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“Oh, you’re welcome.” I put my tablet to sleep, figuring I didn’t have much time before Aiden appeared. I wasn’t in the mood to deal with his crap right then. Just thinking his name had my blood boiling.
A real wife.
Fucking asshole.
“I’m sorry for dropping by unexpectedly,” Leslie chimed in from his spot at the counter, pouring coffee.
That had me snapping out of cursing Aiden in my head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s okay.”
“It isn’t okay. I felt terrible after Aiden told me you were going home.”
Home. What a word to use for El Paso.
“I didn’t mean to take up your time alone. I remember what it was like to be a newlywed,” the man who had put into motion Aiden’s future said.
Newlyweds. I wanted to puke. “It really is okay. I know how much you mean to him.” Or at least, I had a good idea of how much the older man meant to him.
Aiden had two friends he kept in touch with semi-regularly. He saw them in person maybe once a year. Other than them, there was only Leslie. Leslie who had been his coach in high school. Leslie who Aiden had said repeatedly had groomed him and pushed him to succeed. In the twelve years since he’d graduated high school, they still saw each other often enough. Leslie continued to train Aiden in Colorado when the season was over. Then there were the other times that the former coach came by to visit.
If that wasn’t its own form of love and respect—at least in Aiden’s case— I had no idea what was.
My comment though had him chuckling. “Only because he knows how much he means to me.”
As bitter as I felt, I couldn’t help but soften a little as Leslie walked around the island with his cup in hand. His eyes strayed to the table, a smile coming over his face. “He’s still doing those?” He gestured toward the puzzle.
“All the time. Especially when he’s stressed.”
Leslie’s smile grew even wider, turning wistful. “He used to do them with his grandparents. I can’t remember there ever not being a puzzle at their home.” He snickered softly. “You know, after his grandmother died, he didn’t speak to me for almost a year.”
Uh. What? His grandmother?
“I can’t tell you how many times I tried calling him, left him voicemails. I even went to several of his games at Wisconsin to see him, but he went out of his way to avoid me. It damn near broke my heart.” He took the seat that Zac had just left. His white eyebrows rose as he looked at me from over the top of his cup. “That’s between you and me, eh? He’s still sensitive about that time period.”
Aiden? Sensitive?
“When his grandfather died, he was devastated, but when Constance, his grandmother, passed away… I’ve never seen anyone so distraught. He loved that woman like you couldn’t imagine. He doted on her. She’d told me he called her every day after he went away to school,” he continued on like this wasn’t the greatest secret I’d ever heard.
There was no way I could pull off being casual about what he was saying. Plus, I had a feeling that the second he really looked at my facial expressions, he’d know damn well I had no clue about anything relating to his grandmother and grandfather.
And because I was tired of being lied to so much over the course of the last few days, I went with being honest with this man who had never been anything but kind to me. “I didn’t—he’s never even mentioned his grandparents to me before. He doesn’t like to talk about things,” I admitted, messing with the leg of my glasses.
Leslie set his cup on the table and gave me a little shake of his head. “That shouldn’t surprise me.” Of course it shouldn’t. “Between us” —he tipped his forehead forward— “he’s the most remarkable man I’ve ever met, Vanessa. I’ve told him that before a hundred times, but he doesn’t listen. He doesn’t believe, and I’m not sure he cares. When I first met him, I couldn’t get a single sentence out of him. One sentence, can you imagine that?”
I nodded, because yes, yes I could imagine that.
“If I would have asked him to try out for the football team on any other day than the one I did, he never would have agreed. His grandfather was alive back then, you know. He was already living with them. Aiden had gotten in trouble with the lacrosse coach again the day before for fighting with his teammates and his grandfather had told him something—he’s never told me what—that got him to agree to try out. It took me four months to get him to really talk to me, and I was persistent. Even then, the only reason why he did was because his grandfather had a heart attack and I had this feeling he needed someone to talk to.” Leslie let out a sigh at whatever memory was bouncing around in his head. “You can’t live your life bottling everything up. You need people, even if it’s only one or two, to believe in you, and as smart as that boy is, he doesn’t understand that.”
At some point, I’d planted my elbows on the table and set my chin in my hands, caught up in every detail he was telling me. “Did you know his grandparents well?”
“His grandfather was my best friend. I’ve known Aiden since he was in diapers.” Leslie’s mouth twitch. “He was the fattest baby I have ever seen. I remember looking at his eyes and knowing he was sharp. Always so serious, so quiet. But who could blame him with his parents.”
I had about a million more questions I wanted to ask but didn’t know how to.
