by Stacey Lynn
He turned to me with his eyes narrowed and eyebrows raised. He took another drag from the cigarette as if he just remembered he had it in his hand, and I watched the smoke plume and drift into the air as he exhaled.
“And what about you, Chelsea? You still talk to your ex?”
My heart skipped when he said my name. I wasn’t aware he knew I had ever been married. It wasn’t information I made known. And while we said hello and made pleasantries while around our group of friends, we didn’t speak about anything personal.
“No,” I responded. The air felt warmer and my hands balled into fists. I hated having to think about how my marriage ended. The day Cory came home from work and said he didn’t want to keep trying to have kids. He said he couldn’t handle the stress anymore of doctor’s appointments and specialists. What he meant was that he didn’t want kids with me, because six months after he walked out our front door, I ran into him in public, and was forced to meet his new, visibly pregnant girlfriend.
God that shit burned. My gut flipped as if I were at Target all over again that Sunday afternoon when I saw Cory walking through the store, his arm curled around his girlfriend, smiling at her when she held up a pink baby outfit.
Still, I blurted out the honest, humiliating truth before I could force the words back down my throat. “He cheated on me, got another woman pregnant, and then married her right after our divorce was final. I haven’t talked to him since the day he walked out of my house.”
“People suck.” Aidan said it simply, lacking the emotion that he deserved not to have on this day above all days, and I was pulled back to the present—to the reality of what he was going through. Compared to his pain, mine was minimal.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sometimes they do.”
“Derrick didn’t.”
He looked away, tossed his cigarette onto the patio, and snuffed it out under black, scuffed dress shoes. They weren’t a designer brand, and they didn’t look overly expensive. In fact, the entire suit looked completely out of character on him; I was used to seeing him in faded jeans, T-shirts, and worn work boots.
“No,” I replied. My voice was soft and shaky. “Derrick was amazing.” Tears threatened, because it was true.
Something kept me there for several long moments before I pointed my thumb toward the sliding door that I had exited several minutes ago.
“I should go.” I swallowed the thickness in my throat. There was no reason for me to stay, yet the last thing I wanted to do was go home to an empty house, be surrounded in silence, and relive the day from a week ago that was haunting me.
“Don’t.” Aidan stood up and walked toward me. He stopped several steps away and slid his hands into his front pockets. “Stay.”
Something about the vulnerability in his eyes along with the sadness made me pause.
I fought a small grin and failed. “There’s a lot of food to put away.”
Like he understood my need to stall, he gave me a reason to linger. “I could use the help.”
My heart ached with the need to reach out and comfort him, but I didn’t. He was like the wounded, abandoned animals I used to pick up on my parents’ farm. I’d never been able to turn away from anyone or anything that was hurting.
“Okay, then,” I said as he met me at the door to his house. He slid it open for me and stood back while I stepped inside, avoiding looking at him.
In any other moment, I would have enjoyed that. I would have liked to have Aidan open a door for me.
That day, I felt nothing except sympathy for a man who had lost so much—a man who was more than an acquaintance, less than a friend.
When we reached the kitchen, Tyson and Declan were there, Blue and Trina close by. All of them turned their heads in our direction as we entered, Aidan closing the door behind me.
A strange silence hit the room, and in addition to our friends, the remaining parents and students froze as they saw us.
“You okay?” Declan asked, looking at me and not Aidan.
I pushed a chunk of blond hair behind my ear and nodded. “Yeah. We’re okay.”
We weren’t. I wasn’t, and we all knew Aidan wasn’t, but Declan nodded once before he walked to Aidan. They said their goodbyes after asking Aidan if he wanted them to stay.
Aidan said no to everyone, assuring them he wanted to be alone, but I didn’t think it was lost on our friends that I wasn’t preparing to leave.
After I hugged everyone, I stayed secluded in the quiet kitchen while Aidan said goodbye to the rest of the company, consciously stopping myself from staring at the fridge. Pictures of son and dad together in sports uniforms, and some with sandy white beaches in the background filled the fridge. Every time I saw one, tears burned in the back of my eyes.
There was also a calendar of the lunch menu and all of Derrick’s after-school activities. I couldn’t bring myself to look at it.
Hours later—after we tossed out the food Aidan knew he wouldn’t eat and separated the rest into individual containers, after the sun had lowered completely and the quiet set in—I realized there was no reason for me to delay heading home.
“Thank you.”
I nodded and dragged my purse strap up and over my shoulder. “I’m glad I could help.”
Aidan walked me to the front door, and when I stepped through the doorway, he called my name.
“Yes?” I asked, looking at him over my shoulder once again.
He stared at me, and I found myself looking away from his eyes, unable to see the anguish and desperation in them without my own eyes filling with tears. The silence between us grew heavy.
“Thank you. I mean it. For everything.”
He looked away and blinked.
My own eyes watered. I knew his were doing the same even if I couldn’t see it.
And I knew what he was thanking me for, yet I hadn’t done anything.
I didn’t do enough.
As I walked the short distance home and opened the door to my empty house, I knew that the last thing I wanted to do was to leave a grieving, heartbroken father all by himself.
