“She’ll know you,” I said.“Not the legend.Not the captain.You.The man I loved.”
And for the first time, the ache didn’t feel like an open wound.It felt like a tether, thin, delicate, but still connected.Still real.Like, instead of pulling me backwards, it was guiding me forward.
Chapter 53 - Tessa
By the end of June, the heat had turned lazy, heavy, sweet.The kind of heat that makes the world slow down for you when you can’t slow down yourself.
I sat on the porch with my swollen feet propped on a wooden bench, one hand stroking the rounded top of my stomach.The insects hummed like they were trying to soothe me.Or maybe soothe her.She pushed back beneath my hand, stretching long and slow.
“We’re almost there,” I whispered.
It still startled me sometimes, the softness in my voice.The fact that it existed at all again.
A low rumble drifted up the driveway.I looked up, expecting Eli or Kenzie or one of the Palmers.Brody had been by a few times with some pieces Maggie and John had asked him to make for me.
But my breath caught.A Bronco eased to a stop at the bottom of my porch steps.One I had only ever seen once before.
The doors opened, and Callum stepped out first, relaxed.He tipped his chin in a small hello.
And from out of the passenger side stepped out… Aaron Huxley.
Of all the people I expected at almost nine months pregnant on a Tuesday afternoon, Aaron Huxley was not on the list.
I stood slowly; one hand braced on the porch railing as the baby shifted her weight.
“Afternoon,” Callum said, offering a polite warmth that didn’t scrape against me anymore.
Aaron smiled sheepishly.“Hope we’re not intruding.”
“You’re not,” I said cautiously.“I am just… surprised.”
Aaron stepped forward then, holding a folder against his chest.
“I won’t take up much of your time,” he said.“I just… needed to bring this to you myself.”
I waited, as I watched him.I didn't know what to expect.He had always had a quiet confidence about him in the few times we had spoken.But after learning who he was to Nate, I was having a hard time reconciling who he was as a man.Somehow, the impression he had given me didn't line up with a man who would cheat with Brielle behind Nate's back and then rub it in his face in such a public way.He looked different today: in jeans, even though they looked designer, and a plain dark t-shirt.His dark hair was still styled as if he had just come from work, but something in his eyes was different.
He exhaled slowly.“I know you have no reason to think well of me after everything with Brielle.And you’d be right not to.But I want you to know something, because it’s part of your truth too.”
He hesitated, and for once, didn’t seem like a man who filled silence with charm.
“When I first met Brielle, she told me that what she had with Nate was fake.That it was a contract.We started dating in secret because she told me she had an agreement to fulfill and that after New Year’s, it would be over.That the contract ended that night.”His mouth tightened.“So, I showed up, excited that I could finally be out in the open with this stunning woman who seemed so genuine and caught up in something she wanted to get out of desperately.But after how Nate reacted, how his teammates reacted...I questioned her.She stuck to her story...the version she wanted me to see.”
I didn’t say anything, and he went on.
"Slowly she started to change over the year we were public.I noticed small things at first, and then the truth of who she was started to show.It wasn't until I met you, the person who, according to her, was also in a contract relationship with Nate.I should have known before then.But from what I knew of you and how you were on Halloween...I started asking more questions and digging deeper into her lies."
I looked away from him for a moment and swallowed hard, "I didn't know about all the PR stuff...well, until I did.But my relationship with Nate was real, and to my knowledge, so was Brielle's."
"We know," Callum said, stepping closer to the porch.
I cleared my throat and rubbed a soothing circle over my belly."Is that why you are here?"
“No...I mean partly, yes.I wanted you to understand I am not that kind of man.But the reason why we are both here today is that Nate's financial planner reached out to me a week before…” He swallowed hard.“Before the accident.”
A breeze lifted the hair at my neck.
“They asked about the Northern Initiatives about the mobile units,” Aaron said softly.“The programs I told you about.He wanted something set aside for you, for you to build, to lead.Something that wouldn’t be tied to him legally, so you’d never lose control of it.”
