His to Cherish

by Stacey Lynn

  He didn’t give me a chance anyway.

  David let go of my shoulders, reached for my elbow, and opened the door that led to the back patio.

  And I followed, heading to the place where I’d had my first conversation with Aidan after the accident, knowing that this one was about to go completely differently.

  Chapter 12

  “Aidan.”

  I wasn’t entirely certain Aidan was even conscious when David called his name from where we’d stopped just outside the doorway.

  He was splayed out on a lounge chair, three empty alcohol bottles at his side and a half-empty one on the table next to him.

  Aidan’s eyes were closed and his head was flopped toward his left shoulder, face aimed in our direction.

  I took a step forward to check if he was even breathing when David squeezed my hand. I looked up at him to see him shake his head.

  Just wait, he mouthed to me.

  He turned back to Aidan after I nodded. I’d give him about two seconds before I checked on him.

  “Aidan. You weren’t supposed to lie, brother.”

  He muttered something that sounded like, “Go the fuck away.”

  Through his drunkenness, his speech was slurred and his mouth barely moved.

  “Can’t do that, man. You promised you’d call.”

  Aidan’s head snapped up and he stared directly at David.

  His nostrils flared, and I could feel his fury rolling off him.

  “Is that right?” he drawled. His lips twitched and I wanted to cry. I wanted to run to him, wrap my arms around him, and apologize for not being there for him. He’d practically begged me to stay with him and I’d pushed him away.

  His eyes stayed so focused on David I didn’t even know if he realized I was out here, watching him completely fall apart.

  I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I watched as David had another silent argument with Aidan and I took in another disaster scene. Glass was everywhere, the patio table had been thrown completely over onto the cement, and four of the chairs that had once surrounded it were scattered all over the lawn.

  I couldn’t see the grill where it used to sit against the house behind me. I didn’t even want to know what had happened to that.

  In front of me, there were two lounge chairs and another glass side table. One of the chairs was upside down.

  Aidan’s drunken frame took possession of the other.

  Slowly, he shifted his body, twisting and moving until he was sitting up, his feet planted on the ground and his knees splayed wide. His hands dropped to his knees and he continued glaring at David.

  Eventually, David must have won.

  Aidan sighed, reached for something next to him, and held up his phone. “Thought about it. Does that get me points?”

  “Not when you’re drinking yourself to death.”

  I inhaled a sharp gasp at the words. David’s voice was brutal and thick.

  On this day of all days, I figured it was okay for Aidan to lose his shit and implode.

  Or destroy his house.

  Seeing him like this, hair askew and dressed in only a pair of athletic shorts while his completely unfocused eyes roamed the yard and the patio area, sent an aching pain to my heart.

  “Go away,” Aidan slurred. “And leave me the hell alone today.”

  David took a step forward, dropping my hand from his, and whispered, “He wouldn’t want this for you.”

  Aidan’s temper flared like the Fourth of July and I knew all that foreboding I’d felt earlier—everything was about to explode and light up the sky like a firework extravaganza.

  “Aidan,” I whispered, but he didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Yeah?” Aidan replied to David, his eyes narrowed slits of anger and anguish. “You know what the fuck my boy wanted? He wanted to live, you fucking prick! He wanted to play ball and kiss girls and he wanted to learn how to drive my damn truck. He wanted college and more girls probably. But he sure as fuck didn’t want…to…fucking…die.”

  He was panting after his rant and wobbled on unsteady feet. Whether from the booze or his grief, I didn’t know. I lunged to grab him when David threw his arm out, stopping me.

  His arm was a solid bar of steel and his voice lowered. “I know, buddy. I know all that and I know this sucks, but you throwing all this shit around your house, all this anger at my feet, and all your grief into a bottle isn’t going to help a damn thing.”

  “It silences it.”

