Page 36 of His to Cherish
“Thank you,” I said as he pulled the stopper out of the already-opened bottle of wine and handed me a glass. I stared at the burning, dancing embers in the fire pit, trying to enjoy the heat from the flames and the silence in the air besides the chirping of the cicadas.
I freaking loved my yard.
When Aidan broke the silence as we both sipped on our wine, he managed to stun me.
“He talked about you.”
He…Aidan hadn’t talked about Derrick all day except when he told me about Mandy. Nothing. Not when he’d been young, not more recently.
“Always thought you were nice,” he continued, “and pretty.”
I forced myself to take a small swallow of my wine, unable to look at him, but feeling my fingertips buzzing with unnamed emotion.
Quietly, so quietly I almost didn’t hear it over the crackling fire and chirping bugs, he kept going. “He wasn’t wrong.”
My lungs expanded until they burned. I blinked. Tears fell down my cheeks before I was able to stop them.
There was sweetness in his words and pain in his voice.
Seeing him so broken over remembering his son, even if he was being nice to me, slammed the entire tragedy to the forefront of my mind.
His loss.
Shane’s loss.
The school’s loss.
Everyone who knew Derrick had lost so much. Such a great kid, gone, all because of some completely pointless accident.
Where was the justice? The fairness?
Shame rushed through me, choking me. I was crying, sitting next to a man who’d lost his son, who’d given me a compliment—and I couldn’t handle it.
I jumped up from the chair, needing space. Or a stiffer drink. More chocolate, maybe.
I didn’t know what I needed, but I couldn’t sit there anymore, feeling all the things my mind was unable to process, yet I couldn’t say any of it because compared to what Aidan was going through, it was all so damn minuscule.
“Hey.”
I jumped from the burning contact of his hand wrapping around my wrist.
“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Aidan stood in front of me, concern thick in his eyes and that same damn sadness that was so apparent all the time.
I hated it for him.
Despised it. He was such a good man. None of this was fair.
My lips parted when he reached toward me, his thumb gently swiping beneath my eyes. He stared at the tears on the pad of his thumb before dropping his hand.
“I don’t know why I’m crying.”
“I don’t always know why I cry, either. Sometimes I’m thinking of him and laughing and before I know it, I’m a fucking wreck.”
Oh God. If hearts could be shredded to pieces, mine would have been at my feet.
A sob hitched in my throat.
