Chapter 30: The Whiskey Confession
The silence after Lena’s announcement was different. It wasn’t the dense quiet of spent energy; it was the sharp, ringing silence of a trap snapping shut. Catriona’s celebratory squirm on Aidan’s lap stilled. He could feel the shift in her muscles, from playful to calculating.
“Weekly?” Priya’s voice was small from her spot on the floor.
“With audience polls influencing the research direction,” Lena said, her tone flat, reading from the screen. “They want interactive elements. Real-time Q&A integration.”
Sasha let out a short, harsh laugh. “So we’re not just a lab. We’re a fucking reality show.” She finally walked to the door, her hand on the handle. But she didn’t leave. She just stood there, her back to them, shoulders tense.
“It’s a validation of our methodology,” Lena said, but it sounded rote, like she was convincing herself. She took a long swallow of whiskey.
“It’s a brand,” Catriona corrected, a bright, opportunistic gleam in her eye. She shifted on Aidan, grounding herself more firmly against him. “My grandfather loves metrics. This is… this is major.” Her hand, which had been tracing his collarbone, now absently stroked the side of his neck, a possessive gesture. He was no longer just the dataset; he was the flagship product.
Aidan felt a cold knot form beneath the warmth of the whiskey and Catriona’s weight. The hollow, idling feeling was gone, replaced by a low-grade dread. He looked at Priya, who had drawn her knees tighter to her chest. At Cho, whose serene expression had fractured into something like concern. At Sasha’s rigid back. At Lena’s focused, conflicted stare.
“What do you feel?”
The question came from Priya. She wasn’t looking at the laptop or her nails. She was looking directly at him, her dark eyes wide and unguarded. “Right now. For each of us. After all that. After… this news.” Her voice wavered. “Not as data points. Just… what do you feel?”
The room held its breath. Even Sasha turned her head slightly, listening.
Aidan’s throat was dry. He spoke into the expectant quiet, his voice a rough scrape. “Protective,” he started, the word surprising him as much as them. “Which is stupid, probably. But it’s there.” He swallowed. “Catriona… your boldness feels like a dare. It’s exhilarating and a little terrifying. It pulls me out of my head.”
Catriona preened, nuzzling his jaw.
“Sasha.” He addressed her back. “Your challenge feels like a test I didn’t know I wanted to pass. It pisses me off. It also… honours me. You don’t bother challenging what doesn’t matter.”
Sasha didn’t move, but the line of her shoulders softened a fraction.
“Cho.” He met her calm gaze. “Your stillness feels like a sanctuary. In all this noise, you’re the quiet centre. It’s… peaceful. I feel seen by you, not just used.”
A faint, genuine smile touched Cho’s lips.
“Priya.” He looked back at her, curled on the floor. “Your vulnerability feels like a secret you’ve entrusted to me. It’s the heaviest weight. It makes me want to be… careful. And it makes the moments you’re not careful feel like a gift.”
A single tear tracked through Priya’s mascara. She didn’t wipe it away.
He finally looked at Lena. “And you… your control feels like the only thing keeping this from flying apart. It’s the cage and the safety net. I resent it. I cling to it. You make it make sense, even when it shouldn’t.”
Lena held his look, her professional mask gone. In its place was a raw, stark acknowledgment. She gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.
For a beat, there was only the distant hum of the city through the glass.
Then Catriona kissed him.
It wasn’t a research probe. It was deep, whiskey-warm, and full of claiming intent. Her tongue swept into his mouth, her fingers tangling in his shaggy hair. The pent-up energy of the evening, the dread of the future, the shocking honesty of his own words—it all coalesced into a single, hot point of contact.
Aidan’s hands came up, gripping her hips, answering the kiss with a groan that was half surrender, half revolt.
From the door, Sasha muttered, “Fuck it.” The words were resigned, final. She let go of the handle and crossed the room in three long strides. She didn’t kiss his mouth. She pushed Catriona’s shoulder back just enough to bury her face in the junction of Aidan’s neck and shoulder, her lips and teeth finding his skin with a desperate, angry hunger. “You don’t get to be the thoughtful one,” she breathed against his pulse. “That’s not the deal.”
The dam broke.
Priya uncurled and rose, moving to her knees before the bench. Her hands trembled as she unbuckled his belt, her tears now falling freely onto his stomach. She wasn’t seeking data. She was seeking an anchor.
Cho slipped off the bench and padded silently to the light switch, plunging the room into the deep blue gloom of the city’s neon glow filtering through the blinds. In the half-dark, she was a shadow. She gently guided Priya’s head to rest against her thigh, then leaned over, her small, precise mouth finding Aidan’s earlobe. “The sanctuary is open,” she whispered, her breath cool. “No notes today.”
Lena didn’t join the tangle. She became its director from the shadows. She watched, her analyst’s mind seemingly disengaged, replaced by a naked, yearning avarice. She poured more whiskey, brought the cup to Aidan’s lips when Catriona’s mouth allowed it. Her fingers, when they brushed his cheek to move a strand of hair, were not clinical. They were possessive.
It was chaos. It was warmth and skin and the salt of tears and the sweet-burn of whiskey. Catriona rode him with a frantic, celebratory rhythm, her eyes locked on his, declaring her stake. Sasha’s mouth traveled down his chest, her hands gripping his thighs hard enough to bruise, her earlier politics dissolved into a base, claiming need. Priya pressed her wet cheek to his knee, her hand clutching his ankle, taking comfort from the mere connection. Cho, with her gymnast’s silence, simply wound her limbs around his arm, a serene barnacle in the storm.
Aidan let go. The idling engine roared to life, but this time it was driving something he didn’t understand—a vehicle of shared, desperate need. He wasn’t a mirror or a machine. He was the centre of a silent, grasping pact.
He came with Catriona’s name choked into Sasha’s hair, his body arching under the weight of them all.
After, in the tangled, breathing quiet, the blue neon painting stripes across their skin, the reality seeped back in. The laptops were dark. The unopened bottle was empty.
Lena finally moved. She gathered her notebook from the floor. Her pen clicked in the silence.
“The ‘Hired Heart’ series begins next Thursday,” she said, her voice husky but already reassembling into its managerial frame. “We’ll need a pre-interview. Audience parameters. Consent forms updated for public distribution.”
No one replied. They simply listened, the intimate truth of the last hour curdling into the cold fact of what came next.
Aidan sat amidst them, feeling the ghost impressions of their hands and mouths. The protective feeling he’d named was still there, but it was now laced with a new, chilling understanding.
He wasn’t just protecting them from the awkwardness of the experiment anymore.
He was going to have to protect them from what it became. And he had no idea how.