Even if staying would have been equally wrong.
Chapter 2
Death changed things.
For some, those changes were temporary. For days after Derrick’s funeral, a dense cloud hung low and heavy over the halls of Latham Hills Middle School. Laughter was scarce and tears fell often. The school administration brought in grief counselors, available throughout the school day for anyone who needed to talk.
I didn’t know if they helped. Kids in middle school had a natural tendency not to open up to adults, especially strangers. But every time I walked into the guidance area at the school for the first week, there were always students sitting in the chairs in the hallway, waiting to be seen.
The second week, three seventh-grade girls were sitting in the library, pretending to flip through their history books, but mostly they were whispering. I didn’t know what they whispered about, probably about what girls enjoyed at that young age—boys, makeup, and gossip about other girls.
Their quiet giggles rang through the air as loud as the fire alarm that hung on the wall above my desk.
My head jerked in surprise at the foreign sound. I didn’t have the heart to shush them or send them a warning glare like I normally would.
I smiled. I cried a couple of silent tears. Their happiness shouldn’t be minimized just because someone else’s life was lost.
Shane came in and sat with me every day. I didn’t know why, because we didn’t speak. The first day he returned to school after the funeral, I watched him hesitantly weave his way through the library with a paper bag in hand.
He lifted his lunch bag and an eyebrow in question while he gestured to the chair next to me at my L-shaped desk.
I pressed my lips together and nodded.
We didn’t say a word until he started to leave.
He tossed his lunch into the garbage can and paused next to my desk as if he was debating whether
to say something.
Before he could, I quietly whispered, “I’m here if you need me. Anytime.”
He nodded once, sniffed, and ran his finger under his nose.
Tears fell down my cheeks that day, too. It seemed I did that a lot these days.
I didn’t want to. Derrick’s death had such a weighted impact on my heart. I knew the last vision I had of him was forever ingrained in my brain. Every time I closed my eyes he was there—his body, bleeding and twisted into unnatural shapes. I heard their screams in my dreams.
Shane came every day at lunchtime. He didn’t tell me why, but I suspected it was because he and Derrick used to always eat together. Shane was just as well liked as Derrick had been and was just as good at sports and school. I figured he’d open up when he was ready.
But I assumed he didn’t want the reminder of his best friend not being at the lunch table. Perhaps it was also because, for some reason, the accident bonded Shane to me in a way that he knew no one else would understand.
—
Sweat dripped down my neck even though my hair was pulled into a ponytail. The sun that promised winter was finally over warmed my skin and made my shirt cling to me as I worked in my front yard. We were in the midst of record-breaking early spring temperatures, and I was taking advantage of the unseasonably hot weather to get a jump on my landscaping projects.
Perhaps there were more exciting things I could be doing on a Friday after work. I was twenty-seven and single, as Suzanne loved to remind me daily, but my body was worn out and exhausted.
Yet I couldn’t be idle. It was a family curse. I had never been one to sit around and have a “lounge day” where you gorged yourself with ice cream and cheesy Lifetime romance movies. My mom always claimed I didn’t have any “sit” in me. She was right.
Three weeks after Derrick’s death, I still saw his mangled body lying against my curb whenever I found myself with little to do.
Thankfully, the weather was cooperative as I began to redo the landscaping around the front of the house. It needed new mulch, which was being delivered in the morning, and there were several bushes that had died from frost since Cory and I first moved in five winters ago.
It was a large project, one that, depending on the weather, could take me several weekends. My mind was tired and my body felt the stress of the last few weeks, but it felt good to be using muscles and working in the sun.
I was pulling weeds, cursing at a dandelion that refused to budge in the dirt, when a deep, rough engine rumbled behind me. I ignored it, thinking someone had pulled into my neighbor’s drive next door or across the street.
Then the engine cut off and I heard a door open and slam shut. My head turned in the direction of the sound and my eyes flew wide open. Aidan Devereaux had rounded the front of his truck, now parked in my driveway, and stood at the passenger side, a tool belt hanging from his hips, chewing his lip and staring at one of my ruined evergreen shrubs.
I quickly climbed to my feet, dusting the dirt off my hands even though it was useless. I’d been outside for an hour without gloves and I had mud caked to my palms and underneath my nails.
I wiped the back of my hand across my forehead, brushing my sweaty bangs off my face and out of my eyes.
“Hi.”
Aidan didn’t say anything. His eyes stayed on my dead shrubs.
“Can I help you?” I asked when several seconds passed in strained silence.
I’d lived in this neighborhood for five years. I knew that Dr. Hammill next door liked to barbecue on the weekends and sometimes early in the morning when he’d finish an overnight shift at the hospital. I knew his wife of thirty years thought he was crazy for doing it, based on the loving barbs they threw at each other through the open window when he was grilling at six o’clock in the morning.
I knew that Kate across the street from me worked at a bakery in town, because Trina had helped her with marketing when she opened last fall. She served the most amazing bagels and cupcakes. I stopped there almost every day on my way to work for an Asiago cheese bagel. She always had one bagged and ready for me. And I knew that her husband worked at an insurance company downtown and came home promptly every day at five o’clock in the evening, when they ate dinner before taking their lab, Midnight, for a two-mile walk.
