I eat.
It's good. Better than good. The dumplings are thick, hand-torn, the broth rich enough my chest loosens a notch. I'm on my second bowl before I realize she's barely touched hers. She's watching me with her chin on her fist, elbow on the table, and something on her face I can't read.
"What," I say.
"You haven't said a word since I walked in."
"I'm eating."
"Uh huh." She picks up her spoon. Stirs. "You gonna tell me about her, or do I gotta piece it together from a two-minute conversation in a parking lot?"
Fair enough. She walked into a fire for me this morning. She deserves to know what's burning.
I push the bowl back. Rest my forearms on the table.
"Delaney Briggs. That was her name." My voice comes out rougher than I want. "Met her when I was twenty-six. Dated her two years. I had my granddad's mill running, had a house half-framed on the back acreage. Had a ring I saved eleven months for."
Paige sets her spoon down. Goes still.
"My brother Wyatt's three years younger. Charming. Everybody loves Wyatt. He walks into a room and it lights up. I walk into a room and people check the exits." Almost a joke. Neither of us laughs. "They were together over a year. Behind my back. In my own house, some of it, while I was out working the mill."
"Aiden."
"Let me get it out."
She nods. Folds her hands.
"When I found them, I went to my mother." This is the part. The part I don't usually tell. My thumb presses into the table hard enough to whiten. "Stood in her kitchen. Same kitchen shehummed in every morning. Same kitchen where she cut me the corner piece of pound cake every Sunday because I liked the crust and Wyatt didn't. And she told me she knew."
Paige doesn't move.
"Eight months, she knew. Made me dinner. Smiled at me over the mashed potatoes. Never said a word." I breathe. "And when it came out, she looked me in the face and told me to forgive him. Told me not to pull the family apart over something like this."
"Something like this," Paige repeats. Quiet. Flat.
"Her words."
"And your daddy?"
"Same. Both of them. Forgive. Move on. Family's family." My throat's tight. "So I got in my truck. Drove until the pines changed. Didn't stop."
The fire's popping. Somewhere outside, Serenity stamps and blows.
Paige reaches across the table. Her hand covers mine. Warm. Solid. She doesn't squeeze. Just rests it there.
"What a load of horseshit," she says.
A sound gets out of me that's either a laugh or something close to breaking. She grips tighter.
"Your mama covered for your woman screwing your brother in your house, and then told you to get over it? And now that same woman flew ten hours to guilt you into paying hospital bills because your brother can't handle it?"
"That's the shape of it."
"Aiden Harrison." Her eyes are bright. Not tears. Fury. "No wonder you don't sleep."
Nobody's ever been angry on my behalf. That's the thing that undoes me. Not sympathy. Not the careful, measured kindness people give you when they think you're fragile. She's pissed.Genuinely, visibly pissed, and it's all pointed at people she's never met, for a man she's known two weeks.
"Your mama," Paige says, calmer now but barely. "Is she a good person underneath all that?"
