Текст книги "The Wall of Winnipeg and Me"

Автор книги: Mariana Zapata

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 31 страниц)

“I play games for a living, Van.”

I couldn’t stand him sometimes. My eyes crossed in annoyance. “When is my birthday?”

He stared at me.

“See?”

“March third, Muffin.”

What in the hell?

“See?” he mocked me.

Who was this man and where was the Aiden I knew?

“How old am I?” I kept going hesitantly.

“Twenty-six.”

“How do you know this?” I asked him slowly.

“I pay attention,” The Wall of Winnipeg stated.

I was starting to think he was right.

Then, as if to really seal the deal I didn’t know was resting between us, he said, “You like waffles, root beer, and Dr. Pepper. You only drink light beer. You put cinnamon in your coffee. You eat too much cheese. Your left knee always aches. You have three sisters I hope I never meet and one brother. You were born in El Paso. You’re obsessed with your work. You start picking at the corner of your eye when you feel uncomfortable or fool around with your glasses. You can’t see things up close, and you’re terrified of the dark.” He raised those thick eyebrows. “Anything else?”

Yeah, I only managed to say one word. “No.” How did he know all this stuff? How? Unsure of how I was feeling, I coughed and started to reach up to mess with my glasses before I realized what I was doing and snuck my hand under my thigh, ignoring the knowing look on Aiden’s dumb face. “I know a lot about you too. Don’t think you’re cool or special.”

“I know, Van.” His thumb massaged me again for all of about three seconds. “You know more about me than anyone else does.”

A sudden memory of the night in my bed where he’d admitted his fear as a kid pecked at my brain, relaxing me, making me smile. “I really do, don’t I?”

The expression on his face was like he was torn between being okay with the idea and being completely against it.

Leaning in close to him again, I winked. “I’m taking your love of MILF porn to the grave with me, don’t worry.”

He stared at me, unblinking, unflinching. And then: “I’ll cut the power at the house when you’re in the shower,” he said so evenly, so crisply, it took me a second to realize he was threatening me…

And when it finally did hit me, I burst out laughing, smacking his inner thigh without thinking twice about it. “Who does that?”

Aiden Graves, husband of mine, said it, “Me.”

Then the words were out of my mouth before I could control them. “And you know what I’ll do? I’ll go sneak into bed with you, so ha.”

What the hell had I just said? What in the ever-loving hell had I just said?

“If you think I’m supposed to be scared…” He leaned forward so our faces were only a couple of inches away. The hand on my neck and the finger pads lining the back of my ear stayed where they were. “I’m not.”

As if the peck he’d given me hadn’t done enough damage, the way he said that sent my heart pounding again. My chest flushing hot. Everything I thought I knew seemed to spiral out of control.

He was messing with me. Flirting with me. Aiden Graves. What was this?

It didn’t help that, before I managed to get my heart back in shape or get my head on straight, my phone started vibrating. When I saw the incoming message as a picture from Diana, I didn’t think much of it.

But when I unlocked the screen and saw the picture, it only sent me reeling all over again.

She had attached a shot of her television. On the screen was a picture of Aiden and me sitting in the stands just minutes before, his face so close to mine, his arm around my back. It looked… well, I didn’t know what exactly it looked like, but Aiden and I were laughing. I could see what it didn’t look like.

It didn’t look like this thing between us was fake.

But then it got me thinking. Had Aiden just been extra friendly and flirty because he suspected this would happen?

“Look, he’s right there.” I smacked Aiden with the back of my hand before pointing at the brown-haired booger standing just outside surrounded by teammates and other people not affiliated with the university. “Oscar!”

My brother didn’t turn around.

“Oscar Meyer Weiner!” I yelled again.

That had him swinging his head around with a big grin on his face. Raising one hand, I waved and tugged on Aiden’s hand briefly with the other, urging him forward. After away games, he usually didn’t have much time to hang around, so I wanted to take advantage of the few minutes we had together.

As we walked closer, I spotted my brother cutting a path through the crowd, only to stop abruptly for a second and look back and forth between Aiden and me, before he continued walking toward us. Behind Oscar, more than a few of the crowd were looking in our direction too.

My brother was smiling, but his gaze kept trailing to Aiden in confusion. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” he demanded as I took a step forward and let my brother give me a big hug, pulling me up off my feet. He’d been taller than me for nearly the last ten years and never let me forget it.

