Chapter 7
Reid
Iwish I could’ve taken a photo of the enraged challenge in her pale-blue eyes when I threatened to put her in my car myself.
We both know I could’ve done it and was more than willing to if she continued this stubborn streak that I don’t remember from when we were kids.
Granted, I have done a lot of work to block out as many memories as possible from before I moved to LA with the guys, but still.
Seeing her again has reopened them, and I’ve been trying to sort through the least painful ones.
The area is busy as I drive toward Aspen’s apartment. People bustle around the sidewalks and cars jam the streets. It’s not the busiest part of the city, but it’s still rush hour.
Aspen hasn’t said a word to me since we got in the car and instead has been sitting as close as possible to the passenger door, angled away, arms crossed, and staring intently out the window.
I think she made a comment under her breath about them being tinted when she first got in, but I didn’t fully catch it.
The radio is off, because if she’s not going to talk to me while I go out of my way to give her a ride home, then we can sit in silence. It doesn’t bother me.
As I pull up to yet another red light, I feel her turn to look at me.
I glance to my right and realize that she’s checking out the car, not me.
Her eyes roam over the custom black leather interior with navy-blue stitching so dark it’s almost unnoticeable unless you look closely.
She looks to the empty backseat and then back up to the front.
My hands flex against the steering wheel as she looks at them, pausing for a moment longer than on anything else, before she looks back out the windshield.
“What?” I ask. “The car not up to your standards?”
She rolls her eyes.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Annoyance twists my gut. “Just say it. Whatever terrible thing you’re thinking, trust me, it’s nothing I haven’t heard before probably.”
“It’s not terrible,” she grumbles. “But do you always expect the worst?”
“Learned habit.”
She snorts and I tap down the urge to smirk at it. “I was actually just thinking that your car isn’t what I expected it to be. When you stalked me home the other night, I guess I just thought you’d have something a little flashier. It’s pretty simple.”
I wouldn’t exactly call the luxe leather and upgraded tech system simple, but I get what she means. Hayden bought a sports car the first chance he could, while Nikolai crashed a few cars worth more than his childhood home. But I settled with a BMW and have had it for the past three years.
“And compared to your car…” I say and watch her give me a dirty look out of the corner of my eye.
“I was trying to be nice.”
“Me too.”
She scoffs and sinks further into the seat. “I just assumed that with all that wealth and fame of yours that you’d waste it on something stupid like a car.”
“I waste it on other things.” Not really, but she doesn’t need to know how I spend my money.
After growing up with very little of it, I’ve tried to be as smart as possible with investments and savings.
Before the break up, I still knew that our career didn’t have a whole lot of stability in it, and I never wanted to be caught off guard.
“Maybe you didn’t forget after all,” she says quietly. I peek over at her as she gently runs her hand up and down the door handle.
“Forget what?”
“Where we came from.”
We.
It’s been a long time since anyone has included me in their we.
The turn for Aspen’s street approaches, and I make a split second decision that I don’t allow myself to overthink. All I know is that I don’t want to go home and make another shitty dinner by myself.
I flick my turn signal on, and instead of turning right like I should, I turn left.
Aspen rises in her seat and swivels her head back and forth, sending her hair rippling with the movement. It gives off a citrus scent that overwhelms the air freshener in the vent.
“Reid, that was the wrong turn,” she says and points back to where we came from. “You were supposed to turn right back there.”
“I know.”
She blinks, not expecting that answer. “Where are you going then?”
I scan the unfamiliar street until I spot a cafe with a wall of greenery out front and no line out the door. That’ll do.
“We’re getting dinner,” I say and drive a little further down the street until I find an empty parking spot. I make quick work of parallel parking before shutting the car off and grabbing my phone and keys. “Let’s go.”
I don’t give her the chance to object before I get out and start walking. Just like I knew they would, footsteps sound behind me as she jogs to catch up. “What if I’m not hungry?”
“Then you can sit and enjoy my company.”
She scoffs. “What piss-poor company. I’m sure if you wanted someone to eat dinner with, you could find some other poor woman to torture.”
