Page 68 of The Puck Stops Here

‘Aiden tell you that too?’

‘He told me enough.’

‘Did he tell you he used to haul our books to the rink with us? Wouldn’t let Mom bring us back until I got through whatever work I needed to get done.’

She gave a small smile. ‘Crafty.’

‘Devious, more like.’ Though he grinned as he said it.

‘He’s very protective of you, isn’t he? You and your mother.’

He huffed. ‘You worked that out already? He was born minutes before me, yet he always plays the big brother card.’

‘Must be frustrating?’

He jerked. ‘Frustrating?’

‘Suffocating then?’

He frowned. ‘Not really.’

‘You don’t ever feel… patronised?’

‘Woah, step those twinkly toes back, honey. If I felt patronised or belittled by my bro, he’d know about it, believe me. He does it because he cares. He feels responsible for us even though he shouldn’t. And it wasn’t like I gave him any choice in the matter. One of us had to become the man and get us the hell out of there, and it couldn’t have been me.’

‘Why?’

And there it was, the question he didn’t want to answer.

The question hecouldn’tanswer.

‘Why couldn’t you have stepped up to the plate when your family needed you, Blake?’

He opened his mouth, but nothing would come out. His head was elsewhere. Trapped in the past and a moment he’d spent a decade trying to forget.

* * *

Fuck fuck fuck.

Astrid wanted to shrink into the sofa. But this was her job. To get to the truth.

Liar, you were trying to twist Aiden into the baddie of the piece and Blake refused to let you. And now you’ve backed him into a corner. Hit on something he doesn’t want to spill.

But then, didn’t that make it something the reporter in herwantedhim to spill?

‘Have you ever done something monumentally stupid?’ he said into the strained silence, his voice distant and unrecognisable as Blake ‘the Fury’ Carter. ‘Something that threatened every dream you ever had, and know that if you had your time over, you’d do the exact same thing again?’

No, she was pretty sure she hadn’t. But her mother had. Because that ‘thing’ for her mother had been to fall in love with her father. And her mother had told her enough times over that she wouldn’t change it, not for the world, because it had given her Astrid.

Though looking into Blake’s bleak gaze, she had a feeling whatever his demon was, it didn’t have the love of a child at the end of it.

‘I can’t say I have.’

‘And there I was thinking you might pretend the opposite just to make me feel better about what I’m about to tell you.’

‘Would it really make it any easier?’

‘I guess not.’

---