“I texted you on the way here, but I figured your phone was off when you didn’t write me back,” I said as he lowered me. I grinned at him, putting my hands on each side of his face to squish his cheeks together. We weren’t super close anymore, but I loved the hell out of him. He’d been the only one in my family to never disappoint me.

He stuck his tongue out and tried to lick my hand.

I gave his cheek a pinch before I dropped my hands and took a step back so that my shoulder brushed the side of Aiden’s arm. “Oscar, Aiden. Aiden, Oscar.”

It was Aiden who extended his hand first.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Oscar said, his tone a little surprised as he shook Aiden’s hand.

“Same.” The big guy pulled back. “You played a good game.”

I eyed him a little out of the corner of my eye. Had he just paid him a compliment?

My brother’s face turned a little pink as he nodded. The big idiot was like a younger version of me—words weren’t our strength in life. “Oh, ah, thanks. Everybody’s been talking about how you were at our game,” he stammered before his gaze swung over to me as his face kept that nice rosy shade. “I didn’t think you’d be here together.”

I shrugged, not knowing how to respond. “How was your Thanksgiving?”

Oscar shot me that face that said it meant about as much to him as it meant to me. “We had practice, most of us went to the coach’s house for dinner. You?”

“I worked and then went to his game afterward.” I elbowed Aiden’s forearm.

“Hey…” His eyes darted behind me for a second; an uncomfortable look crawled over his long face. Oscar blew out a long, shaky breath. “Damn it, Vanny. I’m sorry, okay? You caught me off guard and I forgot…”

I didn’t like where this was going. We never apologized to each other. If anything, Oscar and I had always understood what we needed to do to survive. He’d given me his blessing to go to school far away from him, and I never gave him shit for going weeks between contacting me.

But I had this terrible feeling…

“Susie is here. At least, she said she was going to be here.”

Motherfucker. Motherfucking fucker. My teeth clenched down, one row aligned on top of the other, and I had to will my face from reacting. It took nearly everything in me to play off the anger filling me up. Of all the times to come see Oscar, Susie had to come now? Since when had she given a shit about him? While they’d always been nicer to him than they’d been to me, none of my sisters had ever really paid that much attention to him.

“I came to see you. It’s fine,” I lied. It wasn’t fine. I didn’t want to see my sister, and I didn’t want him to feel bad either. As if I wasn’t about three seconds away from screaming, I asked, “Are you heading back to Shreveport now?”

He nodded, the discomfort brutally apparent on his face. I guess he did know me well enough to not be fooled. “Yeah.” Oscar stopped talking, his eyes going pained in a way that said ‘I’m so sorry’ and raised his hand up to wave at someone behind me. “Vanny, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. If I knew you were coming, I would have told her…”

Not to come? I could be a better person for Oscar. “Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to make you choose between us.” That had him making a croaking noise that I waved off. “Don’t be dumb. Give me a hug.”

The clean, young lines of his face twisted and strained, but he nodded and quickly wrapped his arms around me. He whispered into my ear, “We have a game against San Antonio in a couple weeks. Come please. Both of you.”

I pulled back and nodded a little more tightly than I would have liked. I really didn’t want to make him feel bad, but just knowing Susie was in my general vicinity made me go to ten. Having Susie around when I’d driven an hour to come see Oscar pissed me off that much more. “I will. I’m not sure about the Hulk here with his schedule, but I’ll go.” I smiled at him. “I’ll see you soon then. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Vanny.” Teeth locked, he glanced at Aiden and extended his hand again. “It was nice meeting you. Good luck the rest of your season.”

The big guy nodded and shook his hand. “Thanks. You too.”

I sensed the evil almost immediately. I spotted my sister and her idiot husband within seconds of turning around. It was like my body was tuned in to know where she was at; it always had been. It was a protective instinct, it had to be.

Apparently, she found me in the crowd immediately too. She was glowering, her mouth twisting as her gaze bounced from me to Aiden and back again. Almost four inches shorter than me and only two years older, Susie looked so much older than her actual age, but that was the consequences of drugs, heavy drinking, and just being a miserable bitch in general. Unhappiness prematurely aged a person, my foster mom had told me once. She was right.

