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“I never knew how good cuddling could be.” There was a smile in her voice as she traced the seam of his pants along the side of his thigh. Even when her touch was dulled by a layer of denim, it still felt electric. “No, strike that, I did. It was one of the things I missed most when you left. Not being able to hold you anymore.” There was a catch in her voice, and it cut him to the quick. He held her tighter, wanting to show her he wasn’t going to leave her again. As far as he was concerned, she was his, and nothing would tear them apart.
Not this time.
“Was it hard when we left?” he asked, his voice soft.
She let out a sigh. Her blonde hair brushed against his lips. For a moment all he could hear was her breath and his heartbeat.
“It was a bad time for me,” she told him, lifting her head to catch his eye. He could see the truth there, written plain. The memory of her pain was enough to make him wince.
“I was heartbroken. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. I barely cared about getting out of bed in the morning. I kept waiting for you to contact me, to let me know you were thinking about me, but you didn’t.”
His chest felt physically painful. “Christ, I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I know that now. But then I didn’t. I thought you didn’t care, thought you didn’t love me. I thought I was unlovable.” Her voice cracked as she finished her sentence.
His heart ached for her. “That’s so untrue.”
“I don’t know how I got through those first few months without you. They’re a blur. I can remember getting into huge trouble for not handing in assignments, and hearing Mom and Dad having worried conversations about me outside my bedroom door. But I didn’t care.” She tried to smile. “I guess they thought I was some kind of melodramatic teenager. Maybe I was.”
“You were hurting. We all were.”
She bit her lip. “And the following summer, I heard Jamie was in town. I was so damn excited to hear that.”
He waited for her next words, his throat so tight he couldn’t move at all.
“I was so desperate for news about you, so I sought him out. It took a while, but eventually I found him staying in somebody’s apartment on the other side of town.” She glanced up at Aiden. “He’d been dealing from there.”
He looked down to see his hand curled into a fist. It took everything he had to unfurl his fingers.
“There were so many people coming and going he wouldn’t pay any attention to me. People buying stuff and shooting up, a whole circle of people smoking. And when I tried to get his attention he said he’d only talk to me if I bought something from him.” She took a deep breath. “So I did, and that’s when he told me you’d met somebody else.”
“What?” A ball of fury formed in the pit of his stomach. “He told you that?”
She nodded.
“And you believed him?”
Her eyes were watery. “I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t in a good place. And it explained a lot…”
“I hadn’t.
I would never have done that to you so quickly. It took me a long time to want to date again.”
“But I still believed him. So I took the joint he’d rolled up for me, along with a bottle of vodka he’d shoved in my hands.”
“He got you high?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I got myself high. And drunk as a skunk. That bit’s on me. What happened after… not so much.”
“What did he do?” His voice was sharp. It made her blink. “Sorry.” He kissed her brow. “It’s not you I’m angry at, it’s him.”
“It’s all kind of hazy. I remember kissing him, and I didn’t hate it. As awful as it sounds, I was so low. Any attention felt good.”
“And you slept with him?”
Brooke nodded. “I barely remember it, but yeah, I did. Once. It wasn’t until a few months later I realized I was pregnant.”
Aiden tried to remember back to those days. Jamie was hardly ever home by that point, and he’d liked it that way. It made his and Joan’s lives so much easier.
