12. He Saw His Only Chance
He Saw His Only Chance
Aiden
My boot had barely touched the bottom step when Ruth’s front door swung open.
“About time you got here,” she said.
“I’m five minutes early.” I kept heading up but then paused, my foot hovering above the next step. Ruth’s smile was big. Too big. “What’s going on?” My final steps were cautious.
“Oh, nothing,” she sang, twirling her cane before floating inside.
My eyes slitted. “Is anyone else coming for lunch today?”
“Nope. It’s just you and me, big guy.”
Relief deflated my chest. Ruth had an unfortunate habit of thinking she knew what was best for me.
For one agonising second, I’d expected to stoop through the front door and see Lola waiting on the other side.
Nothing could prepare me for that. A week ago, her blue eyes had stared up at me, a sigh on her lips, welcoming me inside her.
Today, the same woman had turned her back on me with unrestrained anger.
But even though Ruth’s living room was empty, my eyes widened. “Hey.” I nodded at the crooked line of watercolour canvases on the back wall. “You finally hung up some of your landscapes.”
“Yeah, I put them up last night.” Ruth lifted her good shoulder. “Life’s been feeling… I don’t know… Kind of different lately. It got me thinking about what you said. The house probably does need a bit more colour.”
She made it sound like the paintings were no big deal. It was. But her eyes didn’t linger on the watercolours as mine did, and her unsteady steps disappeared into the kitchen. My gaze flicked back to the wall.
Despite the new splashes of colour, a hush settled over the house when Ruth stepped out of the room.
It wasn’t like her old place on the mainland, where every wall had hummed with life—ribbons and trophies from her equestrian days, Matthew’s swimming medals gleaming in neat rows, framed glimpses of horses, and the smiles they wore when they got engaged and said, “I do.”
Those memories were lost, every last one of them erased. Ruth had made sure of that.
We never talked about the night of the accident ten years ago. We never spoke about the night of the storm the year after, either. Somehow, that night was almost worse.
Horrified, I’d watched Ruth rip every last reminder of her old life off the walls and hurl them onto the soaked ground outside.
“I have nothing left, Aiden,” she’d screamed. “Nothing!”
Even as I’d collected every broken keepsake off the grass, the rain pelting my back like a whip for my sins while Ruth sobbed in a broken ball on her kitchen floor, I’d known I should’ve done more to stop her.
Matthew had abandoned her. She’d needed me.
But I’d barely been holding myself together.
I hadn’t known what to do or how to help.
Most days, I still didn’t.
The distraction of packing away the box of groceries under my arm did nothing to stop the ghosts of shattered glass and splintered wood from stabbing my chest as if it were happening all over again.
Just once, I wish I hadn’t failed the important people in my life.
“Leave all that,” Ruth hurried me along. “Come.” She patted the empty chair beside her. “Sit down with me. Tell me about your week. How’s Harry?”
My eyebrow lifted, but I sank into the chair. This wasn’t where I thought the conversation would go.
“He was on the road a lot this week,” I said with an uneasy shrug. “I think he wants to spend some extra time with his mum to make up for it.”
None of that was a lie. I’d conveniently left out a hell of a lot of the truth, but it wasn’t a lie.
Harry and I had parted on speaking terms, and his fist stayed in his pocket instead of having another crack at my face, but things were strained between us.
My actions had dredged up too much of his past. He’d said as much.
Ruth was none the wiser. “Oh, I thought you might have asked him not to come. Perhaps because you have something to share with me,” she said, her voice far too sunny. “Something… private… reserved only for very best friends.”
My palms suddenly clammy, I roughed my hands along my jeans. Yeah, this was where I thought we were headed, and I still wasn’t prepared. “Uh—what?”
Ruth lifted her coffee mug. “Is there something you want to tell me?” A strange little smile twisted around the rim as she took a sip. “About a certain doctor, perhaps?”
“I, uh…” I cleared my throat. “Don’t know who you mean.”
“Oh, I think you know exactly who I mean.” Ruth’s smile turned smugger than the last time she’d beaten me at Scrabble. In other words, pretty damn smug. “Tell me about what happened last Sunday night.”
My eyes narrowed. Someone had been blabbing, and I had a good idea who it was. “Yolanda Briggs stop by for your weekly coffee catch-up, did she?”
“Yolanda doesn’t just stop by for coffee. She fills me in on the town gossip, too. All the gossip. Times. Details. Everything.”
I tugged at the collar of my shirt. “I, um…” Why did the kitchen suddenly feel like a furnace?
“Spill. Last Sunday.”
“There’s nothing to spill. Sunday was nothing. I stopped by Lola’s…for…dinner.” I almost groaned out loud.
What a way to make it obvious, moron.
“Dinner, huh?” Ruth snorted. Yeah, she definitely wasn’t buying that bullcrap answer.
I scrubbed a hand down my face. “What exactly did Yolanda say?”
Ruth was only too happy to tease me with every embarrassing detail. “I believe her exact words were that you were grunting and groaning and not giving that poor woman’s body a moment of peace as you ravished her for hours.”
My shoulders slumped, and I propped my elbows on the table, palms pressed against my eyes. This was… Goddammit. This conversation was nothing short of a train wreck.
“For hours ,” Ruth repeated with far too much glee for my liking.
“I think Yolanda’s exaggerating a bit on the hours part.”
Ruth’s eyes lit up. “But it’s true?” A squeal erupted that almost shot me out of the chair. “You and Lola—finally? You’re together?”
I shook my head. I hadn’t just shattered the fragile bond between me and Lola. I’d smashed through it like a wrecking ball to make sure we were the furthest thing from together .
