The Langfield Brothers: Box Set

19. Aiden

NINETEEN

AIDEN

“You seem happier today,” Robert says as I sit across from him in his office.

During the season, most of my therapy sessions are done over Zoom, but when I’m in town, he expects me to make the trek across the city to visit him. I’d like to say it’s because of my dazzling smile, but he sees through the facade, and he doesn’t let me fake it, so more often than not, I’m subdued when I see him.

I nod. “What’s there not to be happy about? We won the Stanley Cup, I’ve got a few weeks off, and my health is good.” I tick off all the events that should contribute to genuine happiness yet don’t make my heart rate pick up the way they probably should.

Not one of those items has much impact on my mood. My smile can be attributed to only one thing. The one thing I can’t talk about with anyone but him.

“And you got engaged?” Robert prods, though his expression is hesitant. Probably because he expected that to be the first item on my list. “Have you and Jill started planning the wedding?”

“We actually broke up.”I rub my palms over my thighs, though I can’t help the way my lips quirk at the thought of being done with her.

Based on Robert’s concerned frown, my reaction isn’t the right one. “And how do you feel about that?”

Leaning forward, I bob my head. “Good, I guess.”

Robert’s already giving me a concerned look, and it’s only going to deepen when I tell him about Lennox. I’ve never mentioned her before, and now that I think about it, maybe that’s why I’ve still got so many unresolved issues.

So I start at the beginning. I give him a rundown of who Lennox is to me. I don’t shy away from sharing my feelings with him, and I even detail the marriage pact and my plan to win her back. The more I tell him, the lighter I feel.

“Are you feeling worried about what the repercussions might be?” he asks gently as our hour comes to an end.

Sitting back, I shake my head. “I’ve got this under control.”

The truth is that so long as I can be the person Lennox needs—the fake fiancé, the friend—without showing her how truly attached I already am, this will be fine.

Or it will be a disaster. But at least I’ll be smiling while it lasts.

Step one of my plan is to show Lennox how chill I can be around her. What better way to do that than in a steamy hot tub?

“Knock, knock,” I sing while tapping against her door.

“You’ve got the wrong door,” she yells from the other side.

Chuckling, I tap louder. “Come on, it’s your fake?—”

I don’t get the words out before she’s swinging the door open and yanking me inside. “Are you insane? Someone could have heard you,” she hisses.

The smile I’ve been sporting falls as I take her in, and my mouth goes dry. She’s got a hot pink silk robe pulled tight around her waist, and her full breasts are spilling out, obviously free beneath the smooth fabric, her pebbled nipples enticing me almost as much as her bare legs.

She was dressed in a robe the other night, but it was the thick bathrobe kind. There were no nipples poking through the fabric, and her cleavage was barely on display.

Fuck.

Lennox always has had a great rack, but somehow, every time I see her, she just gets prettier.

I thumb toward the door, trying to catch my breath. “Was going to invite you up to the roof.” I raise my eyes to her face, hoping that avoiding her luscious curves will make it easier to speak. But when those soulful blue eyes lock on me, my tongue gets even more tied.

God, she’s gorgeous.

This was a terrible idea.

“The roof?” She frowns.

I choose to focus on her skepticism rather than how much I just want to say fuck it and drag her into her bedroom. That would obviously be a terrible idea.

“There’s a hot tub up there. Gavin had it installed after we won the Cup.”

Lennox perks up, her expression brightening. “Seriously? Hockey Daddy has been holding out on me? I had no idea.”

I shake my head. “No.”

Her smile grows. “No?”

“No, you cannot call my brother Hockey Daddy.”

With a flourish, she spins, her slinky robe flaring out and giving me the tiniest peek of her ass, and heads toward her bedroom. “Don’t be jealous, Hockey Boy.” In the doorway, she grasps the frame and tilts her head back. “Single dads aren’t my kink.”

She disappears into her room with a loud laugh, leaving me standing in the middle of her living room with my jaw wide open.

“Wait, where are you going?” I yell. I’m not sure if I’ve been dismissed or if I’m supposed to stay here.

Lennox giggles. “I’m getting my suit.”

And I’m back to smiling again.

“How was your day?” I ask as we settle beneath the bubbling water. The weather is mild, and despite the light pollution, the sky sparkles above. It’s a perfect night.

