Page 30 of His to Cherish
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 keptmeclose 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.
