Chapter 6 Aiden #2
The only thing I regretted about that night was not continuing it into the morning and the next day and for the rest of our lives. But that’s the selfish part of me. The irresponsible part of me. My inner asshole.
My body tenses, toes to face. “She… she deserves better than me.”
Carlie exhales slowly, like she’s been holding her breath for years. The anger is gone from her face. Her head tilts slightly. She steps closer, lowering her voice. “I’m not telling you this to punish you. I’m telling you because I can’t let it happen again.”
“That’s not a problem.” My mouth is a desert. “I won’t let it happen again. I won’t hurt her like that. You have my word. I was stupid and selfish back then.”
“What’s changed?”
“These days, I’m just stupid.”
She snorts a laugh. “You’re not.”
“I am. Like I said, she deserves better than me. I’m a piece of shit, and I know it, Carlie, so you don’t have to worry about this. I’ll keep my distance—”
“Stop! Just stop!”
“I don’t know what you want from me! One minute, you’re telling me to stay away from her, and then I agree with you, and now I’m in trouble for that, too? I don’t understand.”
Again, she exhales loudly. “I’m asking you to stop framing fear like it’s virtue.”
The words rattle around in my brain and have nowhere to land. “What?”
Carlie’s voice softens even more. “You fucked up the first time you were with her. Don’t let that be the only version of you she ever gets.”
I clench my jaw. “I don’t want to hurt her again. You don’t want me to hurt her again. I thought we were on the same page.”
She pulls away from the door. “I know. But hiding isn’t kindness. It feels safer than honesty, and maybe it is, but you’re still lying to yourself. And to her.”
“I don’t get you.”
She steps beside me now, angled to stare out of the window. “She’s been miserable for six years, Aiden. You’ve been miserable, too. And neither of you deserve that.”
“You know what I deserve.”
Her shoulders bounce once. “Just because our father—”
“Not everything is about him, Carlie.” I turn to face the window, too. “I’ve done some fucked-up shit. I don’t deserve her.”
“Maybe happiness isn’t a reward for good behavior. Maybe it’s something you should grab onto, no matter what fucked-up shit you’ve done. Because it will make you happy. And it’ll make her happy, too.”
I glance at her. “So, you want me to confess everything? Dump six years of regret at her feet and hope it fixes something?”
Carlie shakes her head. “No. I want you to stop deciding the ending before it happens. Stop anticipating the myriad ways you’ll fuck things up, and just go with the flow. You both want this. There’s no reason to think it’ll go wrong.”
“If we do this, that means I’m involved. Which means it’ll go wrong.”
“That’s Dad talking.”
I shoot her a look.
She is undeterred. “You know I’m right.”
I clear my throat and look out the window.
Images flicker through my mind—Harper in my kitchen this morning, barefoot, wearing my shirt like it didn’t feel wrong.
The way she watched me with Mason like she was afraid to trust what she was seeing.
The question she asked me last night, steady and terrified all at once.
Do I regret her? No. I regret hurting her. But if I had said that last night, it might have given her false hope about us, and that’d be me hurting her again, this time with extra steps. I can’t do this.
“Don’t hurt her again,” Carlie says softly. “But also… don’t let fear ruin a second chance you never thought you’d get. You’ve both been miserable for too long.”
A sound cuts through the quiet. A soft, unmistakable gasp from the hallway. Not the sound a child makes.
Carlie’s head snaps toward the door. My stomach drops instantly, cold and fast.
Harper was listening to us. For how long… I don’t know. Fuck.
The silence after the gasp is worse than the sound itself—charged, exposed, irreversible. I reach for the door, every instinct screaming to explain, to stop this from becoming another fracture I can’t fix.
Before my hand reaches the knob, my phone vibrates hard in my pocket.
Carlie looks at me, eyes wide. “Go talk to her.”
I pull it out, dread coiling tight in my chest. “It’s work. I have to take this.”
Carlie rolls her eyes and sighs. She knows what it’s like to have important moments cut short because of the job.
When I click it, Grant’s speaking already. “Aiden, we’ve completed the review on the bar fire.”
I step back automatically, putting distance between myself and the door before answering. “And?”
There’s a pause on the line. Paper shuffling. The faint echo of a large room. He’s in his office. “The electrical fire itself checks out. Faulty wiring. Old building. Nothing surprising there.”
I exhale slowly, not realizing until that moment how much I’d been holding onto that possibility. She’ll have to get the place rewired. I’m not letting her work in a hazardous building. “Okay, thanks for the call—”
“That’s not all,” he adds. “One of my guys flagged something else. The gas feed behind the bar.”
I straighten. “What about it?”
Another pause. Deliberate this time. “Someone loosened the connection. Not enough to cause an immediate issue—but enough that, combined with the electrical fault, it could’ve gone very differently.”
For a second, I see red. But I shove it down to think clearly. “Your guy is sure it was loosened? You said yourself that it’s an old building. Could have been—”
“It wasn’t just loosened. The two ends of the line were taped to look like an old repair, but there were pinholes in the tape. No rodent, no pest plays with a needle to put pinholes into tape. No wear and tear does that, either. Someone tampered with the gas line.”
I swallow his words down, and it’s like gulping acid. “Then it was arson.”
Grant lowers his voice. “This is unofficial, Aiden. I’m giving you a heads-up because I know you and Harper go back.
I figured it should come from someone she trusts.
An arsonist has that bar in their sights.
Or, at the very least, they did. Whether they’ll strike again…
it’s hard to say. But this is a clear case of arson. ”