Hard to Handle

Chapter 9

Turns out one of Axle’s friends-slash-customers was remodeling a 1957 Panhead and, in the process of dismantling it, realized he wasn’t able to remantle it. Axle had called Aiden in to close and gone out to offer his advice and expertise.

Aiden made a mental note to up his A game. When he was running Axle’s someday—think positive—he wanted to keep the personal touches Axle added. Well, as personal as Axle got.

The remaining work hours had flown, and thoughts of Sadie had only managed to increase with the hours that passed. He was standing at the counter, where he’d kissed her rather thoroughly last night. So, yeah. Thoughts.

At five he locked up, looking forward to a lengthy ride. Somewhere outside of the city, where the trees lined the roads and the traffic was sparse. He thought about asking Dad to go, then thought maybe he’d just go by himself. Dad. Axle. Aiden was surrounded by men who didn’t talk. He wondered how they’d become friends in the first place. Maybe they just pointed and grunted at each other.

Aiden swiped his keys out of the drawer where he’d tossed them, and his hand bumped into an object in its recesses. He pulled the square something out of the drawer, a pink cell phone with a sparkly pink case. He smiled. The ultrafeminine phone could only belong to one woman. A woman who had the shoes to match.

Aiden slid it into his pocket, deciding to stop by her apartment and drop it off. He’d like to see her today. Hell, he’d like to see her every day. Maybe he could talk her into a joining him for a bike ride. Doubtful. He eyed a pink helmet on a shelf on the back wall. Same kind he’d bought and returned last year when she refused to climb onto Sheila.

Maybe this time she wouldn’t refuse.

After he locked up the store and stowed his new purchase in a saddlebag, he rode the short distance to Sadie’s apartment. As he knocked on her door, he recalled the moment he’d stood on this porch a year ago and kissed Sadie for the first time. She’d been feeling raw and vulnerable after all they’d shared; he could see it in her eyes. Aiden felt more purged than exposed, and like he was ready to dive into the next stage of his life. Starting with the kiss he’d planted on Sadie Howard’s lips.

Thoughts so mired in the past, Aiden was caught off guard by the elderly woman scowling at him from the other side of the door. She clutched her blue bathrobe and scowled some more. “Can I help you?”

“Uhh…” He rocked back on his heels and studied the number on the side of the town house. Yep. This was it. “Does…Sadie Howard live here?”

“Here, actually.” Sadie hung off of the doorknob of the town house next door, leaning out over the stoop and smiling at her neighbor. “He’s mine, Mrs. Norman.”

Aiden couldn’t keep the grin from his face. He’s mine. He liked that.

Sadie’s smile dropped when Mrs. Norman retreated back to her apartment. “What are you doing here?”

He shot a thumb over his shoulder. “I was so sure you lived at 1912.”

“I did.” Her eyebrows scrunched over a giant pair of sunglasses. “I moved into 1910 last year when they upgraded the kitchen.”

He walked the three steps to her side of the stoop and stood in front of her, taking her in. Wow. Sadie was poured into a belted black dress hugging her curves and leading down to a damn sexy pair of high-heeled, open-toed shoes. He jerked his attention from her hot pink toenails to her face, pausing briefly at the swell of her breasts beneath the clingy material.

“You look amazing.” He sounded awestruck. He was.

She rolled a shoulder. A small gesture, paired with the soft purse of her lips. “Thanks.”

He met her eyes, or would have if he could’ve seen them through the dark lenses covering half her face. Her vulnerability was apparent in her body language. So was her impatience. “So, what do you want?”

“’Scuse me, Ms. Onassis. Should I have made an appointment?” Her nose wrinkled. Guess she wasn’t in much of a joking mood. Before she shut the door in his face, Aiden extracted her phone from his jeans. “You left this at Axle’s.”

“Oh,” she said, nothing in her tone revealing that she’d noticed it was missing. She took it from him. “I must have dropped it when—I must have dropped it.”

Aiden would have smiled at the memory of when she must have dropped it, but something was…off. From the slight slur in her words like she’d been drinking, to the sunglasses she was wearing, to the outfit better suited for public consumption than for sitting at home by herself.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, prepared to invite himself to go with her.

She ran her fingers through her untamed hair. “No.”

Okay.

He couldn’t leave her like this—all dressed up and nowhere to go. “Mind if I grab a glass of water before I head out?” Before she could tell him no, he made a face. “Think I swallowed a bug on the way over.”

