Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
S he was half hidden by the doorpost, one eye peeking at him like a little kid trying to catch Santa on Christmas morning. Before he saw her, Aiden would have said he didn’t have room for one more emotion, but he did. He couldn’t identify it, but it brought a spark of warmth to his otherwise icy heart. And he knew this much was true: June was beautiful. She wore a floor length satin gown of the palest pink, her shoulders perfectly toned and smooth. In the scheme of things, she was way out of his league.
He held out his hand to her, beseechingly. She scurried forward, clasped his hand, and sank down beside him, tipping her face to study his. “Is it true?” she whispered.
“Which part?” he asked.
“Erica.”
He nodded. Gone. Erica is gone. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words. His face must have said them for him.
“Oh,” June gasped, her free hand popping up to cover her mouth. Then she dropped her hand and took his other hand in hers, giving them both a squeeze. “Aiden, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
He eyed her curiously. “Why did your dad tell you to come in here?”
“He said you wanted to talk to me.” She was still tipping her head, inspecting him. She looked like a little bird, beautiful and exotic and wholly out of place in his misery.
He nodded and took a breath, taking in far less oxygen than he needed. His head spun and throbbed. “Your dad offered me the house if I agreed to marry you today.” He didn’t want to deal with this right now, but he couldn’t not tell June that her father was trying to sell her off. Again. She needed to know, to protect herself. Next time the guy might not be so ethical in his refusal, might hurt her, use her, do any manner of things to bring her harm.
“Oh,” she said, her cheeks turning from pink to magenta. “Well, this is awkward.”
He laughed and she smiled, albeit slightly.
“I’m sorry, Aiden. Sorry my dad dumped my issues at your doorstep in the middle of all this. That’s not fair.” She let go of his hand to brush her palm on his cheek. Desperate for any comfort, he closed his eyes and leaned into it. They remained that way a moment in silence, mutually mortified, taking and giving what they could from each other.
“It’s okay, June. I just thought you should know. And, hey, it brought me a moment’s distraction,” he said. He opened his eyes and they shared a smile. It was oddly intimate, whether because they were sitting less than a foot apart in the center of a large room or because her hand was still on his face or because they were both in the middle of what had to be the worst moment of their lives, he had no idea. All he knew was that having June there made everything feel a tiny bit better and he was reluctant for her to go.
He wondered what she thought as her smile slid and eyes widened. She blinked at him, a doe in headlights. “What if we did it?”
Now his hand stole up to touch her face. Such a pretty face. At least now he was allowed to touch her. That was something. He had held himself in check, somehow sensing she was a temptation, even if he hadn’t let her be. Now that the barriers were down…
“What if we got married today?”
He blinked at her and dropped his hand. Maybe she was actually crazy. Maybe he was finally seeing the secret June, the one she kept hidden. Laughing a little, she shook her head. “Not like that, not married married. Kind of pretend married. I mean, it’s not a bad deal for you Aiden, financially speaking. The last guy my dad tried to buy for me got an offer of a measly new truck. You’re getting eight times as much, more if you count the resale value.”
“June, how can you even joke about this? Your father just offered me money for you like a fifteenth century arranged marriage. He was two goats away from calling it a dowry.”
“Those marriages had excellent track records,” she said, and there was no mistaking the amusement in her tone this time. “Think about it before you say no, Aiden. Five hundred thousand dollars of debt, wiped out like that.” She snapped her fingers. Aiden was already shaking his head by the time she was done.
“No, absolutely not. I won’t use you that way, not for any amount of money.”
“Who says you’ll be using me? Maybe I have my own reasons for wanting to do this.”
He paused, feeling apprehensive all over again. “June, are you in love with me.”
She doubled over laughing.
“So that’s a no then,” he said, his tone dry.
She sat up, clutching her waist. “Aiden, no. Goodness, no. Until five minutes ago, you were engaged to another woman, someone I consider a friend. I would never. And I told you from the beginning I wouldn’t inflict myself on you. Doctors hands.” She picked up his hands and held them aloft between them.
“Then why? Why would you agree to marry me, knowing I would be going into it for purely mercenary reasons.”
“My brother, Denver, had this friend, Heath. A best friend from birth, he was like family to all of us. For a while, he was another surrogate big brother, that is to say annoying. And then we hit puberty and began to notice each other in a different way. It was a natural progression toward dating, and we were all in. As you can imagine, with that kind of history, things were serious fast because we had already spent so much time together and knew each other so well. Of course my dad and Denver were thrilled because it was Heath. He and I had been written in the stars. He was family, totally beloved and safe.” She paused, staring off into the distance. Aiden didn’t know what was coming, but he sensed it was going to be bad. He reached for her hand, clasping it. Absently, she began to toy with his fingers while she continued to speak.
“One day I was reaching for a second handful of chips. He grabbed the bag away and said, ‘Enough for you, chubby.’”
“Were you chubby when you were a kid?” Aiden asked, eyeing her willowy ballerina frame.
She shook her head. “I laughed and told him I wasn’t chubby. He laughed and said maybe I wasn’t, but with the way I kept eating chips it was an inevitability and he wasn’t going to have a fat wife. It was all very jokey, but he kept the chips that day, and I began limiting how many of them I ate.”
Aiden said a word and then darted a glance to the door to make sure his mother hadn’t overheard.
