anything better.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “You don’t have to. It’s over, Aiden. Other than the fact that I still have some lingering reactions from trauma, I’m good. Maya and I are free of them now. Honestly, I’m not sure she’ll ever really remember much of what happened. She was only six when they hauled the entire bunch of them off to jail. And I said as little as possible to her about it.”
“She’s doing fine,” Aiden said huskily.
“I took her to a counselor, but she said Maya was well adjusted. Maybe she didn’t get to do some of the things that I wished she could have, but I tried to keep life as normal as I could for her.”
Aiden tightened his arms around me. “I’m not worried about her. You did a good job at shielding her. I’m more worried about you.”
I sighed. It had been so long since anybody had cared about me that I wasn’t quite sure how to handle his concern. “I’m okay. I really am.”
“Then why did you just ask me to have sex with you?” he asked drily.
Okay. Yeah. Maybe it hadn’t been the best of ideas, but I couldn’t marry Aiden. However, I couldn’t deny that I wanted him. I think we both needed to scratch that itch. Maybe then he’d realize that I wasn’t exactly normal. That I didn’t feel things like normal people did anymore. And I’d make a lousy wife.
“I guess it was pretty selfish,” I confessed. “But I think it’s something we both want. When you touched me in the hot tub, you made me feel things I haven’t felt since I was eighteen. I want to love sex again. I want to feel good. The last thing I want is to remember what happened to me during those years I was married to Marco. I’d rather replace those memories with something better. I’d like to think about you instead of him.”
Aiden stroked my hair absently. “I want that, too, sweetheart. But I don’t just want to fuck you—although I want that pretty badly, too. I want you to marry me. I want us to be the family we always should have been.”
“You know I’m messed up, Aiden. You don’t want me to be your wife. Something broke inside me during those years. I’m damaged.”
“You’re not, baby. You just need some recovery time.”
“I’ll never be the same Skye you knew years ago,” I told him. “I was young, stupid, and terribly naive. The life I led after I got pregnant and in the years after changed me. I can’t be that new high-school graduate anymore.”
Sometimes I wished I could go back to the days when I was a lot more innocent, but I couldn’t. I’d seen too much, been through too much. My dreams had been shattered, and I’d learned to just survive.
I’d managed to endure.
But I hadn’t been truly happy in a very long time. My only joy was my daughter.
“I can’t be the guy I was back then, either,” he informed me. “But you and I can be something better.”
“When you touched me, I could feel again,” I tried to explain. “I guess that’s why I wanted . . . more.”
“It’s not like I don’t want that, Skye. I fucking do. I think I’ve wanted you from the first time I really saw you as more than just Jade’s friend, after you graduated from high school. I’m pretty sure that if you’d shown the slightest interest, I’d have been all over another relationship when you came back with Maya, even though I thought you’d dumped me the first time. I never forgot you, even though I sure as hell wanted to.”
“I never forgot you, either,” I said as I pulled back from him.
I reached into my dress and slowly pulled out the red tiger’s-eye necklace he’d given me so long ago.
I pulled it over my head carefully and held it in my hand as I confessed, “I’ve worn this necklace constantly since you gave it to me. Maybe part of me wanted to remember us, even if it had turned out badly. I only took it off when I had to, like when I had my C-section.”
He lifted his hand, and I dropped the jewelry into his palm.
“I always wondered if you kept it,” he said distractedly, rolling the stone between his fingers.
“It was my most treasured possession—except for the daughter you gave me. I would have left it with the letter, had I known