His to Cherish (10 page)

“We should do something tomorrow.”

The suggestion came from Declan, but it could just as easily have come from any of them. Tyson, David, and I were all hanging out at Tyson and Blue's house, where Tyson had invited us over for dinner and beers. I'd tried to get out of it.

David showed up and practically forced me into his Escalade. The asshole wouldn't take no for an answer, and it wasn't like I blamed him.

They tried to act nonchalant, but I knew better. They were trying, but they were trying too hard. We all knew what tomorrow was.

“No,” I said, and took a sip of my beer. They all stared at me, waiting for more of an explanation.

Declan was the only one brave enough to speak first. “I can take the day off at the restaurant, Aidan, it's no big deal. But it's probably not a good thing for you to be alone tomorrow.”

“Yeah?” I sneered and went to the fridge for another drink. I was doing too much of it these days—sneering and drinking—but really, what difference did it make? “You know what I need? You know what's best for me?”

“Come on. We're just trying to help. Derrick was all of ours.”

I slammed the fridge shut and glared at David. “No. He wasn't.”

The whisper of regret at my harshness fluttered over me and I looked away when they all flinched. Damn it. He
had
been, at least in every way that mattered. When I was a struggling single dad, showing up at college, determined to fucking make something out of myself, these were the guys I'd met on the lawn one day when Derrick had still been in daycare. We'd bonded over Frisbees and joking about girls who were trying too hard to get our attention, and when they'd asked me to go out for a drink, I had to tell them why I couldn't.

So instead, they came back to my shitty family style apartment just off campus, ordered pizza, and hung out with my two-year-old kid and me. They helped me every day after that, acting like it was no big deal to be seen walking around campus with a kid in tow. Hell, I was pretty certain Derrick's diaper bag helped them get more pussy than anyone else.

“Fuck.” I set down my beer and pushed back my hair, staring at the countertop. “I'm sorry. Hell, I'm sorry, guys. I just…I can't handle this shit.”

“We know, but you haven't exactly let us be there for you, either,” Tyson said, pushing back from his spot at the counter. “We miss him, too, you know.”

I knew that. It was why I hated being around them right now.

I dragged my eyes off the counter and faced all of them, but was unable to look any of them in the eye. I shook my head and my chin began to tremble, and fuck if I was going to let them see me cry. The last thing I needed was to turn this room into a bunch of crying pussies, and I knew it would happen if I lost it.

“There's nothing you can do to help. And I can't…I can't be around you tomorrow.” Not that I had anywhere else to be, but damn if I could handle it with them. Declan had been puked on by Derrick more times than I could remember. David used to bandage Derrick's knees and was the one who'd taught me how to wrap his first sprained ankle. Tyson taught him how to throw a football better than I ever could. All of these men shaped Derrick into the kind kid he'd been growing up to be, and I couldn't stand to be around them and all their damn memories and their pain.

I had enough of my own.

“Chelsea seems to be helping,” David said. I felt my lips curl as I glared at him. “I'm just saying. You're hanging out with her more and avoiding the hell out of us, so I'm curious.”

David, the most laid-back and crazy one out of all of us, always pushed me. “We could go skydiving tomorrow. Do something insanely stupid that doesn't have Derrick written all over it, but let's do something, Aidan. For Derrick.”

“You could do Chelsea.” Declan snickered at his own joke, but when I tried to toss that same glare his way, he threw his head back and laughed. “Come on, you dumb shit. You think you're hanging out with Chelsea because you don't fucking want her? You're crazy. We've all seen the way you've panted after her, wanted her. You even told Trina you did last fall.”

“I don't want to talk about her.”

Mostly because I didn't know what I felt about her. I liked her. I'd always wanted her. Sure, I jacked off to fantasies of her lips wrapped around my dick, but that didn't mean anything. It was a familiar, friendly face or porn. She was prettier.

Declan crossed his arms over his chest. “Derrick always liked her. Always said you should date her.”

“I'm not hanging out with her because my kid liked her.” My skin felt tight. Hot and itchy. They were pushing too hard.

“Then why are you?”

“Damn it!” I shouted, and wrapped my hand around my bottle so I didn't fling it at Declan's face. “Because she fucking helps! She gets it in a way you don't. She gets it in a way that doesn't suck me into a black hole. She just fucking helps.”

“And she's pretty. And you like her. And Derrick liked her for you. Come on, Aidan, at least be fucking honest with yourself if not us.”

My nostrils flared as Declan challenged me. I knew Tyson and David were thinking the same thing. And yeah, I fucking liked her. She was pretty and sweet and left me the hell alone and she didn't push me like these assholes did. She didn't force me to remember; she came with no memories of Derrick.

She made shit easy.