  David shook his head. “It hides it, hides your pain and your sadness until it’s forced to come out another way. Be sad, Aidan. Grieve and mourn and wail, but don’t lose your fucking mind over this, or your life. You know this shit.”

  Aidan laughed. It was the first time I’d heard him laugh, and I coiled back into the safety of David’s protection because I couldn’t stand the sound.

  Nails on a chalkboard sounded more pleasant than the evil, dark cackle that escaped his thick lips.

  “You’re such a prick.”

  David nodded. “I know. You love me for it, even if you’re too fucking stubborn to admit it.”

  “Get the fuck out of my house.” His hands balled into tight fists and I shrank back, unsure if there was going to be a brawl, but both men were wired so tight I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  I didn’t want them fighting.

  David stayed still for several minutes until his shoulders relaxed. “We’ll go, then.”

  I frowned and looked at David. He’d wanted me here to help but hadn’t let me do a darn thing yet.

  The way he said “we” seemed to spark something in Aidan.

  “She stays.”

  I jerked back, surprised he even knew I was there, considering he hadn’t yet acknowledged me in any way.

  “I don’t—” I started, but was cut off by the lethal glare Aidan flashed my way.

  “Stay,” he growled.

  No way in hell was I staying.

  David ran a hand through his hair and smiled sadly before he took my hand in his. The comforting squeeze he gave me did nothing to help me. “He won’t hurt you, but don’t put up with his shit, either. Throw it back at him, he needs it, I promise you.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I mumbled when I felt a wall of heat at my side, trying to burn us to death.

  A large hand wrapped around my elbow and I was pulled away from David, into Aidan’s side.

  “Get your hands off her.”

  “Be nice, man.”

  “Go away.”

  David’s smile changed like this had actually been fun. I decided he must have been crazy. He hadn’t helped anything and now he was throwing me to the big, bad, really pissed off, really drunk, and really sad wolf with great big green eyes and sharp, wicked teeth.

  “When your hangover disappears tomorrow, give me a call.”

  He stepped forward, slapped Aidan on the shoulder, and pulled him in for a man hug. He murmured something that I couldn’t hear into Aidan’s ear, and when he pulled back, some of the tension and anger tightening Aidan’s shoulders had evaporated.

  Thank goodness.

  David winked at me before heading toward the sliding doors. “You’ll be all right. Remember what I said before.”

  We both watched David walk away. My head screamed at me to follow, my heart urged me to stay.

  David might have been right, Aidan wouldn’t hurt me, at least not physically.

  But when I looked back up at him, I watched his lips twist like he had more bile to spew in the form of words wrapped with daggers, and I knew I was completely wrong.

  This man had the power to destroy me, and he looked ready for battle.

  “Sit down.”

  The lounge chair he had flipped over was now right side up with the cushion in place. If it hadn’t been broken before, it was now. I struggled trying to get it into an upright position and gave up after I realized it would only lay completely flat.

  When Aidan arched a brow, shooting me o
ne of the many chilling glares I’d received in the last few minutes, I figured to hell with it

  Half of me still didn’t know why I didn’t leave.

  The other part totally understood when Aidan quietly demanded, “Anything I need.”

  I sat. When I couldn’t get comfortable, I lay down on my side and propped my head in my hand, elbow on the thick mattress pad.

  Aidan took a long drink from the whiskey sitting next to him and stared into the backyard.

  We sat, the unfathomable space between us thick with a rolling tension that was different. My pulse drummed in my ears as I watched him.

  When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I decided to go to the kitchen for a drink.

  As I sat up, Aidan’s eyes shot to me and narrowed.

  “I’m just getting some water,” I told him, and scuttled into the house before he could argue with me.

  Once I’d filled a glass, careful not to step on the sticky food remnants on the floor or the counter, I noticed his coffeemaker sitting on the counter.

  While I waited for a cup to brew, I dug through the cabinets until I found a bottle of ibuprofen and dumped three pills into my palm.

