Ace grinned at that. “Would that work on you, too? I’ll let Liam know when he arrives.”
Ruby flipped him off, but when she spun around to her workstation, she crossed her legs tightly and Aarav could see her in profile, blushing just a bit.
James cracked his knuckles, and Aarav figured their coordinator had identified and locked on to his next target for his matchmaking schemes.
18
Sola stumbled as she reached for the back door to Shields.
“Hey, careful.” Legend threw an arm in front of her like a soccer mom who’d braked too hard to keep her from slamming her face on the glass. “Did you get any sleep at all?”
“Not a damn minute.” She groaned. All she had been able to think about was Cash, his grief, and what Aarav taking that shot had done to his psyche. Cash had already bailed on them after some of the most intense sex of her life. Who would he turn to for comfort when his lover was also the person who took his parent—no matter how imperfect—from him?
Not normally a crier, she’d bawled her eyes out for hours as Kennedy rocked her and the jet’s busted satellite dish had tortured her with a far-too-long silence where her imagination had free rein to imagine the worst.
Cash would never forgive them.
For fuck’s sake, he hadn’t actually cared for them at all and had been trying to let them down easy the night before. How would she face both him and Aarav, who’d been forced to make such a horrible choice?
And would he still be willing to love her when she’d led him to emotional slaughter?
Sola was certain the impact of yesterday’s shot would ricochet through their love life, tearing it to shreds long before she’d been ready for it to be ruined.
Liam opened the door to let her in while Tavish and Legend flanked her as they made their way to the bank of elevators. Missions like these brought them closer together, and their unspoken support was comfortable, if not quite as reassuring as Aarav’s presence always was to her after they’d narrowly escaped danger.
This time the hazard was far more terrifying than anything physical.
She wasn’t sure she could go back to feigning disinterest in Aarav or living next door to him, sharing a wall but not their lives. If this went as she expected, she might have to leave the only place she’d ever really belonged.
Sola was trembling by the time she rapped on Aarav’s door.
Within moments, she heard the loud footfalls of someone sprinting for the door. Aarav yanked it open and stood there staring at her, his chest perfectly still as if he was holding his breath. Then it left him in a rush as if someone let all the air out of a giant balloon. “Can we talk?”
This was it. He was about to tell her it wasn’t going to work. That she’d forced him out of his shell and he wasn’t ready, might never be, to be so vulnerable. It was the moment when Cash would rail at them both, telling them how much he hated them for offing his piece of trash father.
This was the moment her dreams died.
Might as well get it over. Sola shrugged. “Sure.”
So when he stepped back and she spied Cash hovering over his shoulder, a few feet back, she was a bit confused. He wasn’t going after Aarav, wasn’t screaming or accusing. None of that.
In fact, he had a new mug in his hand, similar in style to the one Aarav had smashed but a cheery blue color like the shallows off a Caribbean island rather than the pitch black of the ruined pottery that had dotted their sink a mere twenty-four hours before. “Do you want Aarav’s tea? It looks like maybe you could use it more than him.”
Sola tipped her head, confused by how mundane and homey the scene before her was compared to the nightmare scenarios she’d imagined on the ride home. Could Kennedy, Marcus, and Knox have had it right? They’d tried to console her, promising nothing was insurmountable when you loved each other. Those three certainly survived enough pain of their own on their path to happiness as a trio.
“I think I need something stronger. Got any whiskey?” she joked, though she wouldn’t have turned down a shot or two to make whatever they needed to say to her more bearable.
Aarav glided the tips of his fingers over her cheeks, making her close her eyes while she leaned into his caress. She yelped when he scooped her into his arms and carried her into his living room, placing her on the couch between him and Cash. “Nah. I don’t drink that stuff. But I think I have something you might like better.”
He piqued Sola’s interest, and her curiosity when neither of the guys seemed awkward or angry with each other and focused on her instead.
Aarav gestured to a cube the size of a microwave on the ground, draped loosely and haphazardly with a blanket from the couch. What the hell was going on?
She whipped the cover from the object, half expecting it to be Cash’s packed suitcase before he announced his return to his yacht. Instead, the most adorable, twitching pink nose stuck between the bars of a white wire cage. The bunny rabbit it was attached to blinked up at her with wide, innocent eyes.
“Who’s this?” she asked as she flew to it and opened the hatch, sticking her hand in and gently stroking the fluffy, soft fawn colored fur.
“Meet Miss Nibbles.” Aarav crouched behind Sola and started unbraiding her hair. He’d become obsessed with finger combing it and massaging her skull lately. She wasn’t about to stop him when it felt so good, both to unwind around him and Cash and to let him take care of her.