Return of the Youngest Auclair

Ch. 15

The presence of someone standing over me is enough for me to throw myself out of bed and get ready for an oncoming attack. "Whoa, whoa love, it's just me," Aiden whispers to me once he sees the silver shine of the knives I had under my pillow.

"Oh..." I mumble, "I'm sor-." I start to say, but while he raises his hand to stop my apology he can't stop my mind.

I did it again. Just like what happened with Elliot.

How? I was doing so well, all I have to do is put on a smile, but wait... I am in a different environment now. I'm not in America, where I could just smile and everything would be forgotten. If Aiden sees me smile, I know he could read past it, he knew me for years. What else can I do? What else can I do to hide the person underneath my mask? How can I keep the people I don't want to hurt safe?!

"Cameron, amour," Aiden's hands cover mine that had unknowingly slipped into the roots of my hair. "What's wrong?"

I know he wanted an answer, but I couldn't help the strange calmness I felt basking in the silence. "Everything," I said after a moment.

I had wanted to keep Aiden on the outsides of my wall too. To not let him see how vulnerable I was, like my father had drilled into me, and to only do the mission I was assigned to complete, but I now knew. It was like a spear he kept driving into my heart. I wanted to reach out and rely on him, but the fear of losing him was stronger.

"Nothing can ever be right. People have to lie, this is the world we live in. Only the best liars win. The second you tell someone the truth you lose and they run away. Don't get too close or you will have to start lying." I say repeating the words I had been told over and over again.

"You know..." Aiden says now, "if they are forced to hide behind a face every day to get someone to like them, they don't deserve those people."

"What people do they get? No one will just give people anything without expecting something in return."

"And that is where you are wrong." Aiden saying grabbing my shoulders. He leans down and slowly leaves a trail of kisses moving further up my neck as he goes. After he plants a kiss on the corner of my mouth he pulls away and moves to my ear. "I will stand by your side even after you don't see a point in standing. I will be with you and for you forever, Cam." Aiden lays his head gently on my shoulder as we both ingest the silence.

The words I had dreamed about slipped through his mouth with ease and I badly wanted to scream it back to him on a mountain for the world to here to show how much I meant them, but that would mean exposing my identity and destroying both of our reputations in the process. In that moment though, I was drunk on love. I was drunk on his affection and the thing I had wanted since that party.

"Aiden, I lo-..." The words stop as a hot mouth presses into mine, branding my lips like a burning torch. After a moment we both break apart but still remain silent to catch our breathes.

"Say it once you know that you will wake up next to me every morning," he mumbles in my ear before pulling away.

"Now," Aiden smiles. "Are you going to sit in bed and sleep or are you following me as I take you on the best date you will ever have?"

"Well when you say it like that, I may need to raise my expectations a little bit," I say, pulling off my sheets and walking to my suitcase to grab something to wear.

By the time I was done digging through my suitcase I didn't even remember Aiden was in the room with me till I heard a small movement behind me as I stripped.

"Something wrong?" I question with a smirk, knowing what he was looking at, as I bend down to reach for a new shirt and shorts.

"You know, if you keep doing that," Aiden walks up behind me and whispers in my ear, "we're going to have to watch the sunrise from the room."