But I still couldn’t summon up any sympathy for my older sister. I believed in choices. We’d grown up in the same environment, went to the same schools, and had about the same intelligence, I figured. She’d always been a ruthless, angry, mean person, but at thirteen, she’d started doing stupid crap that led to more stupid crap and more stupid crap and more stupid crap until she was buried under so much crap, she could never find her way out of it.

You couldn’t expect anyone to take care of you better than you could take care of you.

Summoning up every inch of adult in me, I told myself not to be petty. I wouldn’t be petty no matter how much I wanted to. So I forced out a “Hi, Susie. Hi, Ricky,” at both her and her crackhead significant other, the same one who had given me a bruise and had gotten damn near kicked in the balls for it.

Just as suddenly as the thought entered my head, the big body next to me suddenly froze in place. I didn’t need to look at him to know his entire frame went rigid; I could feel it. Feel him. “Is that him?” he asked in a low voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

“Who?” I was dumb enough to ask.

“The guy who gave you the bruise on your arm.”

The ‘oh shit’ on my face must have been enough for him, because the instant I thought the answer—the ‘yes it’s that bastard’—a muscle in Aiden’s cheek popped. And he was gone. Those long legs ate up the few feet of concrete between us and Susie. Before I could say a word, stop him, tell him that guy wasn’t worth the energy it took Aiden to get riled up, The Wall of Winnipeg had walked directly into my sister’s husband’s path, effectively stopping the five-foot-ten-ish man in place. Considering he was never close enough to most human beings to really illustrate how large he really was, in that moment, with the two of them mere feet apart from each other, the difference was striking. Aiden dwarfed him in every way.

But it wasn’t the obvious size difference that shocked me. It was the way Aiden, a professional athlete at the peak of his career, was reacting. I had never seen him so still. He was breathing out of his nose like a goddamn dragon. His biceps were so bunched and strained, I could tell from even under his hoodie, and he had the single cockiest expression on his face that I had ever seen, and that was saying something because I thought I’d witnessed the most annoying of all his expressions. But the one he had on right then, put all the rest to shame.

Aiden was pissed. Pissed. The king of control looked like he wanted to rip apart my sister’s boyfriend/husband/whatever the hell he was.

And it was what he said next that tore me in half.

The Wall of Winnipeg stared down at the much smaller man, and in a voice that was as close to a cool, unattached statement as possible, he said, “Touch my wife again, and I’ll break every bone in your goddamn body.”

My wife. Not Vanessa. He’d gone with my wife.

He’d cussed. For me. For my honor. He’d said the ‘G’ word and it was just about the most romantic thing I’d ever heard in my life because Aiden didn’t do that.

Then he steered that acid-like gaze to my sister, who suddenly looked more uncomfortable than anyone in the world had ever been. He didn’t say a word, but I could feel the disgust. I could feel words bouncing around in his head, shaping his tongue. I was sure Susie could sense them, too.

It was right then, in that instant, that I realized I might be a little in love with Aiden. Not in a way that was anything like the easy crush I had on him in the past, but different. So, so different.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Seriously? I asked myself. Are you fucking serious, Vanessa?

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was the garage door opening and closing at noon the following Monday that had me saving my work.

Neither one of the guys should have been home that early.

Zac had just gotten back from south Texas the night before, and he typically hadn’t been getting back from training until three or four. On Mondays, Aiden didn’t get home earlier than three. It was the shortest day for him out of the week, and after having the weekend off following their Thanksgiving Day game, there was no way he’d get home earlier. Mondays usually just consisted of a visit with the trainers, a workout, lunch, and a couple of different meetings that included watching the last game’s film.

So who the hell was home, and why?

I got up and called out, “Who’s home?” When there wasn’t a response, I jogged down the steps to make my way toward the kitchen and paused when I spotted Aiden drinking a glass of water. “What the hell happened to your face?” I just about shouted the second I caught sight of the red and purple along his jaw.

He set the glass of water down on the countertop and gave me a flat look. “I’m fine.”

He was so full of shit. I made my way around the island anyway. “I didn’t ask if you were fine. What the hell happened?”

He didn’t reply as he stuck his hands under the sink’s fountain sensor and splashed water on his face. What the hell did he do? Aiden rarely got into fights. Hell, he’d told me why they were so few and far between, and I’d never heard a better reason for it. He didn’t have an explosive temper; he usually just bumbled around at being irritated all day.

As he dried his face, I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer, wincing when he set the towel aside, giving me an up close look at the bruises that were going to take up a good portion of his face in a few hours.

