Page 63 of Begin Again

The quiet vulnerability in her tone makes my chest tighten. This is different. More personal.

She takes a deep breath. “Did I ever tell you about the night your parents had their accident?”

A sharp prickle runs down my spine. I straighten. “What about it?”

She exhales, her shoulders sinking slightly like she’s carrying the weight of years of silence too heavy to hold onto any longer. “Your father came to see me that night. Cassie had been filling his head with lies, saying I was responsible for George’s death—that I killed him because he got another woman pregnant.”

Her voice wavers. And for the first time, I see it. The years of grief, the weight of something she’s never spoken aloud.

“I made him some tea, tried to calm him down,” she continues. Her voice is measured, careful, like she’s making sure she tells it just right. So she doesn’t misspeak or get a detail wrong. “I tried to talk sense into him, but he wouldn’t listen. He was so angry, Teddy. So convinced I was the villain in all of this. I… I lost my temper. I didn’t know George had a child with someone else. I told him to take all of you and leave.”

Her hands tighten around her mug. The first real crack in her composure. “It was freezing that night. The roads were slick. I didn’t think—I just wanted him to go, and then… then they didn’t come back.”

A shuddering breath. A single tear slips down her cheek.

The raw pain in her voice cuts through me, sharp and unrelenting. I’ve never heard her sound like this, so vulnerable, so human.

“Aunt Aubrey,” I say softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

She shakes her head, a tear slipping down her cheek. “I don’t know if that’s true. But I’ve lived with it every day since.”

Silence stretches between us, thick and heavy. Not uncomfortable, just… full.

When she finally looks up, her eyes are steadier, but still glassy. “I just want you to be careful, Teddy. With Bennett. With Selene. With all of this.” A pause, just long enough for her words to sink in. “There are things about this family—about this town—that you don’t know yet. And I want to protect you from them.”

I nod, my throat tight. This should feel reassuring, but it doesn’t sit right.

She stands, smoothing the nonexistent wrinkles from her shirt. “Good. That’s all I ask.”

At the door, she glances back at me. “And Teddy?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t let anyone make you doubt yourself.”

The words should be comforting. Instead, they feel like a warning.

She leaves, and I stay rooted in place, staring out the window, coffee cooling in my hands.

Aubrey has never lied to me. Has she?

For all her warnings about Bennett, all her insistence that she’s trying to protect me, a thought lingers, quiet but persistent.

What if she’s not just protecting me—but herself?

The sound of the exterior door off my kitchen creaking open snaps me out of my thoughts. My pulse spikes, and I spin toward the sound, my heart racing.

Grabbing a knife from the knife block near me I step closer, half expecting trouble when Orion steps around the corner and into my view. He looks completely unbothered, expression calm and unreadable. We lock eyes as he slips his lock picking tools into a sleek black case before tucking it into his pocket.

“What the hell, man?” I exclaim, lowering the knife I’d raised in self-defense. “You just picked my lock instead of knocking like a normal person?”

Orion shrugs as he steps fully inside my kitchen and shuts and locks the door behind him like he lives here. “Cute knife,” he says, barely glancing at it. “But I couldn’t chance you washing that mug before I got my hands on it. You should probably upgrade your security. That was way too easy.”

I shove the knife back into the knife block with more force than necessary. “It’s too early in the morning for this. Why are you breaking into my house and why do you need my mug?”

Without answering, he holds up an evidence bag in one hand and Aubrey’s discarded mug in the other.

“I’ve been following your aunt around all morning, waiting for the chance to collect a DNA sample from her. This was slightly more legal than breaking into her house. Ergo, evidence.”