Page 48 of Finally Mine
“Dunno,” Ina shrugged her linebacker shoulders. Everyone always assumed Aldo got his build from his father. But his dad had been a slim-shouldered string bean with a toothy grin and a stratospheric stress level who’d keeled over from a heart attack when Aldo was thirteen. “She was supposed to do a few things around here for me while I was babysitting your ass. Does that bother you?”
His mother was like a bulldog with a chew toy when she was trying to pry information out of him.
“Nope,” Aldo lied. “I’m going to sleep.” Without another word, he headed back to his room, ignoring his mom’s calls about his piece of pie.
He shut the door and leaned against it, letting the ache in his leg permeate everything. He could block it out for minutes at a time, could forget for moments what had happened, but it was always there lurking under the surface. The pain, the memories, the fear that he would never be normal again. His life would never be the same.
In all his deployments, he’d been prepared for the fact that he might not come home. Soldiers all faced it, dealt with it in their own way. But never in his wildest nightmares had he predicted this. The sheer magnitude of the loss.
Yes. He was home and alive. But he wasn’t whole. And she deserved someone who could protect her. That man was no longer him.
26
Gloria juggled the plastic container to her opposite hand and rested the flowers on her hip. Welcome home accessories stabilized for the moment, she stabbed at the doorbell.
“Don’t be nervous,” she encouraged herself. “You’re just a friend stopping by to see another friend and his super scary mother.”
“Aldo, get the damn door!” Mrs. Moretta shouted from somewhere inside the house.
“You get the damn door! I’m on crutches, woman!”
A shouting match broke out on the other side of the front door, and Gloria immediately regretted her decision to pop by.
“Oh, God,” she whispered. Maybe she could hustle down the sidewalk and sneak away—
The door was wrenched open, and Gloria’s jaw dropped.
Aldo, looking thinner, almost gaunt, was glaring at her. His hair, longer and curlier than she’d ever seen it, was rumpled like he’d just gotten up. He had a scruffy beard that looked as though he’d paid it no attention. He was wearing gym shorts, and his left leg was bandaged where it ended just below the knee.
“Fuck,” he swore softly and half-closed the door, blocking her view of his leg.
“Who is it?” Mrs. Moretta screamed, like a wounded wildebeest trapped in quicksand.
“Come see for yourself,” Aldo yelled back.
“Um, hi,” Gloria said. “I brought you soup. And flowers.” She’d spent an hour and a half pulling together the perfect bouquet under Claire’s watchful eye. Black-eyed Susans for encouragement, chamomile for energy, jasmine for cheer, and ranunculus just because they were so pretty.
Aldo made no move to invite her in…or say anything at all. He simply continued to stare at her with what looked like a war of emotions behind those shadowed eyes.
Pain.She read it on him as if he’d tattooed the word on his forehead. And her heart hurt for him. She knew pain. Knew the fear that came with it.
“How are you?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
“Fine,” he snapped. His mother bustled up behind him.
Aldo stepped back, letting Mrs. Moretta at the door. “You can answer your own fucking door from now on,” he said in a low voice. But Gloria still heard him loud and clear. Both women watched him as he hurried away from the door as fast as his crutches would carry him.
“I didn’t raise any assholes,” Mrs. Moretta called after him.
“Apparently you did,” Aldo answered bitterly before slamming a door in the back of the house.
Gloria didn’t know what to do. She’d expected…well, she hadn’t known what to expect. It certainly wasn’t this rejection, though.
“Sorry about him. He’s been a dick and a half since getting blown to kingdom come,” Ina said. “What’s in the bowl?”
* * *
Gloria feltlike she was doing the walk of shame when she walked back in the door at Blooms. She’d used her lunch break to make her delivery, and Claire was perched on a stool behind the register reading a paperback when she returned.