“I don't have anything to give her. Nothing good, anyway.”

“Bullshit,” David said. “But come on. Don't be alone tomorrow. Not on his birthday. Let's go do something stupid crazy and know he would have loved to have been there with us. He always wanted to go skydiving.”

That familiar burn soaked into my chest. I suddenly needed air. I didn't want to think about Derrick being happy for me. I didn't want to do shit that Derrick had wanted to do. He could never do those things. It would never be the same.

I didn't want to do the things he liked to do or wanted to do…I just wanted my kid. And I could never have that.

I slammed the beer on the counter and reached for my keys. “I need to go.”

“Home?”

Where it was silent? Where memories of Derrick screamed and shouted at me until I felt like I was going insane? Hell no. Not tonight. Not the night before he should have turned fourteen.

“No,” I admitted, and stared them all down, daring them to laugh in my face. “Chelsea's. And if it makes you fuckers stop worrying, I'll talk to her and get her to hang out with me tomorrow. Deal?”

David pressed his lips together. Tyson grinned. Declan just glared back.

“Promise us,” Declan said with all the fierceness he had in him. “Promise us if it gets too hard, if she can't take off work, promise us you'll call. We
want
to help you, Aidan. We want to be there for you.”

My gaze flickered over them. “Fine. I promise.”

As I drove away, I couldn't keep all the memories of Derrick from piling down on me. The conversation I'd had with the guys brought it all back to the forefront of my mind like a flaming arrow I couldn't outrun.

Try your hardest. Never settle. Go after your dreams. In the end, the only regrets we have are the chances we didn't take.
All the inspirational bullshit I'd spewed at him as a father bounced around in my mind until I settled on one, screaming louder than the others.

Life is too short, so fight for what you want.

It rattled me so badly that when I pulled into my driveway to shower and change, my hands were shaking and sweat dripped down my neck.

All the times I had told Derrick to chase his dreams. All the times I stopped myself from going after mine for him. All the times he'd told me that was stupid. I thought of all the wisdom I'd tried to fill my kid up with, advice and quotes he'd listened to because later I found them scribbled on Post-it notes and hung on his walls or hidden in books or on the bathroom mirror.

He'd fucking taken that shit to heart. He'd worked at it and he'd lived it every day, always striving.

My head fell to my steering wheel and I knew I couldn't spend the night alone with my thoughts and memories. Tears fell from my cheeks onto my lap as I sobbed, remembering everything about Derrick. His smile and his eyes that looked just like mine. The way he nibbled his lip when he swung a baseball bat or tapped a pencil when he studied or bobbed his head when he listened to music.

But the thing I knew more than any of that shit was that he'd be so mad at me if I didn't, at some point, pull my head out of my ass and go after the things I wanted.

Freshly showered after a four-mile run with Camden, I was feeling better since my visit with Beth.

The run had been just what I needed. She gave me perspective, set me straight, and helped me to see that whatever had been happening between Aidan and me was okay. We'd taken our usual path from my house, a half-mile warm-up until we reached the track around the high school, where we ran three more miles before heading home.

Camden had always been our wise friend. She held herself back from people, taking a while to warm up, and could often be seen as standoffish and a little rude. But once you had her loyalty and her friendship, she took it as seriously as her own life. She came from a single mom in a broken-down trailer on the outskirts of town, and everything she had, she'd had to fight and work for. The girl didn't know the meaning of a free ride or an easy life. Because of that, she'd always been more serious, more mature than the rest of us. When we were hanging out at fraternity parties in college and sneaking into bars with fake IDs, she was studying, desperately trying to maintain her 4.0 average. It had served her well, and even though she tended to look at the negative side of situations first, hesitant to find hope in anything, she was the most rational of our original group of four.

Clothed in pajama pants, but this time with a bra and T-shirt—just in case I got a visitor—I was halfway through my dinner of teriyaki noodles when I heard the familiar rumble of Aidan's truck, followed by the doorbell going off.

I had to fight the urge to skip to the door like a schoolgirl and instead forced my feet to walk normally. Slowly.

As soon as I opened the door and saw the man in the doorway, my heart jumped a beat or two. Maybe it took up long-jumping.

That was how long it took for me to say something.

I saw his tightened jaw first, two tendons sticking out at the sides of his neck. His black hair was a mess, like he'd just walked through a supersonic wind tunnel.

And in his hand was a black bag.

My eyes focused on the bag, and I watched as his grip tightened and relaxed around the handle before I looked back at Aidan's face, frowning.

“You okay?”

Clearly he wasn't. Either he was supremely pissed…or it was something I couldn't recognize. Right now it looked like he wanted to beat the crap out of someone.

His nose twitched and he took a step forward into my home, even though I was still in the doorway.

