Page 182 of Between the Lines

The past few days have been…

I don’t even know the right word. I’m drained. I feel it in the air, how weary my parents are, too. We’ve spoken about things all of us would rather have swept under the rug.

I told them about Aiden. About who he is as a person, and what he’s come to mean to me.

And I apologized to them for what happened all those years ago. Again. I haven’t been able to get away from the guilt, picturing Dad’s students laughing behind his back aboutme,and Mom’s colleagues peppering her with nonstop questions.

I cried. Mom turned into a statue, and Dad wiped his own tears with the back of his hand.

Now we’re here, in a peaceful kind of truce, playing like I’m still fourteen and it’s summer holidays.

“Good one,” Dad says to Mom. His voice is begrudging as he reaches to pick up the cards she’s dealt him. She chuckles a little and puts her cards down. “Does anyone want anything? I’m gonna get more tea.”

“I’ll take another cup,” I say. “Thanks.”

“I’m good,” Dad grumbles.

She walks into the adjoining kitchen and I look through my hand of cards. Everything is so familiar, and yet so different, and it makes me feel heady with nostalgia. I could be twenty-eight or twelve. Eight or nineteen.

“A car is coming,” Mom says. Living in a cul-de-sac, she and Dad have a habit of monitoring every car that comes by.

“Oh?” Dad asks.

It makes me smile. They do this several times a day.

“A huge one. It’s really fancy, too. A Jeep of some kind.” Then I hear her set a cup down. “It’s stopping outside our house.”

My cards fall to the table, the wrong side up. I’m showing everything. “Oh my god.”

“Honey?” Dad asks.

“There’s a man getting out of it,” Mom continues. “I think?—”

I’m already hurrying to the door. “Please stay inside. Okay?” I pull the door open and descend the steps in double time.

Aiden is standing by his massive Jeep, hands hanging loosely at his sides, eyes on mine. He’s in that same leather jacket he wore in Utah. A pair of dark wash jeans, and not a suit in sight.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

His eyes run over me. Like he’s making sure I’m safe and sound. “I had to talk to you,” he says. “Iwantto talk to you. There are things I didn’t say the last time, things I need you to know.”

I wrap my arms around my chest. “Aiden…”

He takes a step closer. “I know the last two days have been insane, ever since the tabloid published the story. I know that made you want to run. But Charlotte, you don’t need to run from me.”

The evening air is warm. The sun has started to set, but it hasn’t fully dipped below the horizon. It’s casting a soft lighton the familiar street where I grew up. Tall trees play hosts to crickets that serenade around us.

There’s no doubt in my mind that my parents are watching from the kitchen window.

“Come on,” I tell him. “I know where we can go.”

He follows me to the small path behind my house, down toward the creek. It’s shaded and has a view of the meadow across the water.

Aiden’s presence is heavy behind me. It’s there in his steps, his barely audible breaths. I sit down on the bench that my father placed here when I was in kindergarten.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

He smiles crookedly. “You’ve told me about this place. Told me about the white house in a cul-de-sac, by a creek. There aren’t too many cul-de-sacs in Elmhurst.”

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