Ever After Always (Bergman Brothers, #3)

by Chloe Liese

“That’s not fair,” he says sharply. “Work is for us. Work is how I love you—” He breaks off, staring at the floor. “I didn’t…I don’t mean that exactly. Work is one of the ways that I show you that I love you. By working hard, so we’re protected, so we’re financially secure.” I sigh and drop to the mattress. This conversation. Again. Aiden grew up in extreme poverty. A single mom who struggled to make ends meet. A dad who split when Aiden was a toddler. And I understand this, abstractly at least: poverty is traumatic. Aiden’s worries about money—his exacting need to have all the bills in an Excel spreadsheet, itemized, paid precisely one week before they’re due, to tackle loans as soon as financially possible, to work and work and work—are because he grew up not eating some days, wearing shoes and clothes that were too small, taking under-the-table manual-labor jobs starting when he was ten years old. How he works and lives now stems from that. That and his anxiety, which…those two things are inextricably bound, how he grew up and how his brain simply is. And I love him for who he is. I would never wish him otherwise. But that doesn’t mean I can always understand how deeply his past impacts him. My whole life, I’ve been safe and comfortable. My dad is an oncologist, a military veteran with a pension. My mom’s frugal. Sure, we had a couple tight years when unforeseen expenses stacked up fast, but we were always able to bounce back, unlike so many people in this country for w...