I wasn’t dumb; I would take what I could get, even if it was for the wrong reasons, and I’d capitalize on it. So what if everyone in the future knew our relationship hadn’t worked out and then wondered what had happened to cause us to split. So what if the first thing they assumed was that he cheated on me. That was what everyone usually guessed when couples broke up.
Telling myself I didn’t care what anyone thought, didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
I would know we hadn’t ‘split up’ for that reason. It would have to be enough.
“When did you start looking?” I asked him, shoving the thoughts of cheating and divorce aside again and focusing on him being here.
He hummed, his mouth full. “Yesterday.”
Ahh, hell. I knew I might have laid it on too thick when he’d driven me to the airport. It might have been me telling him, “Stick my hard drive in the microwave if I don’t come back,” that did him in.
“There weren’t any flights last night, and I had to wait to talk to Zac so he could watch Leo; otherwise, I would have gotten here sooner,” he added.
“I really didn’t mean to guilt-trip you into coming.”
He shrugged. “You would never ask me to come, and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t want to.”
While I knew that was the truth, I still felt just a tiny, little, baby bit bad. Just a little. “Yeah, I know, but still. I shouldn’t have cried so much about it or made you think—”
“—you were going to have things thrown at you.” He let out a low chuckle that was all playful and totally unexpected. Aiden reached over and set his palm on my knee, careful not to touch me with fingers that had sauce on them. “I went to bed worried.”
He was worried about me?
“Everyone seemed nice,” he ended.
Of course everyone had been nice to him. Okay, they’d been nice to me too, but it was different. Everyone had been checking him out, before and even some after they realized I caught them in the act. Hookers.
I wasn’t going to lie. This unfamiliar and territorial feeling took over every time I saw women take on expressions that made it seem as if they were two seconds away from jumping his bones while he’d sat there, completely oblivious to the world around him, with a book in those million-dollar hands. And I thought then, of course they checked him out. Here was this massive, incredibly attractive man in a romance novel convention… reading a damn book.
But that part of my brain hadn’t been fond of the ogling even though I logically couldn’t blame them. I wasn’t going to be surprised if pictures of him showed up on the internet tomorrow—if they hadn’t already been posted—with ridiculous memes or captions beneath them.
And just thinking about it filled me with smugness that he was legally my husband, so all these jealous women could eat shit… I knew what my chest was telling me, what it was feeling. Possessiveness. Horrible possessiveness.
I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. This was Aiden. My friend. The man I was married to so he could become a resident. The guy who watched television with me. Sure, I was in love with him, but I knew there was nothing I could or would do about it. I knew what we were to each other for the most part.
Possessiveness had nowhere to live in our complication.
“They were all nice because you were there,” I explained, giving him a side-glance to take in his reaction. “No one came by before you got there.”
He blinked, not caring at all that I was telling him his looks were the reason why I had people drop by. “If they didn’t walk by, it was because they’re blind and dumb, I told you, Van. You had the best-looking promo stuff out of everyone. I took your bookmarks.”
“You really took my bookmarks?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Two.”
He was killing me. He was slowly killing me. “You sneaky ass.” I smiled even wider and patted the hand he had on me. “I really can’t believe you’re here. In The Motherland.”
“I’m from Winnipeg.”
“I know what city you’re from, dummy. I just thought you would never come to Canada.”
Aiden paused. “I don’t hate it here.”
“But you never want to visit and you don’t want to live here. Isn’t that why you… got me? Because you don’t want to move back here?”
“I don’t want to live here.”
“Because of your parents?” I had the nerve to ask.
His head kind of tilted, that full mouth forming a thoughtful line. “They’ll never be the reason I make a decision ever again, Van. I don’t want to live here anymore. I don’t have anyone here except Leslie.” The fork in his hand jerked. “Everything I care about is in the States.”
I gave him a wary look and nodded as if I understood, but I didn’t. Not really.
The big guy just touched me again and I smiled that time.
“I owe you big time.”
That had him groaning before he dug back into the tofu he had on his lap. “You don’t owe me anything,” he said into the container.
“I do. You have no clue how much this all meant to me.”
Aiden rolled his eyes, even though he was glancing down.
“I’m serious. You have no idea. I can’t thank you enough.”
“I don’t need your thanks.”
“Yeah, you do. I want you to know how much it means to me. My own mom didn’t even show up to my college graduation, and you caught a flight to come sit with me and be bored out of your mind for hours. You have no idea how much you’ve made my day—my month.”
He shook his head and raised his gaze, his long eyelashes sweeping low as he leveled that ring of warm brown on mine. “You haven’t left me when I needed you. Why wouldn’t I do the same for you?”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“My friends are coming to visit after I get back from the All Star Bowl.”
Leaning against the counter two days after we got back from Toronto, I gulped down the rest of the water in my glass and narrowed my eyes in Aiden’s direction. Sitting at the breakfast table, he’d greeted Zac and me when we’d dragged our feet inside following our run a few minutes ago.
I was exhausted, beyond exhausted, and with only three weeks left until the marathon, I was seriously beginning to doubt I’d be able to finish it. I’d been struggling to finish eighteen miles a week ago, so a little over twenty-six? Eighteen miles was more than I ever imagined I could do, so I realized I wasn’t appreciating the long strides I’d taken over the last few months. Needless to say, I was busy worrying about how the hell I was going to tackle eight more miles when Aiden made his comment.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“My friends are coming to visit…” He trailed off as if making sure I was listening. “After the All Star Bowl.”
I was listening, but I didn’t get why he was giving me a strange, expectant look. He’d learned he was voted into the All Star Bowl when we’d flown back to Dallas from Toronto. He was set to leave tomorrow. “Okay…”
“They’re coming to visit us.”
Slowly backing up toward one of the stools at the island, I slid onto it, forcing my sluggish, distracted brain to focus. Us. He’d said us. They were coming to visit—