by R. L. Syme
He was staring at her with those big, sad eyes. It reminded her of the last time she’d seen him, before they moved to Dallas. He’d asked her not to leave. Begged her to stay behind. To live with her aunt. To help him learn how to live with what had happened.
She’d confessed she didn’t want to go, but she didn’t have a choice. His eyes had filled as she drove away, and he watched her, all the way down his parents’ long driveway, silent and unmoving.
She had been seventeen, heartbroken, and wanting to start over somewhere else, where her Eponine thing with Aidan wouldn’t be further exacerbated.
Claire saw that same fear, that same sadness. It broke her heart again, just like it had when she’d left.
He blinked as though he’d just recognized her staring at him and turned back to Yumi. His sister was still prattling on, trying to convince the judge she knew her brother the best.
Claire didn’t care who knew him better. She just wanted him not to be in jail. She needed his help, and she was pretty certain he needed hers.
Chapter Six
Aidan stepped into the sweltering July heat, having never been so happy to sweat in his life. Whatever voodoo Claire and Marin had done to make the judge see reason, he was grateful.
Marin and Preston filed behind him, and the two beefy security guards behind them. Aidan just wanted to shake Preston Beckett and his idiot guard and find Claire.
As usual, Marin was giving orders.
“Now, Aidan, since you can’t go to work, you might as well come with me to Brenda’s house for the dress selection.” She squeezed Preston’s arm. “Beckett flew in that Project Runway girl I like so much, and she’s going to meet us at Brenda’s with her entourage.”
“I’ve sent ahead for lunch. There’s a Latin fusion place in Austin that Momma has been raving about, so I had the jet stop over to pick up a spread.” Preston’s voice could not have grated more on Aidan’s nerves if it had been an actual grater.
Sometimes his sister was so alien to him.
“Wonderful.” Marin clapped. “Now. Where is that limo driver?”
Aidan looked both ways, up and down Stagecoach Road. He didn’t see a limo anywhere. He wasn’t even aware that Somewhere had a limo service.
Leave it to Marin.
“I don’t think I’m going to go with you,” Aidan said.
Marin’s gasp was almost stage-worthy. “But you promised to help me with wedding stuff, and with Mom and Dad in Oregon, there’s no one left to look at the dresses.”
“Mar, I’m just not a dress-looker.” Aidan stuffed his hands in his pockets, keeping the yellow envelope with his personal effects under his arm. “Not my style. The cake tasting was one thing. But wedding dresses?”
He hugged his sister, trying not to wrinkle her expensive skirt suit. “I appreciate you making an appearance here, today. You, too, Preston. This completely caught me by surprise yesterday.”
Marin’s face settled into flat suspicion. “Are you gonna tell me what happened? Are these charges true? You didn’t really kill Jane, did you?”
Aidan opened the flap on the envelope and pulled out his car keys. He’d have to walk back over to Main Street to find his truck, and he didn’t feel like answering any questions. “Are you really asking me that, Mar?”
She shrugged. “You got arrested, Aidan. And right after Daddy’s retirement. It does look like he was covering something up for you.”
Aidan shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re really asking me that question, Marin. I figured that you, of all people, would be on my side.”
“I’m on your side, Aid.” She touched his shoulder in a rare gesture of sympathy. “And we’ll get whatever lawyer we need to get to make this go away. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know if you’re really guilty or not.”
With a long sigh, Aidan offered his hand to Preston and hugged his sister. “I’ll call you tonight. I need to go pick up my truck.”
“Come with us,” Marin ordered. “We have the limo, and we can drop you wherever you need to go.”
“Thanks. But no thanks.” He walked up Stagecoach toward the Gold Nugget Bank.
Marin called after him. “Aidan, I don’t like this.”
“I’m sorry. I just need some space.”
His encounter with Jeff was still running through his head and he needed to think. He wasn’t sure if Jeff was a friend or not and couldn’t make out a good reason for him to say what he’d said. It just didn’t make sense.
Not to mention the fact that he needed to find Claire. They’d taken him to the booking office after his release, filed a bunch more paperwork, given him his stuff back, and let him walk through the courthouse doors. In all the mess, he’d found his sister, but lost Claire.
If ever anyone deserved his gratitude, it was her. And now. He was certain that her statement had been the difference between him being released outright and having to post bail.
And if he did have to run, that bail would have been a big nail to the ground in Somewhere. Especially because he wouldn’t have been able to post it himself and would have had to ask Preston. Or his parents. Then, he wouldn’t even have the option of running.
Was he really considering running?
The garbage can took the shredded remains of the envelope, and he stuffed his phone, wallet, and keys into his pocket. The jail was a more distant memory, having his stuff back. He walked past the window display at Books’n’Things. “Back To School” reading displays already. Time seemed to move so fast.
But when he turned the corner onto Main Street, time stopped.
Claire leaned against the back of his red pickup, her blonde hair cascading over one shoulder, providing a sharp contrast to the color of his truck.
He couldn’t have seen a more welcome a sight.
Aidan picked up his pace and jogged across the street. She looked up and smiled when she saw him.
