it all together, she carried the teapot, milk, and sugar to the table, then came back for the cups. Or rather the mugs, since she preferred a bigger cup.
Damon watched silently as she carried everything to the table and put them down, sat, then poured out a couple of mugs. He nodded when she lifted the milk questioningly, before helping himself to some sugar. Apparently he liked his tea milky and sweet.
“So,” he said as he stirred his tea, “Connor told me about Aiden.”
* * *
Astrid went very still, her mug lifted halfway to her mouth. Her face had gone curiously blank. Slowly, she took a sip of her tea, then put the mug down on the table with some care.
“I don’t know if that’s something he should be telling people,” she said, a chill in her tone.
She didn’t want to talk about it, that was clear, and maybe he shouldn’t push, given how painful it appeared to be for her. But he knew what it was like to have to bear painful things by yourself, how terribly lonely it could be, and how hard to get through it.
No one had been there for him when Ella had died. Rebecca had been too consumed with her own grief to take on his, and his mother, never good with the more difficult emotions, had simply refused to talk about it. He’d had to deal with his grief alone and it had been immeasurably hard. He didn’t want that for Astrid.
Did she have anyone to talk to about it? Anyone at all? She’d been keeping Connor’s secret a long time. No one knew here. So was this another secret? Another burden she had to carry?
“Well, he told me.” Damon made sure his tone was matter-of-fact. “And you can tell me too, you know that, right?”
Her chin came up, her eyes flashing. “Why should I tell you? What right do you have to my secrets?”
She was guarded and he got it now. It made sense. That Aiden asshole had hurt her and hurt her badly. Connor had said that Aiden hadn’t been physically abusive, but emotional abuse could be just as bad and she wouldn’t trust easily, not after it had been broken like that.
And he wanted her to trust him. If he was going to help Connor, he needed to help Connor’s lovely mother too.
It’s not just about helping the kid, come on. You want to help her for yourself as well.
No, because this wasn’t about him. This was about Astrid and Connor and what they needed, not about what he needed. Not that he needed anything.
Whatever—if he wanted to gain Astrid’s trust, it wasn’t going to be as easy as sharing a beer. He was going to have to give her something else, something meaningful and precious. A secret of his own.
“I don’t have a right,” he said. “And you don’t have to tell me anything. But secrets are hard to carry by yourself and I think you’ve been carrying Connor’s for a long time.”
She looked down at her mug, her hands placed on the scrubbed wooden tabletop on either side of it.
He didn’t wait, though; he carried on because now he was committed. “I have a secret too that I don’t tell anyone. Because it’s hard to talk about.” He could feel traces of a familiar tension gather inside him, pulling at his muscles. An old grief and the need to protect, even though the object of both that grief and that need was long gone: Ella, his daughter.
Astrid’s head came up, her expression wary. “What secret?”
“I was like you a long time ago. I had a kid when I was only seventeen, a little girl.”
Astrid’s gray eyes went wide with surprise and not a little shock.
“She wasn’t planned,” Damon went on, the tension pulling tighter. “But she was very much wanted, and both Rebecca—that was her mom—and I did our best for her.” The pain was still there despite the years, a deep, abiding ache that he carried close to his heart. And it felt wrong to tell Astrid about it, to put that pain on her, but he’d wanted her to have a secret of his, and his daughter was the secret that he held most precious.
“When she was two, she contracted one of those rare childhood cancers,” he went on. “It was very aggressive and there was nothing the doctors could do. She died.” There, he’d said it now. That was enough.
More shock flickered over Astrid’s face,