Chapter 22
AIDEN
I want to try for real. That thought’s been chewing at the back of my skull since I parked outside the building. This time’s different. This isn’t about checking boxes or playing the good husband for show. I’m here because I’m tired of my own bullshit. No masks. No charm. No dodging.
Dr. Charles Davis has the same unreadable shrink-face he wore last time. Calm, patient, the kind of guy who makes you feel judged even when he’s silent. I hated him then. I kinda still do.
He leans in slightly. “Why don’t you tell me why you came here today, Aiden?”
I exhale, slow. “You already know. I cheated.”
He nods, like he’s heard it all before. Probably has. “Last time you were here, it was to fulfil a requisite. Marriage counselling. To say you tried. Is that what this is again?”
I shake my head. “No. I want to talk about why I keep screwing up. Why I sabotage good things. I want to try.”
He folds his hands on the desk, still watching me like he’s waiting for a fuse to burn out. “Alright. Let’s start there. What are you carrying?”
I pause, looking at him. He’s sitting smugly in his desk chair, not even bothering to sit in the one in front of the sofa. Asshole. Letting the silence stretch, I think about his question.
“My dad left when I was ten. Just... packed a bag and ghosted. My mom worked herself into the ground after. At least, that’s what I thought. I learned to be okay with scraps. Never ask for more.”
He waits. I go on.
“I built a version of me that people liked. Confident. Easy. Dependable. The guy who doesn’t take shit seriously. It worked, until it didn’t.”
I glance down at my hands, twisted between my knees. “Until I realized I was a fraud.”
He peers over his glasses. “Why do you think that?”
I get up, start pacing. “I worked, alright? Got my first job at fourteen. Saved up for gifts, for groceries, for rent sometimes. For her. Then I found out my father didn’t leave. He didn’t clean out the accounts. My mom wasn’t working nights.”
I stop behind the couch, fingers digging into the backrest.
“She was screwing her married boss. I'm his. The financial mess? That happened when his wife found out and made him choose. He picked his wife. And his real kids.”
Dr. Davis says, calm as ever, “You’re his child too.”
I scoff. “Not really. I met him a few times. But he was just... Mom’s boss. Never called me son. Never asked me about school or friends. At the time, I thought it was normal. Just the kid of an employee. I didn’t know.”
“How did that make you feel?” he asks.
I roll my eyes. “How do you think? Betrayed. I gave up my damn childhood to help my mother. She made me feel guilty for spending anything on myself. She even tried to come between me and Kate when she found out.”
“What did you do?”
“I put my foot down. Kate was the only good thing I had. I wasn’t going to let my mom screw that up too.”
Beat.
“Until I did.”
I walk to the window, half expecting him to tell me to sit back down like I’m some sulky teenager. Instead, he swivels his chair to face me.
“What’s your relationship with your father?” he asks.
I glare at him. “I just told you, the guy ignored me.”
“Not him. The man who raised you.”
“He... uh—” I laugh, but it catches in my throat. “He was my hero. Still should be. The man tried to see me even after he found out I wasn’t his. But my mom blocked him.”
Doc leans forward a little. “So why isn’t he your hero anymore?”
I twist my mouth, eyes on the floor. Damn, the man doesn’t miss a thing. “I invited him,” I say, voice low. “After I heard his side, after all the years of thinking he just bailed... I thought maybe, maybe he was still the man who raised me. So I invited him to my wedding.”
Doc stays quiet, just waiting.
“He didn’t answer,” I continue. “And the closer it got to the wedding, the angrier I got. Like, what the hell was I even trying for? Then the morning of the bachelor party, he finally texted, some bullshit excuse about his real kid being sick.”
I rub my jaw, the shame settling like dust on my skin. “So I got drunk. And then...” I shake my head. “I don’t have to say it. You know.”
Doc watches me for a beat, then says, “Can I ask you a question? And I want you to really think before you answer.”
I look at him.
“Who do you blame for your cheating?”
I look at the wall beside his desk. Certificates in clean frames. Photos, smiles, handshakes, some old black-and-white one that looks like family. My throat feels thick.
Finally, I say, “Me. It was my fault.”
Doc doesn’t blink. “I’m asking who you blame.”
I look away, jaw tight. “The situation,” I mutter. “If my friends hadn’t gotten me drunk... if my mom hadn’t lied for years... if my father had just…” I stop, sigh through my teeth. “If he had just tried .”
