Unexpected Appearance

"Dad, your truck is parked behind my car, and I can't get it out of the garage. Where are your keys?" Cadence asked. It was 8:15, and she was getting ready to go to Kash's house for movie night, despite the fact that sitting around reminiscing with her friends, minus the two recently deceased, was the last thing that she wanted to do.
"Oh, honey, sorry about that. Why don't you just take my truck? I'm not sure your Challenger has any gas in it anyway," Eli replied, only temporarily looking up from the sports section he was reading in his comfy recliner.
"Have you been driving it again?" she asked, knowing how her father enjoyed speeding around in a sports car, any sports car.
Eli glanced around the corner of the paper. "Possibly. My keys are hanging on the hook by the garage door."
Shaking her head, Cadence went to the garage door, retrieved the keys, and reentered the living room. Her mom was sitting on the couch crocheting. "I'm going to Kash's house. I'm not planning on being gone too long." She leaned down and kissed her mom on the cheek and then gave her dad a quick hug.
"Try to have fun, honey," her mom yelled after her as she left the room.
"I'll try," she said to her mom, reaching for the door, and then added under her breath, "but I'll fail miserably." She pulled the door closed behind her and then froze in her tracks before almost colliding with a familiar figure. "What are you doing here?" she asked, more shocked than angry, although she hadn't forgotten what had happened that afternoon.
"I told your friends I'd come, so I'm here," Aaron replied, shrugging his shoulders, his hands deep in his jacket pockets. She widened her eyes at him, as if that was enough for him to still be invited.
He shrugged again. "And I wanted to talk to you.” He stopped on the top step leading to the porch.
Cadence glanced at her watch. She still had a few minutes before she was going to be late. She was a slave to punctuality, but she knew her friends would understand under the circumstances—since it was the day they all thought they’d laid Jack to rest. "Okay. What do you want to talk about?" she asked, not moving.
He took a few steps closer to her. "Well, for starters, I wanted to tell you I'm sorry.” Cadence couldn’t believe her ears. Was he admitting he was wrong?
Aaron continue. “Not for shooting Jack," he clarified, and Cadence pursed her lips together to keep from yelling at him again. "I didn't have much of a choice but to do that. But I am sorry that it upset you. That wasn't my intention. I apologize for upsetting you and for arguing with you about it afterwards."
Cadence stared at him for a moment, considering his apology. She took a few steps over to the balcony railing and sat down on it, despite the small amount of snow. "At least you're honest," she replied, shaking her head.
Aaron followed her over to where she was sitting and sat down next to her, their knees inadvertently bumping. “I try to be.”
He looked sincere, and while she was still upset about Jack, he seemed to think there was no other way out of it. Still… he had been so brazen.
Her attraction to him was so strong, though. Earlier, when she’d thought they’d be fighting for several days, at a minimum, it had made her almost sick to her stomach.
Did she have any choice but to forgive him?
"Okay, I accept your apology,” she found herself saying. “And I'm sorry I got so angry at you.” She hadn’t been completely innocent in all of this, after all. “I shouldn't have questioned you in front of everyone. It's just. . . I finally got Jack back, and then you shot him. I was afraid I was going to lose him all over again."
"I know..."
"And, now I've got to figure out a way to convince him to come with us after you blew a hole in his kneecap. How am I supposed to do that?" She withdrew her hands from her pockets and gestured wildly for emphasis. The curtains in the living room window fluttered, and she was absently aware that they were not alone.
"You're right," Aaron agreed, readjusting his position on the railing next to her. "We're going to have to take some time to figure out where to go from here. Hopefully, if nothing else, you got him some information today, and he realizes that, if he continues to take the advice of his brother, he's going to end up in a very bad position." He glanced over at her and she nodded her head in agreement. "Cadence, if he makes one more bad decision, I won't have any choice. He's been warned now by a Hunter. He has no excuse."
"He won't," Cadence said with conviction. "He won't hurt anyone else. I just know Jack wouldn't do that. Especially now that he's been told."
Aaron shook his head. “I know how you feel about him, Cadence, but I’ve seen similar situations many, many times before where a person has acted completely out of character once they have Resurrected. But there’s no point in going into that now. We’ll see what happens.” Cadence felt a wave of relief wash over her at his words. "As soon as we get back to LIGHTS, we'll all sit down and figure it out, okay?"
She nodded again. "I really don't understand why you didn't tell me about him when we were together at the hotel the other night," she added, her voice hushed, in case her parents were listening.
"I didn't want to tell you and then get on an airplane and leave you for two days," Aaron explained. "I didn't think that was fair. I had no idea he had been calling you."
That wasn’t the only thing he hadn’t wanted to do before he got on that airplane…. Cadence felt her face flush with the memory.
A question she’d asked him that day came back to her. “I just don’t understand why whatever you were doing in Billings was more important than telling me—and staying with me.”
"Cadence, come on," he said shaking his head. "I had already promised them I would be there. They needed my help. I couldn't justify putting a personal matter in front of it, especially when I thought it could wait."
She crossed her arms, choosing to say nothing rather than to try to continue justifying her position. It was another thing she couldn’t go back and change now. Finally, she decided to change the subject instead. "How's Laura?" she inquired.
