His to Cherish

by Stacey Lynn

  I still felt it. He ate lunch with me, but we’d moved back to short, pointless sentences.

  So while I tried to relax, I still worried and thought of Shane constantly. By Wednesday, I’d decided I’d see how he was doing after his vacation, and if he didn’t seem any better after a week away, I’d talk to Beth.

  I was also angry and feeling defeated, perhaps slightly foolish.

  I hadn’t seen Aidan since he’d sworn to the gods about kissing me.

  I still had no idea what had happened, why he felt the need to shove his tongue into my mouth and ruin me for all other men in a matter of moments. The kiss wasn’t a long kiss, but when I lay down at night, I swore I could still smell him.

  Taste him.

  It was driving me crazy.

  And as angry as I was, I also understood.

  Things…whatever they were…were moving too fast for him. I was the distraction that reminded him of his son, and my fear that he would wake up someday and realize that that was only the way he thought of me—some link to his son’s deadly accident—had come true.

  He had made it clear from his silence that he wanted nothing further to do with me.

  But as I sat in my house, trying not to wallow but doing a miserable job of it, I still didn’t want to walk away without knowing why. Why Aidan did it. Why he kissed me. Why he hated it so much he stopped coming to my house. And why I still fell asleep and dreamed about him.

  —

  I should have left. I had plenty of time, and the longer I sat there, the more ridiculous I felt.

  Aidan wasn’t home from work yet, and even though the pizza box in my hands had burned my fingers and probably left grease marks on my denim-covered thighs, I was still sitting on his front stoop.

  Waiting for him.

  It had taken enough courage to come here in the first place. That had been helped by Paige, because when you wanted someone to tell you what you wanted to hear and not what you should hear, Paige was the girl you called.

  Camden was the one who told it like it was, although her advice was usually slanted toward the negative.

  I didn’t want negative. I wanted someone to tell me to go after my fairy tale. Paige was the friend to give that to me.

  So after I put in an eight-mile run, and after I baked a batch of double-chocolate-chip cookies from scratch, and after I paced the hallway in my house, trying to talk myself out of this visit but doing it unsuccessfully, I showered.

  Then I did my hair, put on makeup, jeans that made my butt look fantastic, and a shirt that always caught guys’ eyes when I went out. This was, I suspected, because it hung off one shoulder, hinting at skin in a sexy, yet still modest way.

  But now that I was here, on his front porch step, I felt like one of the “vultures” Aidan said he couldn’t stand.

  I was full of second thoughts.

  I heard them screaming in my head, banging together, until my fingers were trembling, sweat was breaking out at the back of my neck, and I felt like I was going to throw up all the cookie dough I’d consumed earlier.

  Yet my feet wouldn’t move, even though my head was shouting, “Get the heck out of here before he gets home, and salvage your self-respect!”

  It was late on Friday. So late that I knew Aidan should have gotten home thirty minutes ago, and the pizza was beginning to cool on my lap. Even though it was still warm, it would probably need to be reheated.

  Or tossed into the garbage can if I could bring myself to listen to the rational voice in my head telling me to leave while I had a chance.

  But I ignored it. I missed him.

  I missed our quiet nights.

  I wanted to apologize for whatever I’d done to make him regret kissing me, not so we could kiss again, even though I’d love it if we did. I just wanted to remind him that I was here for him. I wanted to let him know that we could go back to what we were before that kiss.

  I’d thought about Aidan’s house all week. How he came to mine when he said his was “too quiet.” And if he hadn’t come to mine to hang out, had he been alone all week? How hard would that have been for him? And if he wasn’t at my house, what was he doing?

  That realization, however small, reminded me that regardless of the nights and the hours I’d spent with Aidan, I knew absolutely nothing about him except his girlfriend left years ago and he lost his son.

  In all the time we’d spent together, he’d never once opened up to me about anything personal.

  In fact, if I looked back, there was a clear line around what he would talk about, and none of it, not a single bit of it, had anything to do with him. I was someone who supplied him beer and television and that was it.

  Go.

  I stood and brushed the dust off my butt that’d been plastered to his dirty wooden front stoop for the last forty minutes.

  Unfortunately, I was too late. As I took the first step off the stairs, I heard the distinctive rumble of Aidan’s truck engine. I blinked and his black, Dodge Ram came into view between the trees that lined his side of the yard.

  Halfway down one of the steps to his front stoop, I froze, and then my mouth dropped open as his garage door began rising.

  His truck stopped in the driveway while the door went up, and it was then I saw that he had already seen me.

  He was staring at me through the front windshield. I saw his fingers flex and tighten around the steering wheel and his jaw go hard.

  He had sunglasses on, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could feel them on me—glaring at me.

  A muscle jumped in his cheek, and it was so noticeable I saw it even though we were several yards apart.

  He wasn’t just unhappy I was at his house, waiting for him, he was pissed.

