by Sophie Oak
“I don’t know. She seems like a woman who wouldn’t ruin her manicure, much less her car. I wasn’t surprised she tried to queen bee you, but actual murder? I don’t know. And I don’t know how much we can count on the cigarettes leading us to a suspect. Lots of people smoke. Hell, most of Aidan’s ranch hands smoke. I already put in a call to Ben and Chase. They’re going to start working with the police here.”
“Well, I’m sure the Wonder Twins will figure it out eventually.” She sighed. “I guess I won’t be let off the ranch for a while.”
“No,” Lucas replied. “But I have to go back to Dallas for a few days. I have loose ends to tie up. If I’m going to be in Deer Run, then I have to find a way to do my work from there.”
The room fell silent. Though it was quiet, there was nothing peaceful about it. It was awkward and heavy. Lucas let his head rest against the window pane.
The argument in the truck played back in her brain. The words assaulted her, but more than that she was starting to listen to what was underneath those words. Her head hurt, but her heart was aching.
“Do you really think I pretend he didn’t exist?”
Now he was looking at her. His green eyes bore through her. “You never talk about him. He’s always there, but you never mention his name. I can see that it’s killing you, but you shut down the minute I try to talk. I was there, Lexi. I held him, too. I ache from that night, but I’m not allowed to talk about it. Not even with you.”
She wanted to shrink into herself. She’d avoided this for so long. How could she have not seen that it affected Lucas, too? She’d selfishly believed she was the only one who really hurt, and she’d shut him out of her grief. She’d made him her accomplice in forgetting, in refusing to move on.
“I thought if I didn’t talk about him, I would forget.”
Lucas nodded. “I know. But you won’t and you shouldn’t. You shouldn’t forget him. Can’t you see that?”
“It hurts too much. I don’t want to tell Aidan.” Her eyes were heavy with tears. She looked down at her hands, but Lucas was suddenly there, his palms sliding over hers.
“He deserves to know.”
“The hard part is, I can’t figure out why I don’t want to tell him, Lucas. Am I trying to spare him the pain? Am I punishing him? Am I just terrified that he won’t ever forgive me?”
“All of the above.” Lucas forced her chin up so she had to look at him. His eyes were glossy with unshed tears. “And every single reason is valid, baby. But it’s time to move past that now. It’s time to step up and tell the truth.”
“Did you love him?” Aidan stood in the doorway, a cup of coffee in his hand. His face was blank, his skin a stark white.
How much had he guessed? There was nothing for it now. Since the moment he’d walked back into her life, she was always going to have to make a choice. She could choose to tell him what she should have before or she could keep stubbornly silent. It was so clear to her now that two paths lay before her. She could refuse to tell him her secret and walk away—or she could be brave and share the pain that had always been theirs to share.
“It’s all right if you did,” Aidan said. “I understand if you met someone else.”
“Brandon wasn’t a boyfriend, Aidan. He was our son.”
Chapter Fifteen
The cup of coffee fell to the floor, splattering across his pants. Aidan felt the burning heat, but it didn’t register.
“What did you say?” he asked because his mind couldn’t quite make the connection.
Lucas got to his feet. There was a somber air surrounding him. He walked over and picked up the cup. “I’m going to go and get us all some coffee. I think the two of you need to talk.”
The door closed behind Lucas, and Aidan was left alone with Lexi.
She sat for a moment, the tension palpable in the air between them. Aidan wanted to be closer to her, but he could feel the wall there. “I said Brandon was our son.”
“You were pregnant? How were you pregnant?” Even as he said the words, he knew how stupid they were, but his brain wasn’t functioning. All he could see was Lexi sitting there telling him he had a son. How could he have a son?
The words that came out of her mouth dripped with sarcasm, but her face was flat, with none of her normal animation, like she was a doll and someone had pulled her string. “The normal way, Aidan. See when a girl and her undercover bisexual boyfriend love each other very much…”
“Don’t you dare joke about this.”
