None of the Clarkson siblings had never been close to their father.
Except for Aaron.
Lawrence and Miriam had divorced while all four of them were still relatively young. In the beginning, their father had made an effort, picking them up once a week in his silver Taurus to treat them to pizza. And it had been a treat, because when your mother is a world-renowned chef, pizza wasn’t on the menu very often. Not unless it had truffle oil or a quail egg on top.
Aaron could recall the stunted attempts at conversation while waiting for Lawrence to hand over the arcade tokens, which he’d stockpile in his right pocket like water gathering in the clouds before a big storm. Peggy bouncing in her seat, Rita and Belmont brooding into their sodas at the far edge of the table. Aaron dying for the coins to be distributed so his siblings would bail and he could talk to his father alone, without catching eye rolls from his sisters.
It was the last time Aaron saw his father that stuck with him, though. Belmont hated accepting the tokens from Lawrence, and although Aaron surmised it was due to having a different father, Belmont had never confirmed his feelings on the matter. Huge fucking shock. That afternoon, the four of them were playing pinball—the Addams Family version—while Aaron and his father watched from the dining room.
“What do you think of the big one?” Lawrence had asked. “Belmont.”
After waiting all week to have ten minutes alone with his dad, Aaron was disappointed his grades or Thursday night’s soccer match hadn’t been the topic of discussion, but he’d also been curious over the way his father spoke about Belmont. “He’s my brother,” Aaron said, collecting soda with his straw, capping the end with a finger, and dumping it into his mouth. “Why?”
“He’s only half your brother.” The comment had been offhand, but it made Aaron uncomfortable. At home, they were just a family, regardless if their fathers were different. “You can tell which one of you is my son. It’s like looking into a mirror.”
Aaron cast a reluctant glance toward the arcade. He didn’t like feeling proud that he’d been compared to his father, while Belmont had been disregarded. But he couldn’t stop it, either. “You really think we’re the same?”
“I do.” Lawrence drummed a fist on the table. “You don’t need games like the rest of them. All you need is yourself. Your mind. No one and nothing else. That’s how it has always been for me.” He sopped up a drop of grease with his napkin. “People like your mother tried to make me into something I’m not. But guess what? If she’d succeeded, she’d have just wanted me to be something new at the end of it.”
Aaron loved his mother. And he didn’t mind playing arcade games once in a while, but he figured everything Lawrence said made sense. If his father—an adult—said something, it had to be true. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“You know so.” His father held his gaze. “Now run over and tell the others it’s time to go.”
When Aaron arrived in the arcade, Belmont had been a few pings away from tying the high score record. With his father’s approval and being singled out as the best riding on his back, Aaron stuck his foot behind the machine and unplugged the game.
Regret had flooded him right away, burning the skin of his cheeks. He wanted to take the action back. But it was too late. He’d watched his siblings slink back to the dining room, Peggy rubbing circles into Belmont’s back. Aaron had started to follow, but his father approached and stopped him, slapping a hand down on his shoulder. “Someone like you doesn’t need to apologize. You’re just embracing your nature.”
Torn between pride and shame, Aaron had only managed a nod. His father’s visits had remained steady for another year and sometimes he only took Aaron for pizza, his sisters and Belmont begging off. Aaron told his father everything. About every fight with his siblings, soccer drama, girls. And then one day, he’d never shown up again.
After having Belmont cut him off, Lawrence disappearing had been like déjà vu.
Although he saw one on occasion, he’d never truly gotten either of them back.
Lawrence had tried to instill many lessons—some of which had stuck—but the ultimate one hadn’t been intentional. Aaron didn’t have what it took inside him to keep people near. So he didn’t let anyone nose around. Having his lack of goodness acknowledged was almost as bad as seeing someone he cared about turn their back.
A branch snapping beneath Aaron’s feet brought him into the pitch-black woods, following Grace’s slight figure as she led him to the stolen campaign money. Get the money, return it to the senator, get ahead. Right?
Right.
“What were you planning on doing with it?”
Why even ask the question? Was he attempting to make this march to the gallows even harder for her? Fuck, this didn’t feel right. Nothing had felt right since he’d woken up that morning, but he’d chalked it up to nerves over sneaking into a nationally televised event. It wasn’t so far-fetched that he’d experience some tension.
This was nothing like that. Grace’s shoulders slouched forward, her face hidden by her newly tamed mane. Hair he’d made the mistake of touching and now nothing would ever feel smooth again. Or smell as earthy, the coming home sensation of those strands sifting through his fingers making him feel balanced. What the fuck was balance at this point in time?