  I looked away to the row of narrow but tall pine trees that lined his yard, wishing I had catlike reflexes and could jump straight from my spot on the walkway into the trees and disappear.

  I swallowed, trying to choke down the humiliation coursing through my blood, heating my skin in the worst way possible.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his truck move. He pulled into his garage, and the loud double garage door began descending as soon as his truck disappeared.

  The garage door crashed to the cement ground. My feet vibrated from the heavy thud and then there was silence.

  No footsteps inside.

  No click of a front door unlocking.

  No voice welcoming me in and thanking me for bringing him dinner.

  Before he could see the tears that rose unbidden to the backs of my eyes, I moved.

  I turned around, slid the pizza box onto Aidan’s front porch, careful not to look if I could see him inside his house.

  And I got the hell out of there.

  —

  My own sense of stupidity mixed with foolish hopefulness prevented me from sleeping most of the weekend.

  During the middle of the night, unable to sleep, I kept envisioning that glare I couldn’t see, that cheek jump I saw clearly, and the silence that followed. It made me realize I had a problem.

  And it was a big problem.

  Somehow during our visits, I’d become a typical woman. I’d convinced myself that our time together meant something to Aidan.

  That I had begun to mean something to him.

  In reality, I was just a place to go where he could escape the quiet of his house.

  I came with no expectations.

  I was a one-night stand without the sex. I just lasted longer than a night.

  Last night, I realized I didn’t want to be that anymore.

  I couldn’t be that anymore.

  I’d had a crush on Aidan Devereaux for two years, since I saw him walk into our middle school just before Derrick started sixth grade and it was class registration night. The library was filled with tables, teachers sitting behind them, and the students lined up on the other side, creating their own schedules with their parents signing off on each class they registered for.

  It was cool the way our
school did it. Giving students the responsibility of picking their own classes and teachers. They felt grown up; they were beginning to make their own choices, and the parents were there to help guide them and accept their choices, or help them make better ones.

  I remembered that day clearly because I was standing in front of my desk in the library, watching the madness unfold in front of me. I was also helping at the coffee and dessert table.

  At one point, Aidan Devereaux sauntered up next to me. He stood, surveying the crowd with me, his arms crossed over his chest.

  He smelled delicious. I remembered it because it tickled my nose.

  He looked at me, and his eyes moved slowly down my body in a gesture I felt everywhere, even though I chalked that up to the fact that Cory had walked out on me weeks before. I was in a low spot, but one slow perusal of Aidan’s green eyes had me fighting back a grin.

  My hand had gone to the table to steady myself.

  His lips had twitched into a half smile.

  Then he said, “Busy year ahead.”

  I had nodded. “Yup. Sure is.”

  Then he turned to me, brushing a hand through his black hair, and in the sexiest voice I had ever heard in my life, he whispered, “You ready for this?”

  I assumed he meant the school year, although his tone implied something much different. But I was too messed up from Cory walking away, the reality that I’d never be able to have kids leaving a gaping hole in my heart that I knew would take forever—or at least years—to close, and I didn’t catch it.

  Looking back, I could now see that he’d definitely implied what I thought he had.

  He wanted me. He was at least attracted to me two years ago. He’d made the effort, flirted, and scanned my body with lust in his eyes.

  And he’d done it since then. He would give me a look, a certain smile, and even a flirtatious conversation occasionally—not often, but it happened—when all of our friends were hanging out together either at Fireside or at Declan’s or Tyson’s house. Those things…I hadn’t imagined. I had always figured that because he had a kid at my school, it wasn’t the right time.

  Yet out of all of his friends, for some reason he’d kept me close to him after Derrick’s death.

  What those reasons were, I didn’t have a clue.

  That kiss screwed everything up.

  He tasted me and decided I was no longer worth his time.

  It was the most epic, painfully devastating brush-off. It hurt even more than when Cory left, because although I tried to head it off, I had known Cory wasn’t going to stick around forever. Not when our conversations became strained with silence and heavy sighs when we were together. I knew the infertility treatments took a toll on our marriage, and I knew when he started staying out late that something was broken.

  At the time, I was in my head so much I didn’t make the effort to care.

  And even when he left, it took me months before I realized the truth. Cory was a cheating jerk. We’d gotten married young and maybe it simply wasn’t meant to be.

  Most days, I was okay with it. I didn’t hate Cory. That didn’t mean I ever wanted to receive an invite to his daughter’s birthday party, though.

  But with Aidan, just thinking about that kiss, or that moment two years ago, or the look on his face on Friday night—I hadn’t been able to eat or drink the pain away. And I’d tried all weekend.

  Which was why I was at Kate’s Kakes on a Sunday morning. I planned on drinking coffee and stuffing myself with a piece of everything she had in her display window.

  “Hi, Kate,” I called with a wave of my hand as I entered.