“You waited.” The words surprised him at first, but he just let them hang there. She pushed off the tailgate.
For a second, he wasn’t sure if she would hug him or not, but the moment seemed ripe for it. He decided to take a chance and crossed the distance between them. Aidan slid his arms around her and held her to him, lacing his fingers through her hair without thinking. Every point their bodies touched was alive with fire, but he couldn’t stop just pressing her against him.
He needed her to understand what she had done for him, and words weren’t going to do it justice. He felt her hands on his back and pulled her tighter, tighter.
The heat wasn’t just coming from outside, now. It was inside as well, and it threatened to burn right through him.
She did not push him away, and after a long moment, he remembered they were on a public street and people might be watching. This wasn’t the time or the place.
Aidan released her, but held her at arm’s length. He searched her eyes, trying to figure out if she understood just how grateful he was. He sighed. Maybe she never would.
“Thank you.”
Claire nodded. “It’s what Jane would have wanted.”
A chill went through his body. He doubted that very much.
She grabbed his hand and pulled him around his truck. “Come on, now. I’ve got some stuff to show you.” She opened the driver’s door and slid across the seat. He got in next to her and sat for a moment, reveling in his freedom.
“Really.” He met her gaze. “Thank you.”
“Take me to my aunt’s house. I need to show you something.”
Aidan drove through Uptown and into the residential streets of Somewhere. The air conditioning provided the relief he’d been craving.
It did not cool his burning inside.
“I went to our storage unit last night,” Claire said.
“Your parents never cleaned that out?” Aidan had a flash of memory. He was sitting in his old truck, the blue Ford with the torn leather on the steering wheel. He remembered because he’d been slowly unraveling it while he watc
hed Claire’s parents unpack their entire house into a storage unit. He couldn’t have offered to help. They wouldn’t have accepted it. And some part of him knew they’d never be back.
“I think they’ve forgotten it’s even here.” Claire’s eyes glazed over, distant and full of memory. “There were things in there… I mean, talk about being knee-deep in memories.”
She swiped at her cheek. “But there were a lot of Jane’s old things in there, too. Some stuff from high school, and then things she left when she moved in…”
There wouldn’t have been anything after that, of course. Everything had gone up in the fire. Neither of them verbalized that, however, and Aidan was grateful again.
“What did you find?”
Claire twirled her fingers, engrossed in the movement. “I know I shouldn’t pry in Jane’s personal things. But I know she kept some journals. I thought, if we could present some of them at your trial, they would see how much you loved her and how you couldn’t possibly have killed her.”
Aidan straightened his back and shifted in his seat. As much as he was glad Claire wanted to help, he wasn’t sure she should be digging around in the past. He had a horrible feeling she wouldn’t like what she found, and she would never forgive him.
He couldn’t lose her, too. Not when he’d just found her again.
***
Claire closed the front door behind them. Aidan hadn’t spoken for the last several minutes of the drive. He seemed too emotional to let out whatever was inside. Of course, he must miss Jane. Digging through her things would only remind him of what he’d lost.
That was why she’d left all reminders of him in their storage locker when they moved. She’d needed to start again, to cull the tragedy from her young life. The only way to do that was to cut out Aidan completely—at her parents’ insistence.
But now that she was back and he was here… everything was just the same as it had been. Her heart still broke when he was sad or angry, and soared when he was happy. Her pulse still rocketed when he touched her. She still thought about kissing him.
Somehow, going through his late wife’s possessions seemed the wrong time to be thinking about these things, but she couldn’t have stopped the thoughts if she’d tried. Nothing had really changed for her. She was still in love with Aidan.
Every man she’d ever dated turned to ash in her memory when Aidan was in front of her, alive, real.
She needed to help him free himself of these charges. Even if it meant she would have to spend days immersed in the torture of Aidan’s love for Jane.
All that mattered was saving Aidan.
Claire pulled the box out from under the coffee table and started unpacking the contents. “This was just one of the boxes I found with her stuff. I think it’s the most recent one. The diaries in some of her other boxes were dated earlier in high school, but this was the latest one I could find.”
Aidan carefully picked up one of the diaries and thumbed through it. “Junior year.”
Claire handed him the one with the feather on the cover. “This is early senior year. And the late senior year is the blue one over there.”
She picked up the locked box and turned it over in her hands. “I haven’t been able to open this one yet.”
Aidan took it from her and examined the lock. “Looks easy enough to break. What’s in here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is this weird for you?”
Claire put the second diary down. “I’m more worried about it being weird for you.”
“I made my peace with this a long time ago.” His eyes were so cold, his look so somber. Claire touched his hand and he flinched.
“Sorry, you looked far away.”
“I was saying. I made my peace. Jane is gone. I am here. I couldn’t survive for a long time after you left, Claire. And I still don’t like being in Somewhere, but at the same time, I feel like I can’t go anywhere else. I belong here, but I don’t.”
She resisted the urge to reach for him and instead started reading the diary again. This was the one she’d been reading the previous night. There was so much gushing about Aidan, it had been hard for Claire to finish. She finally had to put it down.
