Parallel Hearts (Parallel Hearts Trilogy, #1)

Chapter 14

To my right, I hear the bedroom door swing open and I turn my head to watch as Aaden emerges. He has changed into dry clothes: a pair of loose fitting khaki shorts and a sea green t-shirt with some surfing logo splayed across the front. This is the first time I’ve seen him wear a color other than grey or black. When he sits down beside me, I notice that the color of his t-shirt intensifies the green of his eyes. They are the color of jade and he catches me shivering in my drenched clothes.

“Here,” he says, grabbing a grey fleece blanket from the back of the couch and wrapping it around my shoulders. He rubs my arms through the material, trying to warm me up and all I can do is watch him.

“Thank you,” I utter as my skin begins to warm beneath his touch.

“No problem,” he says, stopping. My eyes stay locked on his, unable to look away and I begin to forget why I’m sitting here in the first place. Aaden has just watched me transform from being at my strongest, to being at my weakest in a matter of seconds, and he’s still sitting here beside me, not judging me or running away scared. Aaden is someone I can trust, I tell myself. He’s someone I can let within my walls.

“I meant for before,” I say, turning to look out the glass doors where the two of us once stood. “You didn’t have to do that.”

 The rain is still misting outside, and I become fascinated by the web-like patterns of the water as it cascades down the glass. One lonely drop connects with another and together they find another, falling faster and more urgently down the glass until they disperse again at the bottom.

Still watching the rain wash down the window pane, I feel Aaden’s warm hand cover mine and turn to look over at him.

“I know I didn’t have to, Anna. I just did what felt right in my heart. Sometimes you can think more clearly if you turn off your mind and just listen to your heart.”

I know I’m guilty of thinking too much, planning too much and ignoring the messages my heart tries to send me. I think I just trust my mind more than I trust my heart. “I guess I have a hard time doing that,” I admit, looking down at our hands nestled in my lap. With my other hand, I play nervously with the strands of hair that have fallen loose from my ponytail. “Kayla was always better at following her heart than I was. I miss that about her.”

Aaden nods his head in response, understanding my sentiment. “I miss that about my mother, too.” He gives my hand a squeeze, acknowledging the loss we’ve both shared.

“I wish I could have met her, your mom,” I say carefully. “She sounded amazing.”

“She was.” Aaden bows his head, thinking about the mother he cherished and lost, and I find myself wanting to pull him into my arms and comfort him just like he did for me.

“How did she become so knowledgeable about all of this?” I ask, trying to find out more about how Aaden became the person he is.

“Experience, I guess.” He shrugs. “My father died when I was three. I don’t remember him,” he says with disappointment in his voice. “I suppose my mother had to learn who she was without him, and hold onto what she still had: me and my brother Sam.”

In the last ten seconds I’ve learnt so much more about Aaden, that I have difficulty focusing. I knew he lost his mother, but his father, too? Maybe we are more alike than I originally thought. There’s so much he knows about me and so little I know about him. I want to know more.

“What happened to your father?” I ask perhaps a little too eagerly. Aaden lets out a breath of air, readying himself to tell me his father’s story. “I’m sorry, Aaden. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” I look over at him painfully, not wanting to upset him.