Her Younger Millionaire

Chapter 5

If he’d ever actively thought about it, and Aiden couldn’t say he had, he probably would have assumed that the first time he saw someone die it would be a relative and the cause would be old age. Or illness. The movies depict it as somewhat sad, a little bittersweet, and ultimately cathartic. Family members gathered around a bed, holding hands and remembering the good times, and the loved one in question slipping peacefully into death.

That’s not how it happened though, and Aiden doubted there would ever be a Sarah McLachlan montage in his memories that bitter-sweetly reminded him of that moment. Instead Aiden was walking outside with one of his co-workers at his first job, one of his less-liked co-workers granted, but a man he knew fairly well, and the guy was in the middle of a story about a strip club and an female performer he was apparently able to talk into extra services.

And then he was silent, and Aiden was covered in specks of blood and worse. It was really impressive actually, how silent everything suddenly went. No more traffic noise, birds stopped chirping, the wind itself quit blowing. All that was left was the falling body and Aiden staring at where his acquaintance’s head used to be.

Aiden blinked several times, trying to take it in, and then the noises rushed back, the sounds of screams, and Aiden realized someone was shooting towards him. He hit the ground so hard he was fairly sure he broke something, and then covered his head with his arms. Aiden didn’t know much about guns, just the prerequisite information any Texan child was given when it came to shotguns and hunting, but he figured if the bullet was powerful enough to rip Mikhail’s head apart it was probably too powerful for his arms to stop it.

Still, covering his head seemed like a good idea.

He stayed there until the cops told him he could get up, and the EMTs looked him over and disinfected the places where gravel had torn through his knees and hands when he fell and bandaged them up, and then he drove himself home.

For hours, Aiden simply sat on his couch staring at the slightly peeled piece of wallpaper over his window, until exhaustion took him down into sleep, and when he woke up the world seemed both infinitely larger and scarier, and not changed at all. Mikhail was already replaced before he came in.

That was how Aiden was introduced to the spectacle of death, and in retrospect he should have taken it as a sign. He had left his parents’ home searching for something different; rebelling against his fate as son and heir. He wanted to not know what his fate was even before he could live his life. His twin brother Dylan had the gay thing; he had his deviation from the norm. What was Aiden’s? But he went back to work the next day, and that was how the rest of it came about. How Aiden’s introduction to death became the catalyst for the rest of his life.

He’d never been good at changing things. Stubborn and set in his ways, Aiden had spent his entire life picking one path and sticking to it. Aggressive, self-righteous, antagonistic Aiden, his ex-girlfriend had said about him. Always willing to start a fight if he felt he was in the right. Always willing to join an argument even if it meant angering more powerful people than himself. It had driven her away so quickly that he wasn’t even sure it could be called a relationship.

And back then he’d regretted it a little, bought self-help tapes on how to win friends and influence people and never listened to them, but now…

Now Aiden thought of that mindset, of that time, and he wondered if maybe that wasn’t what led to his current predicament. Everyone had told him he was making a mistake. He was trying to be a rebel when he was actually the epitome of the norm; tall, dark, good looking, rich, sheltered, clever – he was already everything people aspired to be…and discontent. Trying to carve out a little niche for himself, make a place that wouldn’t be forgotten. If he had stayed in Texas, settled down, and simply joined the parent co-operation would he still be the boy his parents were so proud to have raised?

Because what he was now, well, it scared him a little. He was a twenty five year old billionaire on the outside. On the inside he was closer to fifty and hurting with it.

*****

‘Kay. Time to be honest with himself.

He liked lots of stuff. Like solving mysteries. He really liked solving mysteries. They’re to him what water was to a fish. Get how important that was? Can’t live without ’em.

Other things he liked are the color green. That’s his favorite color. And girls that wear their hair up in a curly ponytail – he found that really attractive. And girls that are brave, and kind, and skilled in dirty dancing-

…Well.

That sounded a whole lot liked Tina. But that didn’t mean he liked – okay, so maybe he did like her. Just a little bit.

…Or a lot. Maybe.

Oh, who was he kidding? He was supposed to be honest with himself here, so here ya go – he really liked Tina.

He was not really sure when he first realized. Sure, he’d known since he met her that she was different from other women and all, and he didn’t really like the idea of her going off with other guys, but he thought that was just the protective-man side of him speaking. He’d always thought they had this passive aggressive relationship goin’ on, and that was about it. But recently, he noticed that he was, well, kinda attracted to her. At first he was all ‘ew, dude, that’s Tina you’re talking about here’, but then he found out that if he thought of her as a girl and not as that irritating chick who kept shooting him down, he wouldn’t mind dating her at all.

Once he got over that entire passive aggressive thing, it really wasn’t hard to fall for her. Maybe he’d liked her all along, but had always just brushed it off as a lust kind of feeling. And he was not stupid, ya know – he was the foremost speculator in the universe! – he knew Tina probably liked him that way as well. She wasn’t exactly hiding it either, what with all the ‘calling him in for the ‘what are your intentions conversation with her friends’ and ‘random make out sessions in various public places’ – the point was, it’s really obvious. And, okay, so maybe he didn’t exactly get it at first, but now that he knew he liked her, he could see she liked him too, which was good.

But what’s not as good was how to tell her – if he should even tell her at all.

He was sure she knew he hated losing, and, well, he didn’t know what he would do if he got rejected. And since they were becoming pretty close and all, if he confessed and it didn’t exactly work out, their relationship would become really awkward. He’d hate for that to happen – he treasured their relationship. So maybe he shouldn’t tell her.

But if he didn’t tell her, he was pretty sure she would get taken by some other guy soon. Unfortunately, he couldn’t keep her to himself all the time, and he was not the only one who liked her either. Her list of suitors was ridiculous. So, yeah, it was safe to say she wouldn’t stay single for much longer. And he was fine with that, as long as the one she dated was him. But that wouldn’t happen unless he told her.

So he guessed he should tell her – he didn’t wanna regret anything in the future, when he saw her together with some random idiot.

However, just how was he supposed to tell her? He heard girls liked flowers and stuff. But Tina isn’t really girly, so that might not work. What else did she like?

Him, his head went. She liked him. It was obvious, wasn’t it?

That might be true, but shouldn’t confessions be done with gifts or something? He couldn’t exactly put a ribbon in his hair and go all ‘Hey Tina, guess what your present is? Oh, that’s right – it’s me!’ Could he? She would probably sucker-punch him out of existence or something.

But that actually gave him quite a good idea – if she liked him, then she would probably like anything that reminded her of him, right? Therefore, he bought this cap that looked a lot like his, except that the peak was green where his was blue.