  Armed with sobriety-inducing drugs, I headed back to the patio, ignoring the mess all over his house. It would take him hours, if not days, to clean up what he’d wrecked.

  Based on his volatile mood, I suspected most of the damage had been done earlier today.

  My shoulders fell with a wrongly placed sense of guilt. This wasn’t my fault, yet it felt like it was. Had I agreed to spend the day with him like he’d asked, he might not have ended up wasted and destroying his house.

  “Here,” I whispered, getting his attention as I reached him. He stared at the coffee mug in my hand. “Take the coffee and the pills.”

  His lips twisted like he wanted to argue, but eventually he reached out, took the mug from my hand and set it on the table next to him. Then he took the pills and glass from my other hand, tossed the pills into his mouth and chugged the water. When he set the empty glass on the table, he took my hand in his and tugged me gently but with intention.

  “Sit with me?”

  His pleading eyes, sad green sludge, stared up at me, drunk and desperate.

  “Of course.” I forced a small smile that matched his mood and he shifted while I moved into the chair sitting in front of him.

  I trembled slightly when his arm wrapped around my shoulders with my back to his chest, his legs on the outside of mine.

  “I’m so damn tired.” For a moment I thought he meant he was ready to pass out into a drunken coma, but then he inhaled a shaky breath. “So damn tired of all of this. How am I supposed to move past this? Get over losing my kid when I fought tooth and nail to keep him in the first place?”

  My brow furrowed in confusion, but he kept talking, not giving me time to ask.

  “I’m so damn lonely. So damn tired all the time. Hell,” he sighed, and his voice broke. “Fourteen years old today, that’s how old he would have been. How old he’s supposed to be. We were supposed to head to Chicago and make it a guys’ weekend. Gorge ourselves on pizza and hit the Cubs’ season opener. Now what in the hell am I supposed to do?”

  My throat choked and tears fell down my cheeks. I figured he knew I was crying when his hand tightened on my shoulder.

  I wasn’t brave enough to look back to see if he was doing the same. Seeing him shattered and crying could end me.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his head tilted back, looking at the sky.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I dumbly replied. “I wish I could take it away for you.”

  His handed drifted from my shoulder up to the side of my head and he pushed, pressing me against his shoulder. His fingers tangled in my hair.

  “I wish you could, too.”

  We sat like this, in the silence that was so familiar between the two of us, while he reached out and began taking small sips of the coffee.

  “It’s not easy…feeling like I have something good sitting next to me, something I want, and I feel like I can’t have it. It also makes me a dick that I want to keep taking whatever it is you’ll give me because being around you is the only good damn thing in my life, and I don’t want to let that go.”

  I shifted, my head turned until I could see his droopy, half-lidded eyes. He was going to pass out at any moment.

  “You haven’t done anything I don’t want, and you haven’t taken what I haven’t given willingly, Aidan.” I pressed my hand on his chest.

  “I know everything seems so dark and ugly in your head right now, and I don’t get what you’re going through, but I do know difficult loss. And the one thing I know for sure is that whenever there’s good in your life, you need to grab on to it and hold on tight. So much horrible shit happens in the world, so much disaster and death like Derrick’s that doesn’t make any sense no matter how hard you’re going to try. You need the good stuff to help you remember that not everything is always shit. The good helps you be able to bear the bad.”

  His lips pressed together into a line so fine they almost disappeared. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Giving up on being able to say anything to help him feel better—because really, what could possibly do that—I stood and held out my hand. “Come on. You need to go to bed.”

  He was way drunk, it was getting late, and he needed his sleep.

  At the worried flash in his eyes, I offered him assurance. “I’ll stay, though, if you want.”

  He nodded immediately. “I do.”

  “Then go to bed, I’ll be up after I clean up a bit.”

  A frown line appeared between his eyes. If he remembered the disaster he’d caused inside, he didn’t show it. But I turned him by his shoulders and pushed him toward the house, ushering him inside. I didn’t stop moving him until we reached the stairs.

