Page 111 of Skylar

He just hoped that once they opened this door that they’d be able to move forward without it negatively impacting things.

“Sky, would you go on a date with me?” He spread his arms. “I’m asking as the man I am now. The man who’s learned from his mistakes, and who values and cares for the person you are now.”

Her eyes narrowed, and Aiden braced himself for the ultimate rejection. His heart pulsed with pain, already anticipating what was to come.

But he held her gaze as he lowered his arms and waited for her response, whatever it might be.

“I need to think about it.”

Aiden felt a spark of hope in the midst of the pain in his heart. “Really?”

She tilted her head as she crossed her arms. “To be honest, there’s a part of me that wants to say yes. But there’s a whole load of hurtful memories that make me want to have nothing to do with you in that way.”

“I understand. I don’t expect you to forget what I did to you,” Aiden told her. “I just want you to know that I’m different now. I know what I did was wrong, and I am so sorry for hurting you the way I did. The way I treated you. The breakup. The pregnancy. I approached it all in the worst way possible, and I’m sorry. So very sorry.”

Skylar looked into his eyes for a long moment, then dropped her gaze. “I believe you are, and I… forgive you. I know that’s what God wants me to do, and I’m trying to do that. But it’s hard to ignore the memory of how shattered I was after you broke up with me. And then later when…”

Aiden took a step toward her, then stopped, putting his hands in his pockets. He had to give her time. She didn’t totally trust that this time around, he would love and cherish her in the way he should have previously.

Was there a way to show her that?

“I need to…” She turned away from him. “I think I’m going to go to my room.”

With that, she left him alone in the kitchen, nursing a heart that hurt but still held a kernel of hope. Until she gave him a final no, he would cling to that hope.

Aiden went to the fridge and pulled out the package of chicken he’d bought at the store the previous day. He prepared a basic marinade for it, then returned it to the fridge for dinner later on that day.

With that taken care of, he went into the garage and picked up a couple of tools to do some weeding. Taking care of the flower beds had been his mom’s job. But since she was no longer living there, it now fell to him.

Aiden peeled off his shirt and left it on a chair on the deck, then headed for the large flower bed in the back corner of the yard. He had no idea what types of flowers were planted there, and he was sure he’d accidentally “weeded” a few of them in the time since she’d left.

He laid down the cushion his mom used to kneel on, then tackled the weeds that had sprung up in the past couple of weeks since he’d last worked on them.

With the sun beating down on his back and shoulders, Aiden prayed as he worked. For Shiloh. For Skylar. For Charli and Blake. For his mom and Willow. For anyone that came to mind.

It amazed him a bit how easy it had become to take the opportunity during these moments of solitude to pour out his heart to God. He knew there was a verse in the Bible about praying without ceasing, and it hadn’t made sense to him as a teen.

He’d thought he didn’t have the time to do that much praying. But now, he found that his day was filled with just one continual prayer from the moment he woke, when he started his day with a prayer of thanks to the Lord for giving him one more day. He didn’t finish his prayer until he lay in bed at the end of his day.

Though he hadn’t planned to do all the flower beds, once he started, it was easy to just keep going, working his way along the back fence. His mom loved flowers, so they were everywhere.

“You’re going to get a sunburn, son.”

Aiden sat back on his heels as he used the back of his gloved hand to wipe the perspiration from his brow. He looked up at Dan, who stood a short distance away, looking around the yard.

“You have a nice place here.”

“Mom did all the flowers,” Aiden said as he pushed up to his feet. He pulled off the gloves and dropped them on the cushion. “But now that she’s not here, I get to take care of them.”

“Looks like quite a job.”

“It can be,” Aiden agreed. “But I look at it as a way to get some sunshine, some fresh air and a bit of exercise.”

Dan smiled. “That’s a good outlook to have.”

“It’s one I haven’t always had,” Aiden confessed. “But lately, I’m trying to find the good in the difficult or the unwelcome things I don’t necessarily want to do.”

“Like weeding.”

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