The Wall of Winnipeg and Me - Mariana Zapata Page 0,155
the regular season. All that money. I had to bend over and slap my hands against my knees, already on the verge of gagging. “I’m going to throw up.”
The sigh he let out went in one of my ears and out the other. “Stop. You’re not going to throw up. Let me shower, and then I’ll put that cream on,” he said, patting me on the back lightly.
He was wrong. I was going to throw up. How the hell had he just upped and thrown away that much money? And for what? All because Christian was an idiot who thought common rules of society didn’t apply to him?
I knew Aiden. I knew he had the self-control of a saint. He thought his decisions through. He didn’t even enjoy beating someone up, or something like that. He had thought enough about what he was going to do, to know that he wanted Christian to get the first punch in. I wasn’t going to think he hadn’t taken the repercussions of getting into a fight into consideration.
And he’d done it for me.
What a fucking idiot. He could have just given me the money and that would have been enough to make me forgot about that weasel trying to shove his tongue down my throat while attempting to grab my butt over a year ago.
But as much as I thought of how dumb it was to lose a game check, this burst of something special and warm filled my heart before quickly being replaced by guilt.
I ran upstairs, grabbed the stinky bruise salve that worked like a miracle, and headed back down, knowing what I needed to do to help ease the responsibility I felt for what happened. I grabbed a few things out of the freezer and the pantry and turned on the oven to make a quick meal for my off-white knight in shining armor.
When he came down the stairs a little later, the quinoa had just finished cooking and I’d turned off the stove.
“Smells good,” he commented, going around to grab a glass from the cabinet and filling it up with water. “What are you making?”
“Chana masala,” I told him, knowing he’d be well aware of what it was.
I wasn’t surprised when he made a hungry noise as he leaned a hip against the counter and watched as I lined one of the big mixing bowls I used to always put his meals in with bagged spinach. I peeped at him out of the corner of my eye and took in the coloring along the solid lines of his face.
It pissed me off.
“What’s that face for?” the man I’d once assumed didn’t know much about me asked as I measured two cups of the grain and dumped it into the bowl.
Shrugging a shoulder, I put three cups of the chickpea mixture over everything. “Your face is making me mad.”
He snickered and I groaned, realizing just how that came out. “I didn’t mean it like that. You have a fine face. Very good-looking.” Shut up, stupid. Just shut the hell up. “It’s your bruises. I feel bad. I should have done something about it when it happened instead of making you deal with it.”
Passing the giant bowl over, he held it between us, catching my eyes. His face was pensive and as open as it got, but what I realized was there wasn’t a trace of residual anger left on him. He really wasn’t bothered by what happened, not at all. “Don’t worry about it. I did what I wanted to do.”
He always did what he wanted to do. What was new? “Yeah, but it happened a long time ago.”
“And that makes me feel even more responsible, Van.”
I frowned. “For what?”
“For everything. For not noticing. For not caring. For not making you feel like you could tell me things.” His voice was hoarse and just a little ragged.
My heart hurt.
I really hurt in that split second following his admission.
Realistically, it wasn’t like I hadn’t known that we hadn’t been BFFs when I worked for him. I’d known, damn it. I’d known. But to hear him say it….
It felt like an ultra-fresh burn to a delicately skinned place. That place being right between my breasts. The most important place of all.
It took every single ounce of emotional maturity I had in me not to… well, I wasn’t sure how I could have reacted. But I did realize, the more I suppressed the hurt, that I couldn’t—shouldn’t—hold him being honest against him. It