“Yes, well, it only got worse from there. The ‘jokes’ became more constant, more pointed. Did I really want to leave the house without makeup to cover my zits? Had I even brushed my hair that day? Had my jeans always been that tight? Denver and I had always teased each other, and Heath, too. So it took me a long time to realize this was different. The shift was so subtle that by the time I made the distinction, it felt too late, too entrenched. And my dad and Denver never noticed anything amiss, never said anything. So maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought, maybe it was all in my head.
“And then one day we argued about something stupid and pointless, but he slapped me hard across the cheek. I ran away, locked myself in my room, didn’t talk to him for two days. It was Denver who coaxed me back out, helped us make up. He didn’t know about the slap, of course. Heath told him about the silly argument. Denver said I was being a girl, getting mad over nothing. And Heath was sorry, so sorry he cried, buried his face in my shirt and pled with me to go back. So I did.
“And of course that wasn’t the last time he hit me. Telling you about this now, I can see how crazy it was that I put up with it, but when you’re in the moment, you’re so conditioned, so deluded into accepting it as normal. I started covering the bruises, and they were never on my face. Because he was out of control, but not out of control enough to hit me where someone would notice.”
“How did you get away?” Aiden asked.
“My dad asked me why I was wearing a hoodie and jeans in August in Florida and I didn’t have a good answer. By that time it had been two years. I don’t know what it was about that day, maybe my lack of answer, maybe my facial expression, or maybe the fact that I was about to pass out from heat exhaustion. But he sent me to my room to change into shorts and a t-shirt, wouldn’t brook any discussion or disagreement about it. I think he suspected then that something was wrong. But I don’t think he had any idea how bad it was, how far gone. When I returned to the room wearing shorts and a tank top, my arms and legs riddled with bruises….” She paused, her mouth quivering for a second before she got it back under control. “Let’s say that the looks on their faces will stay with me forever, no matter how much I might try to forget. Denver burst out of the house, and I ran after him, pleading for him to stay because I knew where he was going; he was going to kill his best friend.”
“I take it he didn’t,” Aiden said. He was gripping her hand now, so hard it had to be painful, but she didn’t pull away.
She shook her head. “Only because someone called the police and they were nearby in time to stop him after only a light pounding. Denver was arrested and charged with battery, but when the cops caught sight of me…” her smile turned wry. “The charges were dropped.”
“Please tell me the guy is rotting in jail.”
“There was no proof, beyond my bruises, and most of them were old. The trial would have been long and painful for everyone, Denver most of all. Heath wisely moved away, to live with an aunt in Georgia, and hasn’t been heard from since.”
“And is that why you started having accidents?”
She nodded. “It’s been a long time since all this occurred. I thought I was doing okay, but then I started trying to date. Anytime I start to get a little flutter for a man, any time he makes a move on me, I just…fall to pieces. Sometimes literally. My dad and Denver have been riddled with guilt, have barely let me out of their sight all the years since. And yet they both desperately want me to find someone, as if to make up for the broken one I had before. I’ve tried easing their guilt, tried explaining it wasn’t their fault, but nothing I say matters. So they alternately suffocate me and try to sell me to the highest bidder.” She took a cleansing breath. “So there you go, Aiden. You’d get your debt wiped away, and I would purchase my redemption.”
“We can’t get married, June,” he said. “Marriage is a big deal, a huge deal, a lifetime commitment.”
“Only if it’s real. And if you and I got married today, it wouldn’t be, not legally. We have no license.”
“So, what, you want to fake it forever?”
“No, let’s set a time limit. Six months, maybe? Then we’ll quietly uncouple, ease away from each other, and start over. You can have your house, and I’ll get a place of my own, away from my dad and brother. By then maybe they’ll have released the guilt tentacles and I’ll be truly free. It’s a win for both of us.”
“What’s wrong with me that this is beginning to sound sensible?” he said.
She shook his hands. “Come on, Aiden. We’re friends, we’re pals. We can be roommates for six months, right? That’s all this is, a new roommate situation. Lucky for you I’m clean and tidy, always pay my bills on time, and clear the hair out of the drain.”
“I’ve had a few roommates, June. None of them ever looked like you.” On the other hand, his heart was shattered. He wasn’t certain he would ever be healthy enough to try another relationship, and certainly not within their six month time limit. Could he do this, though? “I feel like I’m getting more out of the bargain, financially at least.”
“How’s this: we’ll split everything equally, utilities, groceries, taxes, insurance. And then when the six months are up, we’ll sell the house and if you make any profit, we’ll split it evenly. That way there’s no guilt. We’ll both be putting in equal money and getting equal money out. Evens Stevens.”
He rested his forehead on hers. “June, this is nuts.”
“It’s time to step into the margins, Dr. Lawrence, to embrace the crazy, just a little,” June replied.
“Aiden?” His mother had stepped into the room at some point. Aiden and June turned jointly to look at her. “Honey, I’m sorry to interrupt, but it’s getting a little restless out there. Dad and I are happy to make an announcement for you, or if you’d prefer to do it yourself and then leave, George said he’ll drive the getaway car.” She aimed for a smile and fell flat.
Aiden looked at June, his Mom, and June again. Could he do this? Of course he couldn’t do this. He had never done anything crazy in his life, and this was a step beyond crazy; this was a committable offense. “Mom.” He picked up June’s hand and pressed it to his chest. “This is June. We’re getting married today.”