I could see instantly what Bennett had been talking about.
If I’d walked past Aiden, I wouldn’t have recognized him.
He wasn’t wearing a jacket, so I could see that his clothes were loose around his body, a sure sign he’d lost weight in the past couple of weeks. His skin was pale except for the dark smudges under his eyes. His thick hair was mussed as if he’d run his fingers through it at some point but hadn’t bothered to try to put it back in order.
I could have brushed off his appearance as the byproduct of a man who’d been working too hard for fourteen days straight, but his eyes… there was just nothing I could come up with that would explain how empty and dull his eyes looked.
And the way he was staring at the water… it scared the hell out of me, and I had no idea why.
“Aiden,” I said carefully as I sat down next to him. It wasn’t until I spoke that he even seemed to come back to awareness.
His eyes met mine, and I felt a chill go through me.
My Aiden’s eyes had only ever been full of life and mirth. I didn’t know these eyes.
“Ash,” he said softly, though he didn’t smile.
I reached up to push a lock of unruly hair behind his ear and was pleased when he didn’t pull away from my touch.
“You’re okay,” he murmured as his gaze slid over me.
“I am,” I said as I continued to play with his hair.
I couldn’t not touch him. It felt like the only thing linking us together. “You look tired, Aiden. Haven’t you been sleeping?”
He shook his head. “How did you know where to find me?”
“You told me.”
At his questioning look, I clarified, “You said you wanted to bring me here for our next date. You said you wanted to show me a special spot.”
It took him a moment to nod and I wondered if it was because he was having trouble remembering. I let my fingers brush back and forth over the nape of his neck. His skin felt cold to me.
Too cold.
“It was special to him, so it was special to me,” he finally said.
“Who?”
“Danny.”
Emotion clogged my throat as I remembered him telling me about his younger brother. “Why was it special to him?” I asked.
Aiden leaned back against the bench and took a deep breath. It made me feel better because it gave me hope that some of the lifelessness I was sensing would start to fade away. “Danny was an amazing kid, but he was different.”
“How so?”
“He was more sensitive to things. He struggled to connect with people. Certain environments upset him… like if there were too many people around and stuff. He never actually got diagnosed with it, but I think he might have had some form of autism… Asperger’s, maybe.”
I didn’t need to ask what he was talking about because a friend of mine in middle school had been autistic.
“People didn’t understand him, and a lot of them didn’t even try. My parents got pretty good at dealing with him, but my stepfather…”
Aiden let his words drop off and I saw his jaw tighten just a little bit. I knew there was more there, but I remained silent.
“Danny’s favorite thing was this book our grandmother had given him… The Secret Garden. Do you know it?”
I smiled. I’d read the book when I was a kid. “I loved it,” I said.
Aiden nodded. “He did, too. I’d read it to him every night. Even after he learned to read, he still preferred me to read it to him. On the weekends that our parents stayed in the city instead of going to our weekend house on the shore, Danny and I would come down here on a Saturday morning and we’d spend the whole day exploring. Then we’d sit right here in this exact spot and I’d read to him for hours until he was ready to go home.”
“I bet he loved that,” I said. “You were a good big brother, Aiden.”
My words seemed to pain rather than comfort him. He shook his head and fell silent for so long I was sure he was done talking. I barely heard his next words.
“I couldn’t save him, Ash.”
A chill went through me as I instinctively knew what he was talking about. “You were with him in the water?”
Aiden nodded. “He got caught in a riptide. I… I had ahold of his hand, but I…”
Life returned to his eyes in the form of swift, sharp pain, and I heard him push down a harsh sob. I pressed my forehead against his temple as I settled my hand on the back of his neck.
“I was holding onto his hand and trying to get us out of the current… and he just slipped under.”