38. June 1, 2023 #2
She frowned. “The team said you weren’t coming back.” She groaned, rolling her eyes. “No. They didn’t. I did. I assumed you did, but they didn’t correct me. They knew where you were all along.”
He nodded. “I had unfinished business. I wanted to see if I could find your father, and I told Waters I wasn’t coming back until I found him.”
She felt her heart speed up. “Did you?”
He nodded. “It took me a week, but Zion apparently had some feelings toward your father after all. His ashes were in a secondary crypt on the property, his and a lot of others. Mythos is there now, recovering the remains so they can test them and return them to any families they belong to. They may not be one hundred percent successful, but they’ll try. Your dad’s are the first they’ll test.”
She threw her arms around him, tears pouring from her eyes. She could hear the echoes of “Thank you” pouring from her mouth as she clutched him to her. He held her through the maelstrom of emotions, not saying anything.
When her tears subsided, she lay back against the wet sand, unmindful of it caking in her hair or clinging to her skin. “I’m still mad at you for disappearing for six weeks.”
“Understood,” he murmured. “But I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave him there. You needed the closure.”
“He knew where you were all that time and said nothing to me?”
Demon nodded. “I asked him not to.” He blew out a breath. “I had some personal shit to sort through. There was as good a place as anywhere.”
“I mourned you every day.”
“I’m sorry, a chuisle . I didn’t want to get your hopes up in case it took longer or he really wasn’t there.
Plus, I figured you’d snap out of your depression sooner rather than later, and I thought it was better to let you work up a good rage at me for leaving. It was better than no emotion at all.”
“Don’t you ever not tell me where you’re going again!” she admonished him. “I was mad. But mostly? I was scared. I was imagining all sorts of awful things happening to you. Worried the guys were actually out hunting you when they told me they were hunting leads on Zion and Howard.”
“I’m sorry. No more disappearances. Forgive me?”
“We’ll see.”
“Feck, Esme. I want to give you everything you could ever want.” She watched him hang his head.
There was something defeated in his tone.
A bleakness she didn’t like. It felt oily.
Slimy. Sickly. When he tried to pull away from her, she reached for him, her grasp tight as she pulled him back into her arms.
Her hands reached up to clutch his face between the palms. “Aidan?—”
“No. I need to tell you some things. You need to know why I resisted. Why I wouldn’t commit. Why I couldn’t give you what you wanted.”
He sighed and covered her body with his, his forearms bearing the weight so that she felt close to him but not suffocated.
“When I was sued for malpractice, I went to Japan. I knew if I stayed in the country, my conscience wouldn’t allow me to keep quiet, and the only way to protect her was to remove myself from the area, so I left.
I’d been surfing for several days when I got hurt.
Rogue wave took me out. Severe concussion.
I actually ripped my spine. I was prescribed oxy for the pain to get me through until I could do therapy, but it was going to be a long haul. ”
“Waters’ report said you didn’t have a record for a prescription.”
“That’s probably because I was in Japan at the time I was treated. I’m sure the records are somewhere, but sometimes, international information doesn’t transition smoothly. It doesn’t really matter. They were legal at one time, but my continued use wasn’t. And then there was the boy. ”
“What boy?”
“About a week after my accident, I was on the beach walking. I couldn’t do much else, and even that was painful while taking the meds, but I couldn’t sit anymore.
The boy had swum out too far and didn’t have the skills for the conditions.
He got caught in a riptide. His parents couldn’t get to him, so I promised his father that I’d get him.
I’d save him. I took off into the water, but when I got out there, he was already gone.
I had a choice to do CPR in the water or take him back to shore and hope he wasn’t too far gone so that I could bring him back.
I chose CPR in the water. I chose wrong. ”
“Why didn’t I know about this?”
“My name was never exchanged. I was just a stranger on the beach. I don’t even think it made the news. People drown all the time. Steel is the only one who knows, and I told him the day of the café bomb.”
“Aidan, you’re not to blame,” she reminded him.
“No, I’m not, but that’s not the issue, Esme.” He sighed again, his forehead to her chest. She gently weaved her fingers through the wet tendrils of his hair, waiting for him to go on. “The issue is, I made a promise, and I didn’t keep it.”
