Chapter Twenty-Eight

Derek

It was some time in the early hours of the morning when I heard her breathing change.

There was that hitch in her breath. Then she stiffened and flung her hands up to protect her face.

“Sssh, baby.” I gently pressed my hand to her shoulder and let its weight comfort her. “You’re not there. You’re here with me.”

She mumbled something that sounded like my name.

“That’s right. I’m here. Go back to sleep.”

The stiffness went out of her limbs. She rolled to her side and buried her face into my chest.

After a moment, she was asleep again.

I wanted to take Killian apart with my bare hands. I probably could, right now, with just the strength of my rage. My fingers itched to give her the justice she deserved, and the fact that I hadn’t done it yet made me rage ever harder.

My hands trembled. Just a shot. That’s all I needed. One measly shot to take the edge off so I could sleep peacefully next to her the way I wanted.

In the next breath, horror overtook the rage. What the hell was I thinking?

I pulled Aria tightly to me. I didn’t need a shot. I needed to have her in my arms, and I couldn’t hold her if I was in a jail cell awaiting trial for murdering her ex.

I needed to be here for her. Present and sober, so I could give her what she needed.

I stroked her hair away from her face and pressed a kiss to her temple. She murmured against my chest and sighed.

The rage left me and I closed my eyes.

We’d slept entwined together all night long.

Only sleep, nothing more. I needed her to know she could trust me.

Could she?

I slept, holding her, until the early morning when my eyes flew open just before her chest hitched under my arm. I pulled back to see that her eyes were open and glowing slightly in the gray, pre-dawn light.

The storm outside had passed and everything was quiet.

“You okay?” I whispered.

I felt her chest rise and fall as she took a deep breath. “I need…”

“Whatever you need.”

“I need to know something,” she breathed, rolling over and pressing her lips into my shoulder. “Something that’s been bothering me.”

Try as I might, I couldn’t keep myself from tensing up and I knew she felt it when she pulled away. Her voice hardened and she sounded fully awake and alert when she dropped the bomb in my lap. “Tell me what happened, Derek,” she said.

“What exactly are you asking?”

“What are you hiding from up here?”

The steel in her voice left no room for me to wiggle away from the question. I took a deep breath and rolled onto my back to stare at the ceiling. “You don’t really trust me yet, do you?” I was trying to sound casual, but I ended up sounding hurt.

“I don’t know you,” she protested. “Because you keep all these secrets.”

“It’s not a secret what I was.”

“You were a drinker.”

“A drunk,” I corrected.

“Did you crash your car or something? Is that it?”

I shook my head even though she probably couldn’t see it. “No. I didn’t drive drunk.” I took another deep breath. “But it sort of didn’t matter.”

“Why?”

“Because my friend got hurt anyway.”

“Which friend?”

“Jesse.”

“Jesse Klingman?”

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“You guys were like best friends,” she mused.

“We were.”

“What happened?”

“You have to have figured it out by now.”

“I have a guess. But I want to know for sure. Was it your fault?”

She had me trapped against a wall of my own making. There was no way I could run from a question like that. “In a way,” I said.  “Yes, it was.”

Nausea twisted in my stomach and my brain echoed with the screech of metal on metal. I saw her eyes widen in the dark. “Yeah,” I chuckled ruefully, “That wasn’t what you thought I’d say, was it? You thought I was going to protest my innocence, that it was all just a terrible accident that no one could have foreseen.”

I could see her silently regarding me, watchfully listening. I closed my eyes.  "But that's a cop-out. Because I would have known it would happen that way if I was sober at that point.” I pinched the bridge of my nose between two fingers and squeezed tightly. “But I was too drunk to know anything that night, and so the idea of letting my friend - my best friend in the world, a guy who’d never touched a stick shift in his life -  drive me home on icy roads seemed like a brilliant plan.” I opened my eyes and stared into the dark, not even caring if she hated me now. I had to tell it. “Because with two DUIs under my belt, it was the only way I was gonna get home that night.” I rolled over and looked her right in the eye. “I put my own ass above his safety. I was a shitty friend and he has every right to blame me. As does everyone else in this town.”

She was silent for a long while, just looking at me. I felt like she could see inside of me, way down deep into the parts that I kept hidden and locked away. The parts I didn’t want to acknowledge were mine. All the fucked up and bruised parts that refused to heal. She saw them there in the dark and I couldn’t help but reach out and touch her face.

She cupped my hand with hers and pressed it to her cheek. “You’re sober now, right?”

I nodded fiercely. “Two years.” After the accident, I’d hit rock bottom. I’d lost my job and my house in quick succession, and was sleeping on the streets of a town where everyone knew me and knew I deserved the rock bottom I’d fallen to. “The AA meetings were held in the basement of your grandpa’s church. That’s the only way I figure he knew where to find me. When he offered me the job of caretaker for this place, he framed it like he was the one that needed help.”

Aria dragged her teeth over her bottom lip. Her eyes grew bright with tears.

“He had this thing he did. He took care of people by letting them take care of him. You hardly noticed he was helping you. But then you’d look back and realize that you owed him everything.” I cleared my that, and then cleared it again, but couldn’t dislodge the lump that had suddenly formed.

“He did exactly that for me.” Aria let out a long sigh. “I’d never have left Killian if Grandpa didn’t give me a place to run to.”

I nodded. “He never said a damn thing about what he was doing. He just… did it. His actions spoke much louder than his words ever did.”

“Killian told me he loved me,” she whispered.

I stiffened.

“Words. All the time with the words.” She shook her head. “I believed his words instead of his fists. I should have listened to his actions.” She tilted her head to my shoulder and I pulled her in close.

“So there you have it,” I whispered into her hair. “I told you my secret.”

“Have you talked to him? Jesse?”

“Once. I went to him while he was lying there in the hospital coming to terms with the fact that he’d never walk on his own two feet again. I told him I was sorry.”

“What did he say?”

I slid my hand away from her face and gripped the sheet. Her hand slid over mine and I exhaled. “He laughed.”

“Laughed.”

“In my face. And asked me if being sorry was going to let him walk again.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you spoken to him since?”

“I’ve tried.”

“Have you?”

I couldn’t lie to her. “No. I realized he was right. Sorry wasn’t going to let him walk again. I decided the only way I could show him how sorry I was is by making it so he could walk again.”

I could hear her smiling, scoffing slightly. “How are you going to do that. Are you a doctor?”

I licked my lips. How much was I willing to tell her? “No. But I’ve got a plan. I’m trying to let my actions speak for me.”

She met my eyes and held them for a long while. “But what are you doing?” she finally asked. “Other than hiding?”

I tried for a smile. “I guess not much besides kissing you.”

“You’re not kissing me.”

“You’re right. Those were just words.”

I pulled her closer and cupped her chin in my fingers. “Actions,” I murmured as I brushed her lips with mine.