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Aiden nodded. “In his investment firm?”
I shook my head. I’d told Aiden about how close Xander and I had been as kids and that he’d lived in the guest house on my parents’ property, but I’d never gotten into the details of how that had come about or that the guest house had actually been the caretaker’s cottage. “He hired Mr. Reed to be the estate’s caretaker. In exchange, he got a small salary and he and Xander lived in the little cottage on the property.”
“Fuck,” Aiden muttered as he realized what I was saying.
I fell silent as my thoughts drifted to the day Xander had realized what his father working for mine had really meant. At first, all we’d both seen had been the benefits in that we’d be living within minutes of one another. At eight years old, we hadn’t cared about the semantics of it all. As far as we’d been concerned, we were neighbors and that had been the extent of it.
But when Xander and I had witnessed my father berating Mr. Reed for some oversight with how he’d mowed the grass in the wrong direction or something equally ridiculous, there’d been a subtle shift in our friendship that I’d spent years trying to overcome. But I’d managed it. I’d had to fight like hell to prove to Xander that I never saw him as anything other than my best friend, but I’d done it.
Until the day I’d had to walk past him on the first day of high school and pretend he was just some guy.
It had been the beginning of the end.
“And I thought my dad was a prick,” Aiden murmured.
I chuckled. Aiden’s dad was an asshole, but for a whole slew of other reasons.
“I think I told myself Xander was okay after I discovered he was gone because I needed to believe that to make it through each day, you know?” I said softly. I rubbed the smooth stone between my fingers.
“He was your world too, wasn’t he?” Aiden asked gently.
I cursed the tears that threatened to fall. “Yeah, he was,” I said. “I thought if I could just keep us together long enough until we got to college or something…”
I snorted as I realized how ridiculous my lofty dream had been back then. I’d thought that once I’d turned eighteen, I’d somehow find the balls to stand up to my father. It hadn’t even been about wanting a different kind of relationship with Xander at that point, though the seed had been planted for sure the summer just before we’d started high school. No, I’d just wanted to get to that magic age where I was supposedly allowed to say no to my parents. But even at nearly thirty years old, I still hadn’t figured out how to get that word to actually mean anything with them. My father just had me over too many barrels at this point.
Just like he had the night Xander had begged me not to do what I’d promised I never would.
Leave him.
I felt Aiden’s fingers close over mine, which had started to frantically rub back and forth over the stone.
“So what are you going to do about it?” Aiden asked.
“About what?”
He nodded his head towards Xander’s tent. “Ranger Rick,” he said with a smirk.
“In case you missed it, he’s not talking to me,” I muttered.
“Who said anything about talking?” Aiden’s eyes danced with mischief as he took the stone from my hand and tossed it on the ground. “I say you go in there, unzip that sleeping bag of his and hoover his dick before he even knows what hit him.”
“Ass,” I said as I punched him in the arm.
“You can hoover that too,” Aiden chuckled.
“We don’t even know if he’s gay,” I said, as if that were the only thing stopping me from doing what Aiden had suggested.
“I’ve been on the receiving end of that mouth, B. If he isn’t gay already, he will be by morning.”
I shook my head and laughed, though inside my gut was stirring with excitement at even the prospect of getting my mouth on Xander. No, it was way too risky, not to mention highly inappropriate with the kids around… even if Xander’s tent was on the outskirts of the camp site. Jesus, was I even considering this?
Yeah, fuck it, I was. Because maybe Aiden was right and I’d never get the chance to tell him with words what I was feeling. Maybe nothing in my current arsenal of weapons would get my foot in the door with Xander— to give me the chance to explain why I’d done what I’d done that night. Even if he shut me down, maybe I’d get the few seconds I needed to prove to him that I hadn’t ever left him.
Not really.
“I can’t,” I whispered, more to myself than Aiden. But I had to wonder what was really stopping me. The fact that it was something so outside of my wheelhouse, or the fact that it might not make any difference?
