26. Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Aiden
When the doorbell rang, I’m not sure how long I’d been frozen in my bathroom, gripping the sledgehammer. I’d sped home, hellbent on tearing the room apart, but something kept me from slamming the hammer into the mirror or ripping out the tiles with the crowbar I’d put on the counter. Maybe it was because I wouldn’t have a working toilet if I destroyed the one in here.
Throughout my remodel redoes, I hadn’t touched the primary suite. The bathroom had pink everything and a mirror so chipped and flaking, I’d had to stand at an exact spot to see enough of my face to shave. My bedroom wasn’t much better. The walls were a dingy white. The curtains a sun-faded brown. The only thing decent was my furniture, which I’d brought with me from my one-bedroom apartment.
After Lauren told me about the baby, I had an urge to fix up the primary and went with it. I plopped the pink commode and sink in the bathroom down the hall, where I’d torn up my latest remodel after Lauren ignored me for a week, and showered at the gym. The materials I chose were the best I’d ever bought for my projects: marble tiles, top-of-the line faucets, and radiant flooring. I’d even had Sam help me install a custom-built steam shower. He’d given me shit about not leaving a working full bathroom while I remodeled but accepted the lie that I’d done it to force myself to focus on my own project instead of all the others in the pipeline.
The finished bathroom was beautiful. The kind of work I’d snap pictures of for the company’s social channels. Seeing Lauren’s appreciation of the work only made it better.
But damn it, I needed to get rid of this feeling in my chest. It differed from the anger that usually led to my moments of destruction. My chest ached. No, it hurt. A slicing, breath-stealing pain that would make me think I was having a heart attack, if I hadn’t just had my heart broken.
The doorbell rang again. I ignored it again. I should definitely take a picture of the bathroom for our socials. At least then it wouldn’t be an entire waste.
“Aiden,” Cal yelled as my front door swung open. My locked door, which only had one key. And yes, I realize the hypocrisy of having keys to all my friends’ and family’s houses and not giving anyone mine.
“Where are you?” Theo yelled.
I leaned the sledgehammer against the vanity and walked to the top of the stairs.
My best friends were scurrying through the first floor like a two-person SWAT team, an ineffective one since it took them a full minute to look up and notice me.
Cal skidded to a stop in the front hall when he finally saw me, and Theo smashed into his back. “Why didn’t you answer us?”
Because it hurt too much to breathe, let alone speak. Time to pull it together before Cal and Theo had a fit. I forced in a breath and shrugged. “Didn’t want to interrupt your self-guided tour since you went through the trouble of committing a B&E to take it.”
“You weren’t answering the doorbell,” Cal said, climbing the steps. He gave my shoulder a good-natured thump and walked past me.
Theo pulled me into a two-armed hug when he reached me, which was one arm too many for any guy who wasn’t my dad. “You learn how to pick locks in prison?” I asked him with my face smashed against the shoulder of his leather jacket.
He stepped back and smirked. “Just because I’m a felon doesn’t mean I’m a complete degenerate.”
“I picked it,” Cal said from down the hall where he was looking into the baby’s room. Of course, he’d go straight to it. For all his lack of insight, the man had killer instincts.
“Dr. Cardoso,” I said in mock surprise.
“Don’t pretend you weren’t the one who taught me,” Cal said, walking into the nursery. “You should thank me for respecting your boundaries this long since I could have popped that lock years ago.”
I rubbed my forehead. “So, why did you do it now?”
“Cammie called Cal,” Theo said, heading toward the nursery as well. He came to an abrupt stop in the doorway and turned to face me with shiny eyes.
“Don’t start,” I said, shoving past him into the baby’s room. The man might look like an extra on Breaking Bad , but he was a gooey marshmallow on the inside.
Cal looked up from his staring contest with the crib when he heard me enter the room. “What happened with Lauren?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Theo grabbed the paint samples I’d spread across the changing table and started flipping through them. “That was well established with the twenty text messages and five calls you ignored. Have you considered a muted green?”
“Focus, Theo,” Cal said, taking the little paper strips from Theo and returning them to the changing table. “We aren’t here to give decorating advice.”
