Aiden was pissed. Pissed. The king of control looked like he wanted to rip apart my sister’s boyfriend/husband/whatever the hell he was.
And it was what he said next that tore me in half.
The Wall of Winnipeg stared down at the much smaller man, and in a voice that was as close to a cool, unattached statement as possible, he said, “Touch my wife again, and I’ll break every bone in your goddamn body.”
My wife. Not Vanessa. He’d gone with my wife.
He’d cussed. For me. For my honor. He’d said the ‘G’ word and it was just about the most romantic thing I’d ever heard in my life because Aiden didn’t do that.
Then he steered that acid-like gaze to my sister, who suddenly looked more uncomfortable than anyone in the world had ever been. He didn’t say a word, but I could feel the disgust. I could feel words bouncing around in his head, shaping his tongue. I was sure Susie could sense them, too.
It was right then, in that instant, that I realized I might be a little in love with Aiden. Not in a way that was anything like the easy crush I had on him in the past, but different. So, so different.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Seriously? I asked myself. Are you fucking serious, Vanessa?
Chapter Twenty-Three
It was the garage door opening and closing at noon the following Monday that had me saving my work.
Neither one of the guys should have been home that early.
Zac had just gotten back from south Texas the night before, and he typically hadn’t been getting back from training until three or four. On Mondays, Aiden didn’t get home earlier than three. It was the shortest day for him out of the week, and after having the weekend off following their Thanksgiving Day game, there was no way he’d get home earlier. Mondays usually just consisted of a visit with the trainers, a workout, lunch, and a couple of different meetings that included watching the last game’s film.
So who the hell was home, and why?
I got up and called out, “Who’s home?” When there wasn’t a response, I jogged down the steps to make my way toward the kitchen and paused when I spotted Aiden drinking a glass of water. “What the hell happened to your face?” I just about shouted the second I caught sight of the red and purple along his jaw.
He set the glass of water down on the countertop and gave me a flat look. “I’m fine.”
He was so full of shit. I made my way around the island anyway. “I didn’t ask if you were fine. What the hell happened?”
He didn’t reply as he stuck his hands under the sink’s fountain sensor and splashed water on his face. What the hell did he do? Aiden rarely got into fights. Hell, he’d told me why they were so few and far between, and I’d never heard a better reason for it. He didn’t have an explosive temper; he usually just bumbled around at being irritated all day.
As he dried his face, I grabbed an ice pack from the freezer, wincing when he set the towel aside, giving me an up close look at the bruises that were going to take up a good portion of his face in a few hours.
Did I realize he was trying to avoid talking about whatever happened? Of course. I just didn’t care.
Handing over the ice pack the instant he’d thrown away the paper towels, I took a step back and took in his features again in disbelief. “Did you get jumped?”
“What?” His gaze swung over to me as he frowned just a little bit. He was insulted. He was genuinely insulted. “No,” he snapped, not in a mean way.
“Are you sure?” I asked hesitantly. Sure, he was huge, and sure, in raw strength, he definitely had 99 percent of other men beat, but if there were multiple larger-than-average guys trying to beat him up, it could happen. Right? Just thinking about that possibility suddenly pissed me right off.
Pressing the ice pack against the line of his jaw, he shook his head just the tiniest bit, his eyes doing this dismissive flutter. “I didn’t get jumped.”
His assurance wasn’t doing it for me, damn it, and I was getting angrier by the second. I touched his arm. “Tell me what happened, Aiden.”
“Nothing.”
Nothing. The right side of my mouth went tight. “You beat yourself up then?”
That scoff said more than the word “No” did.
“Then…” I trailed off, not giving this up.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I’d already known that from the beginning. But as stubborn as he was, I was too. And I wasn’t going to let it go because this right here, the clear signs of him getting into a fight with someone on his team was a sign of the apocalypse. Aiden didn’t give enough of a shit about his teammates to care what they said about him or to him.
He’d said it at the game, there were only a few people he’d ever met whose opinions mattered to him. And I knew that wasn’t something he said for the heck of it. He meant it.
I’d been trying my best since Friday not to think about the basketball game we’d gone to. Or at least, I’d attempted not to think about what he’d said to my sister’s husband or how he’d looked at Susie like he wanted to kill her. The memory of him grabbing my hand and walking with me to the car in silence as anger marred that handsome face, had drilled a hole straight into my heart. Then, as we’d sat in my car, he’d said, “I’m sorry I didn’t go with you.”
All I’d managed to do was sit there and frown. “To where? El Paso?” His response had been a nod. “It’s fine, big guy. It’s all water under the bridge now.” I couldn’t help but reach over and put my hand over the top of his. “That was nice of you to stand up for me, by the way.”
Well, I thought it had been more than nice, but the realization of what I thought I felt was something I never wanted to voice.
Then Aiden had gone and done it as he faced forward out of the windshield, teeth gritted, jaw tight. “I’ve let you down too many times. I won’t do it again.”
Just like that, this feeling of dread poured through my stomach, making me antsy. He’d spent the rest of the weekend more remote than normal. While he hadn’t become outgoing since we’d begun getting along a lot better, Aiden had retreated into himself a little more. He’d worked out and finished and started another puzzle, which was his telltale sign that he was trying to work something out in his head or relax.
It all suddenly made me nervous, and a little, tiny, baby bit worried. Pulling one of the stools at the island back, I plopped into it and simply stared at that discolored, harsh face in unease. “I just want to know whether I need to steal a bat or make a phone call.”
His mouth had been open and poised to argue with me… until he heard the last thing I said. “What?”
“I need to know—”
“What do you need to steal a bat for?”
“Well, no one I know owns one, and I can’t go buy one at the store and have it caught on videotape.”
“Videotape?”
Did he know nothing?
“Aiden, come on, if you beat the shit out of someone with a bat, they’re going to look for suspects. Once they have suspects, they’ll look through their things or their purchases. They’ll see I bought one recently and know it was premeditated. Why are you looking at me like that?”