19. Aiden
“ Wait, wait, wait,” Nora said, her eyes going wide. “You’re saying it was all a lie?”
I had to hand it to her, she was doing a great job of sounding surprised by something she’d known all along. But obviously, viewers weren’t supposed to realize that.
“I mean, it wasn’t all a lie.” I gave a sheepish grin to the camera Em was operating.
“Except it kind of was,” Nolan said from where he sat next to me on the swing.
It was Monday morning, and instead of filming the final competition episode, the story producers were filming interview segments with the remaining bakers. Nolan and I had opted to do ours together, out on the Wisteria’s front porch.
“Who’s telling this story, me or you?” I asked, poking him in the side.
“I thought we both were,” he said. “You know, since we’re both on camera and everything.”
“Yeah, but you’re supposed to be the silent, glower-y one,” I said. “You’re going to confuse everyone at home if you change it up on them now.”
Nolan looked back at the camera. “You can see that the part where we bicker all the time because I’m right and he’s wrong wasn’t a lie, at least.”
“Thus proving my point! Except for the me being wrong part. That’s a blatant falsehood.”
I poked him again, and he grabbed my hand, then laced our fingers together and brought them to rest on his thigh.
“I’m keeping you in finger jail until I’m sure you can be trusted.”
“Ooh, kinky.”
“ If we could get back to the matter at hand,” Nora said, pulling our attention back to her. “You were saying, you came up with this idea to pretend you liked each other because…?”
“Because of me, really,” I said. “Nolan went along with it because he’s a nicer person than I deserve, but if people are going to get mad about it, they should blame me, not him.” I squeezed his hand. “Basically, I realized there was a good chance I was going to get sent home early, unless I could find a reason to convince people to keep me around.”
“You seemed to be doing well in the early rounds of voting,” Nora pointed out.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t bake. I still can’t. Not without lots of help, anyway. The writing was pretty much on the wall. But I thought, well, maybe if I could convince viewers that I was head-over-heels for Nolan, they’d feel bad enough to let me stay.”
“So you tricked them?” Nora arched an eyebrow.
I took a deep breath, then nodded. The whole point of these wrap-up interviews was to help explain what had happened this season—why there wouldn’t be a traditional finale, why Tanner had suddenly disappeared from the show, and why all the contestants were being given a small settlement from the network in exchange for agreeing not to sue, though I supposed we weren’t supposed to say that last part out loud.
The network didn’t want to get into too much detail about the events of the past few days, and for the time being, Nolan and I were willing to go along with that. But they did want a narrative from us, a way to tie our story up with a neat little bow. And there was no way to explain how we’d ended up together without explaining how it had all started.
“I did,” I said, exhaling. “I know it was wrong. I knew it was wrong at the time. And I regret lying to people. I really am sorry. The only explanation I can offer is that I was just really, really scared and desperate, and didn’t want to get sent home. I know that’s not an excuse. But I guess I just…didn’t want to be a failure at yet another thing, you know? Anyone who’s watched the show knows I suck at baking, but the fact of the matter is, I suck at a lot of things. And I don’t even mean that in an innuendo-y way. I just mean like, I’m not that smart, I don’t have a good head for numbers, I never went to college. My parents and I—” I broke off, swallowing around a lump that rose in my throat out of nowhere. “I guess I just wanted to pretend I was good at something, for once. Wanted to prove I wasn’t totally incompetent. But I’m sorry I tried to do that by lying.”
“Hey,” Nolan said, tugging my hand to get my attention.
I looked at him in confusion. He just smiled at me. A small, private smile that made me forget about the camera that was four feet from my face, made me forget about everything except for him, and me, and us .
“I love you,” he said, his voice so soft I wasn’t sure the microphones would pick it up. But it didn’t matter. He wasn’t saying it for them.
He brought his free hand to my cheek and kissed me on the forehead before turning back to the camera.
“Aiden’s being generous,” he said, “making it sound like this was all his idea, but it wasn’t. It was a two-part decision, and anyone who’s hurt or mad should blame me too.” He looked at Nora. “And while I wish we hadn’t lied about it, I don’t regret doing it. Because if we hadn’t pretended to like each other, I wouldn’t have met the love of my life. Wouldn’t have realized he was standing in front of me the whole time.”
“Making jokes about cream fillings,” I couldn’t help adding. “It does still baffle me that I didn’t win you over with that alone.”