Lennox leans her head back and moans in a way that makes my dick perk up. Thank fuck we’re the only people out here. If any of the guys saw her like this, I’d have to murder them.

“God, this feels good.” She lifts her foot and presses it against the steady pressure of water coming from one jet. “My day was okay. Just went to work and did a little more planning for Gavin and Millie’s wedding.”

“Oh yeah? Planning it without me now?”

She rolls her eyes as she laughs. “Figured you were done planning now that you got what you wanted.”

I drape my arms over the back of the hot tub and sink a little lower. “And what’s that?”

“Never mind that,” she says, waving her hands under the water. “How was your day?”

I allow her to change the subject without argument. We both know why I was helping her plan the wedding, so there’s no sense in revisiting that conversation. “It was okay. Got a skate in this morning. Hit the gym after, had lunch, saw my therapist, then took a nap.”

“You see a therapist?” Lennox asks, gripping the bench on either side of her thighs. There’s no judgment in her tone, just genuine interest.

I nod. “Annual visits are a team requirement. I just turned it into a weekly thing.”

She’s quiet, thoughtful, and interested, so I find myself continuing.

“Sometimes, after a game, I’d find it hard to breathe, and not just after the losses. The wins were often worse. The heaviness would settle in, and then I’d get angry at myself for not being happier.” I shrug. “Don’t get me wrong, I can smile along with the best of them. I’d never drag my team down.”

The genuine concern in her eyes makes my chest go tight. Needing a break from her scrutiny, I let out a long breath and dip my head beneath the water. Why am I sharing all of this? I want to show her I can handle our arrangement. Instead, I’m proving to her that I’m the kind of person whose feelings she’ll to tiptoe around. I breach the surface and smile. “Anyway, tell me?—”

“Don’t do that.”

I blink the water from my eyes and rake my fingers through my hair to get it out of my face. “Do what?”

“Don’t hide yourself from me. Don’t make yourself smaller, or happier, or anything-er , than you are. If this is going to work, I need you to be real with me. If you need something, tell me. If you feel a certain way, express it. Promise me you won’t be anything but real when it’s just us.”

My stomach twists at the request. Total transparency? If it’s possible, then I’ll do it. I’ll do anything she asks. “Fine. What I need right now is for you to take my mind off this conversation.”

“ Aiden .”She tilts her head and gives me a disapproving frown.

I hold up my hands. “Lex, I’m being serious. I’m new to this sharing the real me thing. Unless you want me to shut down or to break out in song—both coping mechanisms, I’m told—I need to change the subject. Please. It can be anything; just talk.”

For a moment, she blinks at me, her lip caught between her teeth. “Shit,” she breathes out. “My mind literally went blank.”

I cough out a laugh. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, like there’s nothing in here.” She taps on her head. “Nada.”

I suck in a harsh breath, willing myself to focus on her and not the emotions we’ve dredged up. The emotions now swirling beneath the surface, threatening to pull me under.

I’ve never told anyone about my depression diagnosis. Never admitted that I see a therapist weekly. The guys would be concerned about all the pressure they put on me during games. There’s a good chance they wouldn’t trust me to be center. Sometimes I wonder why they do. If they should?—

“Breathe,” she says, pushing off the edge of the hot tub and coming to sit beside me. The warm water sloshes over my torso as she settles so she’s facing me.

Obediently, I suck in a lungful of air. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath. As I exhale, I stare into her blue eyes. Once again, there’s zero judgment. Just empathy.

“I’m right here with you,” she says, placing a hand on my chest.

Swallowing thickly, I shift so I’m facing her, one leg pulled up on the bench, and grasp her thighs, needing to ground myself to her. To calm myself. I don’t expect her to climb on top of me. To straddle me. But when she does, my brain short-circuits in a completely different way.

“Is this okay?” she mumbles, eyeing me cautiously.

Settling with my back against the jets, I grip her ass and pull her closer, hugging her to my body. “Yes.”

She loops her arms around my neck and hugs me back. The simple move pulls a sigh from deep within me. In the past week, Lennox has kissed me. She’s danced with me. She’s spent countless hours planning a wedding with me. But this is the first time she’s hugged me. And unlike our kiss, which was meant to prove something, this is just for us. For me. She’s holding on to me, her head cradled on my shoulder, our bodies pressed tightly together. My very being shifts as our hearts beat a steady rhythm in time. A door that’s been locked up tight for years creaks open in my chest. I relax into the embrace, letting go of all the worries weighing me down, and breathe, enjoying this moment with my old friend.