He might as well be holding a gun to the girl’s back. Jesus, he didn’t know himself anymore. He wasn’t exactly known for being nice to people—on a good day—but this mean streak aimed at one specific person was new. Was it because the questions she asked, the way she looked at him…made him look inward a little too far?
“Answer me,” Aaron said around the lodgment in his throat.
She tossed her hair back and finally—finally—looked at him. Something she hadn’t done since he’d almost slipped and kissed her in the kitchen. It broke his stride and made him want more. Constant focus. All of it. Don’t think about her upturned face, those damp lips. His groin ached with the memory and it wouldn’t quit its attack on his consciousness. But more than anything, he wanted back the trust she’d displayed by letting him tie ribbons into her hair. Since when did he care about personal trust? “No. I’m not going to tell you what I was going to do with it,” she said. “You made your decision. You don’t get to know what’s behind door number two.”
When she started walking faster, Aaron caught up with her, quelling the impulse to grip her elbow. Hurl apologies like water balloons and fuck if he knew what they would entail. “Slow down before you break your neck.”
“What a shame that would be,” she muttered. “You’d never find the money.”
He threw up his hands with a heartfelt curse. “How did I become the asshole when you’re the one who stole money from your own father?” As soon as he said the words, regret passed through him like a dark cloud. “Just tell me why, Grace.”
Instead of answering, she stopped and pointed toward her feet. Aaron had to hand it to her—she’d done a good job of hiding any trace. Handing over his cell phone—flashlight app engaged—Aaron crouched down and performed the job of digging up what looked to be two pillowcases. Stuffed full of fives, twenties, singles. Seeing the cash in reality made the whole thing seem petty. Like walking through a museum full of fine art and exiting through a gift shop. Especially when he looked up at Grace, finding her still as a statue, eyes fixed on some spot past his shoulder.
And he told himself it was curiosity—even though his bullshit detector went off, loud as an ambulance siren—that had him handing the bags to Grace. He would surely regret the decision in the morning, but just then, Grace was real. The money wasn’t. It had no value in the woods, even if tomorrow it certainly would and he’d be calling himself a fool. “All right. Let’s go.”
Grace split a puzzled look between Aaron and the pillowcases he’d handed over. “Go where?”
“You wouldn’t tell me, remember?” He stood, rolling the stiffness out of his neck, brushing the dirt off his trousers. “Look, technically, I’m already an accessory, since I didn’t report you climbing out of the window, like I should have. Might as well royally fuck myself—”
Grace threw herself at him, the impact of her body cutting off his explanation. “Shut up, you liar.” The words were muffled against his neck. “You can’t always explain why something is a good decision, can you? Neither can I. No one can, right?”
Excluding his sisters at events like graduation or Christmas, Aaron had never hugged a girl in his life. Not like this. Not out of happiness, hers or otherwise. On instinct, his arms moved around her, one at her upper back, the other just above her hips. And he tugged the curved little package of her close, just a test. Just a test. “Don’t you dare get used to this, Grace.”
“The hugging?” Her breathy voice sounded right at home in the forest. “Or having you surprise me?”
“Both.” Let her go now. Time to let her go. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking I could be a good man. I will let you down.”
Grace stepped out of his embrace with a solemn nod. “But not tonight?”
He couldn’t answer that. Couldn’t even tell her he’d remain at his current level of decency for one measly night. If that didn’t signal to both of them how little they made sense together, nothing would. Hell, hadn’t it taken him less than one day to betray his potential new employer? A man who’d overlooked his past transgressions and given him another, coveted chance?
A vision of his foot behind the pinball machine, kicking the wire free, invaded, forcing him to rub his palms down the sides of his pants. “Lead the way, Robin Hood.”
Ten minutes later, they were cutting through the cold Iowa darkness in the Suburban, Aaron wondering what the hell he’d gotten himself into. Grace couldn’t stop smiling in the passenger seat, reminding him of a nun who’d broken free of the convent. Or she might have, if her legs weren’t encased to uncomfortable—for him—perfection in purple leggings. Or if he hadn’t noticed her distinctly non-holy lack of panty lines when she’d boosted herself into the vehicle. He’d wanted to haul her back out of the Suburban, press her against the side, and yank the purple cotton down to confirm. God help them both if she’d left her house panty-less, with a man whose cock had been painfully distended since she’d answered the door in a see-through T-shirt, her little nipples tenting the white material.
