“Don’t,” he insisted when I started to stand. He lowered his body to the floor, sitting across from me in the hallway.
“Welcome back,” I said with a tight smile on my lips.
He returned the gesture with a nod.
“I’m sorry,” I blurted out. I pushed out a deep breath and closed my eyes. “What I said before you left was completely out of line. I didn’t mean it.” The words came out fast, nearly tripping over one another as they spilled out. “I was just so terrified when his school called and said he hadn’t shown up. Then I couldn’t get ahold of you.”
I opened my eyes and spotted Ace watching me with a curious expression on his face.
“What were you terrified about?” he asked. “I would never let anything happen to him,” he promised.
My heart squeezed at his declaration.
I wasn’t surprised when my eyes started to water. Briefly, I wondered how he would respond if I told him that I was essentially being blackmailed to keep Aiden safe.
I want to forget everything about you.
Ace’s words from when we first moved in came back to mind. This wasn’t a permanent situation. He wouldn't remain a long-term part of our lives. I couldn’t lay the burden of the mess with Aiden’s father in his lap. Not since his main goal was to rid himself of me once and for all.
I had been too much of a burden in his life already.
I pushed down the desire to tell him everything and instead said, “I’m scared I’m letting him down.” I turned to look back at Ace. “Every day, I wake up and wonder if I’m doing right by him. And Yvette.”
“Yvette?” He cocked his head sideways.
“His birth mom,” I told him. “She was my friend, more like a little sister to me. She…” I trailed off. “She was so young when she had him.” Yvette had reminded me of myself. She had no family to speak of and wasn’t even out of her teens when she got pregnant.
“Most days, I feel like I’m just getting by.”
Ace reached out and took my hand in his.
“The problem with being a parent is you don’t usually find out until years down the road whether you messed them up or not.” I let out a pathetic laugh.
Ace squeezed my hand.
“He’s lost so much already,” I whispered. “I can’t let him lose anything else.”
“What would he lose?” His face was a mask of confusion.
I shrugged. “Anything. I just mean, I want to give him the childhood he deserves, and I don’t know if I’m doing any of this right.”
I let out a sigh, feeling relieved that I’d been able to express my deepest fears to someone besides myself.
“You know, when I first went through pilot training,” Ace started, “I was scared shitless. There were so many guys all competing for the same position. And they weren’t about to hand it over to me. Most of us dreamt of being pilots since we were young kids.”
He moved closer, firming the hold he had on my hand.
“For the first time in my life, I started to think, what if I’m not good enough? What if I spent years dreaming of being this, and it was all just that? A fucking dream.”
I wrinkled my forehead. “Ace, you’re the most competent person I’ve ever known.” From the time I first met him, there wasn’t any goal Ace set that he didn’t accomplish. He’d graduated at the top of our high school class, with me right behind him at number two.
He gave me a smile that pierced straight through to my heart.
“Those were the words that carried me through flight school.” He swallowed and glanced away. “When it got the toughest, and I doubted myself the most, was when I would think about all the times you told me that I could do anything I wanted to. It was your voice that pushed me through those darkest moments.”
Of course, the tears I’d attempted to hold back slipped free.
Ace chuckled as he wiped one with his thumb.