That blank face moved just a bit, her mouth turning down slightly. “I’m sorry. I hide behind it. I know I do.”
He had a son. She was telling him he had a son. Lucas had known. She’d told Lucas, but not him.
“Stop. Just stop. Just tell me.” He needed the story, and he didn’t want to have to wade through Lexi’s bullshit.
She stuttered and grasped at the edges of her gown. She looked so young sitting there. How young had she been when she’d had their baby? Where was their baby? His mind was a chaotic mess of questions, but that one screamed through his brain. If Lexi had their baby, where was he? Was he being raised by someone else? How was he going to get his kid back? Because if he had a kid out there in the world, Aidan wanted him. Had she been so mad at him she couldn’t handle the thought of raising his child? It just didn’t compute. Lexi had always wanted children. They had talked about it the night they got engaged. And Lucas would have gladly stepped in. Hell, Lucas would have married her and put his own name on the birth certificate if she’d wanted it. A sick feeling opened in the pit of Aidan’s stomach.
Lexi would never have given up her baby no matter how mad she was at his father.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant when you left. I had no idea. I actually think it might have happened that night. The timing was right.” Her voice took on a monotone, devoid of all emotion. She stared at her hands as though it was too painful to look anywhere else. Aidan wanted to go and grasp her hands, to force her to look at him and just fucking tell him what had happened to his son.
He stopped and was still. He knew this woman. Though there was a part of him that wanted to rage at her for keeping this secret, he knew the only reason she had was the pain he’d caused her.
“When did you find out, angel?” It was easier to shove down the anger when he realized how much this was costing her.
“Uhm, about a month after you left. Lucas came down for the weekend. I was moving out of our apartment, and I passed out. Lucas freaked and made me see a doctor who told us that I was pregnant.”
He’d been in Basic by then. He’d been getting the shit kicked out of him. He’d thought after that first day of training that he’d be so tired he’d be able to sleep without thinking of them, but he’d been wrong. He’d closed his eyes and they were there, holding their arms out and taunting him with everything he couldn’t accept. While he was pushing them away, Lexi had been pregnant with his baby.
Lexi continued. “You have to understand, Aidan. You were gone. I was in a state of shock. I made the doctor do the test again. I went out and bought five boxes of tests. I couldn’t be pregnant. I said a lot of things back then. I told Lucas I didn’t want the baby. I told him I was going to fix the situation.”
The words cut at his heart, but damn, he understood them. Lexi railed and fought against anything she viewed as unfair. She said things she didn’t mean when she was mad. It would have been worse than just mad. She would have been afraid.
“I didn’t. I mean, I didn’t really ever plan to. I was just being a bitch.”
He put a hand on her back, needing the connection to her. “You were mad, baby. It’s all right. Tell me what happened.”
He knew. He could feel the tears slipping from his eyes. His child was dead. Julian had mentioned an accident. It didn’t take much to put two and two together. His child had been gone for a long time, but Lexi was here. Lexi was still in pain.
“I pretended it wasn’t happening. Lucas tried to ge
t me to tell my mom, but I wouldn’t. I made him promise not to tell. It was easy, because after that one fainting episode, I didn’t even notice I was pregnant. I told myself I would decide what to do later. I told myself I could make an appointment the next day, but I never did, and one day it was too late.”
She’d put it off because she hadn’t really wanted to make an appointment. She wouldn’t have been able to go through with it. But she hadn’t been ready to admit she wanted the baby. Aidan had lived with her long enough to know what had happened. And now he could see what was wrong between them. He just wasn’t sure he could fix her.
“I never bought anything, you know. I didn’t buy a baby name book. I didn’t buy little socks. I didn’t even buy maternity clothes. I didn’t run around telling my girlfriends about it. I only told Lucas.”
Aidan felt a sob threatening. God, he wanted to cry. He wanted to scream and pound into something until his fists bled. He swallowed it all down and sat down beside her. “How did he die?”