Sadie’s lips tilted into the semblance of a smile and she slid the sunglasses into her mane of blonde hair. Her eyes were clear. So…she hadn’t been crying. That was good. Maybe he’d misread her after all.

She dropped her hand from the knob and he followed her in. This town house was an exact replica of its neighbor, only reversed. The staircase ran up the adjoining wall, leading to the bathroom. The door was open, a Harley-Davidson shower curtain hanging from the rod. His Sadie, Aiden thought with a shake of his head. An anomaly through and through.

In the kitchen, Sadie handed over a water. “Bottle okay?”

“Perfect,” he said, accepting it and cracking off the cap. “This”—he looked around the room as he took a drink—“is a kitchen worth moving for.”

“You remember what my old kitchen looked like?” she asked as she reclaimed her half-empty wineglass from the counter.

“No,” Aiden said. “But I wasn’t exactly checking out your cabinetry the last time I was here.”

She pulled the sunglasses out of her hair then folded and unfolded them before setting them aside. She took a drink of her white wine, filling her cheeks with the liquid before swallowing it down.

No, he was right the first time. Something was up. “Are you okay?”

She met his eyes, her gaze clear, but not as sharp as he was used to. “Do you think I’m…” She shrugged as if searching for the right word. “Too driven?” she asked after a significant pause.

Aiden lifted his brow. A loaded question if he’d ever heard one. Wasn’t like he could say yes, no matter what she put behind the word too. Too beautiful, too short, too anything. It was a bear trap waiting to spring.

“Too driven?” he repeated, stalling.

“Too controlling?”

Oh boy.

Aiden crossed to the counter and looked down at his hostess. There was a heaviness in her dark eyes, as if she’d lugged a significant load home from wherever she’d gone earlier. He slid a wave away from her eyes. “What’s this about, Sadie?” he asked, loving the way her lips parted and her breath hitched when he touched her.

She turned away from him and stared into her wine. “Nothing.”

“Talk to me.”

She took a breath, her shoulders slumping even lower than before. “I guess I wanted a second opinion.”

“On…?”

She looked up at him, her hurt a present, living thing. “Whether or not I am a self-centered, shallow bitch.”

Anger tore through Aiden’s chest at the word. He clenched his teeth together and struggled to speak through them. “Who told you that?” If it was that dickhead Perry, Aiden was going to effing kill him. Or at least cripple him.

“Easy, tiger.” She grazed his chest with her fingers and smiled. Faintly, but it was there. “No one said it.” She shook her head. “No one had to.”

It killed him to see her like this—to see her so filled with doubt. She was amazing. How did she not see that? “Look at me, Sadie.”

She did, but only after a long, slow blink.

He held her cinnamon-colored gaze. She needed to hear him. Really hear him. “You’re not selfish. You’re not self-centered. And if I hear you use the b word about yourself again, I’m going to wash your mouth out with Chardonnay.”

Another smile. Progress.

He rasped her cheek with the back of his knuckles because he couldn’t stand being this close and not touching her. “You’re focused. You’re determined,” Aiden told her as he stroked her skin. “You know what you want. You stand up for what you want.” He tipped her chin. “You are an incredible woman, Sadie. Don’t ever doubt that.”

Sadie turned her chin from his hand and muttered a soft “Thanks.” Aiden wasn’t sure if she was completely convinced, but he didn’t mind hanging around to convince her if she’d let him.

“Wine?” she offered.

Hell yes. “Sure,” he said, going for casual.

She pulled a second glass from the cabinet and filled it and handed it to him. Aiden took a sip from his glass as she emptied hers. She frowned at the cork sediment in the bottom like she was reading tea leaves.

“Trey said I wanted the wedding more than I wanted him,” she said. “That I basically neglected him into my sister’s arms.”

Aiden was going to interrupt, but she inhaled to continue and he took it as a hint this was a monologue.

“I mean, I was busy planning the wedding. Our wedding.” She refilled her glass, splashing wine over the rim and onto the counter. Aiden took the bottle from her and finished the pour before topping off his own. The more for him, the less for her, he figured. And she’d had just about enough.

Sadie lifted her glass and studied the pale yellow liquid. “A wedding has a lot of moving parts. You men don’t know this because all you do is show up. In a tuxedo you rent.”

Aiden was married in jeans. In a courthouse. It had been about as romantic as a trip to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. He thought better of correcting her and kept his lips firmly pressed together.