Ruth must have missed my reaction because her excited chatter lit up the room.
“Aiden! Yes! This is so wonderful. As soon as you told me about how you met, I knew you were perfect for each other. I can’t believe you found some poor woman to talk about all your dusty old books and your stupid chickens. You should invite Lola over here—”
“Ruthie girl.” I held up my hand for her to stop. “Lola won’t be coming over.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Are you…?” She glared at the hand sitting limply in her lap. “Are you ashamed of—”
“Never.” I didn’t let her finish that rubbish train of thought.
My palm covered her hand. She couldn’t feel it, but I gave her a reassuring squeeze anyway.
“Don’t ever say that, you hear me? I’m prouder of you than anyone on this whole damn planet.
If I were taking Lola anywhere, your place would be the first on the list, understand? ”
“But…then…why?”
“Lola and I aren’t together.”
Ruth’s smile was confused. “But you… The two of you… Right?”
“I screwed it up.” I choked on the words as my head dropped into my hands. “Ruth, I screwed it up so bad.”
“I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.”
I let out a pained laugh. “It’s so much fucking worse .”
“So, tell her you’re sorry. Explain—”
“No.” Regret sliced through me, and I kept my gaze pinned to my mug. “The things I said… What I did… Ruth, I was so…” I pressed my fist into that bruised spot in my chest. “I was so fucking horrible to Lola… I was just so…”
“Scared?”
I couldn’t answer. I didn’t want to admit it to myself.
Scared? I was terrified. There had never been anyone before Lola.
Life before Richmond had only been about duty—making my father proud and climbing the ranks to become a sergeant.
Life after was full of shadows too dark to inflict on anyone.
I never should have gone there with Lola.
Never .
Ruth’s good arm wrapped around me, her head resting on my shoulder. “You pushed Lola away?”
“Yeah.”
“On purpose?”
I jerked my chin down in a nod.
“Oh, Aiden. Why?” The disappointment in her voice was the last thing I needed to hear. “You deserve to be happy—”
“No, I don’t! I fucking don’t!” I shrugged off Ruth’s arm, the chair scraping against the wooden floor when I pushed up. Standing by the sink was safer. “I have no fucking right to ever be happy after…” Shaking my head, I dragged in a steadying breath. “Not after what happened.”
Ruth twisted in her chair to face me. “After what happened with Lola?” Emotion choked her usually bold voice. “Or…before that?”
“All of it.”
“Aiden—”
“Don’t. Just… don’t, okay?”
“The accident wasn’t your fault—”
“Don’t!”
Ruth’s mouth pressed into a grim line, and she stared at me, not blinking. “You have to stop doing this.” She sighed. “The world already lost three people that night. You have to stop drifting through life like you died with them.”
My head dropped, my chin falling to my chest so I had nowhere to look but my feet. I didn’t want to hear that. Not a single word. Not from Ruth, of all people.
“Lola is so good for you,” she said. “You’ve been different since you met her. You’ve been happy .”
I grunted. “I’ve been delusional.”
“Because you finally found a woman worth caring about? Because you can see a future, and you’re shit scared of actually letting yourself be loved?”
“Ruth, none of this matters. It’s done. Over. Lola will never speak to me again.”
“What exactly did you say to her?”
I glared at Ruth with my mouth clamped shut.
“That good, huh?” Her mug clunked down on the table. “You know I’m going to find out anyway, right?”
“I’m sure Yolanda will have plenty of interesting stories about how much of a bastard I am when she next stops by for a coffee. I’m not speeding up the process.”
“Can I use my former police skills to guess?”
“I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Because you don’t think I can?”
“Because I don’t want you to know!” I raked a hand through my hair. “Fuck, Ruth. You’re the one person I’ve got left on this earth.”
“You’ve got Harry.”
“After what I did, his friendship is still very much touch-and-go at this point.”
Even more disappointment clouded her dark eyes. “Aiden…”
“Don’t you go getting all soft on me now, Ruthie girl. I fucked up with Lola. I deserve what’s coming for me. Your hatred is next.”
“In your dreams, big guy. Try pushing me away and see how far you get. Maybe that worked on Lola. Maybe you did say all kinds of terrible things to her. But I know you better than anyone. That’s not who you are deep down. You and me—we’re fighters.”
“Are you still fighting?”
“I…” She glared down at her hand again. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Not like you used to be.” When she frowned, I nudged a little harder with my next question. “Why don’t you come into town anymore?”
“I just…” She shrugged her good shoulder.
“It’s hard to keep pushing sometimes. The looks.
All the whispers. No one even bothers trying to set me up on dates.
Who wants the weird disabled girl for their daughter-in-law, right?
Maybe some all-knowing being up in the heavens gave me another shot despite the odds, but time’s slipping away. ”
I rushed back to the table and crouched in front of her. “You’ve got time.” I did my best to give her a smile, but she only shook her head.
“Look at us, Aiden. We’re getting older. You’re thirty-seven now. I’m just about to turn thirty-five. Our chances of having families of our own are running out. Is this all life will be for us? Alone? Forever?”
My gut clenched. “Ruth—”
“You have a chance for something better. Something amazing. You can act like a total butthead and say you don’t deserve it, but you do. Lola’s your chance.”
“Ruth, I have to let her go.”
“That’s horse poop, and you know it. Everyone in our families deserted us after the accident, but you and I— we don’t abandon the people we care about. I know you sure as hell don’t.”
“I hurt Lola. I did it on purpose.”
“Then you better figure out a way to make it right.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“If Lola’s worth it, if you truly care about her, you’ll fight to earn her forgiveness even if it is too late.”
I didn’t have to think about it.
Lola was worth it.