Her head was down, but he could see the tears falling like raindrops against her clenched hands. “I was driving to Dallas. It was late, really late. I shouldn’t have been on the road, but I couldn’t stand being alone. I had to see Lucas. I didn’t even call and tell him because he would have insisted on driving down to pick me up. I didn’t want to wait five hours. The car came out of nowhere. One minute I was driving and the next some paramedic was pulling me out of my car. I was in and out for a while. I had a concussion, but otherwise I was fine. I was five months along, but you could barely tell I was pregnant. It was hours before they did a sonogram. There was no heartbeat. No movement. A couple of days later they induced labor, and he was stillborn.”
Aidan sat back, his whole body numb. If he’d been with her, she wouldn’t have been on the road that night. He would have treated her like fragile glass.
“He was so tiny, and I never told him I loved him. I know babies don’t understand, but I never said it. I didn’t even feel it until he was gone. Do you think he knew I didn’t want him at first?”
“No,” Aidan forced the words out of his mouth. “No, angel. He knew what was in your heart. This wasn’t your fault.”
It was his. He’d walked out. He’d never even considered that she could be pregnant. He’d simply left because she wouldn’t conform to his vision of how life should be. Because she wouldn’t leave behind a man she loved for another man who couldn’t accept that he loved them both. He’d walked out with only a suitcase of his clothes and his guitar. He’d left everything else behind, a mess for her to clean up. He’d left behind the couch they’d bought at a garage sale. He’d left the books she’d bought for him. He’d left the table where he’d made love to her that first night they moved in, when everything had seemed possible. He’d left it behind like it was trash when it had been their lives.
“Lucas had to name him. They made a death certificate. Lucas had to name him and make the arrangements.”
Yes, Lucas had been the one to do all the things Aidan should have done. Lucas had stepped up. Lucas had tried his damndest to hold everything together. Lucas had needed him, too.
“The man who hit me accepted a plea. I was grateful for that. I couldn’t have handled a trial. It also kept me off my stepdad’s radar. Jack was happy with him going to jail. He was even happier when the dude broke his parole and ended up back there. As far as he knew, I was okay after all. I moved to Dallas to be close to Lucas, and I tried to forget.”
But she hadn’t. Aidan could see that plainly. She’d been drowning in grief, and he’d been gone. Now he’d walked back in demanding that she give him a second chance. He’d gotten her fired and tricked her into seeing him again.
Guilt weighed on him.
“I’m sorry, Aidan.”
She was weeping openly, her body curving in on itself as though she could block out the pain. Or maybe, he thought as he watched her, because she didn’t believe she deserved comfort.
Aidan gathered her in his arms, praying she wouldn’t reject him. He hadn’t been there when she’d needed him, but he was here now. Her arms wrapped around him as she sobbed out her grief.
“It wasn’t your fault, Lexi. None of it was your fault.” Her grand crime had been loving two men. Her crime had been refusing to settle for a life that would have made all three of them miserable. “You have to know that you would have made a hell of a mother. You would have loved him because you don’t know how to do anything else. You can’t hold this in anymore. This is a poison that’s killing you. You have to grieve.”
Aidan understood death. He’d lost his mother and his father. He’d lost his career. He’d lost her and Lucas. Grief could break a person, but if it was shared, if the burden was spread among loved ones, grief could be freeing. When his mother had died, he’d held on to his brother. When he’d lost his father and his ability to play the guitar, all that had kept him afloat was the thought of getting back his loves. He might not deserve her forgiveness, but he was going to ask for it. He would do whatever it took to never fail her again.
It washed over him like a river. He’d lost so much, but he had a chance to fix things if he didn’t give in to his guilt. Guilt wouldn’t bring back his child. Guilt wouldn’t fix Lexi. Love, really loving her, and dedicating his life to her and Lucas was the only thing that might fix it. His first instinct had been to slink away because he didn’t deserve her, but that was cowardly, too.