Her tone causes me to glance down at her and see that her cheeks are a dark red. Amusement kicks up the corner of my mouth. “Oh, I know. But you’re here, so I’m all in for convenience tonight.”
“Convenience my ass,” she spits and marches forward, having spotted the same cafe and putting together where I’m taking us.
She storms toward the door as I continue at my calm pace.
She’s so easy to rile up, and I like watching the way her hips sway as she walks with a purpose.
The jean shorts she’s wearing cup her ass in a way that hones all my attention.
She throws open the cafe door and slips through, of course not bothering to hold it for me.
It almost shuts in my face, but I manage to catch it at the last second and step inside.
She’s already talking with the hostess and doesn’t look back for me as the hostess leads her toward a table in the middle of the open space.
It’s decently busy, but there are a few open tables toward the back by the kitchen. I stop the worker as she’s about to set the menus down. “Can we be seated at one of those?” I nod toward the more secluded tables.
The hostess lazily glances over at them before shrugging. “Fine.” She doesn’t even give me a second look or seem to recognize me. Aspen shoots me an amused smile over her shoulder, like she clocked the same thing, and we get seated in the back.
“How much did that bruise your ego?” she asks. “That girl didn’t even look twice at you.”
I lean back in the padded chair and quickly scan the place before settling my attention back on Penny. “Not even a little bit. Trust me, it’s nice to fly under the radar like this.”
“I forget you’re famous sometimes,” Aspen says.
“I don’t.”
She rolls her eyes and opens the menu. I do the same, and by the time our waiter comes over to the table, we’re both ready to place our order.
Once our drinks are brought out, Diet Coke for me and Fanta for her, she leans her freckled arms on the table and gives me her full attention.
“Don’t you have better things to do than taking your old foster sister to dinner and driving her home?”
No. “Yes.”
“So then what were you actually doing at On Tap tonight?”
It’s the second time she’s asked me, and I still don’t have an answer for her.
Or myself. Because I don’t know what I was doing there.
One minute, I was sitting on my couch, trying to find something in the endless sea of content to watch, unfulfilled and uninterested in everything I came across.
And the next, I was in my car pulling up outside of Aspen’s bar, not even knowing if she was working but knowing I had to find out.
“A drink sounded good.” I settle on that sad excuse that neither of us believe.
“Bullshit,” she says, and after years of very few challenging me, it feels kinda fun.
Walker was the last one to push back on me, and I haven’t spoken to him since he came barging into the studio a few months ago when I was working on Nikolai’s solo album with him and punched him in the jaw for sleeping with his sister.
We didn’t speak much, as he finally had issues with someone other than me, but regardless, it feels good for Aspen not to just let things slide.
Even if I don’t want to be honest with her. Or myself. “You came to see me again.”
Not a question.
I take a sip of the crisp soda and refuse to break her stare because if I do, it confirms what I don’t want to. That yes, I wanted to see her again. Needed to, even though I don’t know why. “I like the atmosphere there.”
She chews on her straw. “Again, bullshit. Is it so hard to admit that you came there wanting to see me? That you took a detour for dinner tonight because, I don’t know, you didn’t want to be alone?”
“Well it’s not like you had other plans tonight either,” I shoot back.
“Because I was supposed to be working,” she drags out the last word. “What if I wanted to just go home and have a night to myself?”
“You can do that once we’re done eating.”
“Fine, but you know you’re paying for this right?
And not because I’m trying to mooch off of you and all your fortune”—she waves her fingers in the air—“but because I didn’t ask to go out to eat.
I have groceries at home.” The high pitch of her voice tells me otherwise, but I don’t call her out on it.
We both have known what it’s like to go to bed hungry.
I cross my arms and lean back. “I didn’t figure you’d be paying for our dinner, Penny.”
She shifts in the orange padded chair. “Thank you. For dinner,” she adds.
I can’t resist it. “Thanking me for dinner but not for getting that asshole off of you or for the ride?”
Her nostrils flare but before she has a chance to say anything, we’re interrupted.
The waiter sets down our food and we both are quiet as we dig in. The grilled chicken has a nice char to it, and I finish half my salad before Penny’s cut her steak strips into smaller bites.
Yep, she ordered the most expensive thing on the small menu.