I eyed him like I didn’t believe him, because I didn’t. What the hell would give him the idea that I’d go back to work for him?
Drugs.
Drugs would make him think that wasting his time by coming here was a good idea. Hadn’t the parting comment I’d asked Trevor to deliver for me been enough?
What I was thinking must have been apparent on my face because he shook his head and repeated himself. “I’m not on drugs, Vanessa.”
I’d grown up with an addict, and I was well aware they denied they had a problem even if the signs they were out of control were right smack in front of their face. I narrowed my eyes and searched his features again, trying to find a sign he was on something.
“Stop looking at me like that. I’m not on anything,” he insisted, faint lines crossed his tan forehead—the children of the time he spent in the sun and a marker that he was thirty years old and not twenty-two.
I glanced at his arms to make sure there weren’t any weird bruises on them and came up with nothing. Then I glanced at his hands, trying to peer at the delicate flesh between his fingers to see if there were any track marks on there. Still, nothing.
“I’m not on anything.” He paused. “Since when have you ever known me to want to take a painkiller?”
It was my turn to pause, to meet his eyes in the safety of my apartment, and slowly say, “Never.” I swallowed. “But then I also didn’t know you to be an asshole either,” I replied before I could stop myself.
For one second, he reared back. The motion was minute, tinier than tiny, but I’d seen it. It had been there. His nostrils flared wide, the gesture so exaggerated I couldn’t help but take it in. “Vanessa—”
“I don’t need you to apologize.” My hands fiddled at my lap as that small hint of betrayal scourged its way right between my breasts, reminding me that maybe I hadn’t completely gotten over what had happened. Maybe. But I made myself tell him, “I don’t need anything from you.”
He opened his mouth, and I would swear on my life the muscles high up on his cheeks twitched. He made a small sound, the beginning of a stutter, like he wanted to say something substantial to me for the first time since we’d known each other, but didn’t know how to go about it.
The thing was, I wasn’t in the mood for it.
Whatever he might have contemplated saying was a month too late. A year too late. Two years too late.
I had lied to my loved ones about why I’d suddenly quit. Adding up another lie to add to the list of things I’d refrained from telling them over the years because I didn’t want them to worry or be angry over something so dumb and insignificant.
It didn’t matter though. I didn’t work for him anymore, and I’d honestly expected never to see him again. What was the point in getting all bent out of shape? I tried to tell myself that leaving the way I had, had been the best way to go about it. Otherwise, who knew how much longer I would have hung around waiting for my replacement? Maybe they would have tried to get rid of me quickly, but I would never know.
We were as even as we possibly could be. I didn’t feel anything except the barest hum of recognition for someone I’d seen hundreds of times. This guy who I had admired, that I had once respected, who had slightly broken my heart and disillusioned me.
I have moved on with my life though, I thought, forcing my hands still. “I just want to know why you’re here. I really do have things to do,” I said in a calm voice.
The man who had earned his nickname in high school, because even back then he’d been a big son of a gun, cocked his head to the side, his tongue sweeping over his upper teeth. The big knot of his Adam’s apple bobbed before he finally aimed his gaze back at me, accusingly. “I kept expecting you to come back after a few days, but you never did.”
Had I been that much of a pushover? “You honestly thought I would do that?” I gave him my best ‘are you serious’ look.
His eyes slid to the side briefly, but he didn’t admit or deny anything. “I want you to come back.”
No matter what, he wasn’t going to guilt-trip me. I didn’t even have to think about my response. “No.”
He decided to ignore me. Shocking. “I tried to get Trevor to find you, but no one even knew you had another cell phone or had your right address.”
Of course no one did, because neither one of them had ever made an effort to know anything about me, but I kept that to myself. The address they had was from the place where I’d lived with Diana and her brother in Fort Worth, a sister city to Dallas. Rodrigo had moved out a year and a half afterward when his girlfriend had gotten pregnant, and when I got my job with Aiden, I got my own place, needing to be in Dallas instead of travelling back and forth almost an hour every day. Since then, Diana had moved in to her own place.
It also didn’t escape me that Aiden didn’t drop Zac’s name. He was the only one in our small circle who knew my personal number, and I was sure he wouldn’t share it.
“Come back.”
I pushed the bridge of my glasses up and used one of the strongest, most resilient words in the English language: “No.”
“I’ll pay you more.”
Tempting but “No.”
“Why not?”
Why not? Men. It was only freaking men who would be so… so dumb. He hadn’t apologized to me for what he’d said. He wasn’t even trying to be nice and win me over to come back—not that I would. It was the same old shit it always was.
Come back.
Why not?
Blah, blah, blah.
Why not?
Why the hell would I?
I almost said I was sorry for not doing what he wanted, but I wasn’t. Not even a little bit. As I took in Aiden, his overwhelming size swallowing my couch, demanding that I come back and not understanding why I wouldn’t want to, I realized that being ‘nice’ wasn’t going to accomplish anything. I had to tell him the truth, or at least the closest thing to the truth as possible. A small, immature part of me wanted to be mean.
I wanted to hurt him the way he’d hurt me, but as I took him in, I took in the man who had provided me with a job that had allowed me to fund and fulfill my dreams. This was the same person who I’d seen at his worst, when he’d faced the possibility he would never play the only thing in the world he loved again.
This was Aiden. I knew some of his secrets. I didn’t want to care about him, but I guess I couldn’t help it, even if it was a subconscious, mutilated version of what it had once been. And I didn’t want to be like Trevor, or Susie, or any other person I’d ever met who was mean for the sake of being mean.
So I kept it as simple as I could. I stuck my fingers under my thighs and said, “I told you. I deserve better.”
Chapter Six
“Oh shit.”
I spotted the black Range Rover in the parking lot the instant the taxi pulled up in front of the complex by the guest entrance. There was no way I could miss it; I’d taken it to get an oil change and a wash a few times in the past. It wasn’t necessarily the nicest car in the lot—a few of my neighbors had Escalades and Mercedes that I wasn’t sure how they afforded—but I recognized Aiden’s license plate number.