“Well, those were just hypothetical cream fillings,” Nolan said. “You can’t expect anyone to be won over by theory on its own. But once I’d gotten some firsthand, practical experience filling you with—”
“ And I think we’re going to edit that bit out in post,” Nora interrupted before he could go any further. “This is technically still a family-friendly show. Even with the debacle it turned into.” She glanced down at the notebook in her hand, checking something off a list, then looked back at Nolan. “So, Aiden’s explained why he created this whole charade. What made you willing to go along with it?”
“It’s simple.” Nolan shrugged. “I wanted to stay on the show.”
“And you didn’t think that would happen any other way? Your early bakes were pretty successful.”
“Yeah, but nobody liked me. The judges said that time and time again—there was only so much intervention they could do if people weren’t going to vote for me.”
“But you wanted to stay on the show?” Nora prompted. Nolan nodded but didn’t say anything else. She gave him an apologetic smile. “Could you tell viewers a little bit about why it was so important to you to not go home?”
Nolan swallowed, but didn’t speak. We’d discussed all these questions with Nora ahead of time. But his lips were pressed together tightly, and his body was suddenly as stiff and immobile as steel.
I squeezed his hand again, and when he looked at me, whispered, “You don’t have to talk about this part.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “No. I want to.”
He looked back at the camera. “I wanted to stay on the show because I needed money. I know that sounds crass, but it’s the truth. My mom is sick. And she has a lot of medical bills, and we don’t—” He bit his lip and looked away, out into the Wisteria’s front yard. “It’s just the two of us now. Things haven’t always been perfect, but I just wanted to be able to take care of her.”
“Viewers met your mom last week,” Nora said gently. “She talked a little bit about the bond you two have. Is there anything you want to add to that?”
Nolan was quiet for a bit. I pulled my hand free so I could wrap my arm around his waist, then brought my other arm around the front and squeezed him as hard as I could. I felt him shift and run a hand through my hair. A bird trilled from somewhere near the eaves of the porch as the camera watched us silently.
“I don’t always open up that easily,” Nolan said after a moment. “And I didn’t—didn’t want to invite the world into my private life, I guess. I didn’t want it to seem like I was trying to profit off my mom’s illness. She and I—I mean, I never expected her to talk about all of that. I didn’t even know the show had gotten in touch with her. I can’t pretend I wasn’t surprised.” I looked up and saw that he was looking right at the camera. “But I love my mom more than anything. And I would do anything for her. And in the end, that’s all that matters.”
“I’m sure viewers can understand the importance of family,” Nora said. She looked back at me, and I briefly considered sitting up straight before deciding that I was fine where I was.
“So you both had reasons for wanting to stay on the show. Reasons I’m sure viewers can understand, even if they wouldn’t have acted the exact same way. So tell us what happened next.”
“We fell in love,” Nolan said at the same time as I said, “I wore him down.”
He caught my eye. I shrugged, and he laughed.
“He’s not wrong,” he said at the same time as I added, “We did, though, he’s right.”
We both laughed that time.
“So a little bit of both?” Nora asked with a smile.
“Something like that.”
“Aiden’s joking,” Nolan said, “but in all honesty, he did wear me down. Just not in the way he thinks.”
I pushed back so I could see him without having to crane my neck. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that until I met you, I was just…a mess. A very controlled, very uptight mess who was good at pretending he wasn’t one. But inside, behind all the walls I’d erected, I was falling apart. And you broke through those walls. Exploded them, really.”
“That makes me sound awful.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You saved me. I was like the walking wounded, you know? Bleeding internally, but trying to pretend I was fine. I wasn’t even aware of how bad it had gotten. If it weren’t for you, I might never have admitted there was a problem. I would have just kept shutting down, shrinking myself smaller, until there was nothing left. You’re the person who made me excited for the future again. The person who made me want to live , not just survive.”
“You are my future,” I told him, leaning in to peck him on the lips. Nora awed in the background, and I laughed when I pulled back. “That sounds cheesy, but I mean it quite literally. Like, good luck getting away from me. I’m gonna be stuck to your side from here on out.” I grinned at the camera. “Stuck like dried, tangy, white—”
“Yeah, we’re gonna be cutting that out too,” Nora interrupted. She glanced down at her notebook again. “I think we’ve got pretty much everything we need here, actually. I know they’re putting together a little explainer with Vivian, talking about how Tanner was found to be engaging in deliberately-vague-but- definitely-unethical behavior and abusing his power as a judge. But if there’s anything else you want to add…?”
