Chapter 33
Elliot
Dinner is turning out to be…better than expected.
Well, better than the scenarios my head thought up. Never in my life have I brought a woman to my uncle’s house and shared a meal. Hell, I think the only one who has is Sam, and that was years ago, so my brain conjured up with every scenario imaginable.
They were going to hate her.
Not a single person was going to include her in conversations.
She will hate the food.
Said food would make her sick, and we would have to leave early.
She would hate my family and would want to leave.
All the scenarios were highly unlikely, since she already met Grayson and Henry. Plus, when she met Drake in the foyer, they had gotten along great, but a part me still worried.
Yet, here we are, sitting in a massive dining room, eating the most mundane meal of spaghetti and garlic bread, and Aria fits right in with everyone.
It should be nerve wracking that she’s fitting in so easily, but it’s not. It feels really nice, actually.
“Have you thought about possibly working for a professional hockey team? The Knights could use someone like you on their roster,” Grayson says to Aria during his inquisition of a million questions.
Aria shakes her head. “I worked with professional athletes once, and it’s not my forte. I like kids better.”
“Why?” Drake asks, stuffing some garlic bread into his mouth. “I would think working with kids is hard.”
She gives him a nod in agreement. “It is, but there is a joy in working with kids that I don’t think could be filled anywhere else.” A sweet smile across her lips before she looks over at Grayson. “Now, if you ever decide to form a kid’s team, I’m your girl.”
My brother’s eyebrows dance. “That is actually in the works, so you might get a call sooner rather than later.”
Apart from buying the Knights and rebuilding the team, Grayson has also been trying to redevelop the youth programs. When Bennett sold the team, the new owner let the programs dwindle and let other things take priority, so when Grayson took over, he made it a point to reinvigorate them.
I’ve seen the plans for what he’s been working on, and it’s pretty amazing—everything from development programs to learn-to-play programs for kids of all ages, no matter their financial backgrounds.
“Really?” Aria asks, and Grayson goes through his whole plan.
As he speaks and Aria listens intently, everyone goes back to eating their dinner. Me, on the other hand, I ignore the food in front of me and concentrate on Aria.
In the few minutes she sits there and listens to my brother, she takes everything in, looking so damn fascinated. She asks questions and absorbs every answer.
She captivates me by doing something so simple, and I can’t seem to look away. I can’t help but wish all family dinners turned out this way.
A phone ringing somewhere in the room takes my attention away from Aria unwillingly.
Instinctively, I reach for my phone, but the screen is black when I pull it out.
“No business calls at the table,” Ella reminds us.
After a year or so after she and Bennett got married, she made a rule that we weren’t allowed to do anything business related at the table, family meals or not. She got tired of the phones ringing nonstop, so she decided no matter the meal, no business call would be answered.
It’s been a pretty easy rule to follow.
The phone continues to ring.
I hold up my hands, and so do Bennett, Grayson and Drake.
“It’s not mine,” Aria says, and I can’t help but let out a chuckle.
“It’s mine,” Sam says, rolling her eyes. “But it’s not a business call.” She looks down at her phone. “It’s Charlie, and if I don’t answer, everyone in this room is going to get hounded.”
A sigh escapes me. There is only one reason she’s calling right now, and that reason is sitting right next to me.
“Who’s Charlie?” Aria asks.
“A pain in the ass,” I grumble as Ella answers, “My sister.”
Aria laughs lightly while I look at my sister and dare her not to answer the call.
Only one thing could come of it.
Samantha stares me down, and when a smirk grows on her face, I let out a sigh.
Great. I’m going to be subjected to Charlie’s squeals.
I throw my head back on a groan as my sister answers the phone.
“Yes, Charlie?” she says in the sweetest voice. My sister isn’t sweet, and that voice is a lie. I wish I could throw a fork at her without getting yelled at by Henry.
There’s silence for a few seconds, and then I hear Sam’s voice again.
“Elliot, the call is for you.” If there is a way to hate the sound of your name, I hate how my sister just said it.
Letting out another sigh, I turn back to my sister and take the phone from her outstretched hand. Begrudgingly, I bring the device up to my ear. It doesn’t go unnoticed that everyone at the table is smirking, though Aria is looking at me with curiosity.