The man practically knocked me over, pushing me back without touching me at all, and dropped his bag in my entryway.

“Aidan?”

He didn't look at me. His intense glare seemed to be fixated on a spot on the far wall. “You said anything I needed.”

My head jerked back and I realized my hand was still gripping the doorknob, so I let it go, closed the door, and walked around to face him.

He was so large. His chest and shoulders were wide, his hands on his hips, still avoiding eye contact with me, and I watched him breathing rapidly.

Like he was the one who'd just run four miles.

“Are you okay?” My voice was soft, concerned.

His eyes snapped to mine with ferocious speed. “Anything I needed?”

“Um.” I swallowed, my eyes growing wide, because I had no idea what he needed, and a part of him was being really freaking scary. “Yes?”

“I need not to be alone in that damn house for another fucking second. That's what I need.”

I glanced at the floor and realized the bag he'd dropped was an overnight bag.

“You're moving in?”

Finally, I saw a crack in his massive presence. A quick breath burst through his lips. “No…” His eyebrows pulled together as his voice trailed off. One of his hands went to the back of his neck and he rubbed his shoulder before running his hand through his hair. “But I can't be there. Not tonight.”

He seemed panicky, more agitated than normal. I opened my mouth to ask why and then snapped it closed.

He'd tell me when he wanted to. If he wanted to.

Until then, I was a woman of my word.

“Hungry?” I asked, acting as calm as possible. “I made some teriyaki noodles earlier. They're still warm.”

I left him in the entryway, staring at me as I disappeared into the kitchen. It took only moments before he joined me, eying me warily.

“You're not going to ask?”

I wanted to. God, I wanted to.

Instead of asking, I turned the heat on the stovetop to low and added a couple of tablespoons of water and a dash of sauce to the pot so I could reheat the noodles without drying them.

“Is that what you need from me?” I asked, turning to the fridge.

I pulled out a beer for him and set it on the counter.

He stared at the bottle for a moment before shaking his head. “No. I don't want you to ask.”

“Okay, well the noodles will only take a few minutes. I've got steaks thawed if you need something more to eat. But other than that, if you want to go watch TV, I'll be out in a little bit.”

He watched me as he twisted the top off the beer and took his first swallow.

When he set the beer on the counter, he tilted his head—assessing me. Looking for something.

He was probably searching for a sign that said I really was dying to know why he'd shown up, overnight bag in hand, and God, I wanted to. I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to understand what brought us together. What continued to bring him to my house at night. He had friends, loads of them, yet he seemed to be relying on me and not seeing them.

I wanted to comfort him, to brush away his grief and the thick layer of sadness and anger that covered him. But it wasn't my role.

It wasn't what he needed.

I just wished I knew what he needed from me.

I swallowed a thickness at the thought.

“I'll wait for you here.” His voice was gruff and rolled over me like the morning tide, a bit chilly but comforting, and brought with it new hope.

I couldn't look at him. I didn't want to see anything in his eyes that would diminish the impact of what his words and his voice did to me.

So I turned, stirred the noodles, and fidgeted with everything I could find to do in the kitchen all while I kept my back to Aidan. Thoughts of my talk with Beth from earlier entered my mind but I pushed them away.

I didn't want to do or say anything that would ruin the already precarious mood he was in.

“How was work today?” I asked, trying to find something mundane to break the lingering silence between us.

After a stretched silence, he sighed. “Work sucks.”

“I'm sorry.” I meant it. I didn't even know how he could find the energy or the motivation to get out of bed in the morning, much less put in a full day on a job site. “Bad market or what?”

“No, Chelsea. It has nothing to do with the market.”

I twisted my head, looking at him over my shoulder. “I'm sorry.”

“I don't fucking—” He snapped the words out before squeezing his eyes closed and blowing out a deep breath. “I don't want your pity and I don't want your apologies. It just fucking sucks. All of it feels so damn pointless.”

I thought of a thousand things I could say to him.
I'm sorry. I know. I'm sure they do. Things will get better.

They all sounded trite in my head, even if I meant every single one of them. If they rolled off my tongue they'd sound worse—completely meaningless.

Before I could stop myself, before I could talk myself out of it, I went to him.

My bare feet padded across the distressed floor until I was standing in front of him.

His eyes widened when I stopped and looked at the hand around his beer, the other loose at his side.

I did what I'd wanted to do for weeks. I rolled onto my toes, needing the height to get close to him, and my hands moved up his arms until they were at his shoulders.

Then I wrapped my arms around him, pushed forward, and entangled my fingers behind his neck.

My head fell to his chest. I felt his breath catch and he stiffened for a moment before he seemed to give in. The arm at his side wrapped around my lower back. His other hand left his beer on the counter and wrapped around the back of my shoulders, and his head fell to the top of mine.

