~*~
A little bit dumbfounded, Aidan was still sitting on the wall ten minutes later, plucking absently at his hair, when his dad came striding through in his typical broom handle-up-the-ass military strut.
He stopped, pivoted on one heel, and gave Aidan The Stare. Similar to Maggie’s Look, but less subtle. “You’re just sitting there?”
Aidan lurched to his feet, surprised to feel the shakiness in his knees. “Headed back.”
Another dose of Stare. “Chapel in ten,” Ghost said finally, and headed that way without waiting.
Just as well. He had no intention of walking alongside the man.
Aidan met his brothers coming out of the bike shop, Carter putting up the lunch sign and locking the door.
“Brother,” Mercy said, laying a heavy arm across his shoulders and feigning confidentiality, though his voice was loud. “What in the name of all that’s unholy are you doing with that poor Sam Walton girl?”
Carter said something under his breath that sounded like “choking her.”
“Nothing,” Aidan said.
“Nothingyet,” Mercy corrected. “But you’re trying to do something.Oui?”
“I don’t speak French, asshole.”
“Ah, but you speak Woman. And methinks you’re speaking the hell out of it to that girl.”
“ ‘Methinks’? Now what the hell language are you using? – You know what, whatever. I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“Sam went to school with us,” Tango said helpfully.
Still holding Aidan in what was fast becoming a headlock, Mercy spoke over top of him. “Oh yeah, that’s what Ava said.” To Aidan: “Trying to rekindle something? Did you bang her in high school?”
“What? No.” He tried to shrug the massive arm off his shoulders, but it held fast.
“Sam was sort of a bookworm, sit-in-the-front-row kind of girl,” Tango said.
“So she was too good for our boy here, is what you’re saying.”
“Yep,” Tango said with a grin.
They had reached the central office in their trek to the clubhouse, and Aidan ducked out of Mercy’s grasp with a decisive shove. “Fuck y’all. I’ll catch up in a sec.” Ignoring Merc’s hearty suggestions that he was a spoilsport, among other things, he left them behind and went into the office.
Maggie darted him a glance as he entered, then refocused on the computer. “Hi, baby,” she said, half-distracted.
Baby. She’d called him that from the beginning, when he’d been nothing to her but the snot-nosed kid of the man she was dating. He could remember her so vividly then, blonde hair flying in the window, with her red lipstick and Ghost’s jacket draped across her shoulders. She’d looked like a harpy at first sight. But her smile had been warm, and she’d pulled him into a hug, and called him baby. She’d never treated him as anything less than her own.
And he’d insulted her.
“Mags.”
Something in his voice snared her full attention, and she pulled back from the keyboard, eyes coming to his face. “What’s the matter?”
More of her warmth and concern, which he didn’t deserve.
“The other morning,” he said, and found that it was hard to hold her gaze, wanting to squirm with shame. “At the house, the things I said…”
Her lips pursed in understanding, and she nodded. “Don’t worry about it.”
“No. Don’t gimme an out.” He thought she almost smiled. “It was wrong what I said about you. It was shitty. Mags, whatever I think about Dad, it’s got nothing to do with what I think about you.”
