Ghost leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, poker face secured, gaze unreadable. “I guess we shoulda expected it earlier, if we’re honest. All you worry about is partying and fucking.”
“Kenneth,” Maggie said, “we arenothere to beat him up.”
“What are we supposed to do, then? Congratulate him? Congrats, Aidan,” he said, coldly, “for not listening to a damn thing I’ve ever tried to tell you.”
Maggie started to reprimand her husband again–
And Aidan took an aggressive step toward the table, years’ worth of anger and frustration boiling in his gut, fueling the venom in the back of his throat. “You’re unbelievable. This ismymistake,myproblem, and you’re worried about…what? That I didn’t listen to you? That this makesyoulook bad or something?”
“Aidan,” Mercy said.
But Ghost just stared.
“You don’t give a damn about what this means to me. You worry about your son looking like a fuckup loser, isn’t that right? You worry about you looking like you couldn’t teach me anything.”
Maggie made a distressed sound.
Mercy stood. “Guys, let’s take a breath, and talk this out.”
“So he can insult me some more?” Aidan asked. “I know that’s his favorite pastime.”
A muscle in Ghost’s jaw ticked. “How did you think this was gonna go?”
“Exactly like this.”
“You’re thirty-two, damn it, when thehellare you gonna grow up?”
“Grow up and be like you?” Aidan bit back. His throat ached, and his chest constricted, and he hated what he was saying…almost as much as he hated having to say it. “All I need to do now is go on a bender, ignore my kid, and knock a teenager up, and I’ll be right on schedule.”
“Oh shit,” Ava murmured.
“My dad the role model,” Aidan sneered. “Popping high school girls’ cherries and dumping his kid on them. What a guy.”
Ghost started to lunge up from his chair, and Mercy caught him by the arm, pinning him down as if he were a child, seemingly without effort.
“That’s enough!” Maggie snapped, tucking Cal into her chest as he started to cry. “Stop it right now before either of you says something else you can’t take back.” When she turned to Aidan, her eyes were shiny, and it hit him then, like a punch: the cracks about teenagers were more hurtful to her than anyone.
He was an asshole.
“You are not,” Maggie continued, “two idiots at a bar somewhere. You’re family. You’re father and son. And family doesn’t let family face challenges alone.” She looked at her husband, cradling the baby close. “Understand? This isn’t about ego, or undoing what’s already done. We need to be supportive of Aidan. All of us.”
In a quiet voice, Mercy said, “We’ve all done things without thinking them through first. All of us, even if we’d like to think we’re smarter than that.”
Cal’s wail became a high banshee shriek, and Ava reached for him. “Way to go, Dad,” she said as she stood, hand cradling the back of Cal’s head.
Aidan had no idea what to say…
So he left.
~*~
The very first time Sam ever laid eyes on Aidan Teague, she was fourteen, and he knocked the breath right out of her. He’d been slouched up against a wall in the cafeteria, honing what would become his trademark aura of mischief and insolence, and she’d known fourteen-year-old boys shouldn’t have looked like that. Shouldn’t have stirred unspeakable longings in virgin freshman girls.
That impression of him had stayed with her, had held him captive in her fascination longer than any man she’d met as an adult – girlhood had a way of sharpening fascination to something dark and deadly.
Normally, nothing about that mental image intruded upon her daily life at work.
“So how would you characterize Prince Hal at this stage of the play?” she asked her eleven a.m. Shakespeare class.
