He finished off his beer. “I was working. After school, I’d go into the bar, clean the tables, wipe down chairs, fill up the bowls of nuts, and that kind of thing. Then I was a busboy, helped in the kitchen. Whatever was needed.”
“It was your dad who ran the bar? You were helping him?”
Aiden nodded, growing slightly uneasy at the direction their conversation was heading. “Yeah. He worked there every day.”
“And your mom?”
His throat tightened. “She died shortly after I was born, so I…I don’t really remember her. From what people tell me, though, she was a nice woman.”
She surprised him by reaching out and placing her hand on his knee. It was meant to be a gesture of comfort, he knew, but it sent a jolt of desire through his body. “I’m so sorry, Aiden. Your dad must have missed her very much.”
He gave a stiff nod. For a second, he held on to his thoughts, as he always did. But as Janie waited for him to speak—as she stared at him with those eyes that looked like they could understand anything he said—he opened the vault a little. “He did. There…there weren’t any pictures of her. I remember, when I was five, I had asked him about her. I had before as well; I must have after she died, but I guess that day, for whatever reason, he’d had enough. He walked around the house and pulled down every picture we ever had. He said it was impossible to get over people if we were staring at them every day.”
Janie’s eyes were watery. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s slightly messed up. But he was doing his best. He was trying to survive, and I guess that was the only way he knew how. That night, though, after he was asleep, I snuck into the trash can where he’d thrown everything and took a few pictures out. Just so I’d have something of her.”
“Can I see?” she whispered.
Aiden’s stomach dropped. He didn’t even know how their conversation had veered in this direction. He didn’t speak to anyone about this stuff. No one. Ever. But Janie was easy to talk to. Even though he wasn’t used to sharing, it didn’t seem so bad with her. And he had this need to give her what she wanted of him. “Uh, sure,” he said, getting up.
She reached out to grab his hand and then immediately dropped it. “You don’t have to. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“No, it’s fine. I have a picture in my wallet.” He walked over to his jacket in the entryway. He pulled out his wallet and slipped his finger into the small inside pocket he never used and grasped the picture he knew would be in there, trying to avoid looking at it.
“I’m just going to get another beer. Do you need a refill?” he asked, heading into the kitchen.
“Sure,” she called out.
A moment later, he rejoined her in the living room and handed her the picture before filling her glass of wine. He clenched his teeth at the sound of her soft gasp. “What a beautiful picture of the three of you. This was right after you were born? In the hospital?” she said, raising her head to look at him.
He took a sip of beer. He didn’t know how to react to her comment; it felt like if he spoke, then everything would come out. It was dangerously safe talking to Janie, and a part of him was craving it, unloading the memories which had weighed him down. But at the same time, he didn’t want to put his burden on her. “Yes. She…died the next day,” he said, sitting back down on the couch.
She gasped. “Oh, Aiden…I’m so sorry.” She handed him the picture.
“Thank you.” He did appreciate her concern, but he suddenly wanted the conversation over with.
She tilted her head, and a strand of glossy dark brown hair fell forward. He resisted the urge to reach out and tuck it back. “Were you and your dad close?”
He paused before answering. “We saw each other all the time and worked together. So, in that sense, yes. It’s strange, though, because you’d think with a parent you see all the time there would be emotional closeness, but there just wasn’t. We talked about the bar, work, things going on in Wishing River. But there was never anything deep. I don’t think I ever really knew him, and I always felt like he never made the effort to get to know me.”
She took a deep breath. “I can understand that. You’d think your parents would know you better than anyone, but sometimes I think they imagine you to be a certain way, and when you’re not…they don’t know what to do about it.”
He didn’t know what was happening to him as he sat across the couch from her, but despite the discomfort—and there was an extreme amount—coursing through him, he liked talking to her. He liked voicing his thoughts on the past and his dad. But that was as far as he could. The other stuff stayed in the vault. Dragging it out served no purpose. It would likely instill some worry in Janie that he might not be fit to be a full-time dad. And Janie seemed like she understood all of it.
He’d had relationships but had never opened up like this. He’d had surface-level relationships, like he’d mentioned about his dad. He had never wanted more. “What about you?”
She waved a hand and picked up her glass of wine. “I’m sure you already know all that from Maxi.”
A stab of regret hit him in the gut. He’d been such a jackass. He had no idea how he could explain his relationship with Maxi to Janie. He didn’t want her to judge him, and even though she didn’t seem the type to do that, it was complicated because Maxi was her sister. Janie was her complete opposite, but they were still the same blood, and they grew up together.
There was also the complicating fact that Maxi hadn’t talked about her family to him. He had only been vaguely aware that she had a little sister and her mom was a single parent. He hadn’t even known Janie’s name, and he didn’t want to tell her that now.
His relationship with Maxi hadn’t been…well-rounded. There was very little discussion about feelings, goals, pasts. It was bizarre to think that at one point he thought himself in love with her, that it had been a real relationship. He’d been young and angry and inexperienced when it came to relationships like that. He had mistaken her interest in him as love. But Maxi had a lot of issues and had done things he never would have. He may have been messed up, too, but he wasn’t a liar.
