His to Cherish (4 page)

As I walked away, he muttered something in a strained voice that sounded similar to “Thank Christ,” but that couldn't be.

I probably had mud clogging my ears.

By the time I was done washing my hands, Aidan had the pizza boxes, two plates, and two glasses of water set up on my patio table outside. I joined him, sliding into the same chair I'd sat in last night.

“That's a lot of pizza,” I told him when he flicked open the boxes. There were three large pizzas, but each of them had different toppings on each half. Six different types of pizza sat in front of me.

My stomach rumbled. I'd just entered a carb-loaded nirvana.

“Didn't know what you liked.”

He helped himself to three pieces, and I dove in after him. I bit back the comment
You could have just asked
. The food smelled too good. “It all looks delicious.”

I was drooling over the pizza. He couldn't know it was my weak spot and an indulgence I rarely allowed myself. I worked hard and ran to keep my body healthy and fit.

But I'd worked hard the last two days in my yard, and, frankly, I didn't care.

I loaded my plate with three different pizza slices, loving that one of the halves was a taco pizza. After drizzling on the taco sauce, I took a large bite.

A moan escaped my mouth and I closed my eyes, relishing the spicy flavor.

When I opened them, Aidan's eyes were locked on my mouth. I reached for a napkin, pressed it to my lips, and when I did, he looked back down to his own plate.

“Sorry.”

He made a grunting sound with his mouth full of food and pointed to my yard. When he swallowed, he asked, “You do all this work yourself?”

I leaned back in the chair and smiled wide. It was my oasis. Growing up on a farm, I was a country girl at heart. When Cory and I got married, I told him I had always wanted to live in the country on acres of land, possibly with my own self-sustaining vegetable garden and enough chickens for both eggs and poultry.

Cory thought that was insane when we could live in town with a grocery store just down the street.

Our compromise was a house with a private backyard. But since we couldn't find that, he had a privacy fence installed. I thought it was romantic and sweet at the time. Now it annoyed me that I had constantly caved on what I wanted for a man who ended up being a lousy jerk.

I shook the thoughts away and saw Aidan shoot me a strange look.

“Therapy.”

He gave me an even stranger look. Before I could stop myself, I found myself explaining, even though I had never told anyone the real reason why I did so much work in my yard.

“I can't have kids. It took me a long time to get over that; part of why I work at a school, though. I've always wanted to have someone to care for, take care of.” I shrugged, as if it were no big deal. In reality, I was fighting back tears from the memories of years we'd tried to have a baby and it never worked. How Cory walked away from me. My voice was thick with unshed tears when I said, “I can take care of plants and my yard, though.”

It sounded so stupid. Made me feel so pathetic. That familiar feeling of being a complete failure as a woman began to build inside me, and I stared at the pizza on my plate. I waited for the awkward silence or the pitiful look I was so used to getting when I told someone that I couldn't have kids.

Admitting I built a garden just to have something to take care of made me feel about two feet tall.

When I found the courage to glance at Aidan, he was chewing his pizza, looking thoughtfully at my empty vegetable garden that I hadn't yet planted for the upcoming growing season.

“Anyway.” I waved my hand in the air. “It gave me something to do…something to focus on when the house got too quiet.”

He grunted again and took another bite. “My house is too quiet.”

My heart clenched in pain and I opened my mouth to tell him I understood, but I didn't—not really.

Losing a jerk of a cheating husband and a dream I'd had since I was a child was nothing compared to losing a son.

He swallowed his food. “And your ex is a dick.”

I snorted and took a bite of pizza. I hid my mouth full of food while I grinned. “Tell me about it.”

But my stomach and heart were fluttering with excess speed. Everyone loved Cory. He had the ability to walk into a room and command attention. I'd always enjoyed being the wallflower, but I liked how Cory dragged me out of my shell, promising to lay the world at my feet if I'd just follow him.

I never wanted to play follow the leader again.

The end of the school year made kids restless. The warmer air brought with it the excitement of summer vacation and the end of homework, but this year that restlessness vibrated in the halls long before the time it usually did. I blamed the warm weather hitting sooner than normal, and the school being rocked by Derrick's death.

Laughter returned to the air but it was more subdued.

I knew many of the kids missed Derrick—especially Shane.

He still came to my desk at lunch. For the first few weeks I didn't make him speak, but that changed after the first month.

In fact, lots of things were changing. My chest felt a little bit lighter. My steps were a bit quicker than they'd been in a long time.

I didn't like looking into it too much, but I knew part of the reason was Aidan.

He continued to stop by, though not often. Usually he brought food and we cooked dinner. The man could cook. And I mean
cook.
Last week he'd introduced me to the deliciousness that was grilled octopus. I had screamed like a mouse had run across my foot when he held up the tentacled and dangly-looking thing.

He had shrugged and said, “Trust me.”

I did. And I ate every bite.

After dinner, we usually had a drink. Sometimes he stayed longer and we watched mind-numbing television.

The first time it happened, it was a Monday night, and when I asked him what he wanted to watch, all he said was “No football. No sports at all.”