“I wanted to do it right, you know?” she continued. “I wanted to show Trey I would be a good wife. The best wife. And maybe I did get wound around the details, but is that bad, really? Isn’t focus a good thing? Shouldn’t he have been grateful he only had to sign the checks?”

She took another mouthful of wine, pointing a finger at Aiden as she swallowed. “Which, by the way, he says was not the issue. No, no. The issue was that I ignored him. And when I stopped showing up to my family’s house for Sunday dinner, he and Celeste started making out on the patio. Right under Mother’s nose! He actually thanked me for ignoring him so that he could find his beloved Celeste,” she said with a sneer.

It was hard not to laugh. He liked her Trey impression, the way she made him sound like a moron, which, obviously, he was. “I take it you had the displeasure of running into Trey recently?” Aiden asked.

“This morning,” she said, looking for a chair. Aiden lifted off the one he sat on, slid it to her, and retrieved another for himself.

“So Trey…what? Called and unloaded a guilt trip onto your shoulders?”

Sadie snorted. “I wish. Today is my sister’s birthday, and since Celeste always gets what she wants, we had a big, last-minute to-do at the country club.”

Aiden couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for Sadie to be around her fiancé and her sister and play nice. It wasn’t fun to be left for someone else—he knew—and if it had been his brother who Harmony had left him for, Aiden thought he’d probably have fled the country by now.

“I left, but not before Trey followed me out to tell me I was being a bad sister.” The pain in her eyes suggested she agreed. “I keep replaying what he said…” She paused, unshed tears shimmering in her eyes. She was strong, a real suffer-in-silence type. But her control was flagging. She swallowed hard, blinking at the ceiling. When she met Aiden’s eyes, hers were clear. “I think he was right.”

He put a hand on her arm in a show of support. He had so much to say, so many arguments to offer, he didn’t know where to start. He’d never met Celeste but couldn’t imagine Sadie’s younger sister being more remarkable than the woman before him. Sadie was vibrant and challenging and sexy as hell. And if Trey couldn’t see that then his head must have taken up permanent residence in his ass.

“I didn’t congratulate her, you know.” Sadie ran her fingertip along the edge of her glass. “I didn’t hop out of my chair or throw my arms around her. I just sat there and felt sorry for myself.” The tears were back, and finally a few spilled over when she confessed, “I didn’t even see the ultrasound.”

Whoa.

No wonder. Aiden imagined the scene unfolding. A table full of flowers and gifts, family members surrounding the guest of honor, and Celeste announcing she was pregnant. With Sadie’s ex-fiancé’s baby.

“Sadie,” was all he said. Her mouth pulled at the sides as she choked back what he guessed was going to be a sob. Aiden lifted her chin. “Sadie,” he repeated.

She blinked at him, stunned to have shown her real and raw emotions, and swiped her hands over her eyes to erase the evidence. She hopped off her chair so fast, Aiden had to catch it to keep it from falling over. He could almost hear her regrouping, the iron gates sliding down, the moat encircling her, the snapping alligators sliding into its depths…Sadie could shut down her feelings faster than he could say Batten down the hatches.

No one in her family cared to dig any deeper than the false surface she projected. It was easier for her mother and Celeste and Trey to write Sadie off as shallow and selfish and continue living their lives. They were the selfish ones, not Sadie.

Telling her that wouldn’t crack her defenses and Aiden was running out of time. The first night he met her he’d accidentally lured her out from behind her stone walls. All it had taken was a confession of his own.

He happened to have a doozy.

“I feel like I could have done more to save my mom’s life.” Wow. Saying that out loud hurt more than he’d thought. It worked, though. Sadie stopped fidgeting with the belt on her dress and watched him instead. “When my brothers and sister found out I’d moved her to Oregon,” he continued, “they were pissed.”

Sadie gripped the back of her empty chair.

“Mom was convinced the center we moved her into would save her life. Angel, Landon, and Evan tried to convince me to get her back into chemo.” He shook his head, remembering arguing with them in private, or via text, fighting with them as hard as he fought to keep their arguing a secret from Mom. “Mom didn’t want to have chemo. I refused to hound her about it. I figured she was where she wanted to be, and she seemed a little stronger, definitely more hopeful. “And seeing the hope in her eyes…” He blinked back tears of his own. “I just…I couldn’t take it away from her, you know?”

Sadie rested a hand on Aiden’s shoulder, her attention completely on him. Selfish, my ass. If she could see her face, she’d never for a second see herself as anything less than the radiant, supportive woman comforting him right now.

