It had been a long time since Jase had seen Aisha angry. In fact, he’d forgotten all about her bad temper days. But when she showed up where he was clearing a blockage that was damming the creek and flooding lower parts of the property, it was obvious her furious side was alive and well. She closed the distance between them like she was on fire, her hands clenched in fists, flaming color raging in her cheeks. Her eyes practically sparked when they landed on him.
Jase put down his saw and climbed the bank. “What’s up?”
“Did. You. Know?”
“Know what?”
“When you told me you were staying on permanently, did you know they were offering Colton a full-time job too?”
Somewhere deep inside, an observation registered with Jase. By referring to Jo and Callum as “they” instead of by their names, Aisha linked herself with him, as separate, as other, from “them.” Obviously, it was done unconsciously, but even so, something inside him leapt at the significance. Then shrank in shame, all too aware of how undeserving he was of being linked to her in any way.
“Uh, yeah.” He winced. “I actually arranged it for Callum.”
Aisha made a derisive half sniff, half snort sound. “Why?”
Jase wasn’t as confused by the question as he wished he was. He already knew she was sharp as a blade. She’d seen him and Colton working together, and Colton wasn’t careful around Aisha like he was around Callum. Of course, she knew Colton was . . . a questionable choice.
When he didn’t immediately answer, she repeated herself and elaborated. “Why would you do that? What were you thinking?”
Jase studied her agitated face, struggling for the right words. He’d assumed her outrage was because she intuited how Colton was. But something in the flush of her skin, which had spread from her cheeks, down her throat, all the way to the hint of cleavage at the soft curve of her shirt’s neckline, made him pause. Maybe it was something else about Colton becoming a permanent fixture, something non-work-related, that had her unsettled.
Aisha looked around, and her frown deepened. Jase wanted to take her face in his hands and smooth away the stress lines furrowing her brow.
“Why are you staring at me?” she snapped. “And where is he, anyway? Already on a break?”
“Nine thirty would be early for a break, even for us slackers.”
“For you slackers, hey?”
“We spent the last two days organizing and using up the lumber Jo and Callum had on hand—I don’t know if you knew, but we’re building new woodsheds?”
Aisha nodded.
“Anyway, I sent him with a list to the hardware store. He took Jo’s pickup—Jo knows, don’t worry—but he’ll only pack back the smaller stuff. They’ll deliver the lumber.”
Aisha nodded again and plunked herself down on one of the freshly cut stumps, looking deflated and glum, but no longer angry. Jase loved how she wore every emotion so vividly—much like her clothes, actually. He didn’t necessarily know what triggered each mood or what reaction to always expect from her, but he didn’t have any trouble picking out what she was feeling. Her face was . . . captivating. Yeah, that was the word, all right, even if it was kind of old-fashioned.
“You’re still doing it,” Aisha said, her voice soft now.
“Doing what?”
She nudged at a splintered branch with her snub-toed boot. “Staring.”
He sat down beside her. “Sorry.”
“It’s all right.” She turned a little, so that her body faced him, then gave his upper arm a friendly, feather-light punch. “I’m sorry I bit your head off yet again. I don’t mean to be such a snarky cow.”
“You’re the furthest thing from a cow.”
“Oh, but I am snarky?”
Jase responded to her teasing tone with an equally teasing exaggerated shrug. When he spoke though, he was serious. “What is it about me and Colton that pisses you off so much?”
A fresh wave of deep pink suffused Aisha’s face. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, for once seeming as tongue-tied as he always felt. “Colton puts me on edge or something. That’s the only way I can really explain it. I know he’s your foster brother or whatever, and I get that you’re tight, but I don’t like him—or trust him.”
At this proximity, Aisha’s eyes were even more amazing, and today she’d enhanced them further, adding a dusting of fine gold sparkles to the sweeping black arc of pencil that created the cat’s eye look she favored. It was so pretty he couldn’t tear his gaze away. No wonder she called him out for staring at her! He always was. With that, he consciously forced himself to glance away and focus on something else for a minute—though it didn’t work that well. Sure, his eyes weren’t on her for the moment, but she was still all he could see.
“You probably think I’m awful and judgemental.”
Jase shrugged, torn between wanting to defend Colton and wanting to tell Aisha to listen to her gut.
“He’s just so cocky—so positive everyone wants him. He reminds me of my ex. Mo’s dad.”
Jase’s shadow-self, a perpetually awkward, shy kid that he could never outgrow, braced and waited for the blow. In his experience, baby daddies got a bad rap, but then again, Aisha never talked about Mo’s dad. Her lack of griping was more telling than if she complained about him all the time. It made him think Mo’s dad might really be a bad guy. There were enough of them around, for sure. Even with his dark suspicions, however, what she went on to say still managed to catch him by surprise.
“I hated the kind of person I became when we were together—or maybe already was, just that he brought out in me.” Aisha squinted into the distance, clearly looking back at something that made her uncomfortable. “He was charming and flippant, never took no for an answer, and could always figure out exactly what to say to keep me buying his line—or, at least, doubting my own opinions. He thought he could take anything he wanted, get anything he wanted—and eventually it led to sex I didn’t really want to have.”
Jase nodded. His heart hammered, relating too much and wishing for her sake it wasn’t something they had in common. He wanted to tell her about Bonnie and how she’d been with him—but he was a guy. No one ever thought the guy didn’t want it. Even all the way back then, his friends thought he had it made. That he was the man.
Aisha went on to explain how Evan tried to talk and cajole her into having sex, then badgered her, then, finally, forced himself on her one heated night.
