Page 22 of Stuck With Mr. Frosty (Delectable Protectors #5)
MIA
A iden has done a spectacular job of avoiding me over the past twenty-four hours. He didn’t come to dinner last night, and when I got up this morning, he was already gone for work. And now that it’s nearing midnight and everyone else is finally in bed, he comes home.
I look over the back of the couch at him, trying to figure out what to say. Nothing comes to me. What do you say to somebody who’s avoiding you? I thought things were good between us. Sure, there’s the small matter of the letter, but that’s tucked away deep in my underwear drawer.
Aiden eyes me for a moment before going into the kitchen and opening the cupboard, pulling down a pudding cup. “I didn’t know you were gonna be up.”
“Well, I’ve been trying to figure out a time when we could talk, but you never seem to be around.”
“There’s a lot going on at the search and rescue station. With Carter on vacation, I’ve had to pick up a lot of the slack.”
“Sure, I understand that. What I don’t understand is why you’ve been avoiding me. We’ve been home for twenty-four hours, and you can’t even bother to answer a good morning message that I sent you this morning.”
“Didn’t know I had to respond to every message.”
I could scream. It’s not the point, and the guilty look in his eyes tells me that he knows that. He’s trying to be difficult and get under my skin, and it’s working.
“You don’t have to, but you haven’t talked to me since yesterday morning when I lugged the bags back home and you were gone. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“I don’t have time to talk right now. I just came home. I have just enough time to have a snack and then I have to go back to the search and rescue station.”
“Why? So you can keep avoiding me so we don’t have to talk about what’s going on between us?”
“I don’t know why you think I’m avoiding you. I’ve got no reason to avoid you.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. So I don’t understand what’s going on.” I rub a hand down the side of my face, trying to make sense of all of this.
He sighs and peels off the top of this pudding cup, licking it before putting the garbage in the trash. “I really don’t have time for this. I have to go back before the other guy leaves.”
“I don’t think you do. You’ve already been working a double shift, and now you’re trying to tell me it’s turning into a triple?
I think you’re trying to hurry out of here so you can avoid talking about whatever’s been bothering you since yesterday, and right now it feels like we’re going around and around in circles.
I keep saying the same thing. You keep telling me you have to leave, and then you don’t walk out the door. ”
I get up from the couch, my temper flaring. I take a deep breath, but it does nothing to ease some of the irritation flowing through me.
Aiden shrugs. “This is the only point of the day I get to come home for a while. I’d like to enjoy it before I head back out. I’m not in the mood for an argument right now.”
He’s not in the mood for an argument? I take a moment to try and rein in my temper. I don’t have much of one most of the time, but there’s something about him that’s drawing it out of me.
I snap. “We can’t keep dancing around each other like we have no clue what’s going on.”
He grabs a spoon and jabs at the pudding cup. “I’ve got a real job to do, Mia.”
“And you think I don’t?”
I don’t know where this is coming from at all. I want to go over to him, take his face in my hands and ask if everything’s all right. I want to look in his eyes and know that we’re going to be fine.
But I don’t think we’re going to be. There’s this sinking feeling in the bottom of my stomach that tells me this is the beginning of the end.
Aiden puts a massive spoonful of pudding into his mouth and shrugs.
“Seriously, Aiden. We’re going to do this now because if we don’t, I don’t think we ever will.”
“Fine,” he says. “I think my first impression of you was right. You’re just here for a good time.
That’s all this has ever been for you. At the end of the season, you’re going to go back to your life and pretend that you don’t know what you want.
When the truth is that you know what you want, you’re just too scared to go after it. ”
“Where the hell is this coming from?”
“This isn’t just some game of pretend for me, Mia. This is my job, and this is my life. This is what I do all year round. I travel. I do search and rescue. I don’t have time for settling down or whatever else you might have assumed we were doing here.”
I guess that’s my answer.
Tears prick at the corners of my eyes, but I hold them back.
“What I assume we’re doing.”
