last one. Everyone else either left or passed out somewhere before escaping. House is officially back under your very responsible supervision."

"Comforting."

"I try."

He wandered toward the open front door, stopping only long enough to point a finger at me. "Don't stay awake brooding all night. It's bad for your face."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"You'd better."

With a lazy wave over his shoulder, Rowan disappeared into the night, the front door clicking softly shut behind him.

The mansion settled into an almost unsettling silence after Rowan disappeared through the front door. I stood there for another second, listening to the faint hum of the refrigerator somewhere beyond the kitchen and the distant bass still leaking from forgotten speakers before turning toward the staircase. At least the chaos downstairs was over. All I wanted now was a shower, a bed and a few hours where my mind stopped dragging me back to a boy who no longer remembered loving me.

The hallway upstairs was dimly lit, moonlight spilling through the tall windows and stretching long shadows across the polished floor. I unlocked my bedroom, stepped inside and nudged the door shut behind me with my foot. The room greeted me exactly as I'd left it that morning, calm, orderly and untouched. I shrugged off my jacket, tossed it carelessly onto the chair beside my desk and started toward the bathroom, already reaching for the buttons of my shirt.

Then I stopped.

Two long legs stretched out from the far side of my bed.

My brows knitted together. For a second I simply stared, convinced one of Rowan's drunken guests had wandered into the wrong room before curiosity pulled me forward. One slow step. Then another. The rest of the body came into view, sprawled inelegantly across my hardwood floor as though gravity had finally claimed its victory.

Blond hair.

Broad shoulders.

That infuriatingly handsome face.

Kieran Ashcroft.

Passed out cold.

On my floor.

A slow, helpless smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth as I folded my arms across my chest and looked down at the arrogant captain lying unconscious in my bedroom.

"You really are going to be the death of me, aren't you, Gorgeous?" I murmured, the amusement in my voice softening into something far more dangerous. "And here I was... doing such a good job pretending I was over you."

I let out a quiet breath, shook my head almost fondly and smiled to myself.

"Liar.”