Theo let out a long-suffering sigh and gave me a look that had my lips quirking up despite how terrible I felt. “Aiden doesn’t want to talk about his feelings, so I’m asking him practical questions in line with the subject we’re here to discuss until he loosens up.”
“I hadn’t considered green,” I said. “What do you mean by muted? Like sea foam?”
Theo wrinkled his nose. “No, something like sage with warm undertones.”
“I might as well go home,” Cal said.
Sage. I could see how it would work well as a neutral shade, but could I pick a color that would remind me of Lauren every time I stepped into the nursery? Like the baby wouldn’t be a reminder, dumbass.
“You can’t leave,” Theo said, leaning against the wall. “I might need you if Aiden goes apeshit and starts demoing something he’ll regret tearing down.”
“I had enough time to destroy half the house before you two got here,” I said. They gave each other worried looks, and I blew out a breath. “But it might be a good idea if you took my sledgehammer and crowbar for a couple days.”
“We can do that, brother,” Cal said.
“For fuck’s sake, you don’t have to call me that.”
“OK, Big Daddy,” Theo said with a smirk.
Cal threw his head back and laughed. If I didn’t think Theo would pin me to the ground in five seconds, I’d take a swing at him.
“Fine. You can call me brother. My tools are this way.”
“I don’t know,” Cal said, following me out of the nursery and down the hall to my room. “Big Daddy has a nice ring to it.”
“Don’t test me,” I said without turning. “I’ve had a day.”
They didn’t say another word until I led them to the bathroom and grabbed the sledgehammer from the floor.
“This is incredible,” Cal said quietly. He held out his hand, and I handed him the hammer. Theo grabbed the crowbar from the counter and walked deeper into the room. Truth was, I had plenty of other tools that could wreck anything I wanted, but knowing my friends had seen the completed bathroom gave me some much-needed restraint.
Theo opened the shower door and peeked at the tile work. “You came up here to tear this room apart, but you stopped yourself.”
“Yeah, can we not do this here?” I asked. “We’ve already had one bathroom intervention for you, Theo. Our friendship is weird enough.” And I still had the urge to rip the light fixtures from the wall over the sink.
“Of course,” Cal said, backing out of the room. “We can sit on the stairs since you don’t have a couch, and that window seat doesn’t look sturdy enough to hold more than one of us.”
“Speaking of which,” Theo said, following him, “I don’t want any more shit about how long it took me to furnish my place.”
“I have a couch. It’s just not here.”
Cal sat on a step halfway down the staircase and frowned up at me. “You’re paying for a storage unit with all this space? Half the rooms are empty.”
“It’s in the tree house.”
“Fuck,” Theo said, paling. He slid down the wall and plopped onto a step a few above Cal before laying the crowbar across his lap. “I didn’t know you’d built it.”
Technically, the tree house wouldn’t be finished until August. I could have completed the project months ago, but I’d held off so it’d all come together around the time of the accident. I wanted something to keep me busy in the weeks leading up to the anniversary. Plus, Theo and Poppy needed time to finish the memorial statue. But all the structural elements of the tree house were done. My entire crew had volunteered to help me put up the floor, roof, and walls during the off season. The day before I finished my bathroom, I’d gotten Sam and a couple of my guys to help me move my couch from the living room to the tree house.
“When I found out about the baby, I knew I had to stop wrecking the house. So, whenever I felt angry, I went there until I cooled down.”
“I can go with you now, if you want,” Cal said, sending a worried look at Theo, who was doing the weird-ass breathing exercises he’d learned to center himself.
I squeezed onto the same step beside Theo and gripped his shoulder. “Not now.”
“I’m sorry,” Theo said, his breaths labored. “Just ignore me. We’re here for you, A.”
“Nah,” I said, giving him a shove. “I like knowing I’m not the only damaged one in this group.”
Cal narrowed his eyes at me. “Did you try to give him a panic attack?”
“Of course not. They scare me as much as they do you. I wasn’t thinking.”
“Or you were thinking about whatever happened at Karma,” Theo said, the color slowly returning to his face.
My heart thudded in my chest. Instead of walking out the back door, I’d stormed through the café so I could yell at Cammie to check on Lauren if she didn’t come down in a few minutes. What if she hadn’t checked on her? What if she’d just texted Cal and told him I was pissed? What if Lauren had fainted when she was trying to come down the stairs? “You don’t know?”