I squeezed.

He squeezed me harder.

Then I did what I'd
really
been dying to do: I unclasped my hands until I was slowly running my fingers through his hair.

He shifted, somehow giving me a better angle to be able to run my fingers gently along his neck and through the back of his hair. His thick beard scraped across my forehead.

Shivers danced down my arms and my spine like happy little leprechauns, celebrating finding the pot of gold.

It felt so wonderful. He felt perfect.

And he let me hold him until I let go. He held on for a moment more before I pulled back. When he was still close, my hands still on the back of his neck, I leaned up as far as I could and brushed my lips against his cheek.

“I am sorry,” I whispered softly. He tensed, but I keep going. “He was a great kid. One of the best, and I miss him. The kids at school miss him, and we'll all miss him for a long, long time.”

His arms left my back and my shoulders, and his hands moved to my neck.

I swallowed, startled by the strength I knew he carried in his hands. Not that he'd hurt me, but he pressed me back until I was on my heels and his eyes stared into mine.

They bored into me like he was trying to find a hidden message, a secret, but I wasn't holding anything back from Aidan. I didn't want to. I wanted him to see all of me, and, when he was ready, I wanted him to want me.

Speckled honey dotted the brightest green eyes I'd ever seen and I stayed still, my breath coming in short pants.

Then he leaned forward and my breath stopped.

Softly and slowly, his thumbs tightened under my jaw, and his lips moved closer.

His tongue darted out, licking his lips, while he kept his eyes wide open, fixed on me. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move.

I could only hope that he did what I thought he was going to do.

It wasn't nearly enough, but I took it.

Because when his slightly wet lips gently brushed against mine just once before he pulled back, I swore I could taste the hint of forever in his barely there kiss.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice hoarse.

I silently commanded my heart to resume beating before I passed out in his arms in my kitchen.

Thankfully my heart listened. The beat returned at an increased speed and Aidan let me go.

I stood there for a moment, watched him return to his beer and take another long swallow, and then I willed my feet to move to the stove, where his noodles were most likely burning to the bottom of the pot.

I was quite possibly the most comfortable I had ever been in my life.

One of Aidan's muscled arms was under my neck and wrapped around my back, and he was holding me so my front was pressed to his side, my head resting on his shoulder. My hands were clasped together and beneath my cheek, even though I really wanted to let one of them drape across the naked abs I'd been staring at for the last ten minutes.

I couldn't bring myself to budge, which might mean he'd move his arm, and I definitely didn't want that.

I suffered in silence, one of my arms slightly cramped, with a smile that I tried to keep hidden. I didn't want him to know how happy this was making me. And I still wasn't sure how we'd ended up here. In my bed. My chest pressed to his side.

I just knew it felt like heaven.

Earlier, after we'd watched three hours of
American Picker,
a show both of us hadn't seen before but found quite entertaining, I'd gone to the hall closet and came back to the couch with the pillow and blanket I'd used the night before.

Aidan had shot me an incredulous look that felt oddly threatening and asked, “You know what happened last night when I woke up and saw you asleep on the couch?”

I remembered. I remembered him carrying me to bed, tucking me close to him, and I still felt his lips brush against my temple. Fear of drool falling out of my mouth if I parted my lips made me press them firmly together. I nodded.

His lips twitched before he grabbed his overnight bag and took it to the hall bathroom. When he was halfway there, he called out, “You try sleeping on that couch tonight and I'll do the exact same thing.”

I debated for a moment. From what I remembered, it felt really good to be carried in his arms through my house. How good would it feel if I was fully awake and he did it again?

Then I realized what he'd offered. A night to fall asleep next to him.

Decision easily made, I scurried to my own bathroom, washed my face, brushed my hair and my teeth, and thought,
oh my god, oh my god, ohmygodohmygod.
After I left the bathroom, my shoulders and neck jerked back when I saw his large frame lying on his back in my bed—head propped with my pillows.

Aidan Devereaux was in my bed.

Again. The second night in a row.

I did the only thing a girl could do.

I walked around to the other side, climbed in, lay on my side with my back to him, and pretended this was all perfectly normal.

He didn't seem to like it so much, because he muttered something about being alone, which made my heart squeeze. Then he wrapped an arm around my waist, rolled me over, and pulled me against him.

That had been hours ago. Maybe only minutes. I'd lost track of time as I silently stared over the short, coarse black hair splayed across his chest. It was sexy. And I bet it was prickly. I bet when he moved that chest over a woman and that hair brushed against her nipples they hardened in delight.

I just couldn't bring myself to reach over and find out how good it really felt.

His abs were divine—sculpted by someone who knew what they were doing when they created the most glorious male physique I'd ever seen.