Did I realize he was trying to avoid talking about whatever happened? Of course. I just didn’t care.

Handing over the ice pack the instant he’d thrown away the paper towels, I took a step back and took in his features again in disbelief. “Did you get jumped?”

“What?” His gaze swung over to me as he frowned just a little bit. He was insulted. He was genuinely insulted. “No,” he snapped, not in a mean way.

“Are you sure?” I asked hesitantly. Sure, he was huge, and sure, in raw strength, he definitely had 99 percent of other men beat, but if there were multiple larger-than-average guys trying to beat him up, it could happen. Right? Just thinking about that possibility suddenly pissed me right off.

Pressing the ice pack against the line of his jaw, he shook his head just the tiniest bit, his eyes doing this dismissive flutter. “I didn’t get jumped.”

His assurance wasn’t doing it for me, damn it, and I was getting angrier by the second. I touched his arm. “Tell me what happened, Aiden.”

“Nothing.”

Nothing. The right side of my mouth went tight. “You beat yourself up then?”

That scoff said more than the word “No” did.

“Then…” I trailed off, not giving this up.

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I’d already known that from the beginning. But as stubborn as he was, I was too. And I wasn’t going to let it go because this right here, the clear signs of him getting into a fight with someone on his team was a sign of the apocalypse. Aiden didn’t give enough of a shit about his teammates to care what they said about him or to him.

He’d said it at the game, there were only a few people he’d ever met whose opinions mattered to him. And I knew that wasn’t something he said for the heck of it. He meant it.

I’d been trying my best since Friday not to think about the basketball game we’d gone to. Or at least, I’d attempted not to think about what he’d said to my sister’s husband or how he’d looked at Susie like he wanted to kill her. The memory of him grabbing my hand and walking with me to the car in silence as anger marred that handsome face, had drilled a hole straight into my heart. Then, as we’d sat in my car, he’d said, “I’m sorry I didn’t go with you.”

All I’d managed to do was sit there and frown. “To where? El Paso?” His response had been a nod. “It’s fine, big guy. It’s all water under the bridge now.” I couldn’t help but reach over and put my hand over the top of his. “That was nice of you to stand up for me, by the way.”

Well, I thought it had been more than nice, but the realization of what I thought I felt was something I never wanted to voice.

Then Aiden had gone and done it as he faced forward out of the windshield, teeth gritted, jaw tight. “I’ve let you down too many times. I won’t do it again.”

Just like that, this feeling of dread poured through my stomach, making me antsy. He’d spent the rest of the weekend more remote than normal. While he hadn’t become outgoing since we’d begun getting along a lot better, Aiden had retreated into himself a little more. He’d worked out and finished and started another puzzle, which was his telltale sign that he was trying to work something out in his head or relax.

It all suddenly made me nervous, and a little, tiny, baby bit worried. Pulling one of the stools at the island back, I plopped into it and simply stared at that discolored, harsh face in unease. “I just want to know whether I need to steal a bat or make a phone call.”

His mouth had been open and poised to argue with me… until he heard the last thing I said. “What?”

“I need to know—”

“What do you need to steal a bat for?”

“Well, no one I know owns one, and I can’t go buy one at the store and have it caught on videotape.”

“Videotape?”

Did he know nothing?

“Aiden, come on, if you beat the shit out of someone with a bat, they’re going to look for suspects. Once they have suspects, they’ll look through their things or their purchases. They’ll see I bought one recently and know it was premeditated. Why are you looking at me like that?”

His mauve-colored eyelids went heavy over the bright whites of his eyes, and the expression on his face was filled such a vast range of emotions, one after another after another, that I wasn’t sure which one I was supposed to hold on to. He switched the icepack to the other side of his bruised jaw and shook his head. “The amount you know about committing crimes is terrifying, Van.” His mouth twitched under the rainbow of whatever he was thinking. “It scares the hell out of me, and I don’t get scared easily.”

I snorted, pretty pleased with myself. “Calm down. I went through this phase when I was into watching a lot of crime TV shows. I’ve never even stolen a pen in my life.”

Aiden’s careful expression didn’t go anywhere.

“I’m not trying to kill anyone… unless we had to,” I joked weakly.

His nostrils flared so slightly I almost missed it. But what I didn’t miss was the way the corners of his mouth tipped up into a tiny smile.