He didn't need to explain; I figured it was most likely something he and Derrick had done together. I could envision it in my head—guys sitting around, screaming at the television, talking about their favorite teams, their favorite players. Derrick had been a sports phenomenon.

When Aidan said it to me, I watched him squeeze his eyes closed and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him, hold him close, and let him expel his grief all over my shoulder.

I didn't, though, because that wasn't what we did. I offered Aidan company when the silence became too heavy for him. I understood my role without him needing to explain it, even though I found myself wanting my role to change…to grow into something else…but I couldn't force it.

I still wasn't even sure it was the right thing to do.

So instead, I had grinned and held up the remote. “I can do no sports,” I said, and turned on HGTV. We spent the next three hours watching a marathon of
House Hunters,
where couples were shown three houses and had to choose one.

His company was warm and inviting and his smiles began to come more frequently, even if they were still small and sad.

“Miss Dwyer?” Shane asked me, snapping me back to the present.

I wiped the swoony grin off my face. “Hmm?”

Sometimes Shane talked. He carried a heaviness that I didn't know when he'd be able to unload, but when he spoke, it was always about Derrick. As if what we saw together that day bonded us and he knew he could talk about him to me.

I was happy to be there for him. Shane was a great kid. Every time I saw him now, he was alone, like he didn't think he could have his other friends because he'd lost one. In part, I didn't blame the protective barrier he'd placed around himself, yet my heart hurt for him when I saw him walking down the halls, always at the back of the group of his friends. A month ago, he would have been in the center of the huddle, cracking jokes and trading shoulder slaps.

Shane's lips twisted and I saw his chin wobble. “My mom said she saw Mr. Devereaux's truck at your place the other night.”

I frowned. “Yeah?”

He nodded and his eyes began to water. “How…how is he?”

My eyes burned instantly and I reached out to place a hand on his shoulder. He looked up at me, his chin shaking as tears began to fall. He looked away from me and wiped them away.

“He's sad, Shane. Really sad.”

He nodded as if he expected my answer.

“You guys will be okay, though, eventually. It will be a different kind of okay than before, but someday, you'll be okay.”

I squeezed his shoulder to reassure him even though I felt full of crap. I wasn't a psychologist and I wasn't equipped to answer these things.

I was a woman who used to work in a museum basement, dusting artifacts, before I realized that if I couldn't have kids of my own, I wanted to work with them—be around them in some way.

Suddenly, a sob escaped Shane as if it had been ripped from his throat by a demonic force. It was the most tortured sound I'd ever heard in my life. His head fell to my shoulder, his body shaking forcefully against me.

“He didn't want to go that day.”

Oh God. My arms wrapped around the teenage boy. I held him and stayed silent. I didn't bother shushing him. There was rarely anyone in the library during lunch period, and the kids who were there had the grace to leave as soon as Shane started bawling.

Damn it. Some of these kids I worked with were so freaking amazing.

I smiled at them over Shane's shoulder, silently thanking the girls for giving us privacy.

“He wanted to play football, but I convinced him to go for a ride to the park.” His words were choked out through sobs and tears. I could barely form the sentence in my head as he cried, and when I did, I held him tighter.

“It's not your fault, Shane.”

“It is!” he cried.

I shut my mouth. I had the urge to reassure him, to let him know that it was a simple accident, that he wasn't at fault by any means and that no one blamed him, then I began to feel like an utter, horrible heel for not understanding why he'd brought up Aidan in the first place.

“Mr. Devereaux doesn't blame you, Shane.”

He shook his head, rubbing his forehead against my shoulder in disbelief.

Shane's dad had died from prostate cancer four years ago. And while his mom had never been one of the “vultures” that Aidan brought up occasionally, I did know that he'd stepped in to the father-type role for Shane. Derrick and Shane often played on the same sports teams and Aidan was there for every game. I had frequently heard the boys talking about it.

At the thought, my heart shattered for Shane. Not only had he lost his dad and his best friend, now he thought he'd lost Aidan, too.

My heart was so torn for this kid that I did nothing except hold him close and cry silent tears while he continued to sob on my shoulder.

Eventually, he stopped and pulled away. His cheeks flushed when he saw me watching him as he wiped his tears away with the backs of his hands.

“Mr. Devereaux will still be there for you,” I told him, even though I was uncertain. Maybe someday Aidan would be able to do that, but I knew he couldn't now. Nor would he want to.

Shane stood up and grabbed his books.

“I went over there the other day and he saw me at the door. He stared at me and then turned and walked away. He hates me.”

I laid my hand over his and squeezed. “He doesn't hate you.”

Shane stared out into the hallway, seeming to ignore me. The bell was ringing, although neither of us heard it at first. The hallway was filling with students on their way to classes after lunch.

“Give him some time.”

As Shane walked around my desk toward the crowded hall, I called his name.

When he stopped and looked at me over his shoulder, I smiled. “Give yourself some time, too.”

He blinked. A pain hit my chest when I saw the helplessness in his dreary blue eyes. “Thanks, Miss Dwyer.”

I watched him disappear into the crowd that resembled sardines smashed into a tin can. Chewing on my bottom lip, I mindlessly tapped a pen on my desk, trying to figure out how in the world I could fix these two broken guys.

