Chapter 16
Nick’s mind whirled. There sat Aubrey, porcelain-pale, her throat working against a painful-looking swallow.
Paige pulled out of their hug. “Come on, come meet our float-building partner.”
He forced his muscles to unlock and let himself be towed by the hand, because what choice did he have? No thanks, Peanut, let’s skip the part where you introduce me to the woman I’ve loved since before you were born.
“Soooo this is Aubrey,” Paige chirped. “But not just any Aubrey. Aubrey MacLean. The record-holder for trophies in math club. Although I am about to dethrone her, which maybe makes us bitter enemies, except I like her a lot, and . . .”
He resisted the urge to drag a hand down his face. Hearing Paige shape the same name that forever echoed inside his head had
him questioning whether he’d wandered into some kind of upside-down reality. As did the fact that his daughter apparently
knew Aubrey’s name already.
“. . . but, wait, didn’t you two go to school together? The years on those trophies . . .” Paige smacked her forehead with
an open palm. “Right. I’m being dumb. You’ve probably already met.”
“Yeah,” Nick choked out. “We’ve met.”
“Wow, what’re the chances Megan would pair us up with your old classmate?”
He almost groaned. What were the chances? Well, one hundred percent, probably. Fucking Megan Shimamoto, meddling again. The woman barely knew how to do
anything else.
“And I can’t believe you’ve never told me you went to school with a real live mathematician,” Paige continued. “How could
you just not mention that? Ever?”
Aaaand there was a question he had no desire to answer. Even so, he couldn’t wrench his eyes from Aubrey’s. Amid the cool
blue shadows of the barn, her hair shimmered like it had been spun from jewels. He just stood there, in some kind of thrall,
his heart a painful thump inside his chest.
Thankfully, Aubrey saved him from a response by sliding from her seat. “Excuse me. I think I need to . . . clarify something.
I’ll be right back.” She bustled away. A moment later, she appeared outside the window, huddled in a conference with Megan.
Nick tried to shake off his stupor. Get it together. He’d only come to help Paige out, and if Aubrey didn’t want him near
her, he’d respect that. He’d been respecting it.
“I wonder what that was about,” Paige said.
When he forced a shrug, she hauled him over to a stack of rebar, where she fired off a string of numbers that went over his
head. Something about polygons and the sum of interior angles. He eventually gleaned that he had to cut the rods into pieces
and weld them back together into a circle. No, four circles.
Which would probably take all damn day.
He sighed, but went to work with minimal grumbling. The sooner he finished, the sooner he could leave. His morning workout with Jackson had granted him some measure of calm, and he clung to it now, though it felt like trying to hang on to a bar of soap while standing under a roaring waterfall.
A pair of bolt-cutters lay beside the rebar, so he planted one handle against the floor, set a rod between the blades, and
clamped the other handle down by leveraging all his strength. The cut pieces pinged onto the weathered floorboards. Paige
nodded her encouragement and bounded away to “do more calculating.”
Five minutes later, Aubrey reentered the barn, her cheeks pink with cold. Or maybe with being strenuously opposed to his existence.
She strolled over and braced her hands on her hips, her brows raised, as if this had all been his idea.
“Well?” He tried to sound casual. “What’d Megan say?”
Aubrey glanced sidelong at Paige, who sat hunched over her notebook, her tongue peeking from the side of her mouth. She wouldn’t
be rejoining them anytime soon.
“She said she needs me here.” Aubrey kept her tone hushed. “Doing math. And she did promise to put me where I fit best, regardless of who with. I guess I just misinterpreted what that meant.”
He snorted. “You didn’t misinterpret shit.”
Aubrey’s mouth pinched. “You’re saying she paired me up with your daughter on purpose? Paired me up with you?”
He shrugged. No point trying to convince her of Megan’s machinations if she didn’t already know. “Just pick some other job,
if this bothers you.”
Aubrey hesitated. “I’m not going to . . . run away from you, if that’s what you mean. I don’t need to.”
His heart thrummed a discordant note. No, of course she didn’t. That night at her house—when he’d stupidly told her he didn’t
regret—had been the end of it for her. Case closed.
“Besides,” she said. “That’d send everyone the wrong message.”
Right. The “wrong message” being that she was still hung up on him. As if anyone would have suspected that to begin with. He bent to the rebar again, working in silence.
Aubrey stood and watched, as if to prove a point.
