He made this face that irritatingly said, ‘I told you so.’
Who the hell was this human being? He looked like Aiden. He smelled like Aiden. He sounded like Aiden, but he wasn’t the same Aiden I knew. This was the Aiden who had sought me out in Vegas and told me to shut up when I was teasing him. Okay. I swallowed and nodded, accepting that this was what I’d wanted from him. And I’d finally gotten it.
I liked this version more, even though he seemed like a completely different person. Messing with the leg of my glasses, I sniffed and floundered around for the other thing bouncing around in my head. “Why did you call me your wife in there?” My voice sounded all weird.
That heavy-lidded, smart-ass gaze was as cool as a damn cucumber. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I thought we were going to keep this under wraps for as long as possible.” And he could have at least warned me he was going to do it so I could have mentally prepared.
The Wall of Winnipeg didn’t look remotely apologetic. “You are my wife, and I don’t have patience for flirts,” he said in that calm, detached voice that made me want to club him. “You’re not my assistant. Did you want me to deny it?”
“I just…” My nostrils flared on their own. Did I want him to? I wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t like he’d called me his bitch or anything. “It’s fine that you did it. You caught me off guard, that’s all.”
Stretching that long body out in his seat, Aiden didn’t add anything else. I sat there for a moment thinking about what he’d done and thinking about this unconventional fake marriage we had and this new, oddly shaped, blossoming friendship. And it was when I was thinking about those things that I remembered what Aiden had said to me in Vegas. How we’d made promises to each other and how he was going—in his own strange way—to keep up with them.
With my hands wrapped around the steering wheel, I looked at him over my shoulder and asked outright, with a choppy exhale, “What’s it going to be? Crutches or a cane?”
He went with nothing.
“Crutches or a cane, big guy,” I repeated.
Aiden shifted in his seat. “Give me a break.”
Give me a break. I had to count to five. Turning the ignition, I reminded myself that he’d called me what I was: his friend and, weirdly, his wife. He knew me. He’d missed the Vanessa I’d been back when things had been okay between us.
“I’ll find you a walker if you don’t make a choice by the time I get on the freeway,” I threatened, keeping my attention forward. “The faster you heal, the better. Don’t be a pain in the butt more than you need to be.”
He sighed. “Crutches.”
That was way too easy, and I wasn’t dumb enough to bring it up more than necessary so that he wouldn’t change his mind. I didn’t say anything else as I drove to the pharmacy and parked. Aiden stayed silent too when I hopped out of his SUV. In no time, I found crutches and bought a new bottle of over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pills.
The ride home was pretty quiet. I made sure not to watch as he slowly hobbled inside and made his way to the couch where the comforter I’d brought downstairs the night before was neatly folded, stacked under his pillow. Leaving the crutches I’d bought propped against the couch, I hesitated for a second by the stairs as I watched him settle in.
“I’ll be upstairs,” I said.
He nodded stiffly, palming the remote in one of his hands, his head turned toward me. “Thanks for taking me.”
“Yeah.” I shuffled my feet. “What are friends for?” I teased him in a small voice, unsure of how he’d react.
“For that, Van.”
The man I’d seen kind of, sort of, maybe smile a couple of times, had a tentative grin crack across his mouth. The expression on his face completely caught me off guard. For a man who never, ever physically reacted even when he won a game, his smile…
Heaven help me.
It was beautiful. There was no other word to describe it. It was like a double rainbow. Better than a double rainbow.
I felt stunned. Rooted in place forever.
His features didn’t necessarily soften, but the way his entire face seemed to lighten…
I touched my mouth to make sure it was closed and not wide open.
I couldn’t respond. I could only stand there nodding in place with something that was pretty close to a deranged smile making an appearance on my face.
“Holler if you need me. I, uh, have work to do.” Yeah, I tucked my imaginary tail in and ran upstairs.
Good lord. My heart pounded as I sat at the chair behind my desk, and I set my palm over it. What the hell was that? That smile was like a nuclear bomb he had within his reach. I mean, I knew Aiden was attractive, obviously, but when he smiled, there was nothing to prepare you for that weapon of mass destruction.
Hello, I had eyes. Even if I had become mostly desensitized to those muscles on top of carefully sculpted muscles, I knew they were there. I knew his face was handsome despite how unyielding it usually was.
I sucked in a breath and let it out, trying to clear my head. But it wasn’t as easy as it should have been. When I was looking for photographs of male models for an e-book cover, I thought about Aiden one or two times more than necessary.
Good grief, he needed to keep that thing in check.
Chapter Thirteen
A couple of weeks later, after Aiden had completely recovered from his sprain, I was in my room working on a paperback cover for one of my favorite clients when I heard the garage open and close, followed by the beeping of the alarm, and finalized by the loud slap of the door being slammed shut. Lowering the volume on my computer speakers, I sat there a minute.
I didn’t need to look at the culprit to confirm who it was. Aiden wasn’t the slamming-the-door-shut-out-of-anger type of person. He tended to stick to venting his grievances with words or on the field or gym, or more often than not, he went into his room and stayed there doing who knows what. I’d never figured out what he did in there for hours.
That was what alarmed me. It had to be Zac, and Zac was usually too laid back to react to anything like that… unless he had a reason to be really pissed.
I stayed in my room and faintly listened to the angry noises coming from the first floor: the cupboards being forcefully closed, the loud clatter of plates on the counter, and the “Goddammit!” that was shouted twice. It all wafted up the stairs and wrapped around me in my room. But I stayed where I was.
If Zac was angry, he needed space to cool off. At least that was the best way to deal with my sisters when they were pissed.
So I left him alone, despite wanting to know what happened.
Sometime later, stomps echoed their way up the stairs and down the hall.
And that was how I knew something was really wrong. Zac always told me hi. Then his bedroom door closed with a bang just down the hall from my room.
For one brief second, I thought about texting Aiden to ask if he knew what was going on, but if he didn’t text me back, it would just make me mad. So I waited instead.
* * *
Zac didn’t come out of his room the rest of the day.
I didn’t hear him in his room either, and that was when I started to worry.
The following afternoon, I made my way downstairs after he still hadn’t come out. I found Aiden in the kitchen, fiddling with the knobs for the stove while he held a pan in one hand. He briefly peeked at me over his shoulder before muttering a “Hello” that seemed almost natural.
“Hi,” I greeted him back, not getting hung up on the ‘H’ word as I tried to decide how to best go about asking him about my main concern: Big Texas.
It must have been apparent I wanted something, because not a few seconds later, Aiden spoke up. “What’s wrong?”