Chapter 11
Aiden stomped out a cigarette behind the garage and lifted his phone in his hand.
Lynn’s name scrolled across the screen, an incoming text, and he smiled.
This is what it feels like, huh?
Lynn…What a surprise?
It’d been a few weeks already, and he couldn’t get her out of his head. He tried like hell at first, to fight it. He avoided seeing her pictures, didn’t bother to text, and he definitely didn’t think about asking her out more than a few times.
Liar, liar, liar.
After he’d been lied to and used so many times before her, he was afraid to experience it again. He was dead set against spending time with anyone who didn’t have the potential to mean everything, and that was only because he’d promised himself he wouldn’t settle. He’d been single for years, with good reason, and that’s what made Lynn so damn special to him.
For the longest time, he’d been convinced that he didn’t deserve to have someone genuine in his life. It never worked out that way before, not with the cheating and lying he’d already experienced.
In the end all he’d ever wanted was a mutual loyalty that lasted. A promise that was kept, a love that made him feel better instead of worse, a woman who he knew he could count on.
Lynn was the same. She was also that woman. He’d been waiting his whole life, twenty-eight years to be exact, to feel it. That flutter, that magnetic tug, that out-of-this-world attraction that stopped him in his tracks. When Lynn walked into his shop all doe-eyed and smiles, he was lost.
He was a goner, and he knew it. He’d been through enough bad shit to recognize something good when it basically stared him in the eyes.
Lynn was imposing, and fierce and so damn strong, and he knew that she didn’t need him. He knew that about her, and it didn’t scare him away. It made him more intrigued to unfold her like a piece of complicated origami.
She wasn’t his usual type, not in the least. He was a sucker for a damsel in distress, but her…She wasn’t in distress. She’d been through the worst of it, survived, adapted, and she thought that he was worth her time.
He couldn’t figure out why, didn’t want to question it really, but he was increasingly grateful. He kept expecting that to change; he looked for the signs, the red flags, the sirens wailing in his head that would warn him to back off and let her go.
But, they never came.
Every second he spent with her, he liked her more and more and when he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her. She was a little distant at times, almost hesitant, like she was waiting for the same thing he was. The rug to be swept out from underneath the both of them.
It just…didn’t feel like that was going to happen. It wasn’t even that scary, and he was used to keeping himself far enough away from the situation to know when to skip out. He was used to walls and defenses and difficulty, but she didn’t bring that out of him.
She made it hard to keep himself distant.
Aiden wasn’t generally so sure about things, let alone people, but Lynn felt like his the second their eyes met. His whole body jerked with a sort of recognition, like he knew her, like his brain was whispering, ‘finally,’ when he wrapped her up in his arms.
She fit perfectly, too, like she was made for him.
Aiden wasn’t used to nice things, didn’t often seek them out for himself either, but now?
Now, he didn’t know what he would do if she was gone.
He couldn’t imagine a life without her in it, and that was c-r-a-z-y because it hadn’t been that long. Days, even.
How do I even explain that?
He didn’t know, didn’t want to look into it too far lest the entire situation change and then he would truly be hurt.
It’d been so long since he’d been anywhere near someone that held that power over him and now he didn’t know what to do.
What if she leaves?
What if she changes her mind?
What if she wakes up next to me, and somehow I disappoint her?
His mind was constantly roiling with new thoughts, scary thoughts, but even still… it was worth the risk. He couldn’t deny it, and he’d tried.
His phone dinged in his pocket and he pulled it out, expecting to see Lynn’s name scrolling across the screen, but instead he saw an unknown number.
Unknown: You look so good right now.
He looked up, confused.
He didn’t see anyone watching him, so he looked back down at his phone.
Aiden: Who is this?
No reply, not even after he paced for a solid ten minutes before returning to the bay.
He didn’t have any time to waste on some prank dialer, so he shoved his phone into his pocket and tucked his hat back onto his head. He was in a rush as it was.
