“Ahh!” I feign panic, and he bursts into giggles.
They don’t last long. “Mom?” he asks around the toothbrush.
“Yes, baby.”
“Does Aiden have kids who don’t live with him?” He pauses, thinking hard. “Like me and Daddy.”
“No,” I say carefully. “He doesn’t have kids.”
Mason spits, rinses, then looks up at me. “Why not?”
Because life is complicated.
“I don’t know,” I say instead. “Some people just don’t. Like Aunt Carlie.”
Mason considers this, then nods. “Okay.” He pads back toward the couch, conversation apparently complete. I staywhere I am for a moment, gripping the counter, heart aching in a way I don’t let myself do very often.
I chose the wrong man six years ago. And Mason pays for it with an empty space he doesn’t yet know how to name.
That’s not entirely true, and I know it. Leaving Aiden behind was not my choice. It was his. But every time I thought about him in the past six years, I’ve wondered what would have happened if I had tried harder. If I had argued the issue, if I had pushed him…
If I had to push him, I would have resented him. I would have thought he never actually wanted me—that I had bullied him into being with me. So, that wouldn’t have worked, either.
The afternoon drifts by in fragments—cartoons, snacks, a nap he insists he doesn’t need and absolutely does. I answer emails from my phone, talk to my insurance adjuster, pretend my hands aren’t shaking every time my thoughts circle back to the bar.
When Aiden comes home, the penthouse changes again. The air tightens. Shifts.
I’m in the kitchen starting dinner when I hear the door. I don’t turn around, but I know it’s him. His presence fills the space in a way that has nothing to do with sound. “Hey.”
My smile is instantaneous. Can’t help it. “Hey.” When I turn to face him, there’s a look in his eyes that makes my throat go dry. “Hungry?”
Those dangerous eyes gaze over my entire body. Slowly. Methodically. Heat trails through me wherever he looks. “Starving.”
He is not talking about food. I barely rasp out, “Dinner will be ready soon.”
“Can I help?”
“Almost done, actually.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“How about you get Mason ready for dinner?”
He smiles, and I feel it in my bones. “On it.” He vanishes to the living room, and I hear Mason’s excitement when he sees him.
Maybe we really can do this.
That’s the thought that carries me through dinner. Afterward, I’m clearing the table when Aiden says, “I’ll wash the dishes.”
“I’ll dry,” I reply immediately. “Mason, do you want to finish that movie?”
“Yeah!” he practically leaps out of his seat and scrambles to the living room.
Moments later, me and Aiden stand side by side at the sink, careful not to touch. “Um, so… we should probably have some house rules while me and Mason are staying here. Right?”
The way he washes a wooden spoon—his grip shuttling up and down the handle—distracts me. “… eight o’clock.”
I blink a few times. “Um, what?”