As she picked up where she’d left off, she noticed Aidan pick up the late senior year version and start reading.
“There’s certainly enough evidence in here that she loved you and you loved her.” Claire pointed to one of the pages. “I can’t believe her. She was actually sitting with her diary, transcribing your phone calls sometimes.”
Aidan looked over the conversation and offered a tiny smile. “I remember that one. That was right before her car accident.”
Claire flipped a page or two ahead. She’d completely forgotten about that accident.
“You weren’t with them in that car, were you?”
Aidan shook his head. “They were going to Austin, prom dress shopping, and Lisa Trent was driving.”
“Oh yeah. I remember now.” Claire skimmed the page with the St. Bethany Memorial Hospital wristband taped to the side. “Lisa had that purple cast for six…”
Claire trailed off when she read the words mustn’t tell Aidan next to Jane’s intake number on the wristband. She shook herself and re-read the entire sentence. Then the one before and after.
I will never forget how HE rescued me and the look in his eyes at my hospital bedside. Of course, I mustn’t tell Aidan. He can never know that another guy has part of my heart.
Jane’s plain, bubbly letters were unmistakable. The capital letters almost jumped off the page as Claire skimmed it again. She read farther up and farther down, but there was no more mention of the HE from that paragraph. It was all Jane blathering about the accident scene and being in the hospital. But the paragraph about HIM was set off in a box.
Claire sat, silent, for a moment, staring at those letters. HE. Perhaps Claire was misreading it. Or maybe Jane had been playing a trick to see if someone else was reading her diary while she was in the hospital.
With a deep breath, Claire kept reading. Innocuous descriptions of her friends’ injuries and her own physical therapy. She had only needed therapy for six weeks, but Jane had gotten the most sympathy because she’d had the most visible injuries.
Their parents had coddled her beyond reason, even allowing her to regularly skip school. It had driven Claire insane. But how could they say no to Janey? They couldn’t. They never could.
Once the hospital ordeal was old news, the diary continued in much the same fashion as before, only now, the professions of love and transcriptions of calls with Aidan were considerably tamer and more frequent.
Claire closed the diary and watched Aidan read for a moment before he looked up. She didn’t know what to say.
This would not be good evidence.
“What is it?” Aidan asked.
“I’m not sure. I mean, it could be a fluke, but I don’t know. Maybe it’s real. I just… I don’t know.”
“You said that,” he replied slowly.
“Ok, here’s the thing.” She turned to face him, curling her leg underneath her and holding her knee to keep from fidgeting under Aidan’s scrutiny. “If you discovered something about someone that didn’t mesh with what you knew about them, would you believe your years of experience, or the anomaly thing?”
Aidan shrugged. “Depends on the anomaly thing.” He reached for the diary, but Claire sat on it.
“I don’t know if I should show you. I think it may change the way you remember Jane.”
His eyebrows drew together. “Jesus, Claire. What did she do? Kill somebody?”
“No. But… Look, can we just pretend I didn’t find anything?”
Aidan snaked his arms around her and pulled the diary out from under her butt. He was so close when he did this, her first thought was, He’s going to kiss me. And he nearly had. Maybe missed by half an inch.
He opened directly to the page with the hospital wristband and read the page. He expelled a long
breath through his teeth. “I was wondering when you would find out about this.”
Claire’s mouth hung open. “Wh… I mean… y… you knew?”
Aidan closed the book and placed it upside-down on the coffee table. “There are a lot of things you don’t know about my relationship with Jane. And I’d hoped to keep it that way. I wanted to keep her pristine in your mind.”
“I’d rather have the truth than a beautiful lie.” Claire traced the seam of her shorts.
“I’m no saint, either.” His voice was breathy, low, like sinners in a confessional, hiding from some almighty judge.
Claire met his eyes and gasped at what she saw there. So much heat. So much fire. She couldn’t tell if it was anger or desire, but she let it linger for a long time before she broke the charged silence.
“I’m not a child anymore.”
Aidan hesitated, glanced down at her mouth, and parted his lips. Claire’s heart thundered, rocking at gale force inside. But he pulled back and rubbed a hand across his face.
“Can I just tell you… I want to kiss you right now. In fact, I’ve wanted to kiss you since I saw you yesterday at the bakery, eating those cupcakes.”
Claire’s inner tornado sucked up all of her vital organs and sailed through her, leaving the buzz of empty space in its wake. She swallowed and carefully pronounced the words, “You can kiss me.”
“I can’t.” He scooted to the edge of the couch. “Not with Jane’s stuff here, all around us. It would feel like…”
“Like you were being unfaithful to her.”
“Oh no.” His laugh was short, forced. “God, no. The opposite.” Aidan took her by the shoulders and stared into her eyes. “It would feel like I was only taking solace in you. I don’t want you to feel like my interest in you has anything to do with Jane.”
He pressed his lips together. “You need to know a few things, and I am going to have to tell you, sooner or later. It might as well be sooner.”
Claire’s breaths were short and hurried. Aidan Conley had just said he wanted to kiss her. She wouldn’t need to hear anything else for the rest of her life.
