Sins of Aiden

19

CHAPTER 19

I catapult out of my bed like something out of a horror movie, breathing so hard I feel like my lungs will cave in.

My blanket slithers to the floor, my hair feels like it stand in all directions, ready for me to capture a lightning strike. I start patting down my shirt like that will somehow return my dignity from the clustering mess I'm strangled in. I stumble over my blankets, hitting the wall behind me, heart hammering violently against my ribs, embarrassment and panic flooding every artery in my body.

Aiden rises from the mattress with an unhurried steadiness that makes everything so much worse—slow, tall, lethal, like he's unfolding into his full height just to spite the universe. He doesn't look startled. He doesn't look guilty. He doesn't even look human. He stands like a shadow waking with that kind of stillness he gets when he feels cornered. His jaw ticks once, a vein pulsing at the side of his neck.

Harrison stands frozen in the doorway, fingers dug into the frame, eyes flicking between me and Aiden like he walked into a crime scene instead of my bedroom. He stands before us in one of his deep-sea suits—tie perfect, jaw locked and eyes wide in a way I've never seen them. It's not fear or anger I'm seeing, but instead a stunned, throat-tight kind of humiliation like he was never, ever expecting this scene to happen.

Aiden lifts his head, gaze slicing upward with the slow, lazy precision of a predator acknowledging a nuisance. "Harrison," he speaks, voice like a pointed blade.

"What-" Harrison breathes, voice eerily calm and way too controlled, "-is going on in here?"

My stomach drops so violently I might actually be sick.

"Harrison, I-it's not-"

Aiden says nothing. He just watches Harrison with that cold, unblinking stare he reserves for people he hates. People he knows. People he sees right through.

"Aiden was just, uh, he-" My words trip, fall, and die on the tip of my tongue.

"He was leaving," Harrison cuts in, voice clipped, controlled—except it's that dangerous kind of control, stretched tight over something that feels like alarm. "Now."

Aiden doesn't move. He just stands there in my room like the problem is Harrison breathing the same oxygen as us.

Harrison drags his gaze back to me, pupils tightening, nostrils flaring before his face twists into something fatherly—no, falsely fatherly. Concern smeared on like bad cologne.

"Mia," he says softly, stepping into the room, "you alright?"

I physically flinch. Not because he scared me. But because Aiden steps forward at the same time—just half a step, just half a breath—but enough for the air between us to snap like a live wire.

Harrison notices. His eyes sharpen in on Aiden instantly.

"You," he hisses, dropping the fake concern like a mask peeling off. "Out. Now."

Aiden's jaw sets like stone. "No."

My heart drops.

Harrison's shoulders square. "This is my house."

Aiden's lips curl—not into a smile, but something darker. "Yeah," he murmurs, stepping slightly in front of me. "Doesn't mean she's safe in it."

Harrison blinks—rage flaring, barely contained. "Get out," he repeats, voice rising, "before I call the police."

Aiden doesn't move. He doesn't even seem to breathe. He just stares—scrutinizing, and dissecting Harrison like he's reading every lie written on his skin. Something weirdly charged slams into the room—something old, buried tension, like a history neither of them is willing to explain out loud.