“Yeah. I’ve known what this is from the start. It’s fun. We had sex, we went out, we danced.” He doesn’t look at me, just says the words, his tone hollow. He finishes his pudding and tosses the cup into the trash. “I think it’s time we stop pretending that this was anything more than what it was.”
Confusion surges through me as he walks out, the door slamming behind him.
I have no clue what just happened or why.
Things were going good between us. Sure, there were moments when it seemed like maybe this wasn’t going to be something that we continued forward with.
But that’s why I wanted to talk to him. Ever since those couple of days in the cabin, all I can think about is where we go from here.
But now it seems like he’s backing out. He’s done.
Maybe I should be done too. It might be easier that way. I could pretend that he’s never meant anything to me. It would feel like ripping my own heart out of my chest. But I could do it.
I’ve pretended I’m fine before.
Pretending isn’t good enough, though. I cross the room, my heart hammering in my chest, blood rushing in my ears. As I yank open the door, my mouth goes dry. I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know how to fix this.
But I have to try.
He might be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
“Where do you think you’re going?” I say, my voice getting louder as I storm down the steps and into the snow. The cold seeps through my slippers, soaking them quickly.
When he turns around, there’s a pained expression on his face. “I told you. I need to go back to work.”
“No. What you’re doing is running away. Why don’t you tell me what caused this change between us? Tell me what I did. Let me know what I can do to fix this.”
He recoils like I hit him. “There’s nothing to fix. We need to just let it go, Mia. Maybe we were wrong.”
“I think this moment right here is the only one I’ve been wrong about.” My voice breaks, the pain in my chest growing tighter. “Enjoy work.”
I go back inside, slamming the door behind me, blocking it and slumping against it. I bury my face in my hands, trying to take deep breaths. There doesn’t seem to be enough oxygen in the world.
Rosie pads out into the living room, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as I look up. “Do you want to tell me what’s bothering you, or do you wanna just sit and cry?”
“I’d tell you, but I don’t know if I just broke up with him or if he broke up with me, or if we’re still together and this is just a bump in the road.
” I laugh, tears leaking out of the corners of my eyes rolling down my cheeks.
“Honestly, I don’t even know if you could call it a breakup.
How does something end when it never even really began? ”
“Okay. How about you take a deep breath, sit down, and tell me what happened?”
“I don’t want to sit and talk right now.” I wipe the tears from my eyes, tipping my head back and looking at the ceiling until the feeling of needing to cry slowly fades. It’s a trick I got good at while Mom was sick. “I just want to try and forget this entire night happened.”
“I heard him say that he thinks you’re here just for a good time.” Rosie sits down on the couch and pats the cushion beside her. “We all know that’s not true, so why don’t you come over here and tell me what prompted the argument?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. He’s been avoiding me since yesterday.
I tried to talk about it with him today, but you just saw how that went.
Apparently, he’s back to thinking of me the same way he was at the start of the season.
I don’t know how he got there. I thought things were good between us.
I mean, yeah, I got an offer to teach at school, but I was thinking of rejecting it.
I haven’t even told him about it yet because I don’t know what I’m going to do.
There’s part of me that thinks that I should be traveling the world and seeing it.
Then there’s this other part that’s thinking about settling down.
Even considering wanting to do that with him. ”
“Does Aiden know that?”
“He was going to. I haven’t had the chance to tell him yet. Every time I’ve tried to talk to him over the last day, whether it’s through text or the few times I’ve seen him in person at the resort, he always shuts me down or ignores my message. Sometimes he walks away.”
“Well, the end of the season is a few weeks,” Rosie says softly. “Maybe he’s just preparing himself.”
“I don’t think I’m ready to prepare myself.”
“Well, then maybe you need to make him see that as well.”
I slump on the couch beside her, my head pressed back against the cushions as I stare up at the ceiling. This time I can’t will the tears away like I’ve willed them away every other time.
“Sometimes we don’t get choices about these things.”
“I know, but I’m not ready for this to end.”
“In that case, I think you need to go get out of this cabin and chase down your man.”