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“I won’t be scared away. I know what this is. I can feel it,” I say. With every touch, every laugh, every glance he shoots in my direction, I feel it. I try to smile, but it falls flat. I’m trying so damn hard not to cry. “I can be brave enough for the both of us. I can make my own magic. You just have to give me a reason to.”
Aiden never stopped believing in love. He forgot how to. He built a fortress around his heart to protect himself and lost the key somewhere along the way.
Lucie was right. About everything. I manage my expectations to keep myself from getting hurt. I keep a careful distance from anything that threatens my ambivalence. But Lucie snuck in through the cracks when I wasn’t looking and made herself at home in the corners of my heart. She ruined all the plans I made for myself with a smile on her face. And then I fucked it up.
I sat in this chair while she held her heart out to me and I couldn’t scrape together enough courage to say a damn thing. I’m no better than that asshole who left her at Duck Duck Goose. Or the dipshit who made her cry. I think I’m worse. I told her she was safe with me, and then I broke her heart.
“What do you need to fix?” “Me,” I grind out. “I need to fix me.” This part of myself that relies on distance to function. The part that doesn’t want to get too close because the idea of getting attached to someone scares the shit out of me. I let myself get greedy with Lucie, and now I don’t know how to shut it off. I tried, but I can’t. I can’t. I don’t know how to be the person she needs me to be.
“How do you do it?” I choke out. “How do you love her when you’re scared?”
I thought I was doing the right thing, but I was just shoving her away to protect myself. She got too close and I panicked. Simple as that. I was selfish.
Harvey, however, has never claimed to possess an ounce of decency. He folds his arms over the partition between my station and Angelo’s, a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. It was his turn to pick the music today and the soundtrack to Bridgerton is currently blasting through the speakers. The string version of “Dancing on My Own” is actually really soothing, if not also deeply depressing. It’s a good soundtrack for my current mood.
It’s a list of—it’s a list of my favorite things. Things I’ve mentioned on the show and things I haven’t. Things he must have noticed.
Aiden Valentine: Wish me luck, Baltimore.
“My entire life,” Aiden continues carefully, his voice softer. Wait, he’s saying. Listen. “I’ve done my best to not feel much of anything. Feeling almost always led to hurting and I didn’t want to hurt anymore. So I decided not to. But I think somewhere along the way, that choice became a habit I didn’t know how to break. I stopped believing in good things. I stopped believing in anything at all.”
“Do you keep a list of her favorite things in your glove compartment?” He makes a short, amused sound. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. So I don’t forget.”
“She does this thing when she laughs…it’s like she laughs with her whole body. I’ve never seen anything like it. She holds her hands tight together like she’s—like she’s holding on to her happiness. Like she’s not afraid to grab it.” Aiden pauses, his breath gusting over the receiver. In the background, I hear the crunch of asphalt. He must be pacing, wherever he is. “I want to be the kind of man who deserves that laugh. Who earns it.”
“It’s not about deserving,” I say, my throat tight. “If someone gives you something, you have it....
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“I don’t need the right words. I just need your words.” I grip his sweatshirt. “Don’t make me wait like that again. Tell me where you are, even if it’s not perfect.”
She slips out of the booth again and I let her, something untwisting beneath my rib cage. All those months ago, I was sitting on the other side of this café and I heard Patty call for Brooks Robinson. Was Lucie here? Did we drift past one another and not even realize? The woman who changed my life—who carefully and quietly patched all my holes and rough spots—she was within reach and I didn’t even know it.