I smiled at him as innocently as possible. “So do you want to tell me who’s going to get the fists of fury?” I hoped I sounded as harmless as I intended, even though I felt the exact opposite as every second passed.

“Fists of fury?”

“Yep.” I held up my hands just a little so he could see them. He had no idea the number of fights I’d gotten into with my sisters over the years. I didn’t always win—I rarely won if I was going to be honest—but I never gave up.

The sigh that came out of him was so long and drawn out, I kind of prepped myself for the half-assed answer that was going to come out of his mouth.

“It’s nothing.” There it was. “Delgado—”

The brakes in my head came to a screeching halt. “You got into it with Christian?”

He glanced at me through those incredibly long eyelashes, moving the ice pack a little lower on his jaw. “Yes.”

That dreaded feeling in my stomach got worse. “Why?” I hopefully asked as calmly as I could, but I was pretty sure it came out relatively strangled.

Please, please, please. Don’t let it be why I think it might be. Christian had been a creep on Thanksgiving, but it wasn’t like he’d made grabby hands at me.

Aiden’s face said it all. His mouth opened slightly and the tip of his tongue touched the corner of it. That brief silence was cold. “You could have told me,” he accused.

I gulped. “Told you what?”

His gaze was through the thick row of his eyelashes, and I caught his hand flexing over the icepack. “What he did to you. How he acts around you.”

Zac. I was going to wring his neck. “I’ll tell you what I told Zac: it isn’t a big deal.”

The big guy went stone-cold still. A muscle in his jaw popped and a vein in his neck throbbed.

“It is a big deal, Vanessa. Zac mentioned it to me right before he left, but I thought if it was a big deal, you would have said or done something about it. You didn’t.” He leveled that dark, angry gaze at me, his jaw tightening. “I saw the way he looked at you after the game. I heard the way he talked to you while I was right there. He knows we’re married, and he still did that shit.”

Did he just cuss for the second time in a week?

“I am not okay with that,” he claimed in that incredibly deep voice, his spine straight and shoulders back. “I’m not fine with you always thinking you have to deal with things on your own.”

Remorse filled me, but only for a second. I straightened my own back and glared right back at him. “You didn’t have to get into a fight with him over it, Aiden. I don’t want that guilt on my head. The last thing I want is for you to get angry with yourself later.”

Plus, what would I have done back then? Told Aiden his teammate had tried coming on to me? He wouldn’t have done anything. I knew that. The Aiden from a few months ago knew that, too.

“I did have to, and I would do it again.”

I blinked. Then I blinked a little more, having to look up at the ceiling so that I could collect my words. A touch at the side of my jaw had me tipping my head back to look into those deep brown eyes.

Everything about him was serious and intent. “I know you think I wouldn’t care,” he said in that whisper voice that bled solemnness, “but I would. I do. We’re in this together.”

My mouth suddenly dry, I nodded. “Yes.”

“Trust me, Van. Tell me. I won’t let you down.”

Yeah, my throat and tongue thought they were the Sahara. My eyes on the other hand wanted to be the Amazon. I didn’t even realize I needed to sniffle until I did it. As much as I’d been telling myself over the last two days that I’d imagined being a wee bit in love with him, my heart held on to the truth. I was. I hated it, but I was. I recognized it, sensing that stir in my chest. I was falling, if not more than a little, in love with Aiden. My husband of convenience.

And it was terrible. I had no right. No business to do so. This was an agreement between two people who barely spoke to each other. How could I do this for the next five years? What the hell was I going to do with it?

I had no idea.

“You believe me, don’t you?” he asked, tearing me out of my thoughts.

I made myself focus on the face that was as familiar to me as the rest of my loved ones’ were; that tight mouth, the hard lines of his cheekbones, the thick slashes of his eyebrows. Control and discipline in flesh and bone.

I nodded, forcing myself to give him my best easygoing, total-liar smile. “I do. Of course I do.” I touched his forearm. “Thank you again for standing up for me.”

He grumbled, “Stop it.”

I smiled a little more genuinely. “I have this cream for bruises, let me go grab it.”

Aiden jerked his head back like I was about to try to shove a hot dog in his mouth. “You know I don’t care about bruises.”

“Too bad. I do. He can be black and purple tomorrow—and I freaking hope he is—but I’d rather you didn’t.” I winced at the small crack in his lip. “What did he have to do? Take a running start to reach your face?”

