Because my sister was in love with you and I can’t … I can’t go there. “Do you think about her?” she asked before she could access her good sense and keep her mouth shut.

“Yes,” he said again, not having to ask who. “I think about her every time I have a call up on Dead Man’s Cliff.” He met her gaze. “And you, Lily. To be honest, mostly I think of you.”

She sucked in a breath at that. She’d thought of him plenty too. But somehow she’d never pictured him thinking of her in return. Shaking her head because it was too much, she took a step back.

He reached out for her, but she lifted her hands to hold him off and shook her head again. “Don’t,” she whispered. “I … can’t.”

And then she walked away. Or maybe ran was more like it, taking the stairs blindly. At the top, her fingers shook so badly she dropped her keys twice before Aidan gently nudged her out of the way and opened her door with his keys before bending to scoop hers off the floor.

“You have keys to my place?” she asked in surprise.

“I have keys to everything.”

Except her heart, she told herself. Nope, he was firmly locked right out of that particular organ. And he’d stay out.

Aidan watched Lily’s heart go to war with her head for a beat before gently nudging her inside.

She slipped out of his jacket and handed it back to him. “Thanks for that. And the ride. Lock the door on your way out?”

“I can’t leave you alone. Not on her birthday.”

“Yes you can. You just walk out the door.”

He gave her a slow shake of his head.

“And you call me stubborn,” she muttered beneath her breath, but he was fluent in Annoyed Female Speak, living with Kenna.

“Do you want to talk about her?” he asked.

“No. Not even a little bit.”

Wrapping his fingers around her upper arm, he pulled her back around to face him when she turned away. He tried to read her expression and went still with a gut-wrenching pit in the bottom of his stomach. “Does this have anything to do with me?”

A sound came from deep in her throat. Pain? Regret? Hard to say as she pulled free and took a step back, staring at him, clearly shocked. “No, of course not. I don’t know why you’d ask me such a thing.”

“Maybe because immediately afterward you took off,” he said. “And when I called you, you clearly didn’t want to talk to me. That was the last I heard from you for a decade until the junk food massacre in the convenience store.”

She closed her eyes. “It’s not you. It’s me. Ashley’s accident. It was all my fault, Aidan.”