Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Kendall
“Should I ask?” Jillian says at my side and I down another shot.
“You can ask, but I won’t answer. I’m done with questions, done with answers, done with it all.”
“Kendall.” I flinch when Aaron places his hand on my hip. “Will you stop flinching when I touch you? Jesus Kendall it’s me.” I spin around to face him.
“Yeah you, the guy that got me right where he wanted me, waiting for my defenses to be down so he could move in and tear me down. Just like men do, chip away until there is nothing left.”
“That’s not fair,” he says.
“What’s not fair is that you pushed until I let you in and now all I want to do is go back to the point when I held you at arm’s length. I want to go back to before you and I ever happened when I could have meaningless sex with whomever I decided to and then never look back.”
His eyes darken.
“You changed things.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“It is the worst thing,” I say, pushing his hand away. “I told you it was a matter of time til you referred to me as a bitch and now here we are.”
“Never called you a bitch,” he tells me. This is the fork in the road, where I can choose to go left or right. I get the chance to choose the good or the bad, the sun or the darkness.
“By the end of tonight you will.” I toss the last shot back and walk toward the dance floor losing myself in the crowd.
The alcohol clouds my judgement and the memories of that morning after so many years ago.
The knowledge of knowing what happened to me, but no true memories of who.
Walking out of that house, knowing the man who’d hurt me was somewhere inside sharing the conquest with his friends.
I was a story, a stupid girl who’d allowed a stupid thing to happen.
The room sways and I close my eyes feeling the rhythm.
Hands on my hips, a warm body presses in tightly from behind.
A strong hand on my stomach, fingers stretched wide.
I wiggle my ass and hear a moan.
My body stiffens when I realize what’s happening. But before I can say anything the warm body is no longer behind me and I am being drug across the dance floor toward the exit.
The cool night air hits my face, and I am spun around, my back against the outside brick wall.
And I am staring up into Aaron’s cold angry eyes.
“Did that help?” he asks, leaning in and placing one hand on each side of me. “Letting some random man touch you, did that solve the fucking problems in your head. Did it help you win the bullshit game you’re playing?”
I stare at him, my stomach rolling uncontrollably.
“Trying to force me to hate you isn’t going to work.
You want to act like an asshole, you want to push me to react, well I’m reacting.
I fucking care Kendall, it’s too late, that won’t go away.
But right now, I can’t be anywhere near you.
” He steps back and I instantly feel the loss of his closeness.
I feel all the wrongs and I know there is no way to right them.
“Fucking take her ass home,” he says as he steps back and spins around. That is when I notice Sophie and Jillian waiting a few feet away.
“Aaron,” I holler and he holds up his hand without looking back and waves me off. I start in his direction and Sophie places her hand on my arm.
“You need to let him cool off, Kendall.”
“What did I do?”
“Truth?” she asks and I nod. “I don’t know what happened before you two came inside but what I do know is in all the time I’ve been around Aaron I don’t think I’ve ever seen that look in his eyes.”
“Can I help you?”
I spin around and practically trip over my own feet. “Um, yeah.” I already know without asking that this is Aaron’s mother. He may look exactly like his father, handsome and tall, but he has his mother’s eyes. “I was looking for Aaron.” Nervous energy courses through me.
She smiles. “He and his father left early this morning for a last minute trip to the Memphis area. One of the other guys was supposed to go with Randy but Aaron volunteered.” A knot forms in my stomach knowing I’m the reason he so eagerly took off. “They’ll be gone through the night.”
“Oh.” My throat burns. “Okay, thanks.” I start to walk back toward my Jeep when she speaks again.
“You must be the disrespectful girl in the blue dress.” If she wasn’t smiling brightly while saying these words I think I would die right here in Aaron’s driveway.
“I’m sorry about that, I uh…” have no clue what to say.
“Don’t be.” Aaron’s mother shrugs with a laugh. “I love the fact that Joan was put in her place. That woman can be vicious. However I do hate that you had to put up with any of that at all.”
I’m used to people treating me different. It has been that way practically my entire life. “I’m not the sweet southern belle kind of girl.” I force a smile still feeling off-kilter knowing I sent her son more than two hundred miles away.
“No, but you are the girl my son is falling in love with.” Her words stop me dead, like frozen in time, my mouth hanging open slightly in surprise.
“I don’t know about that, ma’am.”
“I do, a mother always knows,” she assures me. “It’s in the way he talks about you, without saying your name. The way his eyes light up whenever I ask him if the woman he is seeing is special.”
“He may be singing a different tune right now.” I laugh nervously.
"Every couple bickers, it’s what keeps the fire burning.”
“Well, I tossed a gallon of gasoline on our fire. I may have even snuck in a stick of dynamite for good measure.”
She smiles bigger.
“I can see why my son is so enthralled by you. You may not be a sweet southern belle hun, but you are intriguing and quite beautiful. He says you keep him on his toes.”
“I may have really messed things up.” Here I am confessing my wrongs to a woman I barely know. A woman who is the mother of the man that has me flipped upside down and doing things I never thought I would.
“Give him some time, he’s like his father in that way. They need time to stew, time to sort it all out in their head. But sooner or later they end up strolling back into the room and sitting down at your side to sort things out.” She is speaking from years and years of experience.
“Even if I was awful and hateful and all he was doing was trying to be there for me?” I know that now. He wasn’t being pushy to force me to talk about what happened, he was genuinely concerned, and I was a bitch.
“Even then,” she says, easing my mind a little.
“Would you like to come over and have a glass of tea?”
“Another time.” I take a breath in attempt to calm myself. “I was supposed to be at work fifteen minutes ago but told them I had to make a quick stop first.”
“You work at your father’s shop, right?”
“I do,” I say nervously. This is the point where she realizes I am a mess of a woman who drives a big manly truck and works on cars and I’m so wrong for her son.
“You’ll have to take me on a ride along with you one day.” She laughs. “My father drove a big rig and I loved those rides as a child. Always made me feel like I was bigger than anyone else and on top of the world.”
“Any time,” I tell her, realizing that I may have misjudged Aaron’s mother. I may have misjudged a lot of people. And in doing so I may have missed out on a lot of things I will never be able to get back.