I jumped back. I casually noticed Aiden out of my peripheral vision looking at me. Specifically my legs. My tights were all dirty and I’d had to dig out a pair of shorts from my drawer that I hadn’t worn in years. They were too tight and too short, and I’d had to put on a baggy T-shirt so the elastic band digging into my stomach and hips wouldn’t be noticeable. I’d lost almost fifteen pounds since I’d started running, but I still didn’t have anything close to a six-pack.

So I was a little surprised when those thick eyebrows knit together, his gaze focusing. “What happened to your leg, Van?”

I’d worn skirts and dresses around him on a few occasions when I worked for him. I had always figured he just hadn’t cared to find out where I’d gotten the scarring that went from above my knee to below it. Hell, I’d been wearing cut-offs when we’d gotten stuck in the elevator together and sat in his lap afterward. His hand had been on my knee. How hadn’t he noticed?

Now I realized he hadn’t even looked at it.

I didn’t care that it wasn’t pretty, and I’d never tried to hide it. It was my badge of honor. My daily reminder of all the physical pain I’d gone through, of all the anger I’d had to get under control, and what I’d done with it. I’d finished school. I got back on my feet. I’d accomplished my goal of growing my business and venturing out on my own. No one else had done it for me but me. I’d saved. I’d worked. I’d persevered. Me. No one else.

And if I could do all that, when I was strong and when I was weak, I could remember it and let it lead me. My achy knee never let me forget what we’d been through in the last eight years.

I made my way out of the kitchen because the truth wasn’t a big deal. “I got hit by a car.”

I just usually didn’t tell people that it was my sister who’d been the driver.

By the time Zac and I made it out of the house, the sun had just started to hang low in the horizon. We jogged steadily for six miles one way before turning around to get back home. That last two miles on the way home we used as our cool down. After we’d caught our breaths, Big Texas abruptly snorted and asked, “How the hell hadn’t Aiden noticed your knee ‘til today?”

I let out a sharp snicker. “I was wondering the exact same thing.”

“Jesus, Vanny, I think I noticed it the first week you started workin’ for him.” He shook his head. “He doesn’t notice stuff that’s not football related unless it smacks him in the face.”

It was true.

Then he said, “Like you.”

And it was like something crashed down on my shoulders. Not necessarily a bad thing, but the truth was like a boa. It could be this heavy snake that could wrap around your neck and kill you, or it could be a feather boa, a nice, fun accessory to your life. In this case, I was going to force myself to take the truth in the form of the feather version. I’d already faced reality and that reality was the one Aiden had admitted to me: he hadn’t appreciated me until I left.

It was what it was. You couldn’t force someone to care about you or love you. I knew that way too well.

But Aiden was a man who only loved one thing, and if you weren’t that one thing, too bad. It was all he’d known for so long, he hadn’t looked in his peripherals at everything else surrounding him. I could accept that nothing else was anywhere near as important as football. What I wasn’t able to do was wrap my head around what Leslie had said regarding Aiden’s grandparents and the grief he’d gone through when he lost them. He’d never even mentioned them in front of me. But I guess that was just the way he was.

Now though, in his own way, I knew he cared about me. That said something, didn’t it? I didn’t think I was trying to pull at straws or make something bigger than it needed to be. I was simply taking what I could get and not making it out to be something it wasn’t.

I could live with that.

So I shrugged at Zac. “Yeah, exactly like that. He’s just so focused he doesn’t care about anything else. I get it.” I did.

With a big sigh, Zac sniffed. “It’s workin’ for him. He’s the only one on the team that’s an All-Pro.” The shape his mouth took after he finished talking made a bittersweet sensation go through my heart. I couldn’t help but think: Poor Zac.

So I smacked him in the arm. “Quit pouting. You’re only twenty-eight. That one quarterback played until he was almost forty, didn’t he?”

“Well… yeah. He did.”

“See?” That was enough for now, wasn’t it? I went with changing the subject. “Are you doing anything for Halloween?”

“Where are you going?”

I stopped at the door and held out the jack-o-lantern shaped bucket I’d bought the day before, so he could see the three bags of candy I’d torn open and dumped inside. “Nowhere. I was going to sit outside.”

Sitting in what I’d began to consider calling his throne—the breakfast nook—the big guy had a puzzle spread out in front of him. I didn’t know why I thought it was so cute but it was. It really, really was. Those big shoulders were always hunched over while he worked on them, and I didn’t need to catch him unawares to know he sometimes stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth when he was really into it. Now though on Halloween Day, his entire body was turned to the side as he caught me on my way out.

Aiden’s eyes dropped to my body in what I might have thought was the third time since we’d met, and he cocked a thick eyebrow, his face a plain, stony mask. “You’re all dressed up.”