by Jody Holford
His hand was on the gearshift and he waited until her eyes fastened back on his. “I know exactly which one you are. Always have, Kate.”
Her eyes widened and her lips parted. He called her Aarons because he liked the way her name sounded on his lips, perhaps too much. And he liked the way the little “O” formed on her mouth when he said it. Clenching his jaw, he gave his head a small shake. Enough. His girls needed some rest and then he’d get them all home so they could settle into something that resembled a normal life. Until their mother swept in and tried to shake it up again.
Chapter 4
Kate turned to her other side on the scratchy sheets. It didn’t make the mattress any more comfortable so she rolled to her back, staring into the darkness. If she focused, she could smell the subtle trace of Elliot’s cologne, which was a far better smell than the staleness of the comforter she was lying under. After the girls had bathed, Beth ate some crackers, and both girls had ginger ale, they’d settled onto the beds to watch the Disney channel.
Elliot had texted Alex to say he’d be delayed and back at work the day after tomorrow. Kate had turned off the lights a while ago but she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she was listening to the sound of two adorable girls snoring and trying to measure Elliot’s breaths, wondering if they signified sleep. He and the girls took the bed closest to the bathroom, just in case, but getting out of the car seemed to settle Beth’s stomach. Between her mother’s impromptu trip and Elliot’s desire to have them home, they needed the break and Kate was happy to stop for the night if it helped Beth. The urgency to get home had faded a bit in Elliot’s presence.
Kate felt badly for Elliot and the girls. The tug of war that came with shared custody had to be hard on all parties involved. She was lucky to have her parents, who’d weathered their own storms, but came through them together. Kate had gone through most of her life with the kind of blissful-take-no-notice ignorance that came to those who’d never had it any other way.
Her family was all about love and protection. Honesty and caring and a sometimes, too much oversharing. They made mistakes, all of them. They’d hurt each other—they were human and all had their share of faults—but underneath, they wanted what was best for each other.
In Kate’s mind, Gina thought too much about what she wanted—like getting to her sister’s house—regardless of what that meant for her girls, like upset tummies. Kate hated seeing what Gina did to Elliot. He was the safety net, the one who picked up the pieces when the consequences of Gina’s irresponsibility emerged.
Kate was about to get up, tiptoe to the mini fridge, and grab a bottle of water when she heard a distinctive, “Oomph,” followed by a low, drawn-out moan. Her pulse woke up and started racing.
“Elliot?” she whispered.
“Hmm?” His hushed voice was laced with pain.
Kate threw back the covers and turned to face him. He lay on the outside of the bed he was sharing with both girls, who were snuggled in the middle. A night table sat between the two beds and the alarm clock’s numbers blazed 3:33. She couldn’t see his face but she could hear his breathing, which had gone shallow and slow.
“Are you alright?” Kate squinted into the darkness.
“Yup,” he groaned quietly. “Gracie has really pointy knees and really good aim.”
Kate brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle. “I’m sorry. That’s not funny.”
“Nope. Not funny.”
Her chest filled with laughter that begged for release. He took down criminals, busted offenders, watched over their small, beautiful town. And he’d finally been taken out by a sleeping angel with tiny knees.
“You done laughing, Aarons?”
She went up on one elbow. “Almost. Get over here. How can two little girls take up so much space?” she asked, scooting over.
His breathing seemed to have stopped, so she spoke again. “Elliot?”
“What?”
“Come share this bed. The girls are hogging yours.”
She held her breath. The waiting gave her time to realize the implications of her offer. Her cheeks warmed right before heat washed over the rest of her body as well. They were friends. It meant nothing. Just a courtesy. But now she couldn’t stop thinking about lying beside him, in bed, in the dark.
“I just meant there’s no reason we can’t share over here. I stay pretty still in my sleep. My knees won’t hurt you,” she said, making light of it.
A deep sigh was his first response. “I think I better stay right here, Aarons.”
There it was again. Like she was a pal on his damn football team. He wouldn’t hesitate to share a bed with a buddy, and clearly that’s how he wanted her to think he saw her. This pricked at her pride like a pin against a balloon. “You sure you know my name?”
His voice was low. “I know your name.”
More silence followed, only this one felt charged. She wanted to stretch her fingers out and see if she could reach his bed. Him.
“I won’t bite,” she said. Unfortunately, she pictured biting him—just a gentle bite—right under his jaw. It would be slightly scratchy, soft, and she’d feel his pulse beneath her lips.
As the silence stretched on, she second-guessed her offer. Why was she pushing him? Maybe because night time left her lonelier than any other time. She might be happy that she’d broken things off with Darby, the lying-cheating-jackass head of accounting at her fashion house. But the couple of nights he’d managed to stay over (usually he said he had early meetings, and she’d been too caught up in everything to realize he wouldn’t, or shouldn’t, given his job), Kate had luxuriated in the feel of someone next to her.
