The Author and Her Bodyguard

Chapter 19

I stood frozen on the sidewalk. Torn between wanting to lie, and wanting to be brave. I had been brave earlier when Carter has tried to push me around, and I wanted to be brave with Aiden now. But being vulnerable requires a different kind of bravery. It requires your heart to be brave. The most fragile part of you to bare itself, hold its breath, and pray it does not break by revealing every crack and scar it possesses.

Standing up for yourself is bravery. But revealing who you truly were is the kind of daring and gutsy thing that I hadn't been known for.

I was always left feeling flustered or embarrassed because Aiden's very existence in my life left me breathless. But I was going to fight for my chance to breathe. And try my hardest to be the kind of gutsy that the characters I wrote about would be proud of. Because that is what they were. They were far braver than I was. They represented everything I wanted to be.

"That was my first date," I said, looking up at Aiden with all the confidence I could muster. "That train wreck back there that masqueraded as a romantic display was my very first date." My hands felt weird as they hung limply at my sides. I needed pockets to hide them in.

"I wish it wasn't. Because it's embarrassing. Who writes stories about romance and adventure with zero life experience to back it up. I'm twenty-two. It's sad—"

Aiden searched my eyes, his own unreadable. "Just because you are careful with your heart doesn't mean your dating choices are embarrassing. There is nothing wrong with not having dated anyone." He looked away. "Besides, a fake date doesn't count."

He continued walking down the sidewalk. "So your dating record is still clean."

I hurried to keep up with him and smiled to myself. "Okay, so what about you?"

"What about me?" Aiden asked as the limo approached.

"What was your worst date?"

We climbed into the back of the limo, and Aiden gave the driver directions to a pizza place nearby. Then settling back into his seat across from mine, he ignored my question.

"Come on Aiden, you literally just witnessed mine. Spill. Worst date story."

He sighed and rubbed his temples. "Seven months ago..." he paused opening and closing his hands in a nervous tick. "I proposed to my girlfriend."

I raised a brow but didn't dare say a word. There was clearly a lot more hovering below the surface. But my mind was abuzz with questions. Aiden had been engaged? What happened? Is he still engaged?

"We'd been dating for eight months. Long-distance because of my job. And I wanted to change things. Have us both live in the same zip code."

He swallowed and looked at the ceiling. "So I surprised her... we had been talking about getting married for a few months by that point."

He paused, weighing each word carefully before he continued. "I took her to a restaurant, got down on one knee."

Aiden swallowed, a flash of pain crossing his baby blue eyes. "And she told me she wanted to get married, but that I wasn't the person she wanted to do that with."

He ran his fingers through his hair. "The icing on the cake was the 'proposal live stream' I set up. She had always wanted her life to be broadcasted for all to see."

I gasped. "So..."

"So all of my family and friends got a front-row seat to my heart being broken? Yeah."

I was silent for a long time, processing Aiden in a new light. A boy who had once been in love. Who had gotten his heart broken. Who had a whole history of love that made me feel so inexperienced by comparison. He had been willing to change everything to make it work and it hadn't been enough."You win."