“I don’t actually know much. We were together, but we weren’t exactly close in terms of our feelings and all that,” he said, knowing it sounded like such a cop-out explanation.
“Huh,” she said under her breath. “I kind of thought it was this epic love story, the way she spoke about you. I would have thought you knew everything about me, our mom, Maxi.”
He ran a hand over his jaw, racking his brain, trying to remember anything Maxi had said about her family. She had bragged about being some kind of beauty queen, but that had seemed irrelevant. “Not really,” he admitted. “Just that Maxi was a beauty pageant winner or something and worked as a model. Your mom raised you two on her own.”
“Did she mention me?”
He shrugged, feeling like this was all entering dangerous territory. “She did mention she had a little sister, but again, we didn’t really talk about all that. We should probably not talk about Maxi.”
Something flickered across her eyes before she turned away and took a drink of wine. “Sure. Of course. That’s personal and between the two of you.”
Damn. “No, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what do you mean?”
He blew out a frustrated breath. “It means you would never get my relationship with Maxi because you’re the complete opposite of her. And I wasn’t the same person then. I look back and I don’t even understand my relationship with her.”
Her mouth formed the word oh, even though no sound escaped. He saw the wounded look that registered there, because they were supposed to be having an honest conversation and he was clamming up. He had to give her more. He owed her more.
“Maxi and I met when she walked into my bar one Saturday night and ordered a drink. She
sat and talked to me, crying about how her life was in shambles and she’d just broken up with some horrible guy, Mike, and she was starting over in Wishing River. She came to the bar every night that week, and by the end of the week…” He frantically tried to think of something that sounded somewhat respectable but came up blank. “We hooked up. I was barely eighteen. It was a relationship built on lies, between two messed up people.”
He glanced over at Janie, and she was staring at him like she was watching a highly anticipated movie at the theater. Fighting the urge to clam up again, he kept on talking. She deserved to hear the truth.
“I have a hard time talking about Maxi, not because I have feelings for her but because she represented a time in my life when I felt out of control. I was mad because my friends were all off—” He didn’t want to reveal that he was jealous of his best friend for pursuing his dream while he was stuck at River’s Saloon. Somehow the fact that he shared Janie and Logan’s love of animals and their dreams of working in veterinary medicine seemed even more personal than his relationship with her sister.
He began again. “My friends had all gone away to college, and I was working the bar. I took what Maxi told me as the truth. We hooked up quite a few times, and our last night together, this guy barges into the motel room she was staying in, finds us asleep in bed, and pulls a knife on me. That’s what made the scar.”
Janie’s mouth dropped open, her gaze flying to the side of his face.
“It gets better. I find out he’s her fiancé. Mike. Apparently, they never broke up, and I was having an affair with a woman who was practically married.”
“Oh, Aiden,” she said, shaking her head. He watched her, and she didn’t seem to be judging him; she almost seemed sad for him—almost like she wasn’t surprised.
“I honestly didn’t know Maxi was engaged,” he said. “She told me she’d broken up with her boyfriend. Anyway, she got this guy under control and confessed that she’d been lying to me. I went in for stitches, and they went home together. So, that’s that… Fast forward sixteen years to when you show up at my bar, and you know the rest.”
Janie reached out to squeeze his knee again. “I believe you. I believe that you never would have been with her if you knew she was engaged. Maxi and Mike had this toxic relationship right from day one. He cheated on her so many times, and I guess that’s why she felt she could do the same. She was probably trying to get him back.”
He processed that piece of information, and it made him feel slightly better, aside from the fact it meant he’d been used. “That makes sense, I guess.”
“They’ve been off and on for as long as I can remember. When she found out she was pregnant, they were on again, and she wanted to pass off Will as his. I guess Mike wanted to believe that, too. Until they both realized that parenting was hard work and required things like stable jobs and genuine selflessness. And obviously neither one of them had that.”
“So how did you have it?”
She averted her gaze. “I don’t know. I’m not perfect, and I’ve made a ton of mistakes along the way. I guess I could have tried harder with Maxi, but I think for a long time I was just the little sister who wasn’t that important. Maxi had a heart condition and needed major surgery as a child. After that, our mom just couldn’t let go of that fear of losing her. Our lives were all about protecting Maxi. Unfortunately, it totally went to her head. I’ve been guilty of enabling her, too. Our mom adored Maxi to the point of obsession.”
“Didn’t she adore you, too?” he asked, settling back into the cushions, relaxing now that he wasn’t in the hot seat but also eager to learn more about her.
“No.” Janie took a sip of wine and kept her eyes focused on some point beyond his shoulder. “I think my mom was raised to believe she wasn’t quite good enough. Our dad cheated on her many times and said it was because of the way she looked. He left when I was a year old, and she blamed herself for it. Maybe me, too, in some weird way, because she’d put on a lot of weight with her pregnancy and he shamed her for that. She would tell me, on really bad days, how she should have tried harder or not had a second child. Not had me—”
She blinked furiously before taking another drink of wine.