  I was staring at the case when Kate walked up to me and slid a coffee into my hand over her tantalizing display case of bagels, muffins, and cupcakes. “Um, Chelsea?”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, so distracted by the delicious carb overload that was about to occur that I didn’t catch the odd tone in her voice. “I’ll have one of everything.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Her question made me pause, and that time, I did notice the strange tone.

  I looked up, taking a sip of my coffee at the same time.

  “What?”

  Her eyes flickered to the door and back to me. “What are you doing here?”

  What an odd question. I frowned and then waved my index finger in front of the case between us. “Um…getting one of everything in your case?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I mean…why are you here and not at home?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Go home.”

  “What?” My eyes widened and my lips parted. Kate and I weren’t friends, but we were friendly neighbors. I’d been a customer in her store ever since it opened, before I’d known my new neighbor across the street was the one who’d opened this place. “Why?”

  “Because.” She drawled out the word and leaned forward. Then she did something incredibly strange. She reached out and grabbed my wrist, squeezing firmly, like in the way you knew someone was preparing you for bad news and they wanted a grip on your pulse while they delivered it. “I can’t say. But you have to get home.”

  “You’re freaking me out.”

  Then she did something stranger. She smiled right before a quiet laugh fell from her lips. “Trust me.” That smile turned into a grin. “You’re going to want to take your coffee and get home. Now. Promise.”

  My heart fluttered at the still odd tone in her voice. Weird. She let go of my hand, reached inside the display, and handed me my standard Asiago bagel.

  “This is for the road, but later…when you understand…I want details.” She leaned in again, giggled, and in a conspiratorial voice she said, “And I mean specific details. Now get.”

  She waved me off and I took a step back.

  “Kate, have you eaten too much sugar?”

  Her laugh increased in giddiness and volume. She was so loud that several customers turned their heads in our direction. “Get. You’ll see what I mean when you get home.”

  I shot her a strange look and made a mental note to stop by her house later, not to give her details about whatever it was she expected to hear from me, but to check her forehead for a fever—to see if she was coherent and making sense. Maybe she was stressed. I’d never seen her on a weekend at her store. Perhaps she lost it on Sunday mornings from the extra business.

  Who knew?

  I waved goodbye, listened to her clap her hands happily as I left, and got into my car.

  I didn’t eat my bagel in the car because I wanted to heat it up in the microwave when I got home. I was still frowning, concerned about my neighbor’s mental stability, when I pulled into my drive.

  I was so concerned, replaying the conversation in my head, that I almost missed it.

  I had no idea how I could miss the enormous black truck parked in front of my house, but I didn’t see it until after I had turned in to my driveway, raised my garage door, parked inside, and glanced in my rearview mirror.

  My hand froze at my visor, seconds away from pushing the garage door opener and shutting the garage door, when my breath hitched as a scream bubbled up in my throat.

  Aidan walked around the corner of my garage and appeared in my rearview mirror, blocking my view of his truck. He crossed his arms over his chest, like a sentry, just like when he’d stood next to me the first time I met him.

  He was blocking my garage door sensor. There was no way my garage would close if there was a six-foot-four, incredibly attractive man blocking the signal.

  He planned it. I realized it when I continued to stare at him in my mirror and he slowly cocked one eyebrow. One side of his lips rose to a smirk as he silently challenged me to escape from him.

  I pulled my gaze from his and looked down at my lap while I muttered, “What the hell does he want now?”

  There was only one way to find out.

  Chapter 7

  I climbed out of my car, taking care not to spill my coffee all over my lap as I
dragged my shaking limbs out of the driver’s seat.

  “Hey,” I said lamely, and shut the car door.

  Aidan licked his lips and his hands fell to his sides. With a nod of his head, he said, “Come on. Something I want to show you.”

  Really? He’d avoided me for a week, acted like a jerk the last time I saw him, and he thought he could just boss me around? I didn’t think so. “Typically when you haven’t seen someone in a week the polite thing to say first is ‘hello.’ ”

  He silenced me with a look that chilled me to my bones.

  It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even upset or sad. It was something completely different and something I had never seen directed at me from anyone.

  I gulped, and found myself walking toward him when he turned and began heading toward my fence. He pulled open the gate and walked through like it was his house.

  “Um,” I said. What was happening? My fingertips dug into the cardboard coffee cup when he turned back to me, this time holding out a hand, gesturing for me to walk through the gate into my own backyard.

  “Just wait.”

  I glanced from the gate to Aidan, whose other hand was gripping the top of the wooden fence. He shifted on his feet, and I hated how I wanted to reach out and soothe away all the grief that was buried in the lines across his forehead and the purple bags under his eyes.

  It all seemed permanently etched into his features and my heart clenched with hurt for him, despite being angry at how he’d treated me and confused as to what was going on.

  I blew out a breath, trying to stem the odd sensation in my chest. Little flutters of hope were pointless.

  Across from me, I saw Kate’s house and recalled the odd way she spoke to me, ushering me out of her shop. I frowned and a dozen questions came to mind.