Page 28 of To Hate Adam Connor
Noticing the thick silence, I looked over her head and saw Aiden watching us with great attention.
“That escalated rather quickly,” Olive said to no one in particular.
I shot a look at Lucy, frowning when I realized how close we were standing, then addressed Jason. “I’m sorry for interrupting your day, Jason, but I think it’s time for us to leave.”
Giving Lucy a wide berth, I helped Aiden down.
“Goodbye, Olive,” he said shyly and waved at her. When Olive leaned down to give him a kiss on his cheek and invite him over again, he gave her a tight hug and thanked her.
“They want me to stay, Daddy. Can I stay?”
“They didn’t say that, Aiden. They invited you over for another time. I have to go to work, so we need to leave.”
“But you said Anne is gone, so who’ll stay with me?”
“I have to drop you off at your mom’s, Aiden. We already talked about it this morning, remember? She is meeting with her people at the house so she’ll look after you today.”
We’d almost made it to the door as Aiden chattered next to me, but when I mentioned his mom, he pulled me to a stop.
“Please, Daddy. Please.”
I looked back at everyone behind us and then got on one knee in front of him. “What’s happening here, Aiden?” While it was obvious he liked everyone in the room, the way he was acting wasn’t his usual behavior. He wasn’t a spoiled kid at all; something was wrong.
As soon as I was down on his level, he wrapped his arms around my neck and held on. “I don’t wanna leave you. Please. Can’t Dan stay with me?”
“Aiden, Dan has the day off.” I unwrapped his arms from my neck and looked at his red eyes. Shit. “You can’t do this to me, Aiden. I have no one to take care of you when I’m on set until I find someone new, little man.”
He wiped at his dry eyes and nodded. “I’m gonna miss you again.”
Lucy broke into our conversation by saying, “My heart is breaking.”
Right, because her fucking heart was so high on my list of things about which I gave a fuck. My jaw ticked. “Can you give us a moment?”
She talked right over me. “Since your heart is probably carved from stone, you can’t understand how that feels, but I just wanted to let you know that multiple hearts are breaking right now—not that it looks like you care about that.”
“Lucy!” Olive whispered heatedly from behind her.
“What?” she asked her friend as if she were as innocent as an angel. In my eyes she was more like the devil reincarnated. “I’m just telling the truth. Look,” she began, getting closer. “Olive and Jason have to leave for a meeting in an hour or so, but I don’t have any job interviews today. Why don’t you leave Aiden here with me? You’ll pick him up as soon as you get back from wherever it is that you have to go, and since we established the fact that I mean no harm to your son, seeing as how I already saved his life once…”
No. That was my immediate answer, but before I could voice my opinion, Aiden ran to Lucy and gave her a hug—or more like gave her legs a hug. Her naked legs. Her smooth, toned legs. I looked up and met her eyes, already shaking my head.
“I wanna stay,” Aiden repeated for the tenth time.
“She is right, Adam,” Jason agreed. “Olive and I will be back here in two hours tops. It’ll be fun. We’ll take care of him until you come back, don’t worry.”
I sighed and rubbed my eyes. “I don’t like this, Aiden. You can’t get your way every time.”
“But I like it here, Daddy, and if I stay here I can stay with you. You’ll have to come back to pick me up.”
“I always come back to pick you up, Aiden. And you’ve only been here for ten minutes.”
Since his play wasn’t working, he tried a different tactic. “I like Lucy.”
“And Lucy likes you, little human,” Lucy interjected into our back and forth and pointed at something I couldn’t see on the other side of the kitchen as she whispered something in his ear. When Aiden went off to check it out, Lucy walked toward me.
“Clearly he doesn’t want to go.”
“Clearly.”
