Chapter 22

Aaron liked me was the first thought I woke up to.

The possibility that Aaron might love me was the very second one.

I’d stayed up for over an hour after I’d made it to my room the night before, going over everything that had gone down on the restaurant dance floor, and it still hadn’t been enough time. But I understood what my heart thought, what it sensed. And that was that Aaron Tanner Hall loved me. Maybe he hadn’t used the words, but he hadn’t needed to. All I needed to do was think about what he thought about me, how he treated me, and compared it to how every guy my friends had dated had treated them, and I felt pretty confident about it.

After all, hadn’t I kind of sneaked in me loving him in there and he hadn’t commented?

Maybe someone would tell me I was jumping the gun and coming to a conclusion that wasn’t at all reality, but my gut thought differently. I didn’t think I was imagining anything. Then again, if he was this wonderful and he didn’t love me, I could live with it forever. What was love if it wasn’t just a single word people used to try and describe something that wasn’t easily explained or grown in one action or declaration?

I’d grown up knowing love was complicated. But I knew what it looked like. What it felt like. And I’d learned the hard way, through my own life and the lives of the people I loved, that there was a really thin line between love and hate. Telling someone you loved them didn’t mean you’d end up together. It was just a freaking word.

So I wasn’t going to worry about it.

With a lot more pep in my step than usual, I got off the bed and showered, feeling revived, feeling even stronger and better than I had before because I’d done what I’d never thought I would be capable of. I’d told someone I was crazy about, madly in love with, that I wasn’t sure we could be together because they weren’t holding up to the expectations I had for them.

Who the heck was I? A badass? Had I reached that level yet?

I never, ever would have thought I would have been able to do that. Ever. Not even in my wildest dream, but if there was something I’d learned about myself quickly, it was that I deserved better. I needed it. I wasn’t about to settle for less.

And I’d done it.

Even Jasmine would have called me a bad bitch.

With the sun seeming to shine straight out of me, feeling rejuvenated and awesome, I finished showering, got dressed and headed up the stairs feeling like I could take on anything. I really did. After grabbing my bottle of water, I went to the deck and took a big whiff of the salty air, simply thinking to myself this is amazing.

So, it was the sun and me feeling pretty indestructible in general that I could blame for how the next few minutes went.

Because it was at that second that the phone inside the house rang.

And when I turned to look inside, Aaron wasn’t already in the kitchen like he’d been the other two mornings when he’d answered it.

It was during the second ring, while I’d been too busy focusing on the fact that the phone was actually ringing, that this image of Aaron being angry and upset at these calls he’d been subjecting himself to, filled my brain. Then, it made me mad. That was when I practically stomped into the house, feeling like a different kind of Ruby than I thought I was capable of.

And I answered the stupid phone sitting in the cupboard beside the fridge with a grumpy “Hello?” that I also didn’t know I had in me.

There was silence on the other end of the receiver.

“Hello?” I repeated myself, sounding just as aggressive as I had at first.

“Hello?” the female voice on the other end responded, sounding hesitant.

“Can I help you?”

There was a pause before the woman cleared her throat and said in a very stern, clear voice, “May I speak to Aaron?”

“Can I ask who’s calling?” I already knew who it was, but I’d seen my family play enough games to know how to play this one.

“This is his mother,” the woman replied with a certain amount of steel in her voice.

“I see,” I said to her, thinking about the words he’d used last night. “He’s not available right now.”

“Can I leave a message?”

“I would rather you didn’t,” I told her, honestly and evenly.

She didn’t say anything again for a moment. “Excuse me?”

“I would rather you didn’t,” I repeated myself.

“Who am I speaking to?” the woman asked, her voice getting a hint of attitude in it.

“His girlfriend,” I said before I could stop myself. “And if you’re going to keep calling him and upsetting him, I would rather you didn’t.”

“Excuse you,” his mom snapped. “Who are you to—”

“Look, I don’t know what your intentions are for calling him, but all I’m going to tell you is that you should really think twice about forcing him to talk to you when all you do is make him mad. If you’re really trying to get back into his life, maybe you should ease up and go about this another way. If you’re not… I don’t know. All I know is that I’m not letting you ruin his morning. Have a nice rest of your day,” I told her. Then I hung up.

Not even two seconds later, the rush hit me.