Page 181 of Secondhand Smoke

“Mom, you’re freaking me out.”

“Don’t pay any attention to me. You stay here, and I’m going to check in on Erin before dinner, okay?” Another tear-filled smile before she left the room.

“Mom…” But Helen was disappearing up the staircase. So Sam turned to Aidan. “What’s going on? Is somebody hurt? Is there–”

He grinned, the movement sudden, and even if she didn’t know what was going on yet, the way his eyes crinkled up allayed her immediate fear.

“Aidan?”

“Do me a favor, and keep standing there just like that.”

“Okay…”

Still seated on the couch, he looked up at her, and his face became tight with some emotional strain, smile plucking hard at the corners, the lines around his eyes deepening.

“Aidan,” she repeated, concerned anew.

“Just stand there,” he urged. “And bear with me as I butcher all kinds of grammar, like Ava always tells me I do.”

Her heart rate picked up another fraction.

“This year has been…insane,” he began. “And a lot of bad shit happened. A lot.”

She nodded.

“But the best thing happened, too.”

That was when she saw the box in his hands. The little black velvet box.

“Oh,” she whispered.

Aidan’s eyes looked too bright, his smile almost apologetic. “Aw damn, I had this whole speech planned out, but it was stupid. So…” He heaved a deep breath. “Sam, I can’t live without you. I’m a smarter, stronger,betterperson since you came into my life. I love you like hell, and I want to wake up with you every morning, and I want you to be the mother of my baby. She’s gonna need a mom. My real mom wasn’t worth a shit, but my stepmom – she’s my mama. And that’s what I want. I want you to be my wife, my old lady, and her mama.” In a rushed afterthought, voice thin with fear, he said, “If you want to. If you can stand it. I know I’m not…”

She leaned forward, framed his face with her hands, and kissed him. She felt him smile against her lips; felt his fast, startled breath. “That sounded like a speech,” she said as she pulled back, eyes filling with tears. “And it wasn’t a bit stupid.”

He opened the box, and it was a pitifully small ring. She’d never seen anything more beautiful.

“Will you marry me?”

Her hand shook as he slid the ring onto her finger. And they were both shaking when he stood up and hugged her tight to his chest.

Forty

“What do you want with her address?” Walsh had asked, suspicious, when Tango asked for it.

He hadn’t cared. Let Walsh think what he wanted; it didn’t matter anyway. “I just want it,” he’d responded, and after a moment of enduring his blank expression, the VP had handed over the info.

Whitney’s brother had bought for his family a Mediterranean-style home on a pie-shaped corner lot, one whose dusky orange stucco, dark cedar pergolas and wide patios were out of keeping with the rest of the ranch-and-colonial dominated neighborhood. One of those pretty eyesore houses that leapt off its foundation and demanded a passing driver’s attention, night or day. It was night now, and Tango sat out front on his bike, breathing down a cigarette, letting his eyes wander across the careful winter landscaping of pansies and evergreen shrubs, illuminated by solar lights.

He recalled Thanksgiving, sitting up in Ava’s old bed, an untouched plate of Maggie’s cooking in his lap. The smell of marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes had made him want to gag. Whitney had sat at Ava’s old desk, picking through her own food, attempting small talk.

He recalled her face, when Ghost told her that her brother was dead, the way bravery had crumbled to make way for grief. Tango hadn’t climbed from bed, hadn’t comforted her. Hadn’t hugged her. He should have hugged her.

He finished his cig, flipped the butt in the gutter and lit another, his hands numb by the time he was breathing in the first drag. He tugged his gloves back on, grateful for the warmth of the hot cherry so near his face. Would it feel better, he wondered, to press the burning end to his skin? He didn’t think it would hurt. He thought it might feel wonderful…

Beneath his tattoos, the old cutting scars on his arms tingled, excited by the idea of more destruction.

The front door opened.

---