Keeley headed downstairs in her swimsuit wrapped in one of Aaron's luxurious towels—why were expensive towels so much softer?—once the cookies were all out of the oven and cooling on plates. He didn't have a cooling rack either, which wasn't surprising.
She had to remember to take the elevator key with her so she wouldn't get locked out of the top few floors.
Interestingly enough, each apartment was assigned a locker to keep their belongings in as they used the facilities. They all had passcodes instead of combination locks but Keeley didn't know the code and she had left her phone upstairs.
She ended up hiding the elevator key in the folds of her towel and left it on a deck chair. She decided to swim before using the hot tub and slid into the warm water with a contented sigh. This was nice.
Summer was halfway over and Keeley had only gone swimming once at a public pool with Ryan and Valentina on one of her rare half-days off. She enjoyed swimming but hardly got the chance to go.
Public pools weren't exactly plentiful in New York City. When she went with her friends it was so crowded that she got kicked or hit by no less than ten different children swimming by. It usually wasn't worth it.
This pool was mostly empty and had six different lap lanes. There were so few people there that she had a whole lane to herself.
Feeling nice and calm, she floated on her back and kicked occasionally so she wouldn't sink. It was slow—it took her fifteen minutes to back it back and forth across the pool a few times—but she was perfectly at peace.
As she transitioned from the pool to the hot tub and eased herself into the bubbling water she thought about how nice this was. No wonder Aaron moved here after finishing college this time around. The house they lived in together after getting married didn't have pool or hot tub access.
Something came back to her that startled her so much she jolted out of the water, accidentally splashing herself in the face. Aaron said he picked it specifically so she could have a safe place to be. She had been so overloaded with information that day that it slipped her mind.
He didn't care about things like hot tubs! He moved here because he wanted a building with security that could keep his parents and any other schemers out. He even kept his staff small and didn't give them full access to his life.
He did that for HER. He didn't want to repeat the same mistakes he had in their last life. Alistair and Roslyn didn't even know about her, let alone that she was currently staying here.
Keeley felt unexpectedly aggrieved. Aaron changed a lot of things about himself and his lifestyle this time around because he wanted them to be happy together. She hadn't given him enough credit for that.
It was funny how things worked out. She gave up everything for him and he never appreciated it…and now she was doing the same when he gave things up for her sake.
She tried telling herself this was different. Aaron was supposed to love her back then. Right now she never asked for anything from him but to live her life in peace.
Except…that wasn't entirely true. She kept accepting his help. She kept talking to him. Jennica's accusation last year that she was encouraging him wasn't so far off base. How had everything become so mixed up?
Keeley did still want to be left alone, didn't she? Then why did she keep talking to him? Why did she keep humoring him? Why did she sometimes even enjoy it?
Her first life with Aaron had so many bad memories that the good ones were practically drowned out. For someone who wanted to forget, she sure spent a lot of time on the guy. Thinking about him, talking about him, spending time with him…
She didn't love him anymore but she felt sorry for him and cared what happened to him in general. It looked like she had had emotions to spare for the man after all. And she hated it.
This wasn't supposed to happen. When she woke up as a seventeen-year-old again she promised herself that nothing would stop her from living her dreams. She had hated Aaron and was determined to avoid him, though she was unsuccessful.
How could she have known that he remembered everything and was trying in his own twisted way to make things right?
Keeley had thought she was given the chance to live again so she could live her life free of him like she was always meant to. But what if that wasn't it? What if the force behind their dual reincarnations was trying to give them another chance to be together and do it right this time?
She couldn't deny that Aaron was supportive of her dreams and wasn't likely to treat her the same way he had before. Maybe she really should ask him to explain how he really felt after all.
No! Even if he was different now, they still weren't well-matched. They would never work.
Why was she even thinking about this? She didn't love him anymore. She hadn't for about a decade. She would not be swayed. Nobody decided her fate but her!
Keeley climbed out of the hot tub with a resigned sigh. She shouldn't have agreed to stay here. It was too easy to think of him when she was surrounded by his things and his cat. It felt like she was fighting a losing battle here.
She kept saying the last thing she wanted was to get entangled with Aaron again and yet she had agreed to stay in the apartment he bought with her in mind. Her friends were right—she was giving off mixed signals.
What exactly did she want? Did she want a life without him or to get over the past enough to accept a better one with him now than she had before? Not knowing was beyond annoying.