"She's getting there," he replied, his voice showing concern. "Jamie has completely drained himself twice now, but it looks like he may need to do it again. That bullet that hit her in the back was fairly close to her spine, and he's afraid she might end up paralyzed if he can't get it all completely healed."
"Laura's not a fan of yours, I gathered?" Cadence asked, her eyebrows raised.
"Not even a little bit," he confirmed. "And she probably shouldn't be. We didn't break up on the best of terms."
"Did she quit the team?" she continued, turning a bit to face him.
“I’d really rather not drudge up those old memories, but I wanted to be honest with you.” He had a bit of a far off look in his eyes.
Aaron continued. "Yes. We worked a job in a nightclub in NYC. It was 1998, so it's been a while. She botched it. Badly. We got into it--as usual. I told her I didn't want to see her anymore, and as soon as we got back to LIGHTS, she packed up and left. I never heard anything from her again. Not directly, anyway.”
Cadence took a deep breath and blew it out. Even thought it was a long time ago, she didn’t like hearing about Aaron’s ex-girlfriends, especially not since there were two of them at the hotel, waiting for him.
How many ex-girlfriends could a guy have who was as old as Aaron and as good-looking as him?
Probably a lot….
“About ten years ago, I heard that she was chasing Giovani, but she wouldn't even ask for intel, at least not as far as I knew. I found out tonight that she had been talking to Eliza off and on and that Laney contacted her a few days ago. But all of this was news to me."
"Was Giovani the mark that night in NYC?" Cadence asked, trying to piece the story together.
"Yes, he was. And so was Holland," Aaron confirmed, looking her in the eyes.
"So, all this time, she's been trying to find absolution. Do you think she's hoping that, if she finds a way to bring him in or destroy him, she can somehow go back to how it was before?" Cadence was fully facing him now, her mind sorting through the situation and trying to make sense of it.
Aaron shook his head. "I think so. I don't know. She's been chasing him for over fifteen years now. Why she didn't ever ask for help is beyond me. She Transformed her sister to help her, but that was way back in the beginning. I can't imagine working on the same case for that long. I think it would drive me mad."
Cadence agreed. "Maybe it has," she offered. "Maybe that's why she didn't ask for help." She glanced down at the porch, her brown boots only slightly dusted with snow. "We need to get him, then," she added. "Even if Jack doesn't like it. Giovani needs to be destroyed."
"I agree," Aaron said, nodding. "We’ve been working on it as a team, too, for a really long time, but he’s a sneaky bastard. So, we'll have to figure out how to do that."
"And Laura and Laney will have to be part of. So they can get some closure and move on," she added.
"If they will, that's fine with me," he consented. “But Laura doesn’t like to work with other people.”
Cadence was quiet for a moment. She knew she was probably going to be late to Kash's house now, but she also realized this conversation was too important to cut short. "Thank you for being completely honest with me," she said, looking him in the eyes. "I know it's not easy for you to talk about your past, but if I'm going to work with these two, I've got to know what I'm up against."
He nodded slowly. "Honesty is extremely important to me, Cadence," he admitted. "When I don't offer information to you, it isn't because I'm attempting to be deceitful, it's because I have a lot of people to coordinate, and not everyone needs to know everything. Sometimes that does more harm than good."
"I agree with you," she admitted, sliding off of the railing and standing next to him. "I know there's a lot more tactical information floating around in your head than I could ever fathom wanting or needing to know. But I'm talking about the really important stuff, the personal stuff. You need to know that you can talk to me about that stuff, too."
"Okay," he said, just above a whisper, his eyes not wavering from hers.
"And, that includes Aislyn," she added, her voice soft so that he knew she was being sincere. "I want to hear about her, too, someday. I know how much she meant to you."
He looked away from her momentarily and then back to her eyes. "Someday, hopefully, I will be able to tell you about her."
"Good," Cadence replied, giving him a small, reassuring smile. "You can trust me, Aaron. I hope you believe that."
He didn't answer her with words. Rather, he pulled her toward him and pressed his lips to hers, and that was all the confirmation she needed that he trusted her. He was learning to trust her, anyway. He’d mentioned not talking to anyone about Aislyn for decades, so if he truly told her about what had happened with his wife, then she’d know he trusted her more than most.
It was hard to release him, but she heard a slight tap on the window behind her and figured her snooping mother had slipped.
Cadence untangled her mouth from Aarons. “We should go, or we’re going to be late.”
“So… I can come with you, then?” he asked, giving her a sheepish grin.
Cadence rolled her eyes. “I guess….” She smiled and stepped aside so he could get up, and he took her hand, leading her off of the porch to his sportscar.

***
Peering out the living room window as discreetly as possible, Liz whispered over her shoulder at Eli who was still entranced by the sport section. "Looks like Team Elliott just took another blow."
"That's too bad," Eli replied. "But our Cadence never was one to take the path of least resistance. She'll figure it out, Lizzy."
"I hope so," a worried mother admitted. "Something tells me she's headed for heartache, and I don't know how to prevent it."
"You can't, honey," her father stated. "It's part of life."
"Well, I wish it didn't have to be. But Aaron… that boy's trouble with a capital T."