“You could have walked away,” said the woman who had walked away a hundred times in the past. This was the person who couldn’t deal with her problems if there wasn’t some sort of bottle around.
Damn it. I was so angry with her in that moment, I couldn’t find a single word that wouldn’t be brutal, that wouldn’t hurt her feelings. She said some things that I didn’t listen to because I was too focused on myself. I shoved my sleeves up my forearms in frustration. Squeezing my free fist closed, I didn’t even bother trying to count to ten. I wanted to break something, but I wouldn’t. I fucking wouldn’t. I was better than this. “You know what? You’re right. I really have to go. I have a lot of work to catch up on. I’ll call you later.”
And that was the thing with my mom. She didn’t know how to fight. Maybe it was a trait I’d picked up from my dad, whoever the guy was. “Okay. I love you.”
I’d learned what love was from my little brother, from Diana and her family, and even from my foster parents. It wasn’t this distorted, terrible thing that did what was best for itself. It was sentient, it cared, and it did what was best for the greater good. I wasn’t going to bother analyzing what my mom viewed as love again; I’d done it enough in the past. In this case, it was just a word I was going to use on someone who needed to hear it. “Uh-huh. Love you too.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until the tears hit my chin and plummeted to my shirt. Fire burned my nose. Five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve-thirteen-and-fourteen-year-old Vanessa all came back to me with the same feeling that had been so strong in those years: hurt. The Vanessa who was fifteen and older had felt a different emotion for so long: anger. Anger at my mom’s selfishness. Anger at her for not being able to clean her act up until years after we’d been taken away from her. Anger for being let down for so long, time and time again.
I had needed her a hundred times, and ninety-nine of those times she hadn’t been around, or if she had been, she’d been too drunk to be of any use to me. Diana’s mom had been more of a mother figure to me than she had been. My foster mother had been more maternal than the woman who had given birth to me. I had practically raised Oscar and myself.
But if it weren’t for everything I’d been through, I wouldn’t be where I was. I wouldn’t be the person I was. I’d become me not because of my mom and sisters, but in spite of them. And most days, I really liked myself. I could be proud of me. That had to be worth something.
I’d barely managed to wipe off my teary face and set down my phone when a familiar bang-bang-bang called a knock rattled my door. If I was capable of snarling, I’m sure the facial expression I made would have been called exactly that.
“Yes?” I called out in a sarcastic tone, resisting the urge to throw myself back onto my bed like a little kid. Not that I’d ever done that, even back then.
Considering “Yes?” wasn’t exactly an invitation to come in, I was only slightly surprised when the door opened and the man I didn’t exactly want to see in the near future popped his head inside.
“Yes?” I repeated, biting the inside of my cheek to keep from calling him something mean. I was sure my emotions were written all over my face, my eyes had to have some trace of the tears that had just been in them, but I wasn’t going to hide it.
Aiden opened the door completely and slipped inside, his eyes sweeping across the room briefly before landing back on me sitting on the edge of my bed. His eyebrows scrunched together as he witnessed what I wasn’t trying to hide. His mouth depressed into a frown. One of his hands went up to reach behind his head, and I tried to ignore the bunched biceps that seemed to triple in size at the action. His Adam’s apple bobbed as his gaze swept over my face once more. “We need to talk.”
Once upon a time, all I’d wanted was for him to talk to me. Now, that wasn’t the case. “You should really be spending time with Leslie while he’s here.”
Those big biceps flexed. “He agreed I should come up here and talk to you.”
I narrowed my eyes, ignoring the tightness in them. “You told him we got into a fight?”
“No. He could tell something was off without me saying anything.” Those massive hands dropped to his sides. “I wanted to talk to you last night.”
But I’d ignored his knock. I made a vague noise. What was the point in lying when I’m pretty sure he was well aware of the fact I’d been awake then?
Aiden fisted his hands for a moment before bringing them back to cross his arms over his chest. “I’m sorry for what I said yesterday.”
I wasn’t remotely impressed by his directness and I was sure my face said that.
In true Aiden fashion, he didn’t let my expression deter him from what he’d come to say. “I don’t like things hanging over my head, and if you and I are going to have a problem, we’re going to talk about it. I meant what I told you in your apartment. I do like you as much as I like anyone. I wouldn’t have come to you for all of this if I didn’t. You always treated me as more than just the person who paid your check and I see that now. I’ve seen it for a while, Van. I’m not very good at this crap.” Did he look uncomfortable or was I imagining it? I wondered. “I’m selfish and self-centered. I know that. You know that. I bail on people all the time.” He had a point there. He did. I’d witnessed it firsthand. “I get it, you’re not that kind of person. You don’t go back on your word. I… I didn’t think you’d care if I didn’t go,” he said carefully.
I opened my mouth to tell him that no one liked being bailed on, but he trudged on before I could.
“But I understand, Van. Just because people don’t complain to my face when I do it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss them off, all right? I didn’t mean to be an asshole downstairs. I only wanted to make sure you made it back fine and you weren’t going to kill me in my sleep for flaking out on you. Then I got mad.”
I had thought about killing him, but it surprised me just a little bit that he assumed I would think that.
Before I could linger on that thought too long, Aiden leveled that dark gaze on me. “If you had done that to me…” He looked a little uncomfortable at whatever he was thinking and let out a shaky exhale. “I wouldn’t have handled it as well as you did.”
That was a freaking fact.
“I wasn’t nagging,” I stated. Then thought about it and, in my head, amended the statement to add ‘mostly’ to it.
He tilted his head to the side like he wanted to argue otherwise. “You were nagging, but you had a right to. I have a lot going on right now.”
My first thought was: The end has come. He’s opening up to me.
My second thought was: It’s so obvious he’s stressed as hell.
I hadn’t caught onto his body language, or the tightness he carried both in his shoulders and his voice as he spoke, but now up close, it was obvious. He’d been through a lot in just the first month of the regular season. He’d already sprained his ankle. Zac had gotten kicked off the team. On top of that, he was worried about his visa and his future with not just the Three Hundreds but in the NFO, period. His injury would be a factor in his career for the rest of his life. Any time he made a mistake, people would wonder if he hadn’t come back as strongly as he’d been before, even if it had nothing to do with his Achilles tendon.
The guy looked ready to snap, and it was barely the end of September. I wanted to ask him if he’d heard anything back from the immigration lawyer, or if our marriage license had showed up, or if Trevor had quit being a pain in the ass and started to look for another team or a better deal or whatever it was that he wanted out of the next stage of his career but…
I didn’t. Today would be a bad day for me to ask and for him not to answer. I was too raw and tired and disillusioned.