“I was listening,” I say as I follow her into the kitchen, needing to get the guilty load off my chest.
“What do you mean?” She opens the refrigerator door, reaching for the milk.
“I was coming back from my run and saw you pull your dad into the house and…” I shift my gaze to Felicity, who is patting my cheek, still babbling in a softer voice, as if encouraging me to man up and get it over with. “I had no idea why he’d be here so early, so I went around to the back window and…listened in.”
“You were spying on me?” Aria asks.
I glance back to see her hands braced on the kitchen counter, the bottle and milk in front of her forgotten.
“I was,” I say, knowing better than to make excuses. “I’m not proud of it, but… I did it. And I’m sorry. I swear to you I’ll never do anything like that again. You deserve my trust, and I mean to give it to you. If you’ll still take it.”
Aria frowns, biting her lip for a long moment before slowly returning to her task. “Okay,” she says, pouring the milk into the bottle and popping it into the microwave. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“Speaking of honesty,” I say. “I know I’m in no place to talk right now, but I wish you’d told me that you and Liam were never married. I wouldn’t have thought any less of you or Skeeter, I hope you know that.”
Aria shakes the bottle and hands it to Skeeter, who is clearly past ready to have her milk. She pops the bottle in her mouth, leans back in my arms, and goes to work, leaving us to our grown-up talk.
“I know that,” Aria says. “I honestly didn’t even think about it, Nash. I’m so used to lying about it, and… Well, I guess I just knew you wouldn’t care.” She shrugs. “It didn’t seem like something I needed to bring up. Our marriage is the only one that’s been on my mind.”
I take a deeper breath, bracing myself for what has to come next. “I love you, Aria.”
Her gaze softens even as she crosses her arms over her chest. “I love you, too, and I love hearing that. So much. But I don’t like the ‘but’ I’m hearing in there.”
“Me, either. But I’m done with your father,” I say. “I don’t want to be in the same room with him ever again. And I can’t say I’m thrilled to think of Skeeter growing up around a man who thinks people are trash if they don’t have a lot of money or reproduce too frequently for his tastes.”
Aria sighs and rubs at the side of her neck. “But he’s not really like that, Nash. I swear he’s not. He says all that stuff, but he doesn’t mean it. He’d give the shirt off his back to a stranger if they needed it. He’s a good man.”
“He accused me of being a child molester, Aria.” Saying the words out loud is enough to make me want to smash a fist through something all over again. “Do you have any idea how deeply that offends me?”
“I know, it’s horrible. Awful,” she says, her brows pinching together. “But like I said, he doesn’t mean those things, he just—”
“Yes, he does,” I insist, not about to let him off the hook. “The man hates me, and after this morning, I can say without hesitation that the feeling is completely mutual. I’m done with him. If you want to have your sisters or your mother over to our house, that’s fine. Any time. But your father isn’t welcome, and I won’t be joining you and Felicity for BBQs or anything else at Bob’s house.”
Aria’s frown deepens. “Please, Nash. Let’s just get through the rest of this mess with Liam and make sure Felicity is safe, and then we can sort this out with my dad.”
“There’s nothing to sort out.”
“Nash, please,” she begs, a note of desperation entering her voice. “I don’t want to spend our entire lives avoiding my father. He’s my father. Surely, we can find a way to be civil and get by in a normal, dysfunctional sort of way.”
“What if my mother had accused you of being a child molester?” I press, digging my heels in. I try not to be stubborn about stupid things anymore, but this isn’t stupid. Bob went too far to make this better with a handshake and an apology. “How would you feel about making nice with her after something like that?”
“Well, she didn’t call me a child molester, but your mom did accuse me of being a gold digger last night. After she said her son deserved better than a user like me.” Aria shakes her head. “Or maybe before, I forget which insults went where, but I still plan on going back to her place any time you want me there. I’m not going to let one nasty woman ruin—”