“When it was obvious she wasn’t going to recover…” He swallowed, felt like a bowling ball was lodged in his esophagus. “I brought her home.” And then his mother, his beautiful, strong, amazing mother, lost her fight.

“She lived ten more days,” Aiden said, feeling the pain of losing her spread across his chest like wildfire. “Landon, Angel, and Evan had barely had time to come home and visit before she passed.” They still held it against him.

“I should have made her get chemo,” Aiden said. He’d thought it a thousand times—a million times—since the funeral, but this was the first time he admitted it aloud. And hearing it now…God. He could hear the truth in his words.

He’d been thinking lately how he hadn’t really fought for her. Sure, he’d sat in waiting rooms for acupuncturists, nutritionists, and even a hypnotist. He’d scheduled her appointments, pushed her thinning body around in a wheelchair; he’d filled out her paperwork and written checks and reported back to Dad. But he hadn’t fought. Not for her.

“I thought I was doing the right thing,” he told Sadie. “But all I did was sit around…and wait for her die.”

He was suddenly seeing things so clearly from his siblings’ points of view. Whoever came up with the saying “the truth hurts” deserved an award for that golden nugget of accuracy. The truth did hurt, and right now it was slashing at his insides like Freddy Krueger.

Sadie put a palm over his forearm, and when Aiden tilted his chin down, a tear splashed onto the top of her hand.

* * *

Vulnerability was not Sadie’s forte. If asked, anyone she knew would say she was as stoic as a Viking ship in gale force winds in the middle of a raging sea storm. And yet, Aiden had been here no more than ten minutes and she’d opened her case of secrets and laid them out like prized jewels.

Here you go, have a look at all my shit.

Like the last time she and Aiden had entered the bubble of safety that was her apartment, Sadie shared her unfiltered, uncensored feelings. And yes, she may have been lubricated with a glass of California white, but the moment he’d touched her face and complimented the hell out of her, she’d remembered that Aiden was a strong wall on which to lay her burdens.

When she’d first met Aiden, hot-handed, dead-sexy-smile, two-hundred-pounds-of-delicious-golden-muscle Aiden, he’d been to hell and back. Now he’d been to hell and back, and returned for one more round trip with frequent flyer miles. And he was still clawing his way out of the depths. Not that he’d burden anyone with the crap he hauled around with him. No, he was too busy making everyone else feel better about themselves.

But Sadie didn’t have a problem coming to his rescue the way he’d come to hers. She kept her palm firmly on his arm and watched the single drop of salt water trickle off her hand.

“Aiden.” Despite the silent promise she’d made herself not to cry again, her emotions teetered on a needle-thin point. “You did exactly what your mother wanted. In spite of what everyone else said. You were the strong one. You did the right thing.”

She knew firsthand when a loved one got sick, how hard it was to make clear-headed decisions. After Sadie’s father’s accident, she’d been too young to fully understand what was happening. Only that her father was in a coma and wouldn’t wake up. Her grandmother had to make the gut-wrenching decision to turn off life support, and Sadie knew now that Grandma Howard had done the right thing for Daddy. In spite of Sadie’s mother’s instinct to hold on to him for as long as possible.

Aiden, in his own way, had done the same for his mom.

“I would have kept my dad hooked to a breathing machine forever,” Sadie told him. “But you put aside your own agenda. You knew what your mom wanted. And it wasn’t to spend her final days throwing up and losing her hair. It wasn’t, Aiden. And you knew it.” She squeezed his arm. “Didn’t you?”

Aiden met her eyes. Pools of green swimming in unshed tears. Sadie’s heart cracked when she thought about what Aiden had gone through in the last year. He’d put his life on hold to move his mother to Oregon, invested nearly all he had left to pay for her continuing treatment. How long had Aiden been setting aside his own wants and needs? Harmony certainly hadn’t had a problem betraying him. And the strength it must have taken for him to stand firmly against his family and fight for his mother…

In a blink, she saw Aiden very clearly. Saw his abundant love for others, his deep compassion for people. His kindness. His unbreakable spirit.

Was it any wonder she’d fallen in love with him a year ago?

“God, Aiden,” she whispered, stroking her fingers through his hair. The tears came and Sadie stopped trying to quell them. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for all of it.” Every heartrending moment of the last year, including the hard time she’d given him at Crickitt’s wedding…He deserved her support. Then and now.

Sadie wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, unsure if she was comforting him or if it was the other way around.