Instead, he let go of her and sank to his knees. He didn’t try to stop his tears. He let his grief flow. He knelt in front of her like a penitent. “Please forgive me, Lexi.”
This was what he should have done in the first place, he thought as her hand came out to stroke his hair. He should have walked in and dropped to his not fully functional knees and begged. He’d thought he needed to prove he had changed, but he owed her his pleas. She’d tossed her pride aside by begging him not to leave. Pride had no place if it kept them apart.
“Aidan, you didn’t do this. I kept it from you. I should have told you. I should have called you when I knew.” Something inside her seemed to have eased. Her face was puffy and red. She’d never cried prettily. When Lexi cried, it was with passion. She cried like a woman, and he still thought she was beautiful.
“I walked out. I walked away from the best thing that ever happened to me.” Aidan kept talking because she was listening, finally listening, and he wasn’t about to waste this chance. “I love you so much. You’re a part of me. You’re the best part of me. I don’t care if you hate me for the rest of your life, I’ll follow you. I’ll make sure you’re safe, because that’s what I was born to do.”
“Aidan, I understand that you feel guilty, but it could have happened even if you had been here. I still could have lost him.”
“But I would have been here to grieve with you, angel. I would have mourned and taken care of you. I would have buried our boy, and I would have clung to you like a goddamn life raft, because that’s what people in love do.”
“I thought you would hate me.” She was calmer, though the tears continued. “I thought you would blame me for not telling you.”
“I would have come back, Lexi. Hell, by that time I was looking for excuses, but in the end, I walked out. I should have stayed and fought, but I was a pussy. I won’t do it again. Kick me out and I’ll sleep on the porch, but I won’t walk. I’m here for life, Lexi.”
She pulled her hand away, her eyes narrowing as she started to weep again. “I feel like I’m in a corner, and I don’t know how to get out. I’ve been here for so long, I just don’t know how.”
Lucas’s slow and steady voice came from the doorway. “Just step out, baby. We’re here for you. I know you feel like you painted yourself into that corner, but no one wants you there.”
“I’ll have to tell my mom. She’s going to be so upset.”
“I think she’ll understand. She asked me the other day why you never played with Josh. It bothers her that you love Olivia, but you don�
�t even look at Josh. No one is going to be mad at you, Lexi.” Lucas’s face was solemn. It was obvious to Aidan that he wanted to join them, but he held himself apart. “I’m a different story. I didn’t call you either, Aidan. I knew I should, but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to lose her. It was selfish, and it cost her. If I had, she might not have gotten here.”
Lexi quickly stepped in. “Don’t blame Lucas. He made me see a therapist, but I knew what to say. I knew how to smile and act through all the steps she wanted me to go through. I didn’t want to give up my grief because it was the only thing I had left of Aidan. I’m sorry.”
Aidan stood and hauled her into his arms. “Never say you’re sorry. Don’t ever apologize for loving someone. We’ve all made mistakes. We can’t let that hold us back. We’ve wasted too much time.”
He held Lexi in one arm and held his hand out for Lucas.
Lucas shook his head. “This is for you and Lexi. I just came back to make sure you’re okay. I’ll give you two some time alone.”
Aidan hardened his voice. “You will not, Lucas. You will come here, and you will stand by your family. This only works if we share everything.”
“Please, Lucas,” Lexi pled. “We all lost him.”
Lucas broke, his handsome face contorting in sadness as he staggered toward them. He practically fell against them. Their arms wrapped around each other as they cried and comforted. They were a circle against anything outside. For that moment, this was the whole world.
They were together finally, and it was enough for Aidan.
* * * *
Deep in the night, Dwight watched as Aidan stepped out of the hospital doors. He looked cautiously one way and then the next, as though he sensed he was prey.
Fucker just wouldn’t die. Why wouldn’t he die?
