Right. The “wrong message” being that she was still hung up on him. As if anyone would have suspected that to begin with. He bent to the rebar again, working in silence.
Aubrey stood and watched, as if to prove a point.
Which shouldn’t have changed anything. But his skin grew hot and prickling under her stare. He manhandled the cutters until sweat trickled down his spine, then peeled off his jacket and tossed it aside. Not because he liked the feel of her gaze on him as he worked in nothing more than a sweat-dampened T-shirt, but—
Oh, fuck it, that was exactly why. Some primal part of him relished the chance to demonstrate the strength he’d never had when they were kids. Because while Aubrey might not care anymore,hedid. He’d care until he was dead—and probably long after.
And the longer she stood there, the more he dared to imagine that maybe, just maybe, some overlooked ember of their past still flickered. Bit by bit, the stiffness melted from her posture. Her fingers snuck to her waist, then twined together. Her gaze cut from his body to his face and back again while her pulse swelled visibly in the hollow of her throat.
Heat rose inside him. Heknewthose tells, had once been fluent in that language of lowered lashes and half-drawn breaths. Even now, he remembered enough to know that while Aubrey might not care, some part of her, however small, still found him attractive. At least on a physical level.
Cold comfort, but he hoarded the knowledge, regardless.
The afternoon passed slowly, with him working up a sweat and trying not to stare at Aubrey, which, for the most part, failed miserably. Paige did most of the directing, while Aubrey marked off rebar cuts with a chalk-paint marker and arranged the finished pieces in preparation.
Then came the assembly. Nick went to the truck for his MIG welder and lugged it into the barn, then set up in a corner where he wouldn’t burn anyone’s vision.
Paige and Aubrey stayed outside. In between hissing showers of sparks, he caught their muted chatter, and reality seemed to drift. How mind-boggling that they could coexist like this. That his life’s diverging roads could overlap in any way, much less chat casually in the October sunshine.
What in the actual fuck.
If nothing else, though, he appreciated knowing Aubrey had the grace not to hold Paige’s origins against her. Even from here, he could make out her tone, warm and encouraging.
Probably talking about math, then. Definitely not about him.
When he finished, he packed up the welder, then paused in the barn doorway. Aubrey and Paige leaned against his truck, smiling. Aubrey kept lifting the heels of her boots out of the ground, then putting them down again, at which point they sank right back in. Paige’s giggle drifted on the breeze.
Seeing them like that, laughing together, ripped open a rift inside him, an ache so profound it felt eternal, equal parts pleasure and pain.
Fucking hell, if only he could have had both of them. Done right by one without forsaking the other. If only he could have built himself a family that knitted together the disparate pieces of his torn-up heart.
But he couldn’t, and he had no one to blame but himself, so he shouldered the welder’s weight and stepped into the sunshine. Aubrey’s smile died at his approach.
He tried not to let that bother him, but a weight dragged at his stomach, anyway.
“All done?” Paige said.
“All done.” He manhandled the welder back into the truck bed.
“Great,” she said. “I’m gonna go check everything over, figure out what we need for next week. I’ll see you and Mom at dinner, okay? Oh, and you’ll have to take Aubrey home. She doesn’t have a car. I’d drive her, but I’m heading to Maria’s for a bit.”
He opened his mouth, but Paige had already bounced off toward the barn. She called over her shoulder. “Nice to meet you, Aubrey! I’ll text you about math club!”
Nick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Math club? Do I even want to know what that’s about?”
“Probably not,” Aubrey said.
When he dropped his hand, he found her peering up, and this new vantage point struck him. In high school, she’d stood nearly at eye level, but that had been before he’d shot up four inches between eighteen and nineteen, once he’d started at the steel mill and begun filling his refrigerator with as much food as he could afford. His body had soaked it up, maybe making up for all that lost time when his dad had considered a refrigerated bottle of ketchup an acceptable discharge of his parental responsibilities.
Yet in those intervening years, Aubrey hadn’t grown an inch. Somehow, that felt right to him, knowing he could tuck her protectively beneath his chin if he needed to.
“Don’t worry.” She frowned, and he realized he’d been staring for entirely too long. “You’re not actually taking me home.”
“I’m not?”
“No. I’ll ride with Megan.”
He surrendered to a bitter chuckle. So damn innocent. “Aubs. Meganleft.”