She hadn’t known she’d enjoy the weight of someone she loved lying beside her. She’d loved sleeping in either of her sisters’ beds when she was little, but this had been different. Waking in the darkness next to someone she cared about, being able to curl into them and remind yourself you weren’t alone—she missed that far more than anything else about Darby, and she hadn’t even known she wanted it. Someone beside her every night, for good. The sound of their breathing lulling her to sleep.
“Kate?”
Her name on his lips brought her back, made her shiver. “Hmm?”
“How come you aren’t sleeping?”
Because the sound of you breathing and the hint of your cologne is distracting. “Sometimes I just can’t.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You get screwed over by a guy in New York?”
Her heart screeched to a halt. Damnit. Cops were too nosey and too perceptive. At least, the ones she knew were. “What?”
She heard him rustle and shift, and then she felt the weight of him on her blankets, essentially pinning her under the covers. Now that he was beside her, she couldn’t breathe. Well, she could but all of her air was filled with Elliot.
Light from parking lot filtered through the gap in the curtains, and Elliot’s eyes flashed like stars in the darkness—sharp, sparkling, intense. She fought the urge to move closer.
“Talk to me.”
She’d planned to keep it bottled up. It was history—and no longer part of her story. She didn’t want a man, a married one at that, to be a focal point of her life and she sure as hell didn’t want him to be a reason she’d come unhinged and craved home. She didn’t want to feel the shame of being foolish enough not to have known Darby was lying to her the whole time. But it curled in her belly, eating away at her.
Maybe if she told Elliot, she could maintain a hint of composure when she unloaded on her sisters, both of whom had the type of men who were only supposed to exist in romance novels. Hot, sweet, excellent fathers. Like Elliot. Her stomach clenched right along with her heart, dueling sensations working against each other.
“Kate?”
“Nothing to tell, really. His name was Darby. He was sweet and funny. After a few dates, we became a couple, or at least I thought we had. I fell for him, but even before I did, I was unsure abo
ut staying in New York. I loved the work and still do, but when I was there, even when I was alone, my head felt crowded. There’s always so much going on in the city. I’d walk to work or take the subway and feel lost, insignificant. I realized I loved learning about design, and the first time Kael complimented one of my ideas in a meeting, it was awesome.” She took a breath as she remembered the feeling of pride, the ownership. It had been a slinky, sky-blue halter dress that shimmered in the right light. “Anyway, I thought, if it’s just the work I love, I don’t have to be in New York to do it. Darby thought my idea for a shop in Angel’s Lake was great. He encouraged me, loved my designs—not that he knows fashion. I mean, he’s an accountant. But he saw designs every day just by working at a fashion house, and he made me feel like mine stood out.”
“They do. I’ve seen your sketches. I can only imagine the real thing,” Elliot whispered.
Focused on the feel of his breath on her face, she scooted closer without intending to.
“Maybe. Anyway, things were heating up and were, I thought, good. And he was so supportive of all my ideas. I took a chance and asked him if he’d ever thought of moving away from the city.”
Kate played with the seam of the blanket, her fingers rubbing up and down, trying to figure out what Elliot was thinking just from the way his breathing changed.
“And?”
She shifted, making their arms brush against each other. Tickles traced their way over her skin, leaving her restless. “And he started backing off. He wouldn’t return my calls. So I went down to accounting on the bottom floor of our building and asked to see him, which I’d never done—we used to meet in the company cafeteria. The receptionist said he and his wife had a standing Tuesday lunch date and he was expected back soon.”
“Fuck,” he whispered.
She heard movement before she felt his hand find hers in the dark. He linked their fingers and it felt like a cool cloth on a fresh burn. Painful, but soothing a deeper hurt.
“The receptionist asked if I wanted to leave a message.”
“Oh no,” Elliot whispered, humor tinting the words—most of the town knew the Aarons sisters weren’t real great at hiding their feelings.
“What?” She whispered back, smiling into the darkness and enjoying the feel and the shape of his fingers.
“What’d you do?”
“Nothing,” she said, her pitch a bit higher. “Just left a message for him saying I hoped he had a really great lunch with his wife.”
“Shit.”
Kate laughed. “He emailed about forty times after that, the idiot. We’d dated for a few months and he’d thought he was in the clear, mostly because I was too stupid to pay attention. Then when I found out and left a message that I know, he panicked. I have enough emails to throw his marriage down the tubes. But that’s not my place. And it’s not what I wanted.”
“You ever email him back?”
“Nope. He came up to see me. I told Kael I didn’t want to talk to him. No one gets around Kael to one of his girls—and seeing as he thinks of Lucy as one of his own sisters, he considers me one of those girls.”
“Sorry, Kate.” His fingers tightened on hers and this time he was the one who closed the space.
He was fully in her breathing space now and Kate imagined being closer, burrowing into him and feeling the heat of his skin against her own, the touch of his lips somewhere other than her forehead. Her other hand lifted in slow motion, reaching out for him. One of the girls snored, a tiny, snuffling sound, and both Elliot and Kate froze. When she quieted, both of them released heavy breaths.
