Chapter 1: The Kitchen Confession
The kitchen smelled of burnt toast and lavender-scented candles. Aidan watched a stray sunbeam cut through the grime on the window, illuminating dust motes dancing above the chaos of their breakfast. A stack of unwashed dishes sat in the sink, and two cooling mugs of coffee stained the counter where Catriona had abandoned them. She was pacing, her socks whispering on the linoleum.
“Just say it, Cat,” he said, his voice softer than he intended. “You’re making me nervous.”
She stopped, her back to him, hands braced on the counter. Her fiery red hair was a messy bun held up by a pencil. He knew every strand of that hair, every freckle on the back of her neck from twenty years of friendship. Since kindergarten. Since she’d punched Jamie Ellis for stealing his snack pack.
“I’m a virgin.”
The words hung in the air, stark and simple, beside the hum of the refrigerator. Aidan blinked. He replayed the sentence. It didn’t compute. Catriona, who lit up every room, who dated confidently, who swore with the creativity of a sailor.
“What?”
She turned around. Her green eyes were wide, vulnerable in a way he’d never seen. “Twenty-five years old. Never even close. People assume, and I let them. It was easier.”
“But… why?” The question felt stupid, inadequate. He’d just asked her why the sky was blue.
A bitter laugh escaped her. She wrapped her arms around herself. “Because every time someone got near, all I could think was ‘You’re not him.’” Her gaze locked on his. “They weren’t you, Aidan. Not even a little bit.”
Time stopped. The hum of the fridge became a roar in his ears. His heart did a slow, hard roll against his ribs. He saw the truth of it in the set of her jaw, the tremor in her lower lip she was fighting to control. Decades collapsed. Sleepovers and homework, graduation, her dad’s funeral where he’d held her for hours in silence, college care packages, break-up phone calls at 2 a.m. All of it, every shared moment, tilted on its axis and revealed a secret shape he’d been too afraid to examine.
“Me?” The word was a croak.
“Don’t make me say it all.” Her voice broke. “Don’t make me list the ways. The stupid, quiet way you listen. How you remember I hate the texture of pears. The way you doodle on napkins when you’re thinking.” She took a shaky step forward. “I built this perfect version of you in my head. No real man could compete. So I just… waited. Like an idiot.”
Aidan was suddenly, acutely aware of his own body. The press of his jeans against the kitchen chair. The heat flooding his skin. And a deep, insistent hardening that made his breath catch. It was a purely physical shockwave, a response to her confession that bypassed his stunned brain entirely. His cock thickened, straining against denim, a visceral claim to words he hadn’t yet processed.
He’d buried those feelings. Carefully. Deliberately. His art was littered with them—sketchbooks filled with the curve of her smile, the line of her shoulder, always disguised, always explained away as ‘practice.’ She was his best friend. His anchor. The one constant in a messy life. Risking that had seemed insane.
Now she’d burned the safety net.
“All this time?” he managed.
“All this time.” She was right in front of him now. He could smell her shampoo, the same coconut scent since tenth grade. “And I’m telling you now because I can’t watch you bring another nice, boring woman to movie night. I can’t be your best man when you marry someone else. I’ll shatter.”
He stood up. The movement was abrupt, sending his chair scraping back. The few inches of height he had on her felt monumental. Her eyes were level with his throat. She didn’t flinch.
“Cat…” He reached out, his thumb brushing a tear she hadn’t let fall. Her skin was so warm. “You built a fantasy. I’m just a guy. I leave the milk out. I get insecure about my code. I’m… messy.”
“I know.” Her hand came up, covering his, holding it against her cheek. “I don’t want the fantasy anymore. I want the messy reality. I want you.”
Her confession was a key turning in a lock deep inside him. The careful compartment he’d kept his desire in blew open. The image was instantaneous, unforgiving: Catriona beneath him, her green eyes dark, her freckles flushed. Her whispering that fantasy he’d never dared imagine was hers. His body reacted so violently he felt lightheaded.
He leaned forward, his forehead resting against hers. Their breath mixed. “This changes everything,” he whispered. “There’s no going back.”
“I don’t want to go back.”
He kissed her. It wasn’t gentle or hesitant. It was a collision of twenty-five years of pent-up want, a claiming and an answer all at once. Her lips were softer than he’d dreamed, and she opened for him with a small, desperate sound that went straight to his core. She tasted of coffee and Catriona, a unique flavor he knew he’d become addicted to.
His hands slid into her hair, dislodging the pencil. It clattered to the floor. Her arms wound around his neck, pulling him closer until not a sliver of light could pass between them. He backed her gently into the counter, the half-empty mugs rattling. The world narrowed to the heat of her mouth, the feel of her slender body pressed the full length of his, the hard, undeniable evidence of his arousal against her stomach.
She broke the kiss, gasping. “Aidan.”
He trailed his mouth along her jaw, down the column of her throat, feeling her pulse hammer against his lips. “Tell me,” he murmured against her skin, his voice rough. “Tell me what you really want.”
Her fingers tangled in his messy dark hair. Her confession came out in a rush, hot and damp against his ear. “You. In my bed. I want it to be you. I want you to be my first. My last. I want you to look at me and tell me I’m yours while you’re inside me. I want…”
She didn’t finish. She didn’t need to. The rest of her favourite fantasy hung in the air, more potent than any explicit detail.
He lifted her onto the counter, the dishes forgotten. He stood between her knees, hands cradling her face. Her green eyes were pools of fierce, vulnerable hope. The sunlight caught the copper in her hair, lit the constellation of freckles across her nose. She was the most beautiful, terrifying thing he’d ever seen.
“It has been you,” he said, the realization dawning with absolute clarity. “It’s always been you. I was just too scared to want it.”
He saw the relief flood her features, followed by a new, potent hunger. She leaned in, kissing him again, all shyness gone.
The hallway to her bedroom was only ten steps away. It felt like crossing a frontier. His heart was a drum in his chest, his body aching and ready. As he led her by the hand from the sunlit kitchen into the dim corridor, the only thought in his head was a silent, unwavering promise.
He would be careful. He would be slow.
But he would also, finally, be hers.