Afterward he’d acted like it was a big step forward in their relationship, said most girls had doubts at first, that it was normal. It hadn’t felt normal. It had felt like rape—but she hadn’t broken up with him. She kept going out with him. She kept making out with him. And then she’d ended up pregnant. And not only that, she discovered another girl in her school was pregnant with his kid too, though she ended up losing the baby.
Aisha braced her elbows on her knees and pressed her face into her hands, and Jase worried she was crying and wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how. After a moment or two, she regained her composure and lifted her face—which was notably free of tears.
“It was so . . . humiliating. Like some Jerry Springer freak show.” Her voice was flat in a way he’d never heard it before. She stood up from the stump abruptly and paced the wood chip strewn ground. When a twig snagged her pantleg, she picked it up and fiddled with it. “But it was also good because it finally allowed me to see through the mind games he played, to know the things my gut whispered were true. He was just manipulating me, using me. I don’t know what I was thinking. That’s honestly what bothers me most. That I wasn’t true to myself or to my values when I was with him. Instead I was this person I didn’t recognize. This stupid, vapid, weak . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her piercing gaze shot up Jase’s.
“You can’t tell anyone!”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t.”
Aisha snapped the twig she’d been holding. “My Dad and Sam know. Evan came weaseling around when Mo was small, pretending he wanted custody. I explained to Sam and my Dad so they’d understand why I was so adamantly against having him around us.”
The twig, in many pieces now, dropped back to the earth. “I never talk about this—have never told anyone else besides them the details before. Sam was helpful, actually. Said it didn’t feel like rape. It was rape. Said it wouldn’t have mattered if we’d had a happy consensual sex life and then he’d forced me sometime. That would be rape too. Sex you don’t want, that you say no to, is rape.”
A new twig, a larger one, found its way to Aisha’s hand. Her voice was raw and her sigh sounded like it hurt her. “And I agree . . . but what do you say about something like that when you keep going along with it, when it becomes voluntary? What does it say about the kind of person I am?”
Jase felt like he was caught up in that old “Killing Me Softly” song. It was exactly like Aisha was telling his whole life with her words. For a long time, he’d lived every day with the shame of being coerced into something he didn’t want to do but did anyway—and then kept doing.
Years later, he’d realized it was wrong . . . that he’d been a kid and a pretty innocent one, sexually anyway. He’d been taken advantage of, but it was like Aisha’s rhetorical question.
“Sex . . .” Jase cleared his throat. “I don’t know. When you’re a kid, or young, I mean . . . it’s complicated.”
“And it’s not now?”
Jase blinked. “Well, that’s good.”
“No . . . it was a question. You don’t find it complicated now?”
“Um, I don’t know.” He shook his head, then shrugged. “I don’t have sex these days.”
Aisha looked surprised. Then her mood changed abruptly, and she laughed. “Me neither! I might as well be a nun.”
“Well, not having it does get to be a habit.”
“Was that a pun?”
He nodded sheepishly. He wasn’t trying to make light of things . . . not at all. Just, well, sometimes you had to make light of the pain you carried or it would sink you.
“A habit.” Aisha echoed, then rolled her eyes and groaned. He smiled in relief. She obviously appreciated the lame joke.
A beat later, she prodded, “So?
“So?”
“Do you think I’m a bad person for judging Colton based on how he reminds me of someone else?”
“Not at all. But you should know, Colton’s not some terrible guy. He’s not like . . . your ex—” Jase broke off with a shrug. “I mean he’s a bit of a player, but he’s not a rapist. He’d never do something a woman didn’t want him to—and he’s trustworthy around kids, not a pervert or anything, and he won’t steal from you guys.”
“Wow, so he’s not a pedo or a thief? What a rave character reference.”
Jase ducked his head, feeling stupid. He did think those attributes were noteworthy and spoke about a person’s character, but he guessed Aisha’s insinuation that they were the bare minimum was one more sign of how different the worlds they’d inhabited as kids must’ve been, despite any similarities in their past relationships—and, really, in all practical ways, how different the worlds they inhabited now as adults still were.
He couldn’t think of how to word his thoughts about all that, however, so he changed tracks entirely. “Okay, so Colton reminds you of your ex. That explains your reaction to him, I guess.”
“My overreaction, you mean.”
Jase shrugged. “If you say so—but what about me? Just guilt by association or what?”
The pink in Aisha’s cheeks had faded, but now it glowed again. Jase sat up a little straighter. What was this now?
“You already know,” she grumbled.
“I really don’t.”
“Yeah, right.”
He widened his eyes and held his hands up.
“I already told you in the car on the way back from town the other day.”
“Told me what?”
She apparently thought he was teasing her or something because she exploded cheerfully. “Don’t rub it in! So I was attracted to you or whatever when I first saw you and it made me a bit mental. It’s not a big deal.”
“Oh, sorry, right. Uh—”
“You sound confused.”
“Um . . . I just, I mean, well, obviously I remember our conversation in the car and stuff. I just didn’t know you were . . . attracted to me so early on.”
Aisha shook her head. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“Um, no, I really don’t,” he said again, but chanced a grin. “About what? You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“Not on your life.”
“Okay . . . but going forward can I safely assume, in general, that my general existence no longer makes you furious, only Colton’s does?”
Aisha burst into warm, happy laughter, and she was suddenly her usual cheery, undaunted self. For a shining moment, everything was right in Jase’s world. “Yes, rest easy, Jase. Your general existence in general does not make me angry anymore. The opposite actually.”
Make that two shining moments, Jase thought.