Aiden and Aveline

Aiden was lost in a reverie, his head back against the dirty wall.

I didn’t want to bother him, so I just leaned my head back against his chest.

And, you know, one thing about Aiden is that he rarely gets angry.

I’ve only really seen him angry a handful of times—most of them were because a man (or even men) either tried to or succeeded in hurting me physically.

Then he would get pissed.

I remember the first time it happened. I was at school, and two boys were about to get in a fight. Rather stupidly, I stepped in between them, assuming they would stop.

Well, they didn’t. One boy did, but the other hit me in the face, giving me a black eye.

In his defense, he did stop and apologize to me. But when Aiden picked me up from school, he took one look at that black eye and flipped out.

“Who hit you?”

His voice was so quiet, so frighteningly full of rage that I was scared.

“Um…um, nobody. I fell,” I lied quickly, grabbing the door handle.

His arm shot across my body, his hand landing on the handle. “Aveline,” he growled, “Doll baby, I’m not mad at you, but you better tell me who hit you right now.”

“Billy Johnson hit me accidentally. It’s my fault, really, I…” I was silenced by the look he was giving me.

He leaned across, looking me square in the face. “Aveline, baby, it’s not your fault,” he purred, “Don’t say that it was.

“But it was, they were getting in a fight and I stepped in the middle,” I said quietly.

He kissed my cheek softly. “Stay in the car,” he ordered sweetly. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

As he got out of the car, I said, “Aiden please don’t do anything to Billy, he already apologized about it!”

Aiden just smiled at me, shaking his head and closing the car door.

I watched as he disappeared into the school. I watched the clock, then: five, ten, fifteen minutes passed. Then, Aiden comes strolling out, all casual as he slides into the car and takes off.

I noticed there was some blood on his hands, a few drops on his shirt. He smiled easily at me though, almost exactly the same as when he left the car. I pulled a paper towel out of his glove compartment (one of the things I had put in his car) and took his hand, wiping off the blood.

“What did you do?” I asked.

He gently retracted his hand from my grip, caressing my cheek gently. “Just took care of business, doll baby. Just taking care of you,” he said, smiling tenderly.

I put my hand over his on my cheek, holding it there. “Aiden, don’t tell me you beat him up.”

He chuckled as he pulled to up to a stop sign. He leaned over and kissed my cheek again. “Then I won’t tell you,” he said, whispering in my ear.