22 - NIGHT TRIP
22 - NIGHT TRIP
Cheryl’s POV
The moment Aiden looked up from his phone and said, “It’s my mother, Evelyn,” I swear my brain short-circuited.
We just stood there, frozen in this ridiculous silence, like one of us was waiting for the other to pull a rabbit out of a hat. Finally, Aiden blinked down at his phone again, his brows knitting together in a way that was both adorable and maddening. “She wants to talk,” he said, his voice quiet, like he was still trying to convince himself. “She says she’ll tell me everything.”
Everything.
My mind did a quick sprint through all the possibilities of what “everything” could mean, but instead of settling on something profound to say, I just stood there, gaping like a fish. Smooth, Cheryl. Real smooth.
Before I could recover, his phone pinged again, and his eyes flicked to the screen, then back to me. “She sent an address.”
“Well—?” I prompted, crossing my arms as I studied him. Aiden looked... lost. Like a man who’d been handed the key to a locked door he wasn’t sure he wanted to open.
“Are you going to go?” I asked when he didn’t say anything.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, his voice uneven. “This is so sudden. I’m nearly drunk, and I wasn’t expecting this. I don’t... I don’t know if I should go.”
What did he mean he didn’t know? This was the moment. The answers he’d been searching for, handed to him on a silver platter, and he was hesitating? “What do you mean, you don’t know?” I shot back, trying to keep my voice gentle but firm. “She reached out to you. She probably knows you’re looking for her and wants to tell you everything. Aiden, I think you should go. I really think you should.”
He stared past me, clearly running mental laps in his own head, his jaw clenching and unclenching. After what felt like an eternity, he sighed, rubbed the back of his neck, and finally looked at me. “Fine. I’ll go. But on one condition.”
“What is it?” I asked cautiously, already sensing I wasn’t going to like whatever he was about to say.
“You’ll come with me.”
Wait, what?
I stood frozen, his words sinking in like cold water trickling down my spine. “You mean, like, right now?”
He nodded. “The address says she’s in Blackwater, which is like an hour’s drive from Bradsbury. If we go now, we’ll be there before ten.”
I turned around, scanning the room for Damon. There he was, chatting with some other guys in tuxedos, his smile easy and unbothered. “I’m here with someone, Aiden,” I said, my voice dropping as guilt twisted in my stomach. “I can’t just leave like that.”
“Sure, you can,” he said with an infuriating shrug. “I doubt he’d notice and I already told you, you have to let him chase.”
I wanted to, but not by ditching him out of the blue on a date he brought me to.
I bristled at his flippancy but hesitated, caught in this impossible tug-of-war. Aiden was right—he couldn’t go alone, not in his state. But Damon... I glanced back toward him and saw a woman approach. She hugged him—hugged him—and he kissed her cheek with a smile that was just a little too warm for my liking.
“Well, like I said,” Aiden’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts, and I pulled my eyes from Damon to look at him “I doubt he’d notice you’re gone.”
I bit my lip, torn between indignation and reluctant agreement. “Where are your keys?” I asked finally.
The ride to Blackwater was a symphony of awkwardness and tension, with silence as the conductor. Aiden sat in the passenger seat, sipping water and staring out the window, while I gripped the steering wheel a little too tightly, hyper-aware of his presence.
Eventually, he broke the silence. “You know, I was never really close to my mother.”
I glanced at him briefly, hoping he’d keep talking so I wouldn’t have to.
“I mean, she was never sober enough to have a complete conversation,” he said, his voice low.
“That must’ve been tough,” I managed, my words clunky and inadequate. My eyes caught the tremble in his hands, and my chest tightened.
“I’m nervous, you know,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper. “I haven’t seen her in years, and now... I just... I just can’t—”
Without thinking, I placed my free hand over his, which rested on his lap. I gave it a gentle squeeze, hoping the gesture would convey all the things I couldn’t say.
The address led us down a winding, narrow road that ended in front of a single, unremarkable building surrounded by trees. The sign out front read St. Mary’s Rehabilitation Center.
“Rehab?” Aiden muttered, glancing at me with a mixture of disbelief and confusion. “She’s in rehab?”
We stepped out of the car and approached the rickety wooden door. Aiden knocked, but it creaked open on its own, revealing a dimly lit interior.
“Hello?” he called, his voice tentative.
A woman in a nurse’s uniform appeared, her face pinched with irritation. “Visiting hours are over,” she said sharply, gesturing to a sign on the wall.
Aiden’s frustration was palpable, so I stepped forward, trying to smooth things over. “I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “We’ve come a long way, and we’re tired, but we got a message from Evelyn Scott asking us to come—”
“Is no one hearing me speak?” the nurse snapped. “Yes, I know Evelyn Scott, but she’s asleep. All the patients are asleep. Come back at ten tomorrow. If you need somewhere to stay, there’s a motel by the gas station up ahead.”
Her abruptness left us both stunned. As we trudged back to the car, Aiden muttered, “Rude much?”
The motel receptionist barely looked up as I asked for two rooms.
“We’ve only got one room left,” she said, not bothering to hide her boredom.
I froze, the weight of her words sinking in. One room. Just one. I turned to Aiden, and his expression mirrored my own realization.
“Well,” he said, a hint of amusement in his voice, “this should be interesting.”
Oh, God. What had I just signed up for?