Page 21 of His to Cherish
Chapter 5
“Wow. That’s some twisted story you have there.”
I looked around the table to my friends. Between college, graduation, marriages, cheating, and divorce, we’d been through just about everything together. But I’d still managed to stun them all into silence when I told them about Aidan and how we’d been hanging out.
I also talked with them about Shane and everything that happened in the library. While I’d planned on keeping all of it to myself, especially considering Aidan was friends with Blue and Trina’s men, I could no longer hold it in. The way Aidan had left last night told me things were changing and I needed perspective, or advice, on how to proceed. As soon as I was done, my shoulders relaxed, as if I’d been finally able to unload all the stress I’d been carrying on my own.
Also, my smile was bigger…happier—although that could have been attributed to the margaritas.
“I don’t know what to do,” I told them, scanning their eyes for wisdom, hopeful they’d be able to impart something that would make everything make sense.
Especially with the way Aidan had left last night. I hadn’t been able to erase his thick, warm, yet conflicted voice from my brain.“You are helping.”
It still made hairs stand at the back of my neck when I thought about the look in his eyes.
Heated.
They screamed,I want you.
I wanted to shout the very same words to him as he walked out to his truck. Instead, I collapsed against my door. Typical. I’d always been the queen of missed opportunities.
Yet I still didn’t know if that was what last night had been.
Getting involved with Aidan could be a colossal mistake. It reeked of bad decisions and morning-after guilt.
Although try telling that to my subconscious, which had replaced my nightmares of Shane’s screams with groans of pleasure as I envisioned Aidan bringing me to intense orgasms. Twice.
“Ugh.” I dropped my head into my hands, shaking it back and forth.
Next to me, Camden wrapped her arm over my shoulders. She was the most serious one of us, the most hesitant to enter into a relationship. She had her reasons and they made sense, even if I still wanted to see her get her slice of happy.
She certainly hadn’t had much of it growing up.
“I think you need to be careful, maybe pull back a little bit. I hate the idea that he could be using you as some link to his son. When he realizes it, when he realizes he has to start moving on, he could leave you in the dust.”
She was right, as usual. It was the thing that terrified me. Besides the fact that it was way too soon to even suggest something happening with Aidan, I was also afraid that, someday, seeing me, and remembering the way I looked in the hospital with his kid’s blood on my shirt, would become too painful for him.
It linked us. It could also be the thing that broke us. Or whatever was happening between us.
“I think you should just see what happens,” Paige chirped up. As usual, her view of the world was colored with rainbows and unicorns. Her smile said it all. She believed in fairy tales and to her, this was the ultimate one. “Follow your heart.”
Next to me, Camden quietly snorted her displeasure.
I eyed Suzanne sitting across from me. “It sounds like a mess.” She was small, and her light blond hair and pixie haircut made her look like Tinker Bell. She had also been married since two weeks after college graduation and was absolutely in love with her husband. They were nauseatingly perfect together. Whenever I was at Suzanne and Jackson’s house, I felt the need to guzzle Pepto-Bismol. They made my heart hurt so badly—in the cutest way possible.
Even when things had been good, or great, with Cory and me, we’d never seemed that much in love.
“That being said,” she continued, raising a hand to silence Paige’s protest. “We allknowhe’s a good man, he’s just a good man going through a hard time right now. I think if anyone could help him move on, it’s you.”
Yeah, but would he move on with me or without me, was the question I was too afraid to ask.
Trina took a sip of her margarita and set it down on the table, gently sliding her finger around the rim and then sucking off the salt. She looked deep in thought when she lifted her eyes to meet mine.
“What?” I asked.
She made a face before she sighed. “I haven’t been around as long as you have, and I don’t know Aidan at all, really. I mean, he’s friends with Declan and I know Declan’s going crazy with worry right now, not knowing how to help his friend.” Her voice drifted and she glanced toward the kitchen window where we could see Declan, his focus on the grill I knew was in front of him. “But I really like Aidan. And I just have to say that I know he’s liked you for a long time. I also don’t think he’s in a place where he’d be willing to act on it. If you being in the same school as Derrick was enough to keep him away, I think this would be harder for him.”
Her words were like a knife to my chest and my next breath burned as I asked, “What?”
