He nodded. “You didn’t tell me everything either,” he pointed out. “How long have you been seeing the guy?”
“Who, Aiden?”
“Yeah. Healer guy.” He grinned. “Pancake guy. Good pancakes, by the way.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t have a chance to eat any yet.”
“He spent the night, I assume?” Kit looked a cross between amused and grossed out.
“I don’t see that it’s your business,” she countered, “and we’re not done talking about you yet.”
Kit looked resigned. “In between all the pranks, we all managed to dig up the regulations and got proof of what the RA was doing that broke them. He’s getting written up and won’t be an RA next semester.”
“Who’s ‘we’？”
Kit looked at the ceiling, as if mentally counting. “My roommate. Dana and her roomie, Naomi. Jesse and his boyfriend, Ty. Kirk from down the hall. And some of my friends from the library.” He paused. “I got a job at the library, by the way.”
“You got a job?” She was torn between being proud of him and distraught that she knew none of this. “Do you have time for that? Do you not have enough money?”
“I’m doing fine,” he reassured her, with the easy confidence of an eighteen-year-old. “And it’s an awesome job. I now know how to research anything, and I’ve met a lot of cool people.”
She finally grinned. Then she startled when tears began to pour down her cheeks.
This was what she had wanted. Her son was independent, and brilliant, and no longer alone. And happy.
“Oh, God! Mom!” Kit quickly engulfed her in a hug. Even though he’d towered over her for several years now, she still felt a sharp pang as he cuddled her like she was a child. When had her baby gotten big enough to cuddle her completely? “What’s wrong? I’m sorry! I should’ve told you everything. I just wanted you to not be alone.”
“I know,” she said. Well, sniffled. “But first: don’t do that. Don’t try to manipulate me just because you’re concerned.”
“Only okay when you do it, huh?”
“I didn’t lie, my dude,” she added sharply, and to his credit, Kit looked sheepish. “You could’ve told me you were doing all that stuff and then insisted that I do the same. You didn’t have to lie, or use guilt. I hope to Christ I didn’t teach you that.”
The fear that she’d done exactly that made her sick to her stomach. She would’ve fucked up fairly significantly if that was the case. That would prove Trev right.
“No, this is my fault.” He looked so miserable, she hugged him. “I’m sorry, Mom. I just wanted you to feel better, you know?”
“I know. But I also want to make sure you know this wasn’t okay.”
“I get it. I won’t do it again.”
“Damned right you won’t,” she muttered, then sighed.
“Sooooo . . . The guy?”
She huffed out a little laugh. “Aiden and I got together recently,” she said. “Like, a day ago recent. But we’ve been good friends for months, and I value that. Nobody’s rushing anything.”
“You like him?”
I love him.
She wasn’t ready to admit that quite yet, though. Probably.
“I like him,” she agreed. “A lot.”
“Well, I’ll need to talk to him,” Kit said, sounding so grumpy and ridiculous that she hugged him again.
“We’ll see about that,” she said, then got up. “All right. I’m having some of these pancakes.”
CHAPTER 40
YOUR RESIGNATION IS NOT ACCEPTED
Aiden spent the better part of the day splitting wood for the fireplace, stress-cleaning his house （even though it didn’t need it）， and killing even more shit on Blood Saga Online. This time, he didn’t avoid the other members of the guild. Ferocity, Gandalf, and Dork helped him demolish a dungeon, and if they noticed he was more subdued than usual on the chat, they didn’t say anything.
As he mechanically went through the motions of annihilating cave demons and lichs, his brain turned over his current situation carefully. Even though his chest was sore over what he’d needed to do with his family, there was a feeling of lightness there too. A sheer relief, and a sense of unknown. It was like being in a huge open field, or out on the ocean, with nothing but possibility and the chance to go in any direction, the horizon just spread out endlessly. It was daunting and encouraging, both at once.
Now, I just need to convince Maggie to be my girlfriend. How hard can that be?
He sighed, feeling his forehead furrow.
First, having a “girlfriend” at fifty felt very weird. There had to be a better word for it.
Second . . . getting Maggie to do absolutely anything was a challenge. While she might’ve previously been amenable to the idea of being his girlfriend, she hadn’t been smacked in the face with her ex-husband the asshole yet. After all these months, he knew that if anything would put her force fields up, it’d be that.
She liked being with him, at least. She was one of his best friends and favorite people, and he hoped she felt the same. And then there was the fact they’d been together. He wanted to do that again, as soon as possible. Not just the sex, although that was awesome, but spending the day together, sleeping next to each other. They’d hit that next level of intimacy.
She also had had no qualms about, say, jumping over a dining table to defend his honor. Which only made him love her more.
But she was skittish. He knew that. Add that to goddamned Trev’s presence, and he was afraid she was going to retreat into herself like a turtle wearing Razor Ribbon. He was nervous he wasn’t going to have a chance.
No. He wasn’t going to let himself overthink this or psych himself out. He’d been letting other people call the shots most of his adult life. He wasn’t going to ignore Maggie’s wishes—he respected her. But that didn’t mean he was going to just sit passively by and let her close herself off from a relationship with him because she didn’t know how strongly he felt, or how committed he was to this, or because she was afraid that he’d judge her or criticize her. He was all in, and he loved her just the way she was. He needed her to know that.
But to do that, he had to . . . you know, talk to her.
It was eight o’clock at night. He’d texted her that afternoon, just as a check-in, but he hadn’t heard back. The ball was firmly in her court.
He’d just heated up a cup of soup—from a batch he and Maggie had made together—when he saw the flash of headlights through his front curtains. Putting the bowl down on the coffee table, he opened the front door.
“Maggie?”
She gave him a scowling up-nod. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” He quickly made room for her to scoot around him. Her hands were stuffed deep in her thick fleece jacket. She was back to wearing no makeup, and her eyes looked a little red. Her hair was its usual crazed nimbus of waves and flyaways, and as she toed off her boots, he could see that they were a mess. Her jeans had a hole in the knee.
She looked wonderful, so good it made his heart hurt.