He had three cars lined up and he had no idea how he was going to finish all of them before his date with Lynn that night, but he was going to try his best. The sooner he got to her, the sooner he would feel better, and the sooner he would get to taste her.
∞∞∞
Lynn laid sprawled out across her apartment floor, cigarette in hand. She didn’t smoke often, and she knew that Aiden would be leaving to meet her for their date at any second, but she was stuck. Her head was stuck in the past.
Memories floated around her like the smoke coming from the cancer stick in her hand, but she was powerless to fight it.
The taste of the nicotine did nothing to quell the taste of sadness on the back of her tongue as she turned the pages of her small journal.
While cleaning earlier, she’d stumbled upon it and set it aside.
Don’t fucking read it, she’d told herself, Just leave it be, but in the end, she’d been too confused to do so.
The green leather-bound journal was rough against the soft pads of her fingers as she turned the pages and wiped the moisture beneath her eyes.
She hated crying, and she’d done such a good job avoiding the act all together for months.
Agony. A-g-o-n-y…It wasn’t the same anymore. It wasn’t the concept of moving on, it was healing that scared her. It was starting over, as a new woman, as a blank canvas, that had her terrified.
It was the fact that she’d literally turned herself inside out, handed the best parts of her over palms-up, and gotten none of it back.
None of it.
Lynn didn’t know if it would have even made her feel better to get any of it in return, but she would have liked the choice. She would have liked to be able to look in the mirror and recognize herself.
She would have liked to know that she hadn’t done it all for nothing. What did years of her life amount to?
A random woman online, an empty apartment, a drawer full of clothes she’ll never wear again, and this not-so-subtle ache that rested just beneath her sternum.
It was constant, sometimes dormant, but she knew it was there and it honestly had nothing to do with Jake.
It had everything to do with what he took from her, what she gave away willingly out of nothing but pure love, and where that landed her.
It had everything to do with what the words on the small pages before her made her feel.
“Today he told me that he doesn’t know if he loves me, and honestly, I don’t know if I do, either.”
“Today he said he doesn’t feel any connection between us, and I’m not sure if I feel anything anymore.”
“Jake said that I can’t ever fulfill what he needs, and that kills me, because all I’ve done is try. All I’ve done is do my best to love him the best way I know how and it isn’t enough… “
It. Fucking. Hurt.
Lynn rubbed a hand across her chest and sucked in a slow breath, trying to steady the pain flowing beneath her paper-thin-skin, but it was useless.
It didn’t make her feel any more human the longer she read the words painted onto the pages of a journal written by a woman who never learned true love before.
She had no idea what the hell she was doing when she was with Jake, other than everything she thought would make the situation better for the both of them. Isn’t that love?
Giving your all, every day, even though you don’t expect anything in return? Does it still mean something if they don’t reciprocate, if they don’t want it?
If he hadn’t wanted her love, then what the fuck did he want from her?
She would have taken violence over his silence any day. That, she could handle. She was used to that.
After her childhood (which had epically fucked her up in the head) she had learned to expect anything from a man.
She could handle the screaming, the rough hands, the abrupt explosions of emotions and anger. But, Jake had been smarter than that.
He didn’t leave bruises on her skin, he left them on her heart, and they were still tender.
From time to time, like now, they still ached.
Was I ever really happy?
Did he ever really love me?
Did he ever really want me?
Her mind fired off the questions she’d only asked herself a hundred and one times before, and this time, she had an answer for herself.
No, he didn’t.
He’d even said it multiple times himself: “I like the idea of you, but I don’t really like you.”
How can anyone say that to someone who’d given up years of their life for them?
“Aiden isn’t like that,” She said softly as she inhaled another lungful of smoke.
It burned, tickled her nose, but it felt good. She felt human once more.
As she tossed the journal into the trash can and checked the time on her phone, she saw a text from Aiden.
Aiden: I’m on my way beautiful, be there soon. I can’t wait to see you.
It made her smile and that was the first time in a long time, that she didn’t have to ask herself if she would be okay.
She just knew.