“I read a good book today,” she murmurs, her breath skating across the damp skin of my neck.

I think my heart is beating louder than her voice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it about?”

“Promise not to make fun of me?”

“Lex,” I say softly, leaning my head back.

She snuggles in closer to my neck, and fuck if I don’t love having her cuddled right there. If she weren’t using the move to hide from me, I’d let her stay there forever.

I rub a hand up and down her back. “I’d never laugh at you. Only with you.”

Straightening, she hits me with a smile that’s like an electric shock to my heart. On the heels of that, my breath is stolen from me. Holy fuck. Clearly, I didn’t get a good look at her when she got in the hot tub. I never got to truly see her bathing suit, and then when she crawled into my lap, I was too focused on my panic attack to appreciate the breasts that are spilling out of her hot pink top.

Don’t look at her tits.

I suck on my teeth and force my attention to remain on her face. “Tell me about the book.”

She shifts back like she’s going to climb off my lap.

I grab her thighs, keeping her where she is. “Where are you going?”

Giggling, she points to her stuff. “I read on the Kindle app on my phone. I thought I’d pull up the book and read it to you. See if you can really keep a straight face.”

Oh fuck. She’s going to read to me? Is it like porn? Am I going to get hard in this hot tub? Yes, if Lennox is reading porn to me while wearing that tease of a swimsuit, chances are I’m going to be a rock beneath the bubbles. Maybe she’ll sit back on my lap while she reads to me…

A guy can dream, right?

“Let me set the scene,” she says, leaning over the edge of the tub and drying her hands on her towel. Once she’s got her phone, she sits back down on my lap.

I have to bite my cheek to keep the huge smile from spreading across my face. She didn’t even pause to think about whether she should sit here or keep her distance. Climbing into my lap was her natural inclination.

“Okay, set the scene,” I prod.

“They broke up because he was a jerk.”

I nod, taking in the stars visible in the night sky.

“He’s not really a jerk. He’s actually very swoony, but he acted like a jerk because he didn’t believe her.”

Chuckling, I drag my hands up and down her thighs. “Got it. He’s a jerk. We should always believe the girl.”

She narrows her gaze on me. “When you love her? There’s no question.”

I sober. “Of course. Keep going.”

She relaxes against me, her body so soft and warm. “He sees her out on a date with another guy. Actually,” she hums, twisting her lips to one side, “that makes it sound like it wasn’t on purpose, when in reality, he knew they were going to be there.”

“So he’s a stalker?” I waggle my eyebrows.

She shrugs, but her eyes light up like she finds the idea of it hot. “For her.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

She looks down at the phone, her face illuminated, and begins to read.

“‘Does his touch set fire to your skin like mine does?’ he grits huskily into my ear, his breath sending a shiver of betrayal down my arms. With his left hand still on my hip, he presses against me and trails his fingers up my bare arm, and I have to hold back a whimper.”

I ghost my fingertips over her thighs, making circles as she reads, and keep my focus trained on her lips as I memorize every word that spills from them.

“Do not let him know he’s affecting you,” she continues reading, but her eyes jump up to mine.

I grin. Am I affecting her? God, I hope so. My cock pulses at her proximity. It takes Herculean restraint not to rock against her.

“‘Do you possess his thoughts like you do mine? Making it impossible for him to work, to breathe, to fucking sleep at night without dreaming of your taste?’ His tantalizing voice dances against my skin as he brushes the barest of kisses against my shoulder, and my legs clench together as I squeeze my eyes shut.”

Lennox inches forward, and when she sucks in a breath, I know she’s discovered how hard I am. Instead of darting away, she freezes and drags her attention up to me. In the light of her phone screen, her blue eyes are dark, her pupils almost eclipsing the irises completely.

“Keep reading,” I tell her, all the while squeezing her thighs and rubbing her oh so gently over the head of my cock. If the kind of obsession she’s reading about is what turns her on, then she’s in luck. I’ve always been that guy when it comes to her.

Obsessed. A bit crazy. And determined as anything to make her mine.