Page 69 of Stained Hearts
He gave a cheeky grin, and I knew I was in trouble. His mouth opened, and what came out made me want to crawl into a hole. “Fuck, Tom! Right there! Harder!”
My cheeks didn’t just heat—they practically erupted into flames.
When he saw my reaction, he burst out laughing, and Olivia followed suit.
I pouted spectacularly, if I did say so myself. “Thanks, Aiden. Thanks a fuck of a lot.”
“Aw, come here.” He reached for my face and pulled me down for a kiss. “I’m sorry.”
“No, he’s not. Oh, believe me, he’s going to do it again, and next time it’ll be around your parents’ dinner table.”
This time I snorted. “Trust me. They’ve heard worse. Hell, mymothersays worse. After she sawWhen Harry Met Sally, we went out to dinner. It was the whole family. We were sitting around the table, and she nudged my dad and nodded toward a table full of blue-haired women. Even from where we were sitting, we could hear them complaining about everything. The service, the people who were sitting around them, and then their gazes land on us. Now we weren’t perfect kids, but Robert and I knew how to behave in a restaurant. One of the women says loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘The state of the world today, where they letthose kind of people in here.’ Dad’s eyebrows arched, and he turned to Mom, who grinned and gave him a nod. All of a sudden, he sank beneath the table—not an easy feat for someone his size—and a few moments later, Mom threw her head back and moaned loud. Well, the women were incensed and called for the waitress, the manager, demanding the police be called, the whole nine yards, when Dad came back out from under the table, spoon in hand, and apologized, saying he dropped it and needed to get it. Mom looked the women square in the eye and said, ‘How you like us now, you hateful bitches?’”
Aiden and Olivia were both laughing so hard, they had tears rolling down their eyes. They clung to each other, gasping for breath, and I sat there enjoying it.
“You don’t fuck with our family. We’re good people, but you’ll be hard-pressed to find people as close as we are. Mom and Dad will suffer the slings and arrows in silence, but the second you bring us into it, well, that’s where their tolerance ends.”
“I love your parents.” Olivia sighed. “Your mom called last week and asked me to go window-shopping with her. We stopped in at the diner for lunch, and after we sat down, we talked about the things we’d seen. She told me she really liked the suit I mentioned would be good for work, but I told her there was no way I could pay that much. She hummed and nodded. After we ate, we got in the car, and instead of heading home, she went back to the store. She told me she was buying me that suit, then proceeded to drag me kicking and screaming into the store. I protested, she ignored. Long story short, I have a new suit.”
I reached over and patted her hand. “I told you both. You’re our family. Mom would sooner cut off her own arm than let one of her kids go without. Back in the lean years, after she found out we had to decide between eating and paying bills, she filled the freezer with ready-to-heat meals every week.”
The doorbell rang, and Aiden’s gaze snapped to the clock. “Oh, we’re late!”
He unlocked the wheels on his chair, stopped to look in the mirror to ensure his costume was good, then grabbed the bowl of candy before pulling the door open. Two young kids, a boy and girl, stood there dressed in a ballerina outfit and cowboy gear. The coolest thing was that each was wearing what would normally be considered the other gender’s role.
“Look at you! You’re adorable!” He reached into the bowl and took out a handful for each of them. “You tell your parents that your costumes are awesome.”
The girl smiled. “Our mommies will be happy to hear that!”
And with those words, they scampered off to the next house.
“Let’s get you set up before the next people get here.”
He snickered. “I can’t wait.”
In her blue uniform, Olivia looked every bit the hardened prison guard. I was the stern, but totally lovable, warden. Aiden’s costume looked better than I ever thought it could. The cloth fit over the wheelchair and looked a lot like an old wooden electric chair. As he sat there, I grabbed the molded plastic helmet that had been spray-painted silver to appear like a cap. My buddy Chris had drilled holes in it, and his brother, Gabe, ran a length of wire through it. The pièce de résistance was in a box on the floor, hidden out of sight. Aiden was going to flip when he found out what I’d done.
“I’m still not sure about this.” Olivia chewed her nail. “I mean, we don’t want to scare anyone, right?”
Aiden shook his head. “No, we don’t want to scare anyone.” His gaze slid to me. “We want to scareeveryone! Loosen up, Livvy. It’s Halloween. People expect to be scared.”
She didn’t seem to be with the plan, but that was okay. It was Aiden’s day, and he wanted to have fun with it, so fun we would be having.
When raised voices caught our attention, he wheeled to the front of the porch. A group of kids, seven in all, strode down the sidewalk. When they stopped and stared at the house, a flush of pride went through me. Under Aiden’s direction, the house had been transformed into a true haunted manor. The plants out front were covered in spiderwebs, the windows had fake holes in them, and “blood” ran down the siding. We had black lights out front, which cast the whole thing in an eerie facade.
“This house is cool!”
The kids came up the walkway, and I readied the switch.
“Trick or treat!”
They all stood there, bags open, waiting to receive their gifts, when I hit it. Gabe had done his job to perfection, as a shower of sparks shot up out of the helmet into the sky. Aiden screamed, Olivia cried out, and the kids stood, their mouths open wide, then turned and ran off crying. Meanwhile, I was laughing so hard, I thought I’d pee my pants.
“What the fuck was that?” Olivia’s nostrils flared. “That shit wasn’t even funny.”
“The hell it wasn’t!” Aiden reached out for me. “That was epic. Did you see their faces? How did you do this?”
“My friends Gabe and Chris hooked us up.” I went over and knelt down beside Aiden. “You said you wanted this to be something you’d remember, and I wanted you to have that. I—” I reached out and stroked a hand over his cheek. Goddamn, what was preventing me from saying the words? Aiden needed to know how I felt. I wanted him to know this was it for me. He was my plus-one in all ways. But when I opened my mouth, the words wouldn’t come.