If
I could fix them.

And why had both of them come to me in the first place?

I was just as broken as the rest of them; I just hid it better.

You have to come with us tomorrow night. Girls' night rules.

I stared at my phone and the text that had come from one of my closest friends, Suzanne. She was one of three of my friends who I met in college. The four of us had been best friends ever since our freshman year when we were all suite mates. Suzanne and Camden went to high school together and had been friends their entire lives, while I met them, along with Paige, the day we moved in.

We instantly clicked, for which I'd been forever grateful. Four girls living together could have turned vicious quickly.

They'd been my rocks, seeing me through infertility treatments and a broken marriage. I was pretty sure I demanded more of them than I'd ever been able to return in the five years since we graduated.

But I had bailed on last month's get-together. Derrick's funeral had just happened and I wasn't up for it.

This month, I wasn't allowed excuses, although I would have loved to give one and skip out.

Mostly because I was being a
total girl
who was crushing on a man she couldn't have.

It shouldn't have mattered. I'd been crushing on him since I first saw him two years ago, with only the rare spark in Aidan's eyes that told me maybe…just maybe…he felt the same way about me.

Neither of us had ever acted on it, though, and the moments where I thought he might were so fleeting I had always been able to brush them away, even while I silently yearned for something more from him.

Now, though, I knew I didn't have a chance. If anything had changed for us, it was that I'd been firmly planted in the “friend zone.”

Aidan and I didn't have a routine. We didn't have nights where we planned to get together, yet they'd become important to me, and they seemed to be important to him.

So I was hesitant to declare I was in for tomorrow night on the off chance he'd stop by and I wouldn't be home.

I'd hate to disappoint him.

Then I shook my head and replied to Suzanne's text. I was being stupid. I could always leave him a note if I felt the need, but even that seemed desperate. A little too vulturelike.

I'll see you there. Save me some chips this time.

I smiled. Two months ago I had shown up thirty minutes late and my friends had fallen on the chips and salsa like they hadn't eaten in months. That huge bowl of chips was gone in a flash, along with the first pitcher of margaritas.

Don't be late this time, twerp.

I grinned so wide my cheeks hurt. I needed this. I needed my friends and their laughter. I needed to remember there was more going on in my life than mourning fathers and depressed teenagers.

Sliding my phone across the counter, I hurried upstairs for a shower. I'd just gotten done with a five-mile run when Suzanne's text had come and I could feel the sweat drying on my skin.

As soon as I was done showering, I threw on a pair of pajama pants, knowing it was late and I probably wouldn't have company tonight. There was a
Flip This House
marathon on HGTV and I was a sucker for a good home-improvement show.

I had a glass of Riesling in my hand and was moving toward the living room when my doorbell rang, startling me.

My feet froze, and I looked down at my cami top with a shelf bra that did little to hide what was beneath. My pink cotton pants had white kittens all over them.

I was essentially dressed like a thirteen-year-old at a sleepover, but I couldn't pass my front door where Aidan—and I had no doubt it was him on the other side—wouldn't see me.

I was stuck.

Tossing back a large swallow of wine, I pretended I didn't care that he was probably going to see my nipples under my tank top. Although I did glance at my coat closet and wonder how stupid I'd look if I answered the front door wrapped in a wool peacoat.

“For crying out loud,” I muttered to myself. “Get a grip.”

I opened the door and immediately wished I had put the peacoat on.

Aidan was definitely on the other side, a bright pink box that I'd recognize anywhere in his hands in front of him, and his eyes immediately dropped to my chest.

“Fuck,” he exhaled.

My throat was filled with a huge lump.

His cheeks turned pink and his eyes narrowed, but I also noted that he didn't move them away from my chest—or my hardening nipples—until I cleared my throat.

I didn't do it to get his attention. I was trying to remember how to speak.

He looked good. Like he always did. Aidan owned his own construction company, taking it over after his father died years ago. All those years of hard manual labor did exquisite things to his body. A T-shirt and faded jeans couldn't hide the physique beneath.

I cleared my throat again, and this time his eyes snapped up to meet mine. But I still noticed his green eyes were darker, his pupils larger than normal.

I figured my blue eyes looked the same.

“Cake.” He shoved the box into my chest so forcefully I stumbled backward a step.

It gave Aidan just enough room to enter my house and I was lost. Lost in my own house because I could not in any way, shape, or form decipher what the heck was happening.

Something sparked between us as he walked around me, and I looked to see if I'd stuck something in an electrical socket. There was nothing there, which meant it was all Aidan.

He simply exuded something powerful. He was strong and muscular and his hands were clenching into fists and then relaxing all while he stared over my shoulder.

“You told me to bring Kate's Kakes with me next time I came, but I hadn't done that yet.”

I rubbed my tongue across my teeth.
Speak!

“Um.”

Aidan didn't look at me. He glanced over my shoulder toward the kitchen and took the box back out of my hands. Then he sauntered away, like I'd actually invited him into my home.

I did the only rational thing I could think to do.

I scampered down the hallway, directly toward my bedroom and my closet.