Page 14 of Skylar

His stomach felt sick as he lowered his gaze to the carpet. “I told her to get rid of it.”

“Aiden… no.” There was so much disappointment in her words that Aiden wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to forget the sound of it.

“I didn’t think she was really pregnant.” Even as he gave voice to his reasoning at the time, he knew that his mom wasn’t going to buy it anymore than Skylar had.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, her disappointment having hardened into anger. “I didn’t raise my son to view life so flippantly.”

“I don’t view it flippantly.” That was true, especially now that he’d lost two loved ones. Life of any kind was worth fighting for. “At least not now.”

“I just can’t believe it,” she said with a shake of her head. “Why are you telling me all this?”

Glad to be moving away from that part of the story, he told her why Skylar had shown up out of the blue at his office.

“So you have a daughter… I have a granddaughter… and she has cancer?”

He nodded. “And she needs our help.”

“Well, of course we’ll help.”

Aiden had known that would be his mom’s response. She never turned down someone in need, so she would have agreed even if the girl hadn’t been related to them.

“Will we get to see her?”

“I don’t know,” Aiden said, relaxing back into the couch now that the worst part of their conversation was over. Or at least it was on the back burner for the moment. “I asked Skylar if I could meet her, and she initially said no.”

“Big surprise there,” his mom murmured as she picked her needlepoint up again and slid her glasses back into place on her nose.

“But she did agree to talk to the adoptive parents.”

“So she knows who they are?”

“If not her, her parents do, as her mom told her what was going on with the girl’s health.”

“Skylar didn’t tell you her name?”

“I asked. She said nope.”

“How does Skylar seem now?” his mom asked.

Aiden stared blankly at the darkened television, remembering how Skylar had been during her visit. “Not happy.”

“I suppose that’s not a surprise.”

“No, it’s not.”

There had been no glimpses of the woman he’d once loved.

His thoughts ground to a halt at that.

Had he really loved her?

Thinking back, Aiden wasn’t sure he had. At least not with the love he should have had for a woman he was dating and talking about a future with. Because if he’d truly loved her, he never would have hurt her the way he had.

“I hope you can have a good conversation about what happened,” his mom said. “Because you left things in a really bad way, I think.”

“We did,” Aiden agreed. “But I’m not sure she wants a conversation about it.”

He wasn’t sure that he really wanted to have another deeper conversation about it himself.

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