Focusing on his fingers touching hers, she kept going, telling him what she didn’t want to say out loud to anyone. “It’s not that it didn’t work out or I got my heart broken. It’s that I didn’t see. That I was naïve enough to think, hey, this great, good-looking guy, this New-York-City-successful guy, wants me. And now I can’t stop questioning my own judgement. My own ability to see what’s right in front of me. I hate it. I hate knowing I…stained their marriage that way.” Kate blinked away the tears. “Cliché right?”
Elliot’s tone stiffened along with his body. “He’s a dickhead. Hard to learn the truth about someone when they keep it hidden. You see the good in people. That’s the part you focus on. Not like you won’t accept flaws, but when someone is underhanded enough to conceal them, you’re not the type to dig, wondering if they’re there. And New York City doesn’t make someone special. Who they are and how they treat people does. You’re special, Kate. And any guy that doesn’t get that is a fucking idiot.”
His words took away some of the sting. “Still. Cliché and stupid on my part.”
“Nothing stupid or cliché about you, Kate. Real men—good men— don’t cheat, insecure ones do. He’s an ass and that’s on him. Says nothing about you.”
“It says I didn’t look close enough. I was so happy having a grown-up life: living in New York, working in fashion, carrying on a relationship. But none of it was real. I mean, it was, but the parts that were didn’t feel like it and the parts that weren’t, did.”
“Uh…you want to say that one more time for me, sweetheart? It’s almost four in the morning and I can’t decipher girl logic.”
Kate pulled her hand from his so she could smack him on the shoulder, but also so she could focus on something other than the way his term of endearment felt like being folded into his arms and held tight. His silent laughter shook the bed.
“The fashion part of it was surreal. Models walking around in their underwear, half their make-up on, waiting to try on the next outfit, complaining about the cold, stripping down in front of each other. I would be taking measurements and making adjustments one second and the next, I was holding their phones so they could squeeze into a design or slip on five-inch heels. I mean, most of them are so tall anyway, the heels seem like overkill. But they really do make the outfits. It was crazy, like being on the set of a reality show.”
Elliot made a humming noise. “That sounds like a terrible way to spend a day. How’d you get that internship again?”
He’d taken her hand again and this time, when she tried to pull it free, he held strong.
“I’m teasing. Really. I would hate to spend my time around half-naked models. Go on.”
“You’re real funny, aren’t you?”
“Only in the middle of the night.”
All too aware of the way his laughter and the pressure of his fingers were distracting her, she tried to explain herself. “It was everything I imagined. It was amazing and at first, I loved the crazy pace. I learned so much about designing and materials and the industry in general. It didn’t feel real. It was like I’d been plopped down into the dream I’d created in my head. And I feel like I didn’t fully wake up enough to enjoy it before I realized it wasn’t for me. I mean, fashion is, but not there. Not in New York and not like that.”
Keeping her hand in his, Elliot shifted so he was on his back, and now that her eyes had adjusted to the dark, Kate watched as he put his other hand behind his head, still listening.
“Darby was really just a footnote. We laughed and had fun. It was good. I was living the exact life I thought I wanted, but every night when I got home to my studio, which I could barely afford, I wished I could pop over to my mom and dad’s and snag dinner or babysit my nieces. I’m worried I didn’t try hard enough. That I wasted the opportunity I was given and if I did, maybe I didn’t even deserve to have that chance. I’m scared I’m going home to disappoint my family. Which I already did when I left for New York. So it’s like full circle but not in a good way.”
She listened to his breathing and it calmed some of the turbulence in her chest. It was good to confide in someone who didn’t mind listening and wouldn’t feel sorry for her or irritated with her choices. Lucy had gotten her the contact. What if Kael was mad at Lucy for recommending her little sister? What if Darby said something about her and Kate’s name was already spinning on the wheel of gossip? What
if she was seen as flighty, and the bank in Angel’s Lake wouldn’t give her a loan without her parents’ signatures for back up?
“I think anything that solidifies who you are and who you want to be can’t be a waste.”
“Do you really think that? I mean I’m turning twenty-five and I don’t even have a job.”
Elliot gave a low, rough chuckle. “Twenty-five is definitely heading over the hill. But I think you’re good. You’ve got a degree, a plan, and a family who’ll back you no matter what.” He squeezed her hand. “And you have friends who’ll do the same.”
She nodded, thinking about his words. She hadn’t been sleeping well for a while now, but most of the nights she’d lain awake, her heart felt like it was tap dancing in her chest. Right now, she felt content. Unburdened. She was going home. Somehow, things would be okay.
“How about you? You think all of the things that led you to where you are right now were worth it?”
Elliot let go of her hand and crossed his arms over his chest. Kate scrunched her pillow a bit under her neck, hoping he’d answer.
“Gina’s a mess. I need to get my girls settled into a real life. They’re in first grade now. They need to be at school, the same school, every day. They need to come home, do homework, have dinner, and go to bed at the same time each night. They need routine.”
“They need you.”
