22. Aidan

22

AIDAN

A idan stood outside the café, breathing like he had just run a marathon, and feeling his heart shatter.

“Daddy, can we go back and see Kenzie?” Walt asked. “Can we get hot chocolate?”

“No,” Aidan said, pulling himself together for his son. “Let’s go make a snack at home.”

Walt began to pout, but came along willingly enough. As they headed to the crosswalk, the last few moments replayed in Aidan’s head.

He and Walt had enjoyed a really fun day exploring the community college campus. They had visited the little fishpond, eaten their packed lunch at the rose garden, and then chased each other across the fields, which were still covered in a shallow layer of crunchy snow that was so satisfying to break.

Aidan hoped that wearing the boy out would have him drained enough to sit quietly and watch The Nutcracker with Kenzie this afternoon. He was planning to get them a quick hot chocolate to share on the way over. Kenzie had said she’d meet him out front.

Stepping into Jolly Beans brought with it the delicious scent of cinnamon, and the sight of Kenzie’s long cornsilk hair. Aidan had moved toward her without thinking, drawn like a moon to orbit his golden sun.

It wasn’t until he was close enough to hear what they were saying that he even glanced at who she was with.

The man in the leather jacket with the sharp jawline was strangely familiar. Aidan searched his memory, surely he would remember someone like that if he had ever met him before.

I couldn’t ask for a better partner, the man said then. And in that moment, Aidan knew exactly who he was looking at. This was the man in the photo, the one who had been there for Kenzie in her moment of need, carrying her offstage weeping, her body curled into his chest.

The rest of what they said washed over Aidan like a tidal wave. The man wanted Kenzie to go away with him. They would live alone together far away…

“ Aidan ,” Kenzie called to him, her voice bell-clear and frantic, snapping him out of his thoughts.

Every instinct told him to run, but Walt was tugging his hand, and he was standing in the middle of the sidewalk in his own hometown. People he knew wandered among the shops, and the rumble of the train pulling into the station meant more witnesses to his misery would soon be here.

“Hey,” he said, turning to her with a calm he didn’t feel. “Listen, we both know it was never going to work out with us. Go and be happy. You deserve it.”

“Aidan—” she began.

“I mean it,” he said sternly, wanting to end it quickly because he couldn’t stand the pain in her eyes. “I have my own life right here, and there’s no room in it for a relationship. Come on, Walt.”

“Daddy,” Walt said, his little voice uncertain.

Aidan tried hard to give himself grace as a single parent. He knew he had made mistakes and would keep making them. But if he tried his best, he hoped Walt would grow up strong and happy in spite of his father’s missteps.

Letting Kenzie into their lives hadn’t been that kind of mistake. Aidan had a feeling it would be a long time before he forgave himself for it.

“It’s okay, Walt,” he told his son gently, bending to look him in the eye so he would know everything really was fine. “Kenzie is spending time with a friend she hasn’t seen in a while. You and I are going to head home now.”

When he straightened up Kenzie was gone. And though he knew he should be relieved about that, he found himself feeling disappointed instead. Maybe he would never see her again, and he had wasted the last moments freeing her without committing every detail of her to memory.

Walt was mercifully quiet. He clung to Aidan’s hand as they crossed the street and headed down the block to Aidan’s truck .

“Hey,” a familiar voice said. “Aidan Webb. Get in here.”

He looked up to see Mallory standing in front of her bakery, eyeing him with a concerned expression.

“What do you want?” he asked brusquely.

“Oh wow, I guess Mr. Grouchy is back,” she said, stepping back slightly and arching a brow. “Come in and I’ll tell you, you idiot.”

“We don’t call each other that,” Walt piped up.

“You’re exactly right, Walt,” Mallory said before Aidan could even react. “But I really, really want you guys to come in. And if you do, maybe your dad will let you pick out something nice to take home, on the house.”

“The house?” Walt echoed, looking up to the rooftop.

“ On the house means for free,” Aidan told him. “Like a present. Fine, Mallory, we’re coming in, but we don’t need any handouts.”

Mallory led the way into her shop, shaking her head like he was a lost cause. And maybe he was. He felt like he’d been punched in the gut and his lungs still wouldn’t fill with air. What was happening to him?

“Sit,” Mallory told him, pointing to a little booth near the counter, the furthest one from the big front window. “Come on, Walt, let’s pick something out for you. Annie, do you want to help him?”

“Of course, Mal,” Annie Williams said, hurrying out from behind the counter to crouch by the glass front with Walt and quietly tell him about each item that was inside.

“What just happened out there?” Mallory asked Aidan, sitting down opposite him.

“She’s in the coffee shop with her partner,” he said flatly. “He wants her to come with him, to live with him, somewhere far away.”

“Are you sure about that?” Mallory asked, raising a brow.

“It’s what he said,” Aidan said, shaking his head and wondering how the woman could be in such denial. Didn’t it make perfect sense that a beautiful woman like Kenzie would want to be with a beautiful man like that?

He’d always thought of her as an old-fashioned girl, not the type to live with someone before marriage. But he had clearly seen what he wanted to see.

“Well, BeeBop is buzzing locally about their conversation right now,” Mallory said. “My phone kept going off because Kenzie is tagged in it. One of the kids from town was listening in and it sounds like Dmitri Volkov is here to offer her a position as co-artistic director at a ballet company he’s founding. There’s nothing romantic happening at all.”

“Oh,” Aidan said, stunned. He tried to put together what he’d heard in a different way and suddenly the word partner took on a new meaning.

“But I could see it getting romantic,” Mallory went on.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Aidan demanded, the slight relief he’d felt going right out the door.

“Kenzie grew up in the theatre,” Mallory said, tucking a runaway strand of her red hair back up in her ponytail. “And so did Volkov. The two of them were raised up on romance. They don’t know anything different.”

“What is the point of this conversation?” Aidan demanded, his blood beginning to boil again.

“The point is that right now Kenzie has never thought of Dmitri as anything but a friend,” Mallory said. “And she probably doesn’t even realize you’re jealous. She just wants a happily-ever-after, just like in all those ballets.”

“A wedding,” Walt said suddenly.

“What’s that, buddy?” Mallory asked, turning to him.

But Aidan gazed at his son, wondering how the four-and-a-half-year-old was able to piece things together so quickly.

They had checked out a storybook of the famous ballets from the library this week, and he went through them mentally.

“Like Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, ” he said to himself.

“ Cinderella ,” Walt sang out.

Even Don Quixote , a book Aidan had read, that he knew didn’t have the happiest of endings, ended happily in the ballet version—with a proposal and a great big wedding.

“Oh yeah,” Mallory said. “Half the ballets are one act of romance and one act of wedding.”

Aidan thought of Kenzie in a wedding gown, her face lit up with that radiant smile that went straight to his heart.

“I need to talk to Kenzie,” Aidan said, half leaping out of his seat.

“Well, you’ll have to do it during intermission,” Mal said. “The two of them already headed to the theatre. Do you want to walk over together? Valerie and Ana are meeting me there.”

“Already?” Aidan asked, looking at his watch .

“You can’t be late,” Mallory said. “The theatre is too small, and they always start on time.”

“Do you want to go see the ballet?” Aidan asked Walt. “Or would you rather go home?”

“Ballet,” Walt said before he’d even finished the second option.

“Okay, then,” Aidan said. “Let’s go.”

The three of them headed out together, walking half a block down the street to join a throng of bundled up neighbors who were filing into the theatre.

I can do this, he told himself.

He might be about to do the least practical and guarded thing he had ever even thought about doing.

But he had never been more certain about anything in his life.