Page 34 of Single Mom for the Mountain Men
CHAPTER 16: Aiden
“Is Tanner often this irritable?” Lena asks me quietly, her arms wrapped around her knees as she sits on my bed.
“He’s a little bitch when you disagree with him or piss him off,” I agree solemnly.
“Stop, don’t say it like that,” Lena warns me. Her mouth curls up into a cute, displeased pout. “He’s your brother.”
“We aren’t kids, Lena. I can say it how it is.”
“Why was he so upset that we asked him about what happened? There were so many men after him.”
“Tanner has always gotten himself into shit like that. He loves doing that to himself. It’s a rush he’s addicted to. It wasgambling before, and horse racing before that. He let it all go for the most part, but the consequences of his actions come back to bite him in the ass more often than he would like.”
“Why doesn’t he just…tell you two? Warn you both beforehand, or ask for help?”
I swallow as I spin the words around in my mouth, wondering how to phrase them. Lena looks at me expectantly, her eyes wide and curious.
“It’s Tanner. He’s more guarded about his issues than Brody is. He doesn’t want to come off as someone who can’t take care of himself or handle the trouble that he’s gotten himself into. He views it as a weakness.”
“Doyouview it as a weakness?”
“Haven’t once, and won’t start now,” I reply quietly. “He has his demons, and the most we can do is give him a shoulder whenever he decides to let us in.”
“What are your demons, Aiden? Tanner has his addictions, and Brody has his SEAL past and those horrors to carry. What about you?”
I pause for a moment, the sudden switching of the topic taking me by surprise.
“My demons?” I repeat.
“What haunts you?” she queries while tilting her head to the side. Were it anyone else asking me this question, anyone but her—Brody, Tanner, or anyone in this fucking world—I would not have bothered with a reply.
But I trust Lena. I trust her completely, and somehow, without me knowing, she has burrowed herself under my skin. I’m a man of few words, and things that are buried so deeply inside me tend to stay there forever.
Yet, just with one small, harmless question, she has me answering her. She charms me with those guileless eyes.
“There’s…not anything like that I can tell you. Nothing like that has ever happened to me. My two older brothers have lived very different lives because they were close with their father. I wasn’t that close with mine because he was a piece of shit. It’s ironic, the ways that this stuff has affected us.”
“Wait, wait,” she says and holds up a palm, “what do you mean ‘their father’? You three are brothers, right?”
“Ah, they haven’t told you,” I mutter to myself. “Lena, Tanner is my half-brother, and so is Brody. My mother divorced their father when they were both children, and then, she got married to my father. The two never made me feel like I wasn’t a part of their family, though. They checked in on me whenever they would find the time and helped me out when I felt the most defeated. I’ve never doubted my place in my brothers’ lives, but my parents…they let me down.”
“Ah,” she breathes to herself. “What about your father, then? I know Brody’s and Tanner’s father was a very risk-loving and impulsive man.”
“Those were the bad habits that Brody and Tanner got from him, but he taught them how to be proper men, too. They know their values and morals, and they will never back down on them. I admire their father more than mine.”
“Why did your mother leave him, then?”
“I guess my dad was more charming than my brothers’ father when he was courting her, because he sure as hell wasn’t romantic when he was with her. Far from it. He was a piece of shit, through and through.”
Images of my childhood flash through my mind. The abuse he put my mother through, the way he would do everything in his power to make sure she was never happy. That man drained the life from my mother’s eyes. A woman who used to love singing and dancing and mixing with groups of people became the most withdrawn, quiet, and defeated person right before my eyes.
“How is she now?” Lena’s voice drops to a lower whisper when she asks. She gets up and moves closer to me, perching herself on the armrest of the chair I’m sitting on. Taking my hands in hers, she caresses my palm with her thumb, her face open and empathetic.
“She left my father. She did it later than she should have because she wanted to salvage the marriage if she could. Having two failed marriages often made her very sad. That’s why she stayed. She stayed for herself, out of the hope that my father would come to his senses and love her back. But things only got worse. That’s when reality really set in for her. I was in my late twenties when she decided to run away from him because he would never agree to a divorce.”
“Oh,” Lena breathes, her eyes lost deep in thought. I had no doubt that she was seeing the parallels between her situation and the dilemma my mother had found herself in.
“I’m glad she realized her worth,” she adds quietly after a moment of introspective silence, her hands still around mine. “I’ve been in her place, so I know how it all feels.”
