Page 28 of His to Cherish
Chapter 6
Chelsea
It was safe to say that my week had sucked.
I hadn’t seen Shane since last Friday when he’d told me his mom was taking him to Sarasota, Florida, for the week to get away and relax. Spring break had already passed and the end of the school year was just over a month away, so it was a strange time of year to take your kid out of school, but I couldn’t fault her for thinking maybe Shane needed a break from real life for a while. While I would have thought the idea of hanging out at the beach in the warm sun would have brought at least a small smile to his lips, Shane wasn’t happy about it.
When he’d told me, he seemed tense and angry. Since he’d clammed up on me after his sobfest on my shoulder, I didn’t feel like there was anything I could say to help him. I hadn’t been able to break through, and the guilt at my failure weighed on me so heavily I went to one of the guidance counselors and spoke about him—anonymously. While I was concerned, I still wanted to respect Shane’s privacy. Revealing the true weight of guilt he carried on his shoulders without his permission wasn’t a step I was quite ready to take yet.
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 youshouldhear, 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.
