AN: Think ya'll will like this chapter. Let's just leave it at that. *big grin* Email!! ********************* The Only Girl: Chapter Eight ******************** I open my apartment door and gape in surprise at the sight of a decidedly nervous AJ McLean. I’d been expecting him to come crawling by eventually but, AJ doesn’t knock, not at MY house anyway. What’s he gonna do, walk in on me naked and see something he’s already seen before? I thought so. But beyond the whole knocking thing is the nervous thing. I don’t like seeing AJ unsure about anything. Alexander McLean is a model of impeccable confidence wrapped in an attractive, tattooed packaging. I’ve seen him nervous twice now and I hate it. AJ being nervous is tantamount to the sky turning green or pigs flying. Not to say that it doesn’t have its endearing qualities, in an apocalyptic sort of way, but it turns my perfectly ordered, if somewhat chaotic world, upside down, and I like my world the way it is, for the most part, besides the aching, gaping hole in my heart part. He holds out a bouquet of wildflowers and I blink with still more surprise. AJ’s been with a lot of women in the years I’ve known him and I’ve never seen him send flowers. Chocolate, sure, diamonds, definitely, lingerie, on too many occasions, but never flowers. He’d send a bottle of hundred dollar perfume to one of his one night stands before he’d buy them flowers, had in fact. “I, umm… got you wildflowers. Was gonna get you roses but, hell, you aren’t really a roses kind of girl Corrie.” I blink again and smile half shyly as I accept the gift, pleased that he had read me as well as Nick had been able too once, so long ago. I touch the petals of a silken pink flower and feel the smile curve into a please grin. I peer up at him from thick, dark lashes, gray eyes questioning. AJ reaches out to brush a similar flower before reaching up and brushing my cheek in a tender, measured movement that leaves me breathless. “And you aren’t really a daisy sort of girl either. Wildflowers remind me of you…” He trails off and waits, almost as if he expects me to rebuke or contradict him, but I’m not planning on it anytime soon. A part of me I thought long dead loves the gesture of the flowers. The thought he put behind them. And the hope I hardly want to acknowledge in his beautiful brown eyes. “Would you like to come in?” I ask softly instead, stepping aside as I cradle the bouquet to my breast. “Very much so,” he replies in a grave, too serious tone. He follows me to the kitchen where I ignore him as I try to find a vase, mind whirling with implications and too many half realized dreams that have been resurrected with the intensity and warmth in AJ’s continued friendship. And my heart aches with the memories of the last time I had received flowers. When Nick had showed up wet and soaking on my Seattle doorstep, wilted daisies in hand. I remember the hard planes of his body flush against mine, and bitter realization that whatever we once were, was never to be again. “What’s wrong Corinne?” I jump at the closeness of the raspy voice in my ear and let out a shaky breath that’s half sigh, half pain. “Memories is all I guess. Sometimes, sometimes its easy to get lost in them, you know?” “There’s more to life than memories Corrie.” I turn slowly until I’m face to face with Alexander James McLean. Until I can see the stubble on his strong chin and be awash in the clean, strong scent of his aftershave. “Like what?” I demand, tempting the lion, tempting fate. He regards me with a hooded gaze and before I know what’s going on in his twisted mind his lips are on mine, tasting, warm, honey and suede and dawn rolled into one. “Like this…” he whispers as he pulls far enough away to draw a breath before descending again like a welcome summer rain. The flowers fall forgotten to the floor as I let myself be drawn into wiry arms, until I’m surrounded, enveloped, engulfed by AJ McLean. “Good answer…” I reply breathlessly before my lips are captured again. ******************************************************************************** I awake hours, days it seems, later still wrapped in those arms. I study them, curled tight, protectively, around me. Study the contrast of my pale skin to his toned, tan, arms, corded with firm muscle and decorated with black tattoos. One hand is draped possessively across the flat of my stomach, the other is fisted in my curls. I like the feeling of being held. I’d missed it, these last several years. But I like the feeling of being held by AJ too. I’d forgotten how good of a lover he was, how considerate he can be if he choose. If he cares enough. It surprises me that he cares. Am more surprised that it feels perfectly natural lying against his body, cradled with his strong chest spooned to my back, my head tucked under that stubborn chin. Nicky had dwarfed me. There is a rightness to being with AJ, like a key clicking into place, that is new and disturbing with its implications. I shift, trying to get comfortable again, and try not to giggle when he murmurs in protest and rolls so that one leg is thrown over my own, effectively stopping any movement on my part. Greedy brat. It’s nice to be wanted again. “You awake?” AJ’s voice raspy and low with sleep, thick with sated desire, is nicer still. How on earth could I have forgotten the whole great AJ sex thing? Only this had been more than sex, at least for me, and man, what a terrifying thought. “Am now…” I murmur into his chest. I feel him sigh and gently uncurl his hand from my hair so that he can stroke it in slow, even strokes. “Corrie?” “Yeah?” The hand stills and I can feel his heart beating wilding beneath my cheek, a fluttering bird trapped in a cage of bone and sinew and flesh. “I, I don’t wanna be friends anymore.” My own heart starts beating fiercely. “All right.” “And I don’t wanna be in a relationship.” I bite my inner cheek hard enough to draw blood but don’t pull away just yet. “All right.” “Marry me Corrie.” I swallow heavily and breathe in the comforting scent of AJ McLean. “All right.” Pandora has opened the box. Thankya, thankya very much. *********************************************************************************** The ring on my finger fits snuggly. Its silver and I wonder how on earth he knew that I was never partial to gold. But then, AJ picks up on things that people don’t give him credit for. He’s a very astute individual. Or maybe he’s just sinfully good at reading me. The diamonds look strange and foreign on my hand but right in a way. As crazy as my life as become in the last night I can’t say that I’m not happy about the changes, no matter how radical. I stare at AJ as he kneels before me, his hands holding mine, tanned fingers entwined with pale. His handsome face is serious but his dark eyes, god they’re shining, twinkling like I’ve given him the world instead of just my poor, battered heart. “Corinne Mattley, you have been my friend for almost ten years. In those ten years I’ve seen you laugh and held you while you cried, for my brother, over my brother. And I have loved you as a friend while my brother held you, but I’ve always wanted to love you as something more. “You were Nick Carter’s sometimes girl. I want you to be my only girl because as long as I have you no one, nothing else matters. Will you do me the honor of being my wife?” I’m crying and not sure why but I still manage to laugh and throw my arms around him. “I already said yes doofus.” He chuckles and holds me tight, like I’d vanish if he didn’t, like I’d want to. “But I didn’t want my memorized speech to go to waste.” “You planned this?” I demand in amused disbelief. He shrugs beneath me and kisses one cheek sloppily. “You think I carry an engagement ring around in my jeans all the time?” “Sometimes, with you Aje, I really wonder. You know how insane this is right?” AJ pulls back so that he can cradle one cheek with his calloused, warm palm. I lean into his heat and the promise of something I thought forever denied me. His brown eyes are intent upon mine and I squirm under his scrutiny. “Do you love me Corrie?” “I didn’t want to…” His hand drops from my face to my chin before he leans in and kisses me slowly. “Do you love me?” “With more than I thought I had left.” “Then that’s all I need to know.” And I’m still crying but it doesn’t matter because he’s holding me again and suddenly nothing seems to matter, not Nick and Tiffany, or the press, or a thousand other obstacles and challenges. Just that I’m here right now, and that I am, for better or ill, madly, desperately in love with Alexander James McLean. “Dammit, I hate it when you’re right.” He laughs and I let myself be drawn towards the bed again.