Which shouldn’t have changed anything. But his skin grew hot and prickling under her stare. He manhandled the cutters until
sweat trickled down his spine, then peeled off his jacket and tossed it aside. Not because he liked the feel of her gaze on
him as he worked in nothing more than a sweat-dampened T-shirt, but—
Oh, fuck it, that was exactly why. Some primal part of him relished the chance to demonstrate the strength he’d never had
when they were kids. Because while Aubrey might not care anymore, he did. He’d care until he was dead—and probably long after.
And the longer she stood there, the more he dared to imagine that maybe, just maybe, some overlooked ember of their past still
flickered. Bit by bit, the stiffness melted from her posture. Her fingers snuck to her waist, then twined together. Her gaze
cut from his body to his face and back again while her pulse swelled visibly in the hollow of her throat.
Heat rose inside him. He knew those tells, had once been fluent in that language of lowered lashes and half-drawn breaths. Even now, he remembered enough
to know that while Aubrey might not care, some part of her, however small, still found him attractive. At least on a physical
level.
Cold comfort, but he hoarded the knowledge, regardless.
The afternoon passed slowly, with him working up a sweat and trying not to stare at Aubrey, which, for the most part, failed
miserably. Paige did most of the directing, while Aubrey marked off rebar cuts with a chalk-paint marker and arranged the
finished pieces in preparation.
Then came the assembly. Nick went to the truck for his MIG welder and lugged it into the barn, then set up in a corner where he wouldn’t burn anyone’s vision.
Paige and Aubrey stayed outside. In between hissing showers of sparks, he caught their muted chatter, and reality seemed to
drift. How mind-boggling that they could coexist like this. That his life’s diverging roads could overlap in any way, much
less chat casually in the October sunshine.
What in the actual fuck.
If nothing else, though, he appreciated knowing Aubrey had the grace not to hold Paige’s origins against her. Even from here,
he could make out her tone, warm and encouraging.
Probably talking about math, then. Definitely not about him.
When he finished, he packed up the welder, then paused in the barn doorway. Aubrey and Paige leaned against his truck, smiling.
Aubrey kept lifting the heels of her boots out of the ground, then putting them down again, at which point they sank right
back in. Paige’s giggle drifted on the breeze.
Seeing them like that, laughing together, ripped open a rift inside him, an ache so profound it felt eternal, equal parts
pleasure and pain.
Fucking hell, if only he could have had both of them. Done right by one without forsaking the other. If only he could have
built himself a family that knitted together the disparate pieces of his torn-up heart.
But he couldn’t, and he had no one to blame but himself, so he shouldered the welder’s weight and stepped into the sunshine.
Aubrey’s smile died at his approach.
He tried not to let that bother him, but a weight dragged at his stomach, anyway.
“All done?” Paige said.
“All done.” He manhandled the welder back into the truck bed.
“Great,” she said. “I’m gonna go check everything over, figure out what we need for next week. I’ll see you and Mom at dinner, okay? Oh, and you’ll have to take Aubrey home. She doesn’t have a car. I’d drive her, but I’m heading to Maria’s for a bit.”
He opened his mouth, but Paige had already bounced off toward the barn. She called over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Aubrey!
I’ll text you about math club!”
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Math club? Do I even want to know what that’s about?”
“Probably not,” Aubrey said.
When he dropped his hand, he found her peering up, and this new vantage point struck him. In high school, she’d stood nearly
at eye level, but that had been before he’d shot up four inches between eighteen and nineteen, once he’d started at the steel
mill and begun filling his refrigerator with as much food as he could afford. His body had soaked it up, maybe making up for
all that lost time when his dad had considered a refrigerated bottle of ketchup an acceptable discharge of his parental responsibilities.
Yet in those intervening years, Aubrey hadn’t grown an inch. Somehow, that felt right to him, knowing he could tuck her protectively
beneath his chin if he needed to.
“Don’t worry.” She frowned, and he realized he’d been staring for entirely too long. “You’re not actually taking me home.”
“I’m not?”
“No. I’ll ride with Megan.”
He surrendered to a bitter chuckle. So damn innocent. “Aubs. Megan left.”
She reared back and glanced around. Cobalt shadows filled the barnyard. Only a few volunteers lingered, none of whom Aubrey
would know. Conspicuously, Megan was nowhere to be found.
“Really?” Aubrey said, her voice shrinking.
“Really.”
“You’re sure?”
“Very.”
She gnawed at her bottom lip. “I could . . . walk, then.”