Nolan tilted his head and looked at me, but I just smiled.
“No. Not really. Except that I want to say how grateful I am for the opportunity to be here. Even if I didn’t win the grand prize—even if nobody won it—well, I feel like I won something even better.”
“Oh, really?” Nora asked. “And what might that be?”
“The right to make all the cream pie jokes I want, now that the show’s over. Obviously. Though being with Nolan is a close second.”
Nolan shook his head. “I’m glad to see fame hasn’t changed you.”
I grinned. “Did you really think it would?”
Nolan’s mom came to visit two days later.
All filming had wrapped up. Aisha and Lucinda had gone home. So had Vivian, and Tanner had been gone since Friday. All that remained was a skeleton crew of producers and editors cutting together the final episode, and a couple of lawyers from the network who’d flown in over the weekend to do damage control.
The tents were gone. The equipment littering the inn’s hallways had been packed up. You’d hardly know there’d been a TV show filming there at all, except for the divots in the grass that dotted the backyard. That, and the occasional production assistant who hustled down to the kitchen to grab more coffee for the editors still working upstairs in one of the Wisteria’s guest rooms.
Nolan borrowed Deacon’s truck to pick his mom up at the ferry. My heart swelled and nearly burst as I watched him open the door for her and walk her up to the porch. He was so careful, so gentle, placing an arm around her shoulders, his eyes never leaving her face.
She gave him a smile that said you know I don’t actually need this much tending . His answering one said I know, but let me do it anyway . She reached up and patted his face, and he flushed. He didn’t remove his arm, though.
A whole conversation without any words. It made me ache, in a good way. Whatever had happened in their past, they had each other moving forward.
“Aiden!” she exclaimed when I jogged down the steps to meet them. “You’re even more handsome in person. I’m Erin. Give me a hug.”
She broke away from Nolan and threw her arms wide, then wrapped them around me and squeezed when I came forward. I glanced at Nolan over her shoulder, and he gave me a rueful smile. When I pulled back, she pinched my cheek.
“Oh, I’ve been wanting to do that for ages.” She grinned. “I’m so happy Nolan got his head on straight and realized what a prize you are. You know, I told him as much, back when the show first started. I told him he needed to snap you up while he still had a chance.”
“Really?” I looked at Nolan speculatively, and his cheeks got even pinker. “How fascinating.”
Erin laughed. “I think my exact words were something along the lines of you having a very cute—”
“Mom!” Nolan interjected, his cheeks bright red now. “Can you not objectify my boyfriend within thirty seconds of meeting him?”
“Okay, okay!” She held her hands up. “I’ll stop. But it is lovely to finally meet you, Aiden. I feel like I know you a bit already, after watching you from home all these weeks, but I look forward to seeing more of you now.”
I beamed at her. “Me too. I want to hear all sorts of embarrassing stories about Nolan when he was younger.”
“Oh, well if you want embarrassing, let me tell you about—”
“Later,” Nolan cut in again. “I think humiliating me can wait until we’ve at least gotten your bags inside, can’t it?”
Erin rolled her eyes. “Spoilsport.”
Despite her promises to tell me stories, I knew Nolan wanted time alone with his mom, so I gave them space for the rest of the afternoon. I caught sight of them a few times, walking through the grounds of the Wisteria or sitting in the backyard, deep in conversation.
At one point, I saw them through the window in my room, talking under the big live oak. Erin reached out and stroked Nolan’s cheek like she was wiping a tear from his eye. He hugged her tightly to his chest.
I stepped back from the window after that. They deserved their privacy. And I had a meeting to get to anyway.
We had dinner together, though, and when I tried to get up from the table to clean up after, Erin pulled me back down into my chair.
“One of the silver linings of being sick,” she said with a conspiratorial smile, “is getting out of doing chores you don’t want to do.”
“Yeah, but what’s my excuse?” I asked.
“Easy. You’re caring for a sick old lady. Obviously, you can’t leave my side.”
“You’re not old, Mom,” Nolan said, standing up and stacking our plates. “And with any luck, you won’t be sick much longer either.”
“Then you’d better let me enjoy it while it lasts.” She turned back to me. “Now, let him take care of all of that, and you tell me more about what Nolan was like off -camera.”
I knew Nolan had spent most of his childhood living with his grandparents, and that things with his mom had been rocky. But as he and Mal worked in the kitchen, and I chatted with Erin, I couldn’t help wishing my parents had been a little more like her.
