The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

I pulled back and nodded a little more tightly than I would have liked. I really didn’t want to make him feel bad, but just knowing Susie was in my general vicinity made me go to ten. Having Susie around when I’d driven an hour to come see Oscar pissed me off that much more. “I will. I’m not sure about the Hulk here with his schedule, but I’ll go.” I smiled at him. “I’ll see you soon then. Love you.”

“Love you, too, Vanny.” Teeth locked, he glanced at Aiden and extended his hand again. “It was nice meeting you. Good luck the rest of your season.”

The big guy nodded and shook his hand. “Thanks. You too.”

I sensed the evil almost immediately. I spotted my sister and her idiot husband within seconds of turning around. It was like my body was tuned in to know where she was at; it always had been. It was a protective instinct, it had to be.

Apparently, she found me in the crowd immediately too. She was glowering, her mouth twisting as her gaze bounced from me to Aiden and back again. Almost four inches shorter than me and only two years older, Susie looked so much older than her actual age, but that was the consequences of drugs, heavy drinking, and just being a miserable bitch in general. Unhappiness prematurely aged a person, my foster mom had told me once. She was right.

But I still couldn’t summon up any sympathy for my older sister. I believed in choices. We’d grown up in the same environment, went to the same schools, and had about the same intelligence, I figured. She’d always been a ruthless, angry, mean person, but at thirteen, she’d started doing stupid crap that led to more stupid crap and more stupid crap and more stupid crap until she was buried under so much crap, she could never find her way out of it.

You couldn’t expect anyone to take care of you better than you could take care of you.

Summoning up every inch of adult in me, I told myself not to be petty. I wouldn’t be petty no matter how much I wanted to. So I forced out a “Hi, Susie. Hi, Ricky,” at both her and her crackhead significant other, the same one who had given me a bruise and had gotten damn near kicked in the balls for it.

Just as suddenly as the thought entered my head, the big body next to me suddenly froze in place. I didn’t need to look at him to know his entire frame went rigid; I could feel it. Feel him. “Is that him?” he asked in a low voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

“Who?” I was dumb enough to ask.

“The guy who gave you the bruise on your arm.”

The ‘oh shit’ on my face must have been enough for him, because the instant I thought the answer—the ‘yes it’s that bastard’—a muscle in Aiden’s cheek popped. And he was gone. Those long legs ate up the few feet of concrete between us and Susie. Before I could say a word, stop him, tell him that guy wasn’t worth the energy it took Aiden to get riled up, The Wall of Winnipeg had walked directly into my sister’s husband’s path, effectively stopping the five-foot-ten-ish man in place. Considering he was never close enough to most human beings to really illustrate how large he really was, in that moment, with the two of them mere feet apart from each other, the difference was striking. Aiden dwarfed him in every way.

But it wasn’t the obvious size difference that shocked me. It was the way Aiden, a professional athlete at the peak of his career, was reacting. I had never seen him so still. He was breathing out of his nose like a goddamn dragon. His biceps were so bunched and strained, I could tell from even under his hoodie, and he had the single cockiest expression on his face that I had ever seen, and that was saying something because I thought I’d witnessed the most annoying of all his expressions. But the one he had on right then, put all the rest to shame.

Aiden was pissed. Pissed. The king of control looked like he wanted to rip apart my sister’s boyfriend/husband/whatever the hell he was.

And it was what he said next that tore me in half.

The Wall of Winnipeg stared down at the much smaller man, and in a voice that was as close to a cool, unattached statement as possible, he said, “Touch my wife again, and I’ll break every bone in your goddamn body.”

My wife. Not Vanessa. He’d gone with my wife.

He’d cussed. For me. For my honor. He’d said the ‘G’ word and it was just about the most romantic thing I’d ever heard in my life because Aiden didn’t do that.

Then he steered that acid-like gaze to my sister, who suddenly looked more uncomfortable than anyone in the world had ever been. He didn’t say a word, but I could feel the disgust. I could feel words bouncing around in his head, shaping his tongue. I was sure Susie could sense them, too.

It was right then, in that instant, that I realized I might be a little in love with Aiden. Not in a way that was anything like the easy crush I had on him in the past, but different. So, so different.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

Seriously? I asked myself. Are you fucking serious, Vanessa?

Chapter Twenty-Three

It was the garage door opening and closing at noon the following Monday that had me saving my work.

Neither one of the guys should have been home that early.

Zac had just gotten back from south Texas the night before, and he typically hadn’t been getting back from training until three or four. On Mondays, Aiden didn’t get home earlier than three. It was the shortest day for him out of the week, and after having the weekend off following their Thanksgiving Day game, there was no way he’d get home earlier. Mondays usually just consisted of a visit with the trainers, a workout, lunch, and a couple of different meetings that included watching the last game’s film.