“What, Charlie?” I sigh.
“Move your ear out of my face, Lane. I need to see this woman who is your girlfriend but isn’t your girlfriend.”
Pulling the phone back, I look down at the screen and come face to face with the dirty blonde. Apparently, before Sam handed me the phone, she turned it to FaceTime and put Charlie on speaker.
I roll my eyes at the screen, and she sticks her tongue out at me.
Before I can turn her request down or even end the call, a hand reaches out and takes the phone from me.
“Did he say I was his girlfriend?” Aria says to the screen, a smirk on her face and faux shock in her voice.
Charlie doesn’t bother to answer her question. “Oh my God, you are gorgeous!”
From there, Aria inserts herself further into my family’s dynamic, and I never want her to leave it.
* * *
Dinner ended hours ago.
The pasta and garlic bread was all eaten, the dessert devoured, the wine flowing.
Given how much we drank, I was ready to get a member of my uncle’s security team to take me and Aria back to my penthouse, but that went out the window when someone suggested we stay at the manor instead.
“Can we?” Aria looked up at me with bright eyes, excited at the prospect of staying here. She was nearly bouncing in her chair.
I couldn’t say no to her, so now, here we are, walking into the room labeled as mine more than twenty years ago.
“I really like your family,” Aria says as she strolls fully into my old bedroom.
A small smile spreads along my face. “I think they feel the same way about you.”
And it’s not a lie. From what I can tell, my family loves her. Bennett and Henry even cracked a few smiles.
“And is that something you’re okay with?” she asks, looking up at me with those bright eyes. “That I like your family and they like me?”
She’s close enough for me to reach out and cup her face, caressing her cheek as I do. My heart jumps when she leans in.
“You and my family liking each other is something I’m very okay with.”
She turns her head and places a kiss against my palm before looking back up at me with what I can only describe as sympathy. “Can I ask you a question?”
I know what’s she’s going to ask. After spending time with my family, even if it was for a few hours, she was bound to get curious.
How did we end up coming to live with my uncle?
Where are my parents?
Questions anyone would want the answers to—at least anyone close to me.
“You can ask me anything you want,” I say, because she is the only one I would truly open up to.
The question that leaves her lips takes me back to a conversation we had in the car.
“You didn’t enjoy the time you lived here, did you?”
A sigh escapes me, and I drop my hand from her face. “Not particularly, no.”
She nods as if she understands. “In the car, you said this was never home for you. Would it be okay for me to ask where home was?”
I look at her, truly look at her. Staring back at me is a beautiful woman who isn’t my girlfriend or even mine to claim, but I want her anyway.
I see the care for me, the sincerity in her eyes, and I want to fall to my knees and give her the world.
I never really knew what it was like to find your person, the one you could tell your deepest darkest secrets to, but looking at the woman before me, I think I figured it out.
Aria is it for me, and I want to give her everything.
Even the parts of me I want to bury deep, to never see again.
To her, I will give everything.
I let my shoulders drop, walking over to the bed and sitting on the edge. It may have been years since I’ve lived under this room, but I’ve used this bed more in the last few years than I did when I was younger.
Holding out a hand to Aria, I give her the answer she seeks. “Home was back in Mexico. Back in Sinaloa.”
It takes her a second, as if she is digesting my words, but before long, she slides her hand into mine and lets me drag her to me, helping her sit beside me.
She is silent for a few seconds. “Why was that home and not here?”
That’s the very question I asked myself for years. It wasn’t until I went to therapy that I found the answer.
I fall onto my back and look up at the ceiling.
“Because that was the only place I knew for ten years. It’s where I was born, where I had my parents, where I had aunts and uncles and grandparents.
” I pause, trying to remember all the details of the first ten years of my life.
“I think if I had known the final time I was there was going to be my last, if I had known we were going to be moved to a different country to live with someone who didn’t know we existed, then things might have been different.
But I was ripped away without an explanation, and I lost everything I had ever known in a matter of hours. ”
My mind goes back in time, to the day my dad told me to help him get my siblings in the car while he ran around the house, gathering things.
“?Y Mami? ?Donde esta? We can’t leave her,” I remember saying as soon as my dad got in the car and started driving. I knew something was wrong, that we had to go fast, but I had no idea what was going on or where we were headed.