Chapter 4
GARRETT
Aidyn is dark and menacing, like a thundercloud.
With loud booming cracks. And flashes of fire.
He stomps out of the building, leaving me to follow like a chastised kid.
I hate it. I hate him. But my body feels alive, as if awake for the first time in a while.
He doesn’t look back, obviously not caring if I follow him or not.
But something about the set of his shoulders makes me think that isn’t true.
He’s aware of me. That feeling of being alive intensifies.
Once he reaches his van with the Christy’s Café logo on the side, he strips off his jacket and shirt and wads them up.
Then he points those laser eyes at me. I stumble on the last few steps and duck my head, trying to hide my flushed face…
I’m not even sure what I’m feeling. Uneasy? Embarrassed? Turned on? Fuck me.
“Don’t you dare get cake on my seats. Strip, Garrett. Now.”
Is it his words? The intense look on his face?
The sight of Aidyn Christy in an undershirt, his freckled shoulders bare?
He rests his arms on the top of the car as he waits.
I glance away from his scowling face, but a musky smell snags my senses and draws my attention to the dark-red hair of his pits.
Desire pulses through me, making me dizzy, and I turn away to hide my body’s reaction.
What the hell? I had this all under control.
This man is off-limits. And he hates me.
“Garrett,” he growls, and fuck, that sound is the last thing I need.
“Hold the fuck on.” I try to sound harsh and not turned on.
I strip off my jacket and my dress shirt. No way am I taking off my pants. Instead, I wipe off the frosting as best I can. Unfortunately, the cake settled in my lap, so wiping at my confused dick with Aidyn glaring at me makes everything worse. Jesus.
“Stop being a diva. Hurry the fuck up.” The slamming of his door alerts me, and I take a calming breath before wadding up my destroyed clothes and folding myself into his vehicle.
“Just drop me off at my hotel. I’ll take an Uber back.”
“Jesus H Christ. You’re not in New York, Garrett.”
He starts the van and pulls onto the main street.
I try not to look, but the way his forearms strain as he steers and shifts has me squirming in my seat.
It has nothing to do with Aidyn. It’s just been a while since I’ve been with someone.
I miss it. The heat of another man’s body.
The smell… God, the musky scent that has my dick so hard it’s painful.
Add in the growl of his voice. He grunts, interrupting my thoughts.
“‘I’ll take an Uber back.’ What the fuck is wrong with you? ”
“I wish I knew.” I try to count the number of pickup trucks I see instead of the freckles dusted across the top of his hands. Large hands that grab and yank…
“Seriously, what’s the matter with you?”
I laugh, finally turning to face him. “Do you want the entire list or the condensed version?”
His eyes flick to mine and then back to the road. A bright-green flame licking at the edges of my sanity. Teasing me. I’ve completely lost it. I clear my throat. “Really, Aidyn. Just drop me off at my hotel.”
“No fucking way.” Another quick glance. “If you don’t come back, Jane will string me up by my balls.”
Now I’m thinking about his balls, and I’ve got to get a fucking grip on this thing. But thinking about gripping doesn’t help at all, and I sigh. All my frustration escapes like the balloons at the wedding. “You’d probably prefer I didn’t return. It’d make your life easier.”
His body freezes and the air around us thickens with tension. “You’re a fucking idiot.”
I can’t argue with that, so I don’t even try.
Staring out the window at my hometown seems safer.
Not sure I even care where we go. We pass by Carlton’s Drug Store, where, once upon a time, you could get ice cream.
I remember the musty smell from where the roof used to leak.
The yellowed black-and-white tiles as I tried to corral Emily and Jane, thirteen and four, into not wandering off.
Not that anything would happen to them in our small town, but it only took one whooping with a switch from the old willow tree for me to learn that keeping my sisters safe was the most important job I had.
A heaviness settles on my chest, making it difficult to breathe.
I failed. And in that moment, I would gladly take a switch.
I’d welcome the pain. Turning my head away from Aidyn, I use my wadded-up clothes to wipe my eyes.
This is why I don’t come home. It hurts too fucking much.
And I can hear Aidyn’s words as clear as if he’s saying them. Stop being a coward. We’re all hurting.
We stop at my hotel, and I take the quickest shower possible, knowing Aidyn is waiting for me.
Is he pacing the room? Or sitting on the queen-sized bed?
And that brings thoughts I don’t need or want, especially since the shower has to be quick and the walls are thin as parchment paper.
I’ve done everything I can to keep the peace between us, so when I emerge from the bathroom seven minutes later, hair still dripping but fully clothed, and see the scowl on Aidyn’s face, it sets fire to my tired-of-his-shit attitude.
Nothing I do is ever good enough. And I can quit pretending it is.
We make it to the diner with barely a word between us, and I wait downstairs while Aidyn changes.
But I’m not unproductive. I mentally examine every slight, every thing that irritates me about Aidyn Christy.
It’s not just about Emily. There are things I don’t reexamine, including how we met and the choices made, because they aren’t relevant now.
And they have nothing to do with my frustration with the man.
He makes everything more difficult. It’s deliberate. Although it’s not just me he’s that way with. But that’s giving him an out.
One he doesn’t deserve.
The diner hasn’t changed much: the colorful backsplash Emily added when they first opened, the same old mop she bought him as a present.
Part of me feels relieved, but a small part is irritated—the sameness rubbing at a wound still raw after two years.
Would I be any happier if it had changed?
Maybe not, but that isn’t the point. And I’m not sure what that actual point is.
I want to wallow in my anger. Shove my frustration in his face so he feels it.
So he knows he isn’t the only one grieving.
I want to hurt him.
And that isn’t like me at all. The man is clearly hurting already. But his hurt has a fragile layer of healing over it that I want to pick at. If it heals completely, then where are we? What are we?
Nothing.