Riding Curves by Christa Wick

across his chest
and started to glare.
    I closed my eyes. I couldn't bear to
see him angry at me. The sight was almost as painful as seeing him
hurt by me. But he expected me to tell him why I was at his house
and the glare wouldn't go away until I did.
    Even then, it might never go
away.
    I sucked a breath in and looked at
him. So beautiful, the anger I wanted to shrink from adding to his
raw appeal. I had to speak before looking at him froze my
tongue.
    "I wanted to apologize for what I said
at the hotel -- for what I believed. Daddy told me that
Pamela--"
    "I know," he interrupted.
    I felt my gaze go wide and I sucked a
little more air in. "You know?"
    "He told me in January," he shrugged.
"Not that he asked you to stay quiet, but who else would you
protect like that?"
    I nodded. He was right. The only other
people I would protect like that were Aiden and my mother, and
neither would have asked me to stay silent. So Aiden knew in
January when he was sporting a new woman on his arm and in February
when he had yet another one.
    I thought on that for a few seconds.
It hurt, felt like an intentional rejection, but I wasn't exactly
little miss innocent at the time. At least it had looked that way.
The truth was both embarrassing and painful.
    "I didn't go to Harold's over
Christmas," I confessed. "I haven't dated anyone since that
day."
    "I have." His tone was curt,
uncompromising, and I felt for a second like he was trying to
intentionally hurt me with his words and all they implied. And then
he removed the implication. and I knew he wanted to hurt me.
"Dated…fucked, whatever you want to call it."
    I closed my eyes again. He intended to
make this hard, maybe even to push me away entirely. I had no
guarantee that there was any light at the end of this long tunnel.
I knew I had lost him as a lover, but part of me hoped that I could
have my friend back. I loved Aiden, always would, anyway I could
get him.
    "I'm sorry I called you selfish,
I--"
    "I am," he interrupted. "You can't
expect anything better from a Perry."
    I shook my head. He had heard that
growing up, even after he went to work in my dad's shop, although
daddy would have fired any employee who dared utter the sentiment.
Still, all the town busybodies never quite stopped looking down on
Aiden, even after he graduated college and made the shop such a
success.
    "You're not anything like your mom and
Frankie. Not anything like me…I was the selfish one. All I could
think about was how much I was hurting…" My tears started up again.
I didn't try to hide them, didn't swipe at them. It was all I could
do to keep the box from slipping from my fingers as numbness crept
along my limbs.
    He shifted. If anything, his body grew
tighter. "Why are you here, Cecelia?"
    Not an ounce of retreat in his tone. I
sucked another breath in, hiccupped half of it back out. I lifted
the box. "I need to return this. I didn't get it until
today."
    I waited for him to say something, as
if the late delivery were some kind of exculpation for my months of
having remained silent. I knew it wasn't, just wished it could be.
It didn't matter that someone had lied or that I had promised daddy
I wouldn't tell. I didn't deserve Aiden's forgiveness. I could have
talked to him after I found out about Pamela's theft, could have
talked to my father so that he released me from the promise. I
could have gone into that hotel room without flinging accusations.
But I had been afraid to have tough conversations with the two most
important men in my life and so I stayed silent.
    No, I didn't stay silent. I lied about
having a boyfriend weeks before Aiden showed up with the first new
woman on his arm. I stayed away half a year, making it clear with
my absence that I didn't want to face even the chance that I would
run into him.
    Stuck in a noiseless vacuum as Aiden
continued staring at me, I walked the two steps to the nearest
table and put the box down. "I know how much work you put into your
pieces. You only do