There’s a pause. The kind that isn’t silent, not really. I can feel him looking at me. Then Doc leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees.
“That’s the problem with blame,” he says quietly.
“You can spread it out like peanut butter, thin across everyone who hurt you. And it might even be true. But healing?” He taps his chest once.
“That only starts when you stop handing out pieces of responsibility and take the whole damn thing for yourself.”
I blink at him.
He doesn’t soften. “You cheated, Aiden. Not your friends. Not your mom. Not your father. You made a choice when you were hurt. That’s not unfair, it’s just honest . So the real question isn’t who you blame. It’s who you want to be now.”
I nod slowly. My throat’s tight. The answer should be easy, but it isn’t. Who do I want to be? “I don’t want to be the guy who ruins things,” I say. “I want to be the man she believed I was. I want to be someone who owns his shit.”
Doc watches me for a moment, like he’s measuring whether I mean that or I’m just saying the right thing.
Then he says, “Let’s go back to that night.”
My stomach knots. He sees it, but doesn’t flinch.
“Not the excuses,” he adds quietly. “Not what anyone else did. I want to hear about you. What you felt. What you did. Start from the morning of your bachelor party.”
Flashback ~~ 10 years ago ~~ Day before the wedding
I wake with a skull-splitting headache and the taste of regret thick in my mouth. Last night, me and a bottle of whisky after the rehearsal dinner. That much is clear. The rest? A blur. My college guys got rowdy, Kate got... prissy, and then nothing. Just blackout fog.
Dragging myself downstairs, every step pounds like a drumbeat in my head. Jack and Alex are already at it, shouting, arguing over a cereal box or maybe a toy. Kate’s voice floats above them, calm but useless. They aren’t listening. Neither is she.
"Quiet!" I snap, louder than I mean to.
Silence slams into the room like a wall. The boys freeze mid-swing, eyes wide. Kate, halfway to the sink, stops moving. I’ve never yelled at them before. Not once.
I soften. “We don’t yell, okay?”
Both boys nod quickly. I move past them, past Kate, whose stunned expression says everything and nothing. She won’t call me out. She never does. That’s part of the problem.
I sit, the coffee Kate must’ve brewed already steaming on the table. I take a sip, scalding, welcome.
“So,” she says finally, voice even, “I have my bridal shower today. Just a bunch of kids and our mothers, what could possibly go wrong?”
She smiles faintly, like it’s a joke, but she’s watching me. Casual, but not.
I should tell her about my father. About what he said. What she did. But how can I? Not now. Not when she’s drowning in wedding prep and I’m already cracking. Taking another sip of my coffee, barely tasting it, I say: “Bummer. I’m gonna head to work, okay? Finish the project before the honeymoon.”
Kate doesn’t look up from rinsing a plate. “Do you have to? Today?”
I don’t answer. Just push back my chair and head upstairs.
She doesn’t follow. Doesn’t press. She never does.
She has no idea the ‘extra’ projects I’ve been picking up are what’s paying for the whole damn shindig tomorrow.
The tent, the flowers, the food my mom insisted on upgrading.
The extra chairs, the backup generator, the kid-friendly desserts.
All of it. I didn’t tell her. I don’t want to.
It’s not her job to worry about money. Or my past.
Especially not my father.
At work, I get the usual claps on the back, smirks, a chorus of “dead man walking” jokes as I pass by. They mean well. I guess. But they don’t get it. None of them do.
To them, I’m the guy who knocked up his high school girlfriend and stuck around because he had to. Because it was the “right” thing to do. Because I was trapped .
They don’t see what I see. They don’t see Kate the way I do. I’m marrying her because I want to. Because I love her. Because from the moment I realized she was it for me, I haven’t wanted anything else.
But still... I know what people think. And on bad days, I think Kate might believe it too. That I’m here out of obligation. Guilt. Momentum.
Sometimes I tell myself I’ll change that. I’ll prove it. I’ll show her what she means to me, remind her that none of this is a burden, it’s the life I chose . But those thoughts are like sparks in wet wood. They catch for a second and then the numbness spreads again, dull and heavy.
I walk through the day like a ghost. Fogged over. Nothing cuts through.
Tomorrow is our wedding. The day I’ve been planning since the moment I proposed, when she was pregnant with Alex and scared and so beautiful I could barely breathe.
And here I am, acting like an asshole.
Tomorrow…Tomorrow I’ll be different.
I promise.