  “Up you go.”

  He reached out and gripped the banister. His sigh was deep and slow as he turned to face me before staring at the staircase like I’d asked him to climb Mount Everest. “Thank you, Chelsea.”

  I chewed on my bottom lip, wanting to lean in and brush my lips against his, tasting him like he occasionally did to me, but I held back.

  As much as I desired him, tonight was not the night. And it most definitely wasn’t the moment, even though for the first time since I had stepped inside his house earlier, the tension and anger had seemed to evaporate. “Anytime.”

  —

  It took hours to have the house halfway presentable. I did the most I could before my body felt like it was going to collapse from exhaustion.

  I kept busy, vacuuming up the glass shards all over the place and stacking the thrown photos into a neat pile on the kitchen table. In the office, I took the broken lamp to the garage to throw it away, vacuumed, and picked up the scattered papers and broken laptop.

  The kitchen was the worst, but by the time I was done scrubbing and cleaning the floors and countertops, it was mostly picked up. I loaded the dishwasher and left the remaining dishes to soak in the sink overnight.

  It was midnight when I finally dragged my weary and aching body up the stairs, and the random thought of Beth’s text message blinked into my mind.

  Quickly, I changed course and moved to the entryway where I had dropped my purse and dug out my phone.

  “Thank goodness,” I said to myself when I saw there were no texts other than one from Suzanne. I ignored it, feeling my eyelids droop heavily with exhaustion.

  Upstairs, I found Aidan’s room at the left side of the staircase and entered quietly so as not to disturb him. Based on the soft snoring coming from his bed, a train could have come rumbling through his backyard and he wouldn’t have flinched.

  I realized I was still in “going out” clothes, a teal satin top and skinny jeans.

  I looked around, trying to see if there was anything I could wear to bed that’d been thrown on his floor, but it was surprisingly clean. Considering the d
ownstairs was such a disaster, I was shocked that Aidan’s bedroom was so tidy. There wasn’t a random pair of boxers or socks strewn anywhere.

  After debating for another second, I quietly dug through Aidan’s dresser drawers until I found a stack of perfectly folded white T-shirts.

  After grabbing one, I used the restroom, stripped off my clothes, threw on his shirt, and headed to his bed.

  It was massive, much larger than my queen, and I slid into the free side, staying close to the edge of the bed.

  If Aidan woke up, there was a chance he wouldn’t even know I was there.

  Exhaustion overtook me and my heavy eyelids closed before I could give any further thought to the fact that I was sleeping in Aidan’s bed for the first time.

  Chapter 13

  The taste of mint licking across my lips woke me up in the morning.

  A mewl of surprise escaped me as I registered the wall of heat close to me and covering my chest.

  Opening my eyes, I was startled to find Aidan lying next to me, his mouth hovering just above mine.

  In a second, I took in his wet hair, the slightly damp feel of his hot skin over mine, and the way he was completely caging me in—on his bed.

  My eyes widened and I swallowed thickly.

  A quick twitch of his lips appeared and vanished.

  “Good morning,” he said, and pulled back slightly.

  My hand wrapped around his wrist, preventing further movement.

  That one small touch of my skin on his, holding him against me, sent a reaction straight through me. Based on the way his pupils widened, I think he felt the same thing. I swallowed again, trying to find my voice and the will to leave. Somehow, like his anger from last night, that had also skipped town.

  “How are you?” I asked, my voice just a whisper.

  “Shit.” He frowned. “I suspect I’ll feel like shit for a long time.”

  I longed to reach out, smooth the tension from the deep line between his sad eyes, but I tightened my hold on his wrist instead.

  “I meant your hangover,” I lied, forcing a small smile. I didn’t want to deal with anything heavy this morning; we’d had enough of it last night—unless that heaviness came in the form of Aidan’s body pressing against mine. Or moving over me.