Her love for Nolan overflowed. You could hear it in her voice when she talked about him, see it in her eyes whenever he came over to check on us. She was proud of him and made sure he knew it.
“Did you have a good talk with her?” I asked when I crawled into bed that night, exhausted. Nolan had moved into my room so Deacon and Mal could start getting the Wisteria ready for regular guests.
Nolan rolled onto his side to face me. “Yeah. We did.” His hand traced an invisible pattern along my arm. “It was…a lot. She told me that there were some run-ins with social services when I was too young to even remember. Way before I actually—well, before everything happened. It was apparently kind of a ticking time bomb situation.”
“Wow.” I brought my fingers to his chest, feeling the warmth of his skin. His heartbeat thumped beneath my palm. I imagined love pouring from my body into his. “That is a lot.”
“She said she felt guilty for never telling me. And I—” He broke off, shaking his head slightly. “You know, I was so mad when she first gave that interview, telling everyone about what we went through. I’d spent my whole life blaming myself for getting taken away, for her using, and there she was, just casually pulling the rug out from under me, telling me I was wrong. I know it wasn’t casual, and that wasn’t what she was trying to do, but that was what it felt like. And I was kind of dreading her coming down here, even though I was the one who suggested it.”
His eyes went wistful. “But when I went to pick her up from the ferry today? I didn’t feel any of that. All I felt was this sadness, that so much had come between us. And this desperation not to let that happen again.” He bit his lip. “Is that bad?”
“Bad? Why would that be bad?”
“Because it means I’m soft? Or, I don’t know, asking to get hurt again?”
I shook my head. “I think it means you love her. And I don’t think loving people makes you soft.” I centered my hand over his heart. Let its rhythm fill me. “You can get hurt when you love people, but you trust that they won’t do it on purpose. And you know that it’s worth it, anyway. Because you got to love them. And that’s worth any price.”
Nolan smiled at me. “When did you get so wise, huh?”
“Mmm, approximately a week ago? That was when I realized that no matter what happened, I wanted to be with you. That I would always want to be with you, even if we both fuck up. Even when we fuck up, I should say, because let’s be honest—with me, at least, it’s a guarantee that I will.”
“Aiden.” Nolan’s fingertips brushed my temple.
“I’m serious. And I’m not saying it in some self-deprecating haha, isn’t it funny how I always mess up way. I just mean, I’m human. We both are. But hard as it is for me to wrap my head around it, you’ve seen me at my worst and you still love me. And I know I still love you. And no matter what happens, I know I’ll want to figure it out with you.”
He ghosted a kiss across my lips. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but I know better than to question it. So I’ll just say that I love you. And I feel the same way.”
I smiled. “Okay. Good. Because I actually have something else I want to talk to you about, and I want you to remember what you just said, about figuring things out together, instead of just jumping in and telling me no out of hand.”
Nolan raised an eyebrow. “That sounds ominous. Should I be nervous?”
“No.” I shook my head. “At least, I don’t think so. I think it’s good news. It’s just, well, you know the plan? Play nice for now, then have Em leak the video later?”
Nolan nodded. Neither of us was sure we would win if we took Tanner to court. He’d never technically said what he’d done to my drink, and everything else was just slippery enough that a good lawyer could probably get him off, even with the recording.
But we didn’t want Tanner to get away with it and hurt more people. And while Nolan and I weren’t allowed to share the video if we took the settlement, Em wasn’t getting a penny from the network and was under no such prohibition. So the minute the settlement hit our accounts next week, he was going to send the backup copies he’d made to as many gossip sites and TV entertainment channels as he could find.
We might not be able to win in court, but we could do our best to make sure everyone knew to stay away from Tanner from now on.
“Yeah,” Nolan said. “Are you having second thoughts? Because I understand if you are. I don’t think a four thousand dollar settlement is nearly enough, considering what Tanner put you through, but that video is going to turn our lives into a circus for a little while. I wouldn’t blame you if you just wanted to take the money and forget about the rest.”
“No, no, it’s not that. Well, it is that. Kind of. I don’t care about people finding out about what happened to me. And as long as you’re still willing to talk about it, and deal with the inevitable questions once the video comes out—”
“I am.” Nolan’s voice was firm. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure he can’t hurt anyone else.”
“Then I am too. Definitely. Operation Takedown Tanner is still a go.” I smiled grimly. “But about the money. I completely agree that four thousand isn’t enough for what Tanner did to any of us. But the thing is, I never actually signed the settlement offer the network gave everyone.”