Cal shook his head. “Cam just said you left Karma looking pissed, and Lauren was crying so hard she was afraid to leave her. Cammie asked Rowan to come to Karma.”
“Poppy too,” Theo said. “She said Lauren hasn’t told them anything, so they’ve just been taking turns staying with her and working downstairs.”
I nodded. She didn’t want her friends to know that she’d shown the worst version of herself to me. I wasn’t an idiot. I knew she’d broken my heart to protect herself, that the sweet woman I loved was still there, hiding behind a cold exterior she hadn’t shown anyone else. The tears confirmed it, which made the entire situation so much worse. She cared, deeply. Just not enough.
“Did something happen to the baby?” Theo asked, gently.
“No,” I said. Both of them visibly relaxed. “Shit, text that to your women.” Rowan, Poppy, and Cammie must be beside themselves by now if Lauren hadn’t at least told them the baby was OK.
Cal and Theo pulled out their phones and typed.
“So I’m assuming something happened between you and Lauren?” Theo said after he’d sent his text.
I nodded.
“You aren’t going to tell us, are you?” Cal asked.
I started to shake my head, but decided they needed to know the gist if I had any chance of making it through the rest of Lauren’s pregnancy with my sanity. “Lauren might be the love of my life, but that baby is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I would do anything for my child. Even if it means letting go of any chance with Lauren.”
Cal and Theo stared at me, then each other. “Love of his life?” Cal asked Theo. “Did you hear that too?”
Theo nodded.
“And you’re just as surprised as I am, right?”
Theo nodded again, and I realized he was speechless.
“I thought you and Lauren got plastered and had hate sex that one time,” Cal said.
I shrugged. “That’s a fair assumption.”
Cal rubbed his forehead. “I’m still confused. So she’s upset because you two were together without any of your friends knowing, and now you’re not?”
“I wouldn’t say we were together.”
“But she’s the love of your life?” Theo asked, finally speaking.
“You of all people should know you can love someone without being with them.”
Theo nodded.
Cal sat up straighter. “Right. So, what do you need us to do?”
“I told you. Just keep my tools awhile.”
“Besides that,” Cal said.
“Make sure Lauren has everything she needs.”
“Guarantee she doesn’t,” Theo said, studying the crowbar in his hands. “But not everyone can accept what they need.”
“Well, that’s depressing,” Cal said, standing with the sledgehammer. “Want to go pick up green paint samples? Maybe grab tiny jars of different colors, so we can paint squares of each on the wall tonight. That way you’ll be able to see how the colors look in different light before you decide.”
Theo beamed at Cal like he was one of the old farts in the community center art classes who’d finally figured out how to mix watercolors. “That’s a great idea.”
Despite my world falling apart, I smiled. I might not have gotten to play in the NFL or found a woman who loved me back, but I had great friends and a baby on the way who deserved a kick-ass room. “Hell Cat taught you that, didn’t she?” I asked Cal. “She did the same thing at the bakery.”
Cal grinned.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I said.
Theo stood, still gripping the crowbar. “While we’re at the store, maybe we should look at kitchen stuff too. I noticed yours was gutted. You’ll probably need one with a baby.”
“Yeah, maybe we should start there instead. Lauren could still—”
Cal shook his head. “Paint samples. That’s all we’re getting. After we paint the nursery, we can move on to the kitchen.”
“Who made you foreman of this project?” I asked.
“Logan.”
My breath caught and Theo’s mouth dropped opened. Guy was definitely having a panic attack before the night ended.
Cal’s eyes widened. “I have no idea why I said that. I was going to say that I needed something to distract me because I’m worried about Rowan’s surgery, but his name just came out.”
I shrugged. “I’ve been talking to the guy ever since I moved in. Guess he finally said something back.” More likely, Cal had a momentary lapse between his mind and his mouth, but I kind of liked the idea of Logan butting into the conversation. He had always been the one to know exactly what each of us needed.
“Our friendship really is weird, isn’t it?” Theo asked.
“Yeah, but it works, brother,” I said, slapping him on the back.