She nodded in acknowledgment. “If I’m ever going to trust anyone again, there can’t be any secrets between us, not even little ones that probably wouldn’t matter to most people.” She regarded him wistfully. “Yours aren’t little, though, are they?”
He shook his head. His was huge. In fact, his whole identity wasn’t what anyone in this town thought it to be, at least not entirely. He was still Anna Mitchell’s son, but there was so much more to it.
“That’s what I mean,” she said. “I know better than anyone what sort of damage that can do.”
Aidan understood that from personal experience, though he wished he didn’t. “I see exactly where you’re coming from. I’ve lived with a lot of secrets in my lifetime, not mine, but around me. Things I didn’t discover until recently, in fact. It changes the way we feel about the people we’re supposed to be closest to.” He thought of his mother and how much she’d kept from him—and from Thomas—and how it was affecting their lives to this very day.
“If you know that, then how can you expect me to ignore the fact that there are things you’re not telling me?” Liz asked. “I don’t want to wake up someday and realize the man I’m with is practically a stranger.”
“I can’t ask you to ignore anything,” he conceded with regret. “I will ask you to be patient, though. I want to tell you everything, but I’m not able to.”
She frowned at that. “What’s preventing you? Or is that just a convenient excuse because you don’t really want to be open and honest? Are you afraid people will think less of you if these secrets come out?” Her expression turned wry. “I know a whole lot about that. It’s the reason I’ve kept quiet. Not even Bree has heard the story I told you.”
“She’d be on your side, the same way I am,” he assured her.
“I’m not willing to take that chance.”
Aidan understood her hesitance and her reluctance to believe in him. He could hear how flimsy it sounded to simply say he wasn’t at liberty to talk about his secrets. If he were in her shoes, he wouldn’t buy it, either.
“Will it help if I promise that you’ll be the first person to know everything as soon as I can talk about it?” he asked. He thought of the initial blood test report. “Everything will be resolved soon, maybe even as early as tomorrow.”
She looked genuinely torn, as if she desperately wanted to have faith in him, but feared that she’d be burned yet again by trusting the wrong man.
“Not good enough,” she said at last. “I think you should go. And maybe we shouldn’t spend any more time together for a while.”
Aidan would have asked how long, but he already knew the answer. She didn’t want him around until he was ready to disclose everything he’d been holding back. Even then such a big secret might be more than she could handle. He could hardly hold that against her. There were plenty of days when he had no idea how to live with the truth himself.
He nodded and stood up. Before getting Archie’s leash and calling to the dog, he leaned down and pressed a kiss to Liz’s forehead.
“This isn’t over,” he vowed. “Not by a long shot.”
She gave him a sad look that spoke volumes. “I think it is.”
And then she turned away, as if she couldn’t bear to see him leave. Archie whined as Aidan tugged him toward the door. Even the dog seemed to sense that something had shifted here tonight, and not in a good way.
* * *
To Aidan’s dismay, Thomas called him first thing on Monday morning to report that the blood test had been inconclusive. It hadn’t ruled Thomas out as Aidan’s father, but only the full DNA analysis on the swabs taken by the lab could prove definitively if they were father and son. Or not.
“I know we were both hoping for answers, but maybe this delay is good news,” Aidan suggested, though he had a hard time believing that himself, not with his relationship with Liz hanging in the balance. “It means you haven’t been ruled out as my father.”
“It actually is good news,” Thomas said.
Aidan was startled by his ready agreement. “You think so, too?”
“Shocking, isn’t it, after my initial reaction?”
Aidan could almost imagine the smile as Thomas said those words. “What’s changed?”
“Well, for whatever it’s worth, I’m coming to grips with the idea that I have a grown son,” Thomas explained. He hesitated, then said, “I know we weren’t going to speak of this to anyone until the results are in, but my wife has already guessed. She says it’s impossible to miss that you’re an O’Brien.”
Aidan was stunned, not because they’d talked about it, but because Connie saw what Thomas had refused to accept. “She believes me? And is she okay with the news?”
Thomas laughed. “Here’s the thing you should know about my wife. She’s tough. She raised a daughter mostly on her own. She took a long time coming around when we first started seeing each other. She’d done okay by herself. I was older. I was twice divorced. I was an O’Brien, which you may have seen by now can be a blessing and a curse. I was only slightly more amenable to the idea of taking another risk on marriage. Her daughter pretty much hated me. Well, not me, but having to compete for her mom’s attention and love. It almost broke my wife’s heart. I think the fact that Jenny and I have reconciled our differences has made her see families in a whole new light. Biological connections aren’t the only ones that matter.”
Aidan had a feeling there might be a lesson in the story for him. “What turned things around? I mean in terms of winning her over with all those hurdles you faced?”
“We got out of our own way and focused on the fact that we’d fallen
