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Seventeen
Vic had stuck around the Collins house after Aubrey slammed his truck’s door. He’d sat in their driveway, debating whether or not to knock on the door and then further debating how long to give Aubrey to tell her parents off before he knocked on the door.
He’d settled on twenty minutes. It’d been Eddie who’d answered. Mary had been at the kitchen table, wadded tissues in her hands, eyes red.
“Hey, Vic,” Eddie had said mildly. Which had been ever so slightly alarming, as Eddie rarely greeted Vic with anything less than disdain. “Come on in.”
“Is she all right?” Vic stepped inside, surprised when Mary came to him for a quick hug. When she’d patted him on the back in a motherly fashion, a torrent of emotion hammered him. Once upon a time, these people had been his future in-laws.
“It’s not your fault,” she’d assured him. “It’s ours. She’s upset. She’ll be all right.”
Mary hadn’t looked as if she believed herself, but Vic could tell she was trying to be strong for him, the man who’d let this mess go on far longer than he should have.
Eddie had told him that Aubrey was packing and that he planned on taking her back to her apartment. “I know my daughter. She needs time to process. She needs to be alone for a while.”
“I’d offer to help, but...” Vic had shrugged, feeling useless. Eddie had shaken his head, silently confirming it’d be a bad idea to offer.
That was five days ago.
Five days was as long as Vic was willing to wait before he went to see Aubrey. His texts had gone unanswered. He didn’t bother calling her in case she was pissed off enough to block his number. He’d sent flowers, but anonymously. Who knew what she’d done with them. No doubt she’d figured out they were from him.
At her apartment door, he steeled himself for rejection, no matter what form it took. Whether she screamed at him or slapped him, he’d weather her storm. He’d do it for her—because he loved her.
He rolled his shoulders, looked up and down the quiet hallway and then knocked lightly. He wished he knew where her head was at. It’d help to know if she was crying or—
The door swung aside, and she stood there, jaw squared, head cocked as if daring him to speak. She wore flat white tennis shoes and a floral dress that hugged her subtle curves. She was at once the sexy, strong-willed woman who’d talked him into sleeping with her and the vulnerable woman he hadn’t meant to take advantage of.
She wasn’t smiling. He wondered if she’d ever smile at him again.
“Yes?” she clipped.
“Five minutes.” She began closing the door. He stopped it with his hand and sought her emerald eyes for any sign that the Aubrey who loved him was still in there. “Two minutes?”
Her features softened briefly before she opened the door and invited him in. She shut it with a snap.
“You kept them.” A vase of wildflowers stood in the center of her kitchen table. His heart buoyed. Maybe she didn’t hate him.
“It would’ve been wasteful to throw them out. Even if they are from the man I never want to speak to again.”
“You’re speaking to me now.”
“What are you doing here?”
Right to the point. Still, he couldn’t help delaying the inevitable.
“You have a nice apartment.” He wandered from the kitchen, painted sunny yellow, to the vibrant turquoise-and-white living room. Red throw pillows decorated a futon, and a bookshelf in one corner was overflowing with books. He thought of the bookshelves in their dream home. Of how living there with her seemed even further away than it had the first time she’d left him. “The last time I was here, I didn’t really look around.”
“You have one minute left,” she reminded him tersely.
“Letting you go was the biggest mistake I ever made,” he blurted. He was out of time and out of excuses. She needed to hear the raw truth, and if she was granting him a minute to say it, he was going to use every second. “The day we fought over you continuing college, and delaying the wedding... I have no excuse for my behavior except that I was an entitled twenty-one-year-old jackass.”
She inclined her chin in agreement.
“I was angry with you at first. I kept telling myself I deserved better. That if you loved me, you’d marry me right away, school or no school. But hear me, Aub. I was the one who pushed you away. A few years later, I accepted that I’d blown it. I wanted to call and check on you, but I didn’t. At one point, I bumped into your dad at an event in town. He told me you had a boyfriend. Hearing that wrecked me. Just split me in two. I decided I was going to get over you, finally, and rid myself of the pain. Then the grief came. It stayed a hell of a lot longer than the anger.”
Her eyebrows bowed in sympathy, but her body language was closed. Feet together. Arms crossed. Lips pressed into a flat line. He’d known this wasn’t going to be easy. Hell, he didn’t deserve for her to make it easy on him. Years ago, he’d stubbornly believed that if he told her to leave, she’d come back. Instead, he’d altered the course of both their lives.
“When I heard your voice over my shoulder that night at the Silver Saddle, I would have done anything to convince you to have a drink with me. It was my last shot, or so I thought. A Hail Mary that never should have worked. But then you said yes. It was a miracle.”
