Erin was being so sweet. Sam couldn’t comprehend it. She curled her hand around the cold Coke can and struggled to understand why Erin, of all people, was staring at her with concern and love.
“Sam?” her sister whispered in a small voice. “What’s wrong?”
The room made sense around her, then. Cheap table and chairs, equestrian photos on the walls, fridge and microwave and space heater. She was in the office at Briar Hall Stables, where she’d taken her sister for her first riding lesson. Where Tonya Sinclair had just informed her that…
A raw, ugly sound tore from her throat and Erin jumped.
“Oh God,” Sam whispered, hand tightening on the Coke until the can flexed.
“Are you sick?” Erin asked. “Do I need to call Mom?”
Yes, she was sick alright. Sick enough to think that Aidan had ever loved her, that he’d been honest with her. All those times he’d looked troubled, been stuck in his head – they made sense now. He’d been preoccupied withthis. This child he’d kept from her.
Erin stared at her, working her hands together, face screwed up with worry.
Emmie came barreling into the room, curly blonde hair flying loose from her ponytail, expression a photocopy of Erin’s.
“Sam,” she said, voice sorry, appalled, sympathetic. “I had no idea. I swear. She just now told me. I had no idea…”
Sam stared down into her lap.
He hadn’t trusted her with this knowledge, hadn’t told her.
And she loved him…
Twenty-Three
Running the numbers in his head was stressing him. Would she need a wedding? A big party? Would she need a new house? Kitchen shit? Yard shit? Aidan was scrambling in his head, trying to decide what it would take to make Sam his long-term. Forever. He had to tell her about Tonya, sure, but that wasn’t the only concern. There were other domestic things to consider, for his domestic girl. Who loved him.
She loved him.
The thought was a rhythm inside him, driving him through his work day, making him smile for no reason.
He stood leaning against the siding of the bike shop, taking a smoke break, when Walsh appeared, jogging toward him. Something was off about the Englishman’s demeanor, as he drew close.
Aidan pushed away from the wall, body vibrating. “What?”
“Brother,” Walsh said, gravely. “You have a problem.”
~*~
She was going to cry, and shereallydidn’t want to, which made her eyes sting all the more sharply. Sam sat at the kitchen table, the same table where her father had once sat her down, as a naïve thirteen-year-old, and explained men to her.
“Pick a good one,”he’d told her.“You’ll know him when he looks in your eyes. You can’t hide a false heart, Samantha. Never forget that.”
But love didn’t always differentiate false from true. And it hurt like hell.
It was starting to get dark, the light fading beyond the small square windows in the back door. Erin was upstairs doing her homework, after trudging away with obvious reluctance and concern. Sam wanted to savor this very human response in her sister, but she was too full of needles and ice, too breathless. Mom wasn’t home yet, so for the moment she was alone.
And then she heard the bike approaching.
Her tear ducts reacted straightaway and she clamped down on them hard, forcing her emotions to freeze.No, she thought.Don’t let him see you cry.
Four seconds after his engine shut off, his knock sounded at the back door. Frantic, desperate.
“Come in,” she called.
Aidan entered in a flurry of cold breeze, his eyes dark and wild, his hair mussed from his helmet.