She inhaled sharply.
“As a doctor, I promise people and their loved ones that I can fix them. Heal them. I failed those three girls that day in the hospital because I didn’t watch out for all of my team.
People I was responsible for. I failed that boy and his parents when I promised to save him.
I failed my family when I dishonored them with my actions in surgery the day those girls died, and then I abandoned them rather than go through the awkwardness of the family trip, and then they died when I wasn’t there. ”
He stopped, picked up his head, and looked her in the eyes.
“I wanted you so badly. I always have. From the moment I saw you, you were alive with this fiery light. I couldn’t look away from you.
Despite how messed up I was, you still seemed to want me.
I tried not to, but we got closer. I had just convinced myself that maybe we could make a go of it, and then?—”
“And then I told you the only way we could be together was if you gave up the meds, which you can’t because you actually do need them.
It was a sign of another failure to keep a promise because you knew you wouldn’t be able to do it.
” She ran a hand down the side of his face.
“Aidan, why didn’t you just tell me? I would have understood. ”
“Maybe, maybe not. But you need to know, I tried to give up the shite, Esme, I really did, but I was all up in my head. My spinal cord was torn in the accident. The discs fused, and the pain is bad. Even surgery isn’t going to fix it. I’ll always be in pain. Always.
“Sometimes it’s okay, but it’s never really gone.
Standing for long periods of time over a patient or the armory table or any sort of extended activity is excruciating.
The meds allow me to function at my work, but when I come down off the adrenaline when the job’s done, I can’t do anything physical without taking them.
I’ve never been off the meds. It’s just that I make sure no one sees me take them because I don’t want the team to blame the drugs if something goes wrong on a project.
Then I get all up in my head about ‘What if something does go wrong?’, causing me to get pissy worrying about it, so everyone assumes I’m detoxing. ”
“It’s why you disappear when you come back to L.A. from a project. You’re fighting through the pain.”
“Pretty much. The beach hut gives me a place to lie low. If I’m at Tribe, I’m accessible.
People can just come find me, and I can’t hide the pain.
At the beach hut, the possibility of someone coming to find me in the early stages of recovering is rare.
No one wants to haul their ass to the beach, so they text three or four times before sending someone out to collect me. ”
“Waters has been covering for you all this time, hasn’t he? He knows where you are and why afterward.”
“Yeah. Fecker knows everything about everyone. Impossible to hide shit from his spidey senses. ”
She nodded. “I don’t like how you did it, but I guess I can understand. I wasn’t exactly listening to what you were saying to me after you rescued me.” She stopped. “Wait. You said it took a week to find my dad. Why didn’t you come back right away?”
“I just… I needed to get clear. I needed to figure out if I could quit, and I knew I couldn’t do that here. Everyone would hover, and I didn’t want to disappoint people when I failed.”
She bit her lip, afraid to ask but needing to know. She chose a more passive approach to see if he’d open up about what he discovered. “I meant what I said in the hotel room,” she confessed. “I want this. Us. I don’t care.”
“Fireball,” he breathed out.
He kissed her lips softly.
“I’m not worthy of your attention, let alone your love.
” He brushed back wisps of hair that the night breeze was blowing over her face.
“I’m always going to be in pain. The only hope I have of being permanently pain-free is surgery, and of course, there’s no guarantee it will actually work.
I’m not ready for that yet. Not until the Salieri are routed out.
“In the meantime, there’s a procedure I tried—radiofrequency ablation—where the doctor severs the nerve.
It worked for a while, but the nerves grow back, and then the pain returns; however, I’d only be down about a week before I could return to duty.
Probably have to have it done about every six months.
As it wears off, I’ll have to go back on the meds.
Do some more therapy. Then when I can’t stand the pain anymore, I’ll be out six months to a year to have the surgery and recover. That’s assuming it works.”
“As long as you want to do it for you, I think you should do it. I meant what I said, Aidan. I’ll stand by you. I know I said that once before, and then I went back on it. I was hurting. Not a worthy excuse, but it’s true. I did come to my senses, but by then, you were gone.”