What I didn’t know was why Aidan was standing in my driveway, staring at my shrubs like he wanted to rip them out of the ground with his bare hands.
His presence ruffled me and a nervous tingle slid down my spine. Or maybe it was the sweat.
“This is a big project,” he finally said.
I looked from him to my yard.
My shrubs and landscaping wrapped around my front porch and then continued in gentle curves along the front of my ranch house. At the corner, it dipped out around a clump of birch trees that added height to the house. When my mulch was delivered tomorrow, it would take me at least one weekend to move it, if not more. Not to mention all the shrubs I wanted to replant.
“It is.” I nodded and bent down to grab my shovel. I didn’t know what I was doing, but just like when Shane stopped by the library, I sensed he needed something. So I let him have it. “Know how to dig a hole?”
I turned and watched a brief twitch at one edge of his lips. It looked like it could possibly…maybe…be the early workings of a smile.
He pushed off the truck and walked into my yard, dropping his tan leather tool belt onto the ground.
A soft and husky “Yeah” fell from his lips as he reached me. “I know how to dig a hole.”
When he got close I saw the devastation in his eyes. His skin was tight. His facial hair, which had been slightly scruffy at the hospital but completely clean at the wake, was full grown and thick. His inky-black hair looked like his fingers had been running through it all day long.
And his shoulders were slumped forward as if he needed a nap—one that lasted a month.
An ache clenched my heart and I had to struggle not to gasp as he took the shovel from me.
“Okay, then.” I clapped my hands together and pointed out three other shrubs I had to remove.
While Aidan went to work, I focused on pulling weeds from around the birch clump in order to give him some space.
We worked for over an hour in silence except for his occasional slight grunts as he dug out the evergreens.
My back and thighs ached from squatting and pulling weeds. The skin on my fingers was raw, and more than once I caught myself gazing at—or more like ogling—Aidan’s backside as his muscles flexed and tightened while he worked. I didn’t know if his jeans were made just for his body, but they fit him perfectly. Tight in all the right places.
Every time I noticed I was practically drooling over the hardworking man I closed my eyes, shook my head, and forced myself back to the project at hand.
As soon as he had the shrubs pulled out, I stood and once again pointlessly tried to wipe the caked-on dirt off my hands.
He stood, grabbed his previously discarded tool belt, and stared at his truck.
I moved toward him, watching him struggle with something while he stared at the truck but made no effort to leave, and I offered, “I was going to grill steak tonight, if you want some dinner.”
His head jerked and he looked at my front door, back to his truck, and then he shifted on his feet, turning to look at me.
“You have more than one steak?”
I nodded. “I always cook two. The second one I use for fajitas, but you can have it if you’re hungry. Feeding you is the least I can do.”
I meant for the help with the yard, but I regretted the words as soon as I said them.
His shoulders tensed and he scowled. I thought he was going to leave.
So he surprised me when he met my eyes and tilted his head, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Mind if I man the grill?”
I grinned and lifted my hand in the direction of the front door. “By all means, it’s all yours.”
—
&nb
sp; “There’s a bathroom, first door on the left, if you want to get cleaned up.”
I gestured in that direction, trying hard not to think about how completely odd it was that Aidan was in my house.
He looked down at his dirty hands. “Thanks. I’ll be just a minute.”
“No hurry.”
Once he disappeared down the hall and I heard the door close behind him, my feet quickly moved to my own master bath.
As soon as I stepped inside, I gasped in horror.
My long blond hair was matted and ratty where it had escaped my ponytail. I had a thick smudge of dirt across my forehead and down my left cheek.
Sweat had made my old baby-blue crewneck shirt cling to my skin and I had sweat stains under my armpits.
“Crap,” I muttered. “I look like shit.”
I shouldn’t have cared. We were doing yard work and now we were grilling dinner. I definitely shouldn’t have been thinking about looking good for Aidan. I had no idea why he had shown up at my house, but it definitely wasn’t to hook up with the school librarian.
Yet I couldn’t resist making an effort.
Quickly, I scrubbed my face, figuring makeup free was better than the caked-on-dirt look. With wet hands, I redid my ponytail and used a couple of pins to pull my bangs off my face.
Once I’d gotten as much dirt off my hands and from under my nails as I was going to without scrubbing them for hours, I called it good enough.
On my way out of the bathroom, I made a quick detour to my closet, whipped off my stinky bra and top, and threw on something equally boring, but at least it was clean.
When I hit the kitchen, my breath coming in oddly quick pants, Aidan was already there.
He was standing by the kitchen island, his hips resting against the granite countertop, and he had a glass of water in his hand.
“Sorry,” I said, still slightly breathless. I couldn’t help it. The sight of him in my kitchen had my lower stomach warming and feeling tingly. It was an insane, but not uncommon, reaction to him. “I needed to get cleaned up, too.”
His eyes dragged down my body. I felt that look hit everywhere and tried to ignore the way my stomach flipped. It quickly diminished when I caught a quick smirk on his lips before he turned away from me.
