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“Mason and Chase took her and Charlotte to the bathroom. They drove to the nearest coffee shop, since Char refused to go in this bathroom,” Julian calls back with a chuckle, and they turn back to talking to the other guys.
“Should we go get her?” I ask Aiden nervously.
He shakes his head. “No. When they get back, we’ll just leave right away.”
I nod, relieved that I finally told somebody, especially Aiden, who always has a plan. “Hey,” I start timidly. “How come you didn’t tell me that Ryan’s your stepbrother that night at my house?”
Aiden sighs and moves from where he was positioned in front of me, immediately making me regret asking him about his personal life, but he leans back on his elbows on the open tailgate to my left, his toned arm resting against my thigh, and looks away from me, out into the distance.
He runs his hand through his hair. “It was a horrible time in my life, and it’s not something that I can talk about easily.”
“But I’m not just anyone,” I say softly.
He looks at me as if he’s weighing some major decision in his head, before coming to a conclusion and admitting determinedly. “No, you’re not.”
This is it. Prepare the awkward death certificate because I think Aiden just stopped my heart.
“It’s hard for me to open up to people.”
Believe me, I know. I reach out and gently place my hand on the back of his neck, my arm resting on his sculpted back, and gently brush my thumb back and forth in a comforting motion.
“You know you can tell me anything, if you want too.”
My touch seems to relax him, and I feel some tension leave his body.
He sighs, still looking out in the distance at nothing in particular. “You remember what I told you about my father?”
“Your real one?” The one who walked out on his nine-year-old son and pregnant wife who had cancer because she refused to abort the soon-to-be-born twins and he refused to deal with the bills.
He nods, and I do, too, before I realize that he can’t see me. “Yeah, I remember.”
“After he left, my mom was kind of desperate. There’s only so much a single mother with a young kid and two newborns can do. You know, what with her cancer coming back and being able to afford her medical bills and all the other ones.”
I sit in perfect silence, captivated by Aiden and his words.
“I know that she married Greg more for support than anything else. He was awful, and so was his son.”
“Do you blame your mom?” I ask gently.
“No, not really.” He looks at me thoughtfully and then back out into the distance. “She did what she had to do for her kids. She knew she was dying, and when she did, we would’ve gone into the system. I would’ve been separated from the twins, and that would’ve been a lot worse than anything Greg’s ever done to me.”
My crush on Aiden increases tenfold. He loves his little brothers so much that he chose an abusive guardian over never seeing them again. Aiden’s probably the closest thing to a father that those boys have ever had.
“Did Greg ever . . . was he—” Abusive? I can’t ask him that. “Was he mean to the twins?”
“Never. I’d kill the bastard before I’d let him touch the twins.”
I nod and continue the comforting strokes of my thumb on his neck, feeling him calm down slightly. It’s obvious that Aiden would do anything to keep his brothers away from Greg.
“He’s in jail now, right?”
He nods again. “And in a perfect world, he’d rot in there.”
“Why did he go to jail?” I ask, hoping that I’m not pushing anything.
“Of all things, the dumbass was arrested for trying to sell heroin to a police officer.”
“I was not expecting that.” I raise my eyebrows. “How long did he get for that?”
