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Any traces of his smile disappear, and he looks away from me and out into the parking lot. “I guess I don’t have much to smile about.”
The Aiden I’m used to is back because of my big mouth: the guarded, hardened Aiden whose closest thing to a smile is a smirk or unimpressed scowl. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry. I won’t tell anyone about what you told me.”
“I know. I’m—I’m sorry for even having to ask you. I know you won’t.”
A lot is riding on my image. If people start digging into my past, they won’t really find anything. Amelia Collins didn’t exist until a few months ago.
Aiden once asked me why there weren’t any pictures on my phone, and that’s because there can’t be any evidence of me. Not even on my personal phone—we can’t take any risks until the police find Tony. Having more people know the truth about who I am just complicates things, and the more people who know, the greater the odds that Tony can find out.
Even if I do trust Aiden, I hope he doesn’t dig any further into my past. Realistically, all it would take is a simple internet search to find out that there was never an Amelia Collins in a life-threatening car accident that left a little girl dead.
He doesn’t do anything to soothe my fears when he adds, “Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re hiding though?”
“What?”
“Some things just don’t add up. There’s more to the story. You can talk to me, if you want.”
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Trying not to look worried, I take a page from his book and change the subject. “How about you? You never told me what happened to the twins. Are they . . . ?”
“Alive? Yeah. A pain in my ass, but alive and healthy.
“We managed for a while without my dad. My mom gave birth to the twins, and life was okay for a while.”
“What are their names?”
“Jason and Jackson. They’re nine now.” A trace of his smile is back as he thinks about his little brothers. I can tell that he loves them deeply. Just remembering the anger and hatred he had when telling me that his dad was pressuring her to abort them reaffirms this.
“You mentioned a stepfather? Your mom got remarried?”
Any love in his eyes for his brothers is replaced by pure hatred at the mention of his stepfather. He reaches down for his bag, which is on the ground by his feet, but I’m not finished. I need to know. Not just for curiosity’s sake, but because I’m genuinely interested in Aiden and his life, and need to know more about him.
I reach out and grab his sculpted bicep, stopping him from picking up his bag and effectively ending our conversation. “Come on, Aiden. I was honest with you.”
“Fine, but the same thing applies. This stays between us.”
He looks back out into the parking lot, breaking eye contact. “We were okay for a while, but the cancer came back, and it was getting harder for my mom to pay for everything and take care of three boys. When Jason and Jackson were a couple of months old, she remarried—probably more out of necessity than anything else.” He pauses, frowning. “My mom died a couple of months later. The twins were barely one and I was ten.”
“Did you live with your stepfather?”
He tenses when I ask that question. “And his son, for a while. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
He scoffs. “Greg’s in jail.”
I don’t miss how he doesn’t like to refer to them as his step-father or stepbrother.
“So you just live with your brothers now?”
“Yup. We lived with a neighbor for a while, but now it’s just me and the kids.” Thinking of his brothers seems to put him in a slightly better mood.
The warning bell ringing through the parking lot breaks our little bubble, reminding us of our surroundings.
He straightens up, lifting his bag from the ground and swinging it over his shoulder. “Come on, we should go before we’re late.”
I reluctantly walk with him to the school entrance. I still have so many questions to ask him, so much I still need to know.
