Expired Getaway (Last Chance County #7) - Lisa Phillips Page 0,21
He walked with confidence and control in a way that made her…ache. It wasn’t the cop, it was the man. Why did she have to fight an attraction now? This wasn’t the time.
His gaze lifted, and her next breath caught in her throat.
Bridget coughed. The air emerged as a whimper. Tonight of all nights? The past had no intention of letting her go.
“You…” Disbelief warred across his face.
Bridget sidestepped him.
He grabbed for her, taking hold of her wrist in a grip that made her cry out as pain sliced through her wound. He let go as though he’d burned her. “You’re the one I hit.”
She didn’t know what to say. “Aiden…” Even as she whispered his name, she knew she had to walk away.
Bridget stumbled off the curb.
He took a step toward her. “She said you were dead.” His gaze hardened. She’d never seen him angry before.
“She was right.” Bridget took another couple of steps away and put yet more space between them. It had been too long. Her life was a dangerous place, and she couldn’t stand the thought of losing anyone else.
No matter how much she might want to stay.
“Bridget.” Her name was a moan from his lips. “You—”
She shook her head. “Don’t.” Then took two more steps. “Let me stay dead, Aiden. It’s for the best.”
Bridget ran to the car, while more tears rolled down her face.
Eight
One wheel of his police car bumped up onto the curb. Aiden shut the engine off and stumbled out. He was supposed to be off shift by now, which meant coming back to the office. All the way here he’d been working on autopilot. Text the sitter to stick around. Drive back to the office. Aiden pushed through the front door and nearly fell.
“Whoa, buddy. You oka—”
Aiden looked up.
Basuto hit the button to let him behind the counter and met him at the door. “I got you.”
He lifted Aiden’s arm over his shoulder and held up his weight as they walked to the break room where the sergeant deposited Aiden into a seat on the couch. Then Basuto sat on the coffee table in front of him.
“What happened, Ade?”
He ran his hands down his face, the first hitch of his breath signaling an oncoming breakdown.
“Sydney?”
What? “No.” He blinked. “No, Sydney is fine. Elexa is going to sleep over.”
“Then what’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Is it the woman you hit with your car? We all know that was an accident. You aren’t going to get in trouble.” Basuto studied him.
He probably thought it was just hitting Aiden now, what he’d done. As though the weight of what could’ve happened overwhelmed him in a rush.
It was the woman. Basuto had that much right.
Aiden wanted to throw up. Sydney. He’d looked up from the sidewalk, and in that moment his whole world changed, which he could admit sounded cliché, even to his own brain. But the supposedly dead mother of his child, the child he’d raised singlehandedly her whole life, had been standing in front of him.
Blonde now, not the redhead he remembered.
Aiden covered his face again. He could hardly process enough to say it out loud. “She’s…alive.”
“I know. That’s a good thing. You just clipped her, right?”
“She walked out of the hospital.”
“Already?” Basuto’s head jerked. “She left?”
“I saw her coming out. Took me a second to put it together, but the hair…” Aiden made himself stop. Find the right words. “The woman I hit.” He couldn’t even believe he was saying this. “It was Bridget.”
Not dead.
Very, very much not dead. After all this time, and after he’d been told she had passed away in childbirth. That woman—the one who’d shown up on his doorstep—had given him a baby and told him her mother was...gone. That he’d have to do this by himself, or she would hand his newborn over to child services. And who knew what kind of family she would end up in? His mind was whirling a mile a minute.
Aiden knew it wasn’t normal for a single eighteen-year-old guy to raise a baby girl by himself. He was her father, so naturally that made it the right thing to do. He’d started going to church a few months before. It had seemed, at the time, as though God had handpicked him for this task.
No one could love a child he’d made—with Bridget—the way he could.