He didn’t even get a chance to sit down before the door leading to the main part of the clinic opened and another employee called his name. Aiden glanced back at me and tipped his head toward the door before disappearing. The crowd of women disbanded too. I hadn’t really been thinking straight before we rushed to leave, so I’d forgotten to bring something along to keep me entertained. I grabbed one of the magazines on the table and started flipping through it, trying to tell myself that Aiden was fine.
An hour later, the door Aiden had gone through opened again and his bulky frame slowly crept out, one obviously pained step at a time. A man in a short white coat behind him at the doorway shook his head. “Get crutches or a cane.”
Aiden simply lifted a hand before approaching the window where only two employees were waiting at that point. I dropped the magazine on the table and got up. The Wall of Winnipeg hunched over the counter, signing something.
“It’s such a pleasure to see you again,” the receptionist crooned just as I stopped right behind Aiden. Was she batting her eyelashes?
If she was, he didn’t notice. His attention was on what looked like the invoice in front of him.
“I’m such a huge fan of yours,” she added.
A fan of that ass, more than likely, I figured.
She kept going. “We all hope you get better soon.”
Yeah, she was definitely batting her eyelashes. Huh.
That had Aiden responding with one of those indecipherable noises of his as he straightened and slid the paperwork over to her.
“Mr. Graves, I can settle your visit with your assistant if you’d like to take a seat,” the receptionist said in a sugary sweet voice, her green eyes flicking to my direction briefly.
Aiden settled for shrugging a shoulder as he turned his body to face me. Nothing about his expression or body language gave me a warning. “She’s my wife.”
Time stopped.
What the hell did he just say?
“Handle it for me, would you, Muffin?” Aiden asked casually, digging into his back pocket and handing over his wallet like he hadn’t just said the freaking ‘W’ word in front of strangers.
And wait a second, did he just call me Muffin? Muffin?
My mouth went dry and my face went hot, but somehow I managed to smile when the woman’s curious and slightly shocked attention slid over to me, more than extremely aware of the weight of Aiden’s gaze on me.
His wife.
I was his freaking wife and he’d just said so aloud.
What the fuck?
There were words for everything, and I understood that a lot of times, they meant nothing. In this case, I recognized that yeah, ‘wife’ didn’t mean crap, but still, it was weird. It was really, really weird to acknowledge the title for a hundred different reasons.
It was even weirder to hear the word out of Aiden’s mouth, especially when it was me he was talking about.
The Muffin thing was its own beast, something I definitely wasn’t prepared to deal with in that moment.
Picking Aiden’s wallet from his hand, I turned my hopefully not-so-shocked face to the receptionist and handed over Aiden’s debit card. With a fake, strained smile that was more of a grimace, she took it from me and swiped it. After she handed a receipt over, I found Aiden waiting for me at the door and walked out alongside him. I resisted the urge to ask if he wanted to use me as a crutch for support. Once we were in the car and before I did anything else, I turned to him in the seat, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Aiden… uh…” I scratched at my forehead, trying to keep my features even. First things first. “Did you just call me Muffin?”
He looked at me. His blink was so delayed, I started thinking maybe I’d imagined it. “I figured it was too soon to call you Dinner Roll.”
I stared at him, and as I did, my mouth might have been open at the same time. Slowly, eventually, I nodded at him dumbly, attempting to absorb what I realized was a joke he’d just made. A joke he’d made aimed at me.
“You were right. It would have been too soon,” I muttered.
He made this face that irritatingly said, ‘I told you so.’
Who the hell was this human being? He looked like Aiden. He smelled like Aiden. He sounded like Aiden, but he wasn’t the same Aiden I knew. This was the Aiden who had sought me out in Vegas and told me to shut up when I was teasing him. Okay. I swallowed and nodded, accepting that this was what I’d wanted from him. And I’d finally gotten it.
I liked this version more, even though he seemed like a completely different person. Messing with the leg of my glasses, I sniffed and floundered around for the other thing bouncing around in my head. “Why did you call me your wife in there?” My voice sounded all weird.
That heavy-lidded, smart-ass gaze was as cool as a damn cucumber. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I thought we were going to keep this under wraps for as long as possible.” And he could have at least warned me he was going to do it so I could have mentally prepared.
The Wall of Winnipeg didn’t look remotely apologetic. “You are my wife, and I don’t have patience for flirts,” he said in that calm, detached voice that made me want to club him. “You’re not my assistant. Did you want me to deny it?”
“I just…” My nostrils flared on their own. Did I want him to? I wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t like he’d called me his bitch or anything. “It’s fine that you did it. You caught me off guard, that’s all.”
Stretching that long body out in his seat, Aiden didn’t add anything else. I sat there for a moment thinking about what he’d done and thinking about this unconventional fake marriage we had and this new, oddly shaped, blossoming friendship. And it was when I was thinking about those things that I remembered what Aiden had said to me in Vegas. How we’d made promises to each other and how he was going—in his own strange way—to keep up with them.
With my hands wrapped around the steering wheel, I looked at him over my shoulder and asked outright, with a choppy exhale, “What’s it going to be? Crutches or a cane?”
He went with nothing.
“Crutches or a cane, big guy,” I repeated.
Aiden shifted in his seat. “Give me a break.”
Give me a break. I had to count to five. Turning the ignition, I reminded myself that he’d called me what I was: his friend and, weirdly, his wife. He knew me. He’d missed the Vanessa I’d been back when things had been okay between us.
“I’ll find you a walker if you don’t make a choice by the time I get on the freeway,” I threatened, keeping my attention forward. “The faster you heal, the better. Don’t be a pain in the butt more than you need to be.”
He sighed. “Crutches.”
That was way too easy, and I wasn’t dumb enough to bring it up more than necessary so that he wouldn’t change his mind. I didn’t say anything else as I drove to the pharmacy and parked. Aiden stayed silent too when I hopped out of his SUV. In no time, I found crutches and bought a new bottle of over-the-counter anti-inflammatory pills.
The ride home was pretty quiet. I made sure not to watch as he slowly hobbled inside and made his way to the couch where the comforter I’d brought downstairs the night before was neatly folded, stacked under his pillow. Leaving the crutches I’d bought propped against the couch, I hesitated for a second by the stairs as I watched him settle in.
“I’ll be upstairs,” I said.
He nodded stiffly, palming the remote in one of his hands, his head turned toward me. “Thanks for taking me.”