It was new, or maybe it wasn’t. It’d been so long since I’d seen them play.
Still, it scraped my chest raw. Every time he opened his lungs and his lips caressed words into song, words he’d never dare utter in everyday conversation, it moved me. This, though, this was different.
But even as that part of me that would always belong to him yearned and cried, the other part that belonged to someone else, someone who was probably hurting just as much as Everett, lifted my feet and carried me back through the house to the door.
His lyrics followed, stayed with me, until I closed the door to Mom’s car and Hendrix started the engine.
“So, you and Everett, is that over now?”
How like Hendrix to ask such complicated questions at the very last minute.
I unclipped my seat belt and opened the door. “We never really began.”
Leaning an arm on the steering wheel, Hendrix pondered my words, then nodded at the apartment building behind us. “That’s not your place.”
“No,” I said, getting out and closing the door. I opened the door to the back seat, pulling out my duffel. “It’s Aiden’s. Thanks for the ride.”
He flicked his hand in goodbye, driving off once I hit the sidewalk.
Heaving my bag up the steps, I ran over all the things I wanted to say until I reached his apartment. Steeling my spine, I dumped my purse and duffel to the ground and knocked.
Every word, every apology I’d formed evaporated when Aiden finally came to the door, opened it, then walked back inside his apartment.
I ditched my bags, following him. “What happened?”
“Care to elaborate?” he asked, stopping in the kitchen and ripping open a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. His detached demeanor and the cool calm in which he poured himself a shot and threw it down his throat grated.
“You just leaving me there like that. What the hell was that?”
“Oh,” he said, wincing as the whiskey probably burned on its way down. “Yeah, that was me walking away from something that just about destroyed me.”
Anger vanished, waves of guilt taking its place. “Your mom—”
“I didn’t know,” he said, pouring another shot, then capping the bottle. “I mean, I knew, but I didn’t know specifics. So yeah, I left. I needed to. But I came back.” He tossed the shot back, slamming the glass down before rounding the counter. His chest was bare, his golden skin pulling at my eyes, along with the dip of his hip bones, of which his team sweatpants rode low on.
I shifted my eyes, forcing them to his face. An indecipherable emotion passed over it, hardening the sharp angles and darkening the two-day-old stubble littering his rigid jaw. “You came back?”
“Mmm.” He strode closer, one slow step at a time. “I did. And you know what killed me more than finding out just how much me and your damaged guy have in common? Hmm?” I frowned, unsure, but he continued. “It was seeing you asleep together exactly where I’d found you, all tangled up as if you didn’t have somewhere else you should’ve been instead.” He stopped moving, eyes ablaze with fury, and his teeth gritting. “And you let it happen. As though what he’d told you and how it made him feel were all that mattered. Because who cares how I feel, right? Not when it was my unhinged mother who ruined his life.”
“Aiden, no,” I said, clearing my throat as razor blades tried to tear it. “No. I know it’s a lot, and it looked bad, but I fell asleep.” I laughed, disbelief and fear rattling the sound. “Does the fact I love you mean nothing?”
He leaned back against the counter, his tongue tracing his lips and one bare foot crossing over the other. “Does it mean anything to you? Or am I just some kind of bandage you’ve done your best to wrap around all the shit he’s put you through?”