Page 13 of Skylar

What had Aiden thought when he’d seen her? Had he catalogued the changes in her the way she had in him?

She knew her appearance had changed over the years. Her hair wasn’t as long as she’d worn it in high school. Her figure had filled out a bit more once she’d stopped cheering and because of the pregnancy. The thing that bothered her the most, however, were the slight lines that had appeared on her face in the past year.

They were nothing major, and it was unlikely that anyone else had noticed them. However,shehad noticed them, and they bothered her. She wasn’t even thirty years old!

With that in mind, she turned her attention back to her nighttime facial routine. She’d talk to her dad the next morning to ask about the plan for the testing.

And perhaps she’d give Charli a call to ask what they thought about Aiden knowing something about Shiloh.

Though she could probably put off making that call for a day or two.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Can I talk to you about something, Mom?” Aiden asked once Willow had finished her dinner, taken a bath, and was asleep in her bed.

His mom looked up from the embroidery hoop she held in her hand. After slipping the needle into the edge of the fabric, she set the hoop down on her lap, then pushed her glasses onto the top of her head and gave Aiden her full attention.

“What’s going on, sweetheart?”

Aiden hesitated, knowing that what he said next was going to change things. He didn’t want his mom to look at him with disappointment, but he knew she would.

“I need to tell you about something,” he began, searching for a good starting point. He’d made the decision to be honest with her, but now that he was at that moment, he wanted to lie. “I didn’t tell you the truth about why Skylar and I broke up.”

His mom frowned. “Skylar Halverson?”

He nodded. “I know this seems out of the blue, but I promise you it will make sense.”

Her frown morphed into confusion. “Okay?”

“I was the one who broke up with Skylar,” he said. “I know I told you it was a mutual decision, but it really wasn’t. Being in college had opened up a whole new world for me, and I wanted to be able to date other girls.”

“Aiden…”

And there was the disappointment. Unfortunately, he hadn’t even gotten to the worst part yet.

“The summer before I started my sophomore year at college, I broke up with her,” he told her. “But then Skylar called me a couple of months later to tell me that she was pregnant.”

“What?” His mom’s eyes widened as she pressed a hand to her chest. “Skylar was pregnant?”

“That’s what she said, but I didn’t believe her.”

“Why wouldn’t you believe her?”

Aiden swallowed, then cleared his throat. “I thought she was just saying that to get us back together again.”

“She wasn’t that sort of girl,” his mom said. “I don’t think she’d ever have done that.”

He wanted to tell her that emotional teen girls could do crazy things. Just like emotional teen boys could. But instead, he just nodded.

“So, was she really pregnant?”

“Yes. She was.”

“What did you do?”

He sighed. “I didn’t find out that she was until a few days ago.”

“What did you say to her?” she asked. “Back when you thought she was faking it?”

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