Aiden’s eyebrows knitted together as he looked at me quizzically.
“Then why did you come?”
“He said he was worried about you,” I said. “I was worried, too.”
“You were still worried about me? You still don’t know, and you were worried?”
“Well, yes,” I said, unsure why this was such an obviously strange concept to him. “Of course I was.”
“But…but you ran off.”
“I was scared, Aiden,” I said. “I had no idea what was happening—I still don’t know what happened. You scared me half to death, and I couldn’t think straight. I’m still not completely sure myself what I’m doing here. I don’t think I can reconcile all of this. Kayaking and skydiving were far from the norm for me, and I’ll admit I wasn’t comfortable with that at first, but this is entirely different. I’m not even sure I want you to tell me. Guns and police? That isn’t me, Aiden.”
“No,” he agreed, “it’s not.”
“So what am I missing here?” I asked again. “Aside from having a son, what were you keeping from me?”
“I didn’t tell you what happened to my last girlfriend,” he said. “I didn’t want you to know how she died. I didn’t want you to know …”
His voice trailed off, and the words seemed to have lodged in his throat.
“Know what?” I prompted.
“I didn’t want you to know what happened to him,” Aiden whispered.
“Are you going to tell me now?”
I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed and then nodded his head.
“I’ll tell you,” he said. He tightened his hold on my hand. “I don’t know what you are going to think afterward, but I’ll tell you.”
My legs were starting to cramp, so I sat down next to Aiden and leaned back against the same wall. I let him keep his grip on my hand—he seemed to need it—as he began to tell his story.
“It’s been over six years since it all started,” Aiden said. He took in a long breath and blew it out slowly. “Megan and I, we had known each other for a while and had just gotten more serious, but we were young. We were talking about moving in together when she found out she…that she was pregnant. She gave birth to Cayden the next spring.”
He traced the edge of my hand with his thumb.
“Everything was going okay, you know? I mean, at least I thought it was. Yeah, we were usually strapped for money, but we were making it all right. Daycare was so expensive, she decided to quit her job and just stay home and take care of him. She was in retail and wasn’t making much anyway, so I figured it would work out. I picked up a second job so we could afford what we needed for Cayden, but it was never quite enough.”
“I don’t know exactly when it all started falling apart,” Aiden continued. “I don’t know if I should have seen it coming. Since I was working two jobs, I wasn’t around as much as I should have been, but I was only doing what I had to do to keep things going. Eventually, she met this other guy.”
I felt him tense.
“Jackson Harper.” Aiden said the name with a sneer. “If she had just found someone better than me, I could have lived with it. I still loved her, but I wouldn’t have tried to stop her if that was the case, but it wasn’t. He was bad news. I knew it. All our friends knew it, but she didn’t listen to anyone. He promised her the world, and she believed him. When she left me, she moved right in with him.”
“He was into all kinds of shit,” Aiden said. His eyes had gone dark and cold. “Bad shit. Drug trafficking, knocking over convenience stores, mugging restaurant workers as they left with the night’s deposit—all that kind of shit. He had a record, had done a little pen time in the past, and had met some seriously rough people while he was there.”
“The thing was, he was also stupid. He had no idea how deep he had gotten into it, and he thought he could play one of the big-time drug lords off another one. He was wrong. He pissed off the wrong guy and ended up with a price on his head.”
“Megan, she…she wasn’t into that stuff, but she believed every lie he told her. I don’t know if it was the money he was bringing into the house or not, but she ate it all up like fucking candy. I barely recognized her when I saw her. She’d changed her clothing style, her hair, her attitude—everything—just to please him. By the time she understood what was really happening and called me, it was too late. I was so pissed off at her for having Cayden around that asshole, I couldn’t even think straight. If I had known…if I had really thought about it…fuck!”
“What happened?” I whispered as a cold feeling closed over my heart. “What happened to Megan and Cayden?”
“We switched off weeks with him,” Aiden explained. “I wasn’t going to settle for that every other weekend shit, so we alternated whole weeks—Sunday to Sunday. I couldn’t stand being around Jackson, and to avoid making a scene, we would exchange him at Sugarman—this candy store off of 20th Street. It was right between where we lived, and Cayden loved the place, so it was easy to occupy him there for a little while if one of us was late or something.”
“They were late. They were usually late, but they were really late. An hour went by, and Megan wasn’t answering her phone. I finally got sick of sitting around and drove to Jackson’s apartment.”
He looked up at me.