Cabin Fever | ✓

(25) The Cheerio Effect

"I'm okay now," she soothed gently, "I'm okay, Aiden. I'm right here."

He let go of her hand to circle his arm around her waist and bring her into his side, inhaling her hair at the top of her head and placing a kiss there, his anger beginning to calm.

"I'm just proving a point-"

"You can shut the fuck up," Aiden snapped, "You've said enough. You've done enough. You will stay away from her or I'll have one of her girl friends do something about it."

"You should just go,"'Marley added in a much kinder tone, in the back of her mind thinking about who would willingly take a swing at Trish if Aiden asked.

They'd probably have to get in line. That thought made her smile, lucky to have such supportive friends.

"I've been dealing with him for the last year. Marley was my window of opportunity to talk to the cops without him tracing it back to me-"

"Ah, so you could cover your own ass?" Aiden barked.

"No one would protect me if he came after me. No one ever has. Marley you have Aiden if he tries anything again. I did what I had to do and whether it was bad or good doesn't matter as much as I'm free now."

She stood from the stairs and headed for the main path where they were standing. Aiden moved when she did, keeping himself as a barrier between them until Trish was gone.

"No matter what she did, Aiden," Marley began, sitting on his bed as he grabbed what he needed for a shower, "she didn't deserve an abusive relationship. Nobody does."

His hands stilled in his armoire for a second, and Marley knew he was thinking about Violet, "The more I think about it, the more it makes sense. Not that it was right, not that she should've done what she did, but it just makes sense."

He turned around, leaning his back against the wood to face her.

She smiled at him softly, "Well, she was right about one thing."

When she paused for dramatic effect, he raised a questioning eyebrow.

"That you're a diamond in the rough." her words were light but the meaning behind them wasn't. There are bad people in this world, worse men she could've ended up with.

And she ended up with one of the best ones.

Aiden's smile was wide and bright, "I think I got lucky, too."

"It has nothing to do with luck," she disagreed with a shake of her head, "Do you know what the Cheerio Effect is?"

"How if there's two Cheerios in a bowl of milk, they gravitate towards each other without any outside influence." he nodded, wondering where she was going with that.

"I think that's what love is. Not luck. But that the right people just...have a way of finding each other."

-

"Mr. Green, 3:00, with ice tea."

Marley smirked secretly as Jay checked the bases in the middle out of view, "Shit."

She had 3:00 and the ice tea already marked off on her sheet.

"You're out of the game," Bryan said, grabbing the dice off the Clue Junior mat with a smug smirk, "guess it sucks to suck eh?"

"You play this with Christopher all the time," Marley pointed out in Jay's defence, referring to Bryan's young son, "So you kind of have an unfair advantage."

"I don't," Aiden cut in from Marley's right, looking over his markup sheet with a sly smile, "and I'm about to win."

Marley leaned over to peek but he quickly turned his paper away with widened blue eyes, "Marley Hoover cheats at board games? I guess everyone has a dark side."