“Wait, really?” Nolan’s eyes widened.
“And I might have kind of taken a meeting with their lawyers this afternoon while you were catching up with your mom. And I might have finally agreed to sign their papers…once they bumped my settlement up to four hundred thousand.”
“Four hundred thousand dollars?”
“As opposed to what, nickels?” I laughed. “Yeah. Four hundred thousand dollars.”
“That’s amazing!” His brow furrowed. “But why would I tell you that was bad?”
“Because I want to use it to pay your mom’s medical bills?”
Nolan’s jaw dropped. It had never really closed after I’d told him the amount, but it dropped even farther now.
“Aiden, that’s incredibly sweet, but you can’t just—”
“I can ,” I interrupted. “I can, and I will. Even if you break up with me and I have to give it directly to your mom instead of you, I will do it. But, you know, I’d prefer it if you didn’t break up with me. We’ve only been dating for real for a week, after all.”
“Aiden.” Nolan looked anxious. “That is—I can’t tell you how much that means to me. Really. But you need that money too. And it’s not fair of me to—”
“I don’t, though, actually. I don’t need it. I can get a job as a barista anywhere. In DC, or even, um, here.”
“Here?”
I swallowed. “That’s something else that happened this afternoon. I was talking with Nora. Just saying how much I was going to miss her and Em. And she told me they had a proposal for me.”
Nolan didn’t say anything. I thought he might still be in shock from everything else I’d said, so I rushed on.
“They had this idea of doing a web series. With me, I mean. Where I’d go around and try all these different jobs and be, well, terrible at them, but highlight the craft and skill of the people we were showcasing that week. So it would let all these small businesses and artisans show off. We could call it something like Aiden Attempts , and obviously, we could shoot it anywhere, but they’d have more contacts with artists and people if we started locally. And Summersea is a lot closer to DC than LA is, and—wait, why are you laughing?”
“Because I was trying to figure out how to bring up the same idea with you,” Nolan said, his shoulders shaking.
“Seriously? They talked to you about it too?”
“No, not that.” He shook his head, grinning. “But I was talking to Mal tonight, when you and my mom were still at the table. Apparently, the Wisteria has gotten an insane amount of press from all of this, and he and Deacon are thinking about expanding. Having a fully-fledged restaurant with dinner service and everything. Maybe adding an addition out back. But to do that, they’d need a full-time manager, and—”
“They asked you to do it?” I said.
“They asked if I would be hypothetically interested. And I’d need to check with my mom, for one thing. But she couldn’t stop raving this afternoon about how pretty it was down here. So if she were up for relocating…” He trailed off, smiling. “God, I was so worried about how I was going to broach the subject with you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ve said on multiple occasions that you didn’t want to live somewhere as small as Summersea.”
“Oh.” My mouth fell open.
“What changed your mind?” Nolan asked.
“I just…” I paused, thinking for a moment. “I said I didn’t want to live somewhere like Summersea because I didn’t want to end up in a place like my hometown. Close-minded and claustrophobic. But if I’m being honest, that’s not what Summersea feels like. It feels like family, you know? The good kind of family.”
I arched an eyebrow. “But I probably shouldn’t be honest. I should probably lie to you and be like, damn, you’re right. I totally don’t want to move here, and it would be a huge favor if I agreed to, and you’d owe me something pretty big in return. ”
“Oh, yeah? Like what?”
“Well, for example, and this is just off the top of my head…you could let me help out with some of those bills?”
Nolan gave me a helpless smile. “This is probably one of those things I’m not really going to be able to stop, isn’t it?”
“Probably.”
“So I should maybe just go ahead and agree, to save us a lot of arguments over something that is, ultimately, the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me?”
“Something like that.”
“Even though it means that if I do agree, then I think you’ll actually owe me ? For being so selfless and for making such a big sacrifice and demonstrating how I’m learning to let people in?”
“Let me get this straight. You’re saying that I’d owe you for giving you a stupidly large sum of money, just because you’d have the grace to not throw a fit about it?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.” Nolan gave me a serious look. “And I should warn you in advance, it won’t be easy to work off your debt to me.”
“Oh?”
“It’ll be a long process. Long, hard, and hot.” He grinned wickedly. “Sweaty, too. Are you sure you’re up for that?”
“Why, Mr. McAllister.” I batted my eyelashes at him outrageously. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Thanks for reading!