Aiden burst out laughing, not even grimacing as his cut split wide.

“Seriously, Aiden.” I reached up to touch his bruised jaw gently with my fingertips. “Did he sucker punch you?”

The big guy shook his head.

“He actually managed to get a fair shot in?” I wasn’t going to lie. I was a little disappointed. Aiden getting punched was almost like finding out Santa Claus wasn’t real. He’d gotten into a handful fights in his career before—I’d seen footage of it online when I shared it on his fan page because people were vicious and loved that kind of thing—and while he wasn’t this hotheaded asshole who liked to get into it for no reason, each time it happened, he beat the shit out of whoever tried to start something with him.

It was impressive. What could I say?

Then he gave me that dumb look that drove me nuts and I frowned. “No. I made sure he hit me first, and I let him do it twice before I hit him back,” he explained.

This sneaky son of a bitch. I didn’t think I’d ever been so attracted to him before, and that included all the times I’d seen him in compression shorts. “So he’d get blamed for it?”

One corner of his mouth pulled back in a smug half-smile.

“Are you going to get into big trouble?”

He raised a big shoulder. “They might just dock my game check. They won’t sit me out. We’re too deep into the season.”

That had me choking. “A game check?” That was thousands. Hundreds of thousands. A stupid amount of money. Everyone in the world could look up his annual salary online. All that money was split up into seventeen total payments deposited throughout the regular season. All that money. I had to bend over and slap my hands against my knees, already on the verge of gagging. “I’m going to throw up.”

The sigh he let out went in one of my ears and out the other. “Stop. You’re not going to throw up. Let me shower, and then I’ll put that cream on,” he said, patting me on the back lightly.

He was wrong. I was going to throw up. How the hell had he just upped and thrown away that much money? And for what? All because Christian was an idiot who thought common rules of society didn’t apply to him?

I knew Aiden. I knew he had the self-control of a saint. He thought his decisions through. He didn’t even enjoy beating someone up, or something like that. He had thought enough about what he was going to do, to know that he wanted Christian to get the first punch in. I wasn’t going to think he hadn’t taken the repercussions of getting into a fight into consideration.

And he’d done it for me.

What a fucking idiot. He could have just given me the money and that would have been enough to make me forgot about that weasel trying to shove his tongue down my throat while attempting to grab my butt over a year ago.

But as much as I thought of how dumb it was to lose a game check, this burst of something special and warm filled my heart before quickly being replaced by guilt.

I ran upstairs, grabbed the stinky bruise salve that worked like a miracle, and headed back down, knowing what I needed to do to help ease the responsibility I felt for what happened. I grabbed a few things out of the freezer and the pantry and turned on the oven to make a quick meal for my off-white knight in shining armor.

When he came down the stairs a little later, the quinoa had just finished cooking and I’d turned off the stove.

“Smells good,” he commented, going around to grab a glass from the cabinet and filling it up with water. “What are you making?”

“Chana masala,” I told him, knowing he’d be well aware of what it was.

I wasn’t surprised when he made a hungry noise as he leaned a hip against the counter and watched as I lined one of the big mixing bowls I used to always put his meals in with bagged spinach. I peeped at him out of the corner of my eye and took in the coloring along the solid lines of his face.

It pissed me off.

“What’s that face for?” the man I’d once assumed didn’t know much about me asked as I measured two cups of the grain and dumped it into the bowl.

Shrugging a shoulder, I put three cups of the chickpea mixture over everything. “Your face is making me mad.”

He snickered and I groaned, realizing just how that came out. “I didn’t mean it like that. You have a fine face. Very good-looking.” Shut up, stupid. Just shut the hell up. “It’s your bruises. I feel bad. I should have done something about it when it happened instead of making you deal with it.”

Passing the giant bowl over, he held it between us, catching my eyes. His face was pensive and as open as it got, but what I realized was there wasn’t a trace of residual anger left on him. He really wasn’t bothered by what happened, not at all. “Don’t worry about it. I did what I wanted to do.”

He always did what he wanted to do. What was new? “Yeah, but it happened a long time ago.”

“And that makes me feel even more responsible, Van.”

I frowned. “For what?”

“For everything. For not noticing. For not caring. For not making you feel like you could tell me things.” His voice was hoarse and just a little ragged.

My heart hurt.

I really hurt in that split second following his admission.