If that wasn’t abrasive, I didn’t know what was.
His features didn’t change even a little bit as he replied to the voice on the other end, “I’m fine. I’m sure Colin told you I was fine when you talked to him.”
Who was Colin?
“Look,” he basically growled after a moment, making me lean toward the glass panel separating the deck from the living area like that would get me closer to the action going on inside. “If I had wanted to see you while I was home, I would have. Sorry.”
I’d already known Aaron had sarcasm down stat, but he’d never sounded more insincere ever. Who was he talking to? Who would have the home’s phone number anyway?
“I’m at the beach house—”
The beach house. Not a beach house. Wait a second….
“—I need to go. If you want to talk, call Colin or Paige—”
I knew that name. Paige was his sister’s name. Was Colin his older brother? It had to be. So who—
“I’m going now. Bye,” he ended the call abruptly, still talking and sounding like a totally different person from the warm man I’d gotten to know.
He stood there. All long and lean, his body strung completely tight. It wasn’t until his head drooped forward and his hands went up to lace behind his head that I turned around, my heart beating quickly.
I tried to process everything. A phone call. Aaron’s entire personality changing like Jekyll and Hyde. Him mentioning his sister and who I could only imagine was his brother. The beach house.
He’d never once mentioned renting the house, had he?
He’d brought up several times having a decent relationship with his dad, so there was no way that could have been him on the phone, but… had it been the woman he’d repeatedly called his “birth mom” who had “left?”
My mind was running a mile a minute as I tried to think. Think, think, think.
A brief memory of the T-shirt he’d worn the first morning flicked through my thoughts. Hall Auto. He’d never mentioned what his dad did exactly, only that he had employees and that his brother and sister worked for him.
I knew it was none of my business, but the need to know lingered in my brain as my stomach turned at the not-lie but not-truth Aaron might have been hiding from me. Maybe not hiding exactly, but he hadn’t been forthcoming either. With a glance into the house one more time to find Aaron in the same position he’d been, I brought my phone up to my face and launched the browser, quickly typing in “Hall Auto” and “Shreveport” into the search.
It didn’t take more than two seconds for five different results to fill the screen. Five different results for five different auto dealerships in the state of Louisiana, all called some variation of HALL AUTO. This lump formed in my chest, and even though I knew I didn’t deserve to feel like he’d lied to me, I couldn’t help it. It took about a minute of searching before I found an “About Us” section on one of the dealership’s websites. Keywords like “family owned business since 1954” and “family values” caught my eye. But it was the three pictures at the bottom that made me not move.
One was an old picture that had to have been taken in the 50s with a gentleman and a woman beside a car that would have been vintage today. That one was no big deal.
The second image was a recent one of a man in his late fifties standing beside a white car.
The third was a clearly dated picture of a man standing in between two males and a younger girl. The older man was obviously the one who had been standing solo in the first photograph, but it was the male beside him was almost a mirror image of Aaron just a little younger than what he was now. Standing a few inches away was the younger girl, not touching the man. And on the far end was a face I knew well. A face much younger than the one I’d been seeing constantly.
It was a seventeen maybe eighteen-year-old Aaron standing there besides who I was sure had to be his brother.
If the physical proof hadn’t been enough, Aaron had told me his dad always owned white cars.
His dad owned car dealerships. Not just one or two, or the little, used car ones on the side of the freeway or took up space on corners of streets in certain neighborhoods. They were huge dealerships. And his dad—granddad, family, whatever—owned them.
Hadn’t he told me he didn’t want to join the family business and everyone thought he was dumb? Hadn’t he said his dad would have supported him financially if he’d needed something? Hadn’t he specifically told me he was fine on money? Always so vague.
Why hadn’t he just… told me? Did he think I was a gold digger?
The answer to that question came to me immediately, making me feel foolish. No, he wouldn’t think that. He had to have his reasons for not being up front with me about his family’s businesses. He had to. I knew that.
The greatest question remained: who had he been on the phone with? Did his dad own the beach house? I knew I could find out at least the second question, but going behind his back felt sleazy.
I needed to trust him. I needed to not take his silence personally. I needed— “Sorry about that,” Aaron said, stepping onto the porch with an expression that seemed a little too forced. He cleared his throat as he sat down and gave me a smile I knew he wasn’t feeling. “What do you think about going fishing again?”
“Goodnight,” Brittany and Des called out as they made their way toward the stairs.
Everyone else had already gone to bed, or at least headed to their rooms.
Aaron, who had been seated on the love seat while we’d been watching a DVD of The Mummy that he’d “found” in a binder full of other movies, sat up in his seat and looked over in my direction, his expression carefully blank, just like it had been the entire afternoon and evening since we’d gotten back from fishing. He’d been trying his best to act normal, sweet, like usual while we’d been out in the surf, but I could tell something was on his mind. I just didn’t know what exactly. “You tired?”
We hadn’t talked much while we’d been fishing, with Des coming along. I’d gone to the beach with Mindy and Brittany once we got back when Aaron had claimed he needed a nap and had stayed at the house. By the time we made it back after two hours of lying under the umbrella, we had found all three of the guys passed out throughout the house. Aaron on one recliner, Max on the big couch, and Des had apparently been sleeping in his room from what Brittany had said. I’d helped her make dinner, and by the time we were done, everyone had woken up.
It wasn’t too much of a stretch to say that I had tried to give him his space when I could still tell there was something going on with him that he didn’t want to share. I’d spent the last few hours, especially during the movie, reminding myself that he’d invited me to spend time with me. Because he cared about me. Not for me to act like a heartbroken twat who ignored him and got her feelings hurt for no reason.
You would figure I’d know by that point how complicated life could be, but apparently I didn’t.
So his dad—his family—was rich and he hadn’t said a word about it. So what?
So there was someone calling the house who made him mad enough for his entire demeanor to change and he didn’t want to talk about it. So what?
I shook my head, trying to keep the expression on my face a clear, easygoing one that didn’t have you break my heart by keeping things from me written all over it. It wasn’t like I hadn’t known that coming here. “I’m not tired, are you?”
“No,” he answered, rubbing his hands over his khaki shorts.
I watched him, that beautiful face, the resigned-looking language printed all over his body, and honestly, it made me ache. What could I do?
“Want to take a walk on the beach?” I asked him before I thought it through.