More than anything, he wanted to pull her close and tell her how glad he was they did have her. “Hey, Janie, I’m sorry. That’s awful. And hell, where would Will be if you weren’t here?”
She smiled slightly. “Thanks. It’s okay. Really. Mom became obsessed with looks and believed that if she had looked a certain way, none of that would have happened to her. She tried her best to provide—and she did—but it was always with the complaint that if she’d been beautiful, she could have married a rich man who’d provide for her.”
“So she fixated on Maxi. She wanted her to be a trophy wife to some rich guy, and then she’d be set. And Maxi was the poster child for all-American beauty. She had blonde hair, blue eyes, and a face like a doll. She was tall and thin and wasn’t the least bit shy. She loved the attention and clothes and makeup. All the extra money and money our mom didn’t have went to pageants. Maxi always accused me of being jealous, and I don’t know, maybe I was, looking back.”
She shook her head. “Maxi had everything. She had our mom’s complete attention, she got the nice clothes, and she didn’t have to work hard in school because her plan was to marry a rich man, so who cared about good grades. The two of them would go away on weekends to the beauty pageants, and I’d stay home by myself. I’d end up studying or reading. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house because I was pretty young, so I didn’t have a lot of friends—”
She stopped speaking abruptly, and her face turned red.
“Why’d you stop?”
“Because this is becoming really long-winded and pathetic-sounding. Let’s just say my childhood was fine and Maxi and I are simply different people.”
That was putting it mildly. But that kind of independence she’d had to establish early on made sense when it came to caring for Will at such a young age. She had been on her own; she’d been the kid brushed aside for the shiny gold object. And she knew what it was like to not be wanted. “Are you still in touch with your mom?” he asked.
Janie winced. “She died just before Will was born. She and Maxi had a huge falling out because of Mike. My mom couldn’t understand how she would risk everything for a loser like him. It was pretty bad. She blamed Maxi for wasting all her money, and then…she turned to me and said that it would be my job to support her. I was the child who was encouraged to get a job and make my own way in the world because…”
Her voice trailed off, and he filled in the blanks, not knowing if she’d continue. His gut churned at the mind games they’d both been brought up with. Her mother hadn’t seen Janie’s beauty—on the inside and out. She hadn’t appreciated all the different sides of her. “I don’t know what to say except I’m sorry, Janie.”
She folded her legs under her. “I’m actually glad I wasn’t the beauty-queen child. I loved school, and I loved learning. I wanted to be a vet since I was little. I saw what all that attention did to Maxi, and I’m grateful that wasn’t my life. Maxi probably thinks I’m jealous of her, but the truth is that now, as an adult, I’m very grateful for what I’ve accomplished and who I am. So being the ugly kid had its benefits,” she said with a laugh.
Aiden’s head was spinning. This was not what he expected. He was staring at the most beautiful woman he’d ever met, and he knew it would be stupid to reach out and kiss her, to place his hand on the nape of her neck and pull her over to him, to feel her silky hair in his hands, to finally get to kiss her…
It would be stupid because it would be incredible between them, and he sensed that. It would be wrong to show her with his mouth, his hands, his body, just how beautiful he thought she was.
But mostly it would be stupid because nothing could ever happen between them.
H
e didn’t know why, when her gaze dipped to his mouth, he didn’t get up off the couch. Instead he wrestled with his conscience. It was a fight he couldn’t win.
He leaned forward, ever so slowly, giving Janie plenty of time to move or tell him to stop.
And she met him halfway.
Chapter Twelve
Janie didn’t know what was going on. Well, obviously she knew what was going on, but up until this point, she’d assumed her attraction to Aiden was one-sided.
Yet tonight, without Will at home, it was as though this barrier had been lifted. She revealed embarrassing things to him, like being the ugly kid, even though he had been with her sister the beauty queen. But he’d revealed things first, and her heart had ached for him and the childhood he desperately tried to pretend was totally fine. There was more there, she could feel it, but she’d let it drop.
Aiden was reaching across the couch for her. The entire night she’d been so aware of him physically, the way he seemed to envelop her with warmth. She would catch the twinkle in his eye or the shadows. The dimple that she was so thankful she was on the right side of so she could see it, and how it never failed to soften an otherwise hard face.
When he’d talked about his parents, a part of her wished she could reach across to him and hold him, and she wanted to feel what she’d felt in the barn when she’d hugged him. Except he wasn’t wearing a winter jacket now. She wanted to run her hands up the hard lengths of his arms, his shoulders, and then trace the defined lines of his jaw. And then there was the Maxi scar story.
But now he was right in front of her, his hand delving into the hair at the nape of her neck, and she had to meet him halfway because she wanted him. More than she wanted things to remain uncomplicated, more than she wanted to do the right thing, she wanted Aiden.
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