He still didn’t have an adequate gauge of Grace’s mental state. Or rather, what other people had decided about her mental state. Despite his words of frustration earlier—despite her having a handler and eating in a different location than her family when a guest came over for dinner—Aaron’s gut told him that while Grace might talk, act, and reason differently, there was a high chance she was better adjusted than he was. But his attraction to her took away his objectivity. Big time. His body had been hot for contact with hers since she climbed backward through the window, so he couldn’t trust himself. What if he allowed himself to pursue his attraction to Grace? When he turned out to be a callous motherfucker—and he would—she’d be hurt. And not in the way some women of his experience were offended when he didn’t call. No, as with everything else, Grace would react differently.
And the idea of her being hurt made his insides burn.
“Take this turnoff,” Grace instructed, breaking into his thoughts. “It’s not far.”
Aaron steered the Suburban off Interstate 235, turning the windshield wipers on when snow began to fall. Not a lot, just a light flurry, but enough to make someone from California take turns with exaggerated slowness. Something he realized when Grace’s soft laugh reached him and he looked over, finding her cross-legged on the seat, pillowcases puffed in her lap, watching him with amused eyes. “Have you ever driven in the snow before?”
“Does yesterday count?”
She pursed her lips. “I guess.”
“Try for a little more sarcasm next time.” Unbelievable. He actually felt self-conscious. “Do you drive?”
“Not lately. Not since I lived in Austin.” She turned in the seat, dropping her feet to the floor. “But when I drove, it wasn’t like a grandpa.”
“Mario Andretti is a grandpa. Maybe you meant that as a compliment.”
“I didn’t,” she replied breezily.
Aaron caught sight of his reflection in the speedometer, surprised to find himself smiling—without a conscious effort—and quickly dimmed it. “Belmont drives slower than I do. My brother,” he explained when Grace lifted an eyebrow. “The mountain you ran into. When you were…”
“Leaving your cabin,” she finished, not looking at him anymore, making the back of Aaron’s neck itch. “You don’t look like brothers.”
“We don’t act like them, either.” He rolled to a stop at a red light, watching the flurries dance along the asphalt, spinning in the headlight beams. “Or maybe we do. He’s the only one I have to judge against.”
“Turn right at the next light,” Grace said, leaning forward to peer through the windshield. “My sister and I were close. Really close. But she didn’t…they separated us one summer and things were different after that.”
The light turned green and Aaron reluctantly hit the gas, Grace’s words ricocheting in his head. “Separated you how?”
“Up ahead.” Aaron had no choice but to drop the subject—what the hell was the subject anyway?—when Grace tapped on the passenger’s side window, indicating a two-story brick building, tucked back from the road, the front courtyard surrounded by a black, chain-link gate. “There. I’ll just be a minute.”
Aaron threw the Suburban into Park, scoffing into the sudden silence, void of the engine hum. “You’re not going by yourself. I don’t even know what this place is.”
He climbed out of the vehicle, rounding the front fender and pulling open Grace’s door. She held out one of the pillowcases to Aaron, turned, and started to jump from the Suburban—but a blast of protectiveness had Aaron catching her midair with an arm around her waist, easing her down slowly until both feet were firmly on the ground.
But he couldn’t let go. Her breasts were pushed up even higher than usual because they’d dragged down his chest and hadn’t had a chance to bounce yet. He tugged her close, tight, and watched them plump, groaning like an agonized bear. She seemed to will his mouth closer with a bat of her eyelashes and his head dropped forward, as if she’d commanded it…and he had no control…none.
The loss of will was so unfamiliar, Aaron released Grace and stepped back as if he’d been burned. A hammer pounding in his head and behind his fly, he pivoted on a heel and made for the gate so she wouldn’t see the confusion on his face. Why did this girl continue to inspire such a need to be something he wasn’t? For damn sure he wasn’t some chivalrous knight who went around snatching damsels in distress out of the air and kissing them, like a scene that played out while movie credits rolled. And the sooner the night ended and he could snuff out any future confusion about his self-image, the better.
Grace drew even with him at the gate, which was locked. He watched in dawning realization that she’d been there before when she reached up and pressed a Call button on a recessed silver keypad, causing a light to come on and a camera to buzz into activity. Grace smiled at the electronic eye and Aaron banked the urge to shove her behind his back. Instead, he peered through the fence for some clue as to where they were, getting ready to hand over a bundle of cash.
Just above the single black door, a small sign was hung, illuminated by a dull spotlight that flickered in the snow, which had begun to fall harder.
YouthAspire.