“Do you think we have time to go back and see if they have any more Hostess lemon pies?” Melanie asked, worrying her bottom lip as his attention was once again drawn to the large man with a Marine tattoo wrapped around his forearm as he continued sitting there, glaring at Aidan as he absently drummed his fingertips against the armrest of his father’s favorite chair.
“How have you been, Mr. Robinson?” Aidan asked, only to end up biting back a sigh when Melanie’s father continued glaring at him.
Aidan turned his attention to the woman sitting across from him and decided to focus his attention back on Melanie when her mother narrowed her eyes on him. When he found Melanie debating between a Hostess cupcake and a Hostess apple pie, he couldn’t help but smile when she mumbled sadly, “I can’t decide.”
“Ah, you shouldn’t be eating that garbage,” a petite blonde said with a disapproving sigh as she reached over and-
“Don’t make me kill you,” Melanie said, not bothering to look up as she continued debating between snacks as her mother said, “Leave her alone, Caitlyn.”
“It’s not good for the baby,” the woman that he’d heard so much about, none of it good, said with a pointed look at the snacks in Melanie’s hands as she pulled a man with a sheepish smile on his face towards the loveseat by the window and sat down, snuggling up against his side before his ass had a chance to hit the cushion.
“The baby’s fine,” Aidan assured her even as he couldn’t help but wonder what she was doing here since Melanie’s parents told them that she couldn’t make it.
“What are you doing here, Caitlyn?” her mother asked, looking confused while her father released a resigned sigh.
“Why wouldn’t I be here?” Caitlyn asked with a perky smile as she laced her fingers with the man who hadn’t stopped staring at Melanie since he’d walked into the room.
“Because you weren’t invited,” her father said with a glare still locked on Aidan.
“Why wouldn’t we be invited?” Caitlyn asked, looking confused as she flipped her perfect honey blonde hair back over her shoulder.
“It’s fine,” Melanie mumbled absently as she handed him the lemon pie so that she could continue searching through the bag.
“This is our daughter, Caitlyn and her fiancé, Adam,” her mother said as Aidan noted the way that Adam looked at Melanie and-
“After four years, we’re finally getting married!” Caitlyn said with a sheepish smile as she held up her left hand and gave her ring-finger a pointed wiggle.
“Jesus Christ,” her father said, rubbing his hands roughly down his face as the forced smile on her mother’s face froze and Melanie…Melanie briefly paused in search for the perfect snack to glance up at the happy couple and mumbled, “Congratulations,” before focusing back on her bag of treats. Aidan sat there watching her, noting the way she bit her bottom lip and the way that she gripped the plastic bag tightly in her hands.
“Why don’t we go have a look at the box of my old baby stuff that my mother left in my room?” Aidan suggested as he reached over and took Melanie’s trembling hand in his.
“Ooooh, I love baby stuff!” her sister gushed, moving to stand up and join them only to sit back down with a pout when her parents shot her matching glares.
With a gentle tug, Aidan pulled Melanie to her feet and led her out of the room and headed upstairs. By the time they made it to his old room, she was crying and for the first time in his life, he wanted to fucking kill someone.
“God, I’m such an idiot,” she said with a humorless chuckle as she wiped at the tears streaming down her face.
“No, you’re not,” Aidan said, watching as she walked over to the double bay window that he used to spend hours at when he was little, watching as the other kids played while he tried to work up the nerve to ask if he could join them.
He never did.
“Yes, I am,” Melanie said, shaking her head in disgust as she wrapped her arms around herself.
“Why’s that?” he asked as he closed the bedroom door.
Shaking her head, she said, “Because I should have known this would happen.”
Nodding absently, Aidan leaned back against the door as he debated giving her a moment, but that wasn’t really an option, which meant…
“Did Lucifer ever tell you that I used to have a speech impediment?”
“Not right now, Aidan,” Melanie said, wiping angrily at her face as he pushed away from the door and crossed the room.
“It was actually pretty bad. I couldn’t form a coherent sound until I was four and that was after two years of speech therapy. All the specialists told my parents that they should probably start looking into special needs schools and resign themselves to the fact that I would probably never be able to talk,” Aidan began as he joined her at the window.
“My parents refused to give up on me. Every day my mother would wake me up with a smile and told me just how much she loved me. Then she would spend the rest of the day talking, just talking about anything and everything so that I could hear how sounds were made. She’d talk about her day, share random thoughts, read everything she could get her hands on out loud for me, cookbooks, brochures, signs, the disturbing notes my brothers’ teachers sent home, and when she ran out of things to talk about, she’d start all over again. At the end of the night, she would tuck me in bed, beyond fucking exhausted, and tell me that she loved me again.”
“My brothers would help, too. They’d read their comic books to me, tell me about their day, and tell me how they were going to fuck each other over,” he said, noting how her lips twitched as she wiped away the last of the tears.
“As soon as my father came home, he’d pick up where my mother left off. He’d throw me over his shoulder and start telling me about his day, the cases that he had, the medicine that he’d prescribed and why. The days that he filled in at the emergency room were my favorite. He’d tell me the best way to do a suture, the things to watch out for, and the tricks he’d taught himself to keep his hand steady. I decided before I could talk that I wanted to be a doctor.”
“By four, I could choke out sounds and by the time I started school, I could mumble gibberish that my mother swears to this day that she could understand. My teachers tried to work with me, but they’d end up getting frustrated and would ask me to lay my head down on my desk whenever they couldn’t understand me.”
“What about the kids?” Melanie asked as they stared out the window.
“The ones in my class were fine. The principal had a talk with them on the first day of school and asked them to try to be understanding. They took that as leave me alone. The other kids weren’t so understanding. For the most part, they left me alone because of my brothers, but-”
“Kids can be cruel,” she said softly.
“Yes, they can. They mocked me every time I made the mistake of opening my mouth and made my life a living hell. It made me work harder, made me desperate so that every night I would come home and practice my sounds until I passed out. I thought it was helping, but it actually made everything worse. I mangled sounds, struggled to get them out, and started to get more frustrated.”