“We both do. I don’t have to deal with the questions from my parents and everyone else around town about what I’m doing. Have I met a nice young man, aren’t I getting older, shouldn’t I be thinking about kids? Same for Jackson. His family is thrilled we’re ‘together.’ I can live my life in peace.”
“What’s wrong with just being honest and saying you’re content to be with yourself for now? Why can’t you just live your truth out loud?”
I chuckled. For all her sensibility, she still hadn’t come to understand how close-minded the folks of Green Valley could be, especially concerning this topic. “You haven’t lived in this town all that long. You’re still doing everything ‘out loud’ and just about everybody thinks you’re a foul-mouthed banshee.” I shook my head. “I don’t begrudge you—you do you. But you don’t know what it’s like, living here with my last name. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone, including my parents, have an expectation for what I should be or how I should appear to everyone else. Hell, I think Jackson is the only thing my dad and I ever talk about. He doesn’t know what else to say to me. He doesn’t understand what I do, he’s tired of pretending he does, and he’s still disappointed I don’t work at the bank like Tavia and Walker.”
“Not good reasons.” Leigh opened her closet and rummaged through the hanging items. “Sounds more like laziness to me. You’d rather pretend you have an imitation of the thing you actually want, and I think that’s sad and pathetic. And, friend, you are neither of those things. Why don’t you take a chance on someone else? Grab whatever you actually want for once without just going along with the motions?”
“When did you become pro-relationship?”
“A relationship is fine for you,” she said, her tone stiff as she returned to the suitcase with a kelly green blouse in hand. “But I’m done with men. Finished. You should learn from my example. I’ve got to go home now for my aunt’s funeral, knowing my good-for-nothing ex-husband is going to show his face and somehow make my life hell. You want that kind of grief?”
From what I knew of Leigh’s ex, none of it good, Nick wasn’t quite as dastardly. True, he’d left abruptly, and yes he had—
“You’re over there justifying the cheating, right?” I broke from my thoughts in time to see Leigh staring at me with one hand propped on her hip. “Aren’t you?”
“I know how stupid this sounds. Really, I do. But he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, at all. Maybe if I had—”
“What? Should we have waited until he took her to the walk-in closet and got her underwear around her ankles before we jumped out? Just to be certain of his intentions?”
I covered my face with my hands. “You’re right. I’m being dumb.”
She sighed, planting her hands on either side of the suitcase’s halves. “Zora, the last thing I want to do is weigh in on how you should live your life. God knows, I wish you’d take the reins and shock yourself a little bit. I’m willing to bet you’re going to do that with Nick. I won’t judge you if you do. But I just want you to remember that people don’t change, not that much. So go into this with a clear head. Know the risk.”
“I’m not going to sleep with him.”
Her groan reeked of skepticism. “Let’s review the data points, shall we? He shows up unexpectedly and you end up face-down, ass-up in front of him. You take a private flight and end up on top of the man. You had a huge fight with him yesterday, all while you were pantsless—”
“Okay. When you put it like that—”
“It’s not me putting it like anything!” Her laugh grated on my nerves. “I’m just trying to point out the inevitable here. It’s not just you, thinking with your rational mind here. Your body is in on the decision making. You’re horny from years of celibacy, and you’re not who you were before Nick showed up. I’m telling you, your undercarriage is hot. Your engine is running. Your juice is loose.”
We glared at each other.
“Fine.” Leigh planted her hands on her hips. “Hypothetical question. First thing that comes to mind, say it. If you had sex with him, how would you do it? Missionary? Doggy? Quick.”
“No,” I said automatically, surprising myself with how quickly the answer and accompanying mental picture sprung to life. “On top.” My blood heated at the idea of me on top of Nick, straddling those ridiculously muscled thighs, my bare thighs sliding along the crisp hair of his thighs. I wanted his mouth, his tongue, on my breasts. I needed his hands gripping my back while I rode him. I wanted to follow that captivating scent, whatever it was, all along his neck with my nose, then my teeth. And I wanted my hands in his hair again, finally. I wanted to run my hands through it, grip it, pull it, punish him just a little. Or a lot.
I realized I was staring into space. Cold sweat trickled down my spine as I imagined just how good it would feel to have him inside me again, my walls clenching around him as I came.
Damn.
Leigh looked smug. “You’re over there getting off without your hands in your pants. Time to face reality. I put backup condoms in your purse and bedside table.”
Chapter Eighteen
Zora
“Thank you for coming.”
I slid into the opposite side of the booth where Nick sat, at once both treacherous and delicious in a plaid shirt rolled above his elbows. His dark stubble had taken on an increased volume and depth that made my stomach pitch dangerously. Those unnerving green eyes crawled over my body in a slow sweep, and I couldn’t shake the impression that he was somehow collecting data, storing observations that would be used against me in short order.
Meep.
Pull it together. Don’t be dumb for a man. Especially one who has already proven he can’t be trusted.
I’d pulled on a quick, no-ironing-required paisley dress that showcased my best assets before driving to Kaye’s, a cute little coffee shop straddling the Green Valley-Knoxville border. Might as well be cute when dismissing him from my life for the final time, right? I hadn’t missed the flare of appreciation in Nick’s eyes as I approached the table.
Yeah, this thing between us? It had to stop.
“You didn’t give me much of a choice,” I said in response to his greeting, tossing my purse on the bench seat beside me.
“Actually, I gave you exactly that. I simply made it clear that I had no problem showing up at your house or wherever you were tonight at this time.” His eyes burned into mine. “It’s time to talk. We have to, without any dramatic exits this time.”
“You know, at least one of those exits was yours.”
“Regardless.” He lifted one well-built shoulder in a shrug.
“Well, I agree. We need to get on the same page.”
He nodded at the empty space in front of me. “What, you don’t want any coffee? Pastry? Anything? Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
I suppressed a shiver, internally shocked at my own lascivious read of his very innocent statement. Yep, I was in trouble. “Nope. I just want to get this said.”
“Okay. Go for it.” He took a sip from his own cup of coffee, looking supremely confident. Watching his remarkable calm, I found myself wanting to kick the shit out of him under the table and make him feel a little of the tumult currently acid-washing my gut.
I’d rehearsed this speech a number of times out in the car, but I found myself suddenly out of words. I looked away from his eyes and out the window to the wet street. After Leigh’s warning, I realized I was, in fact, dangling over the precipice of my own ruin. I considered myself a smart, practical woman who usually heeded warnings and steered clear of unnecessary risks. So, I found it unnerving to realize that deep down a part of me wanted to hear the sharp clang of metal teeth closing around me in Nick’s trap. A part of me wanted to be caught, wanted to surrender to the dark intent in Nick’s eyes. Even though I knew better. After his declaration yesterday in my office where he left no question that he wouldn’t settle for friendship, I knew I had to be clear. I had to put distance between us. Perman
ently.
“I told you I was proud of you. And I meant that. I’m glad you’re doing so well in life. It’s more than we’d ever dreamed of, what you’ve accomplished.”
“Here comes the but.”
“Don’t interrupt.”
“Fine.”
“But . . . it doesn’t give you license to just walk back into my life like you’d never left. We’re not eighteen anymore—I get that. It’s not exactly fair to hold you to the promises we made as teenagers. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. But the truth is,” I said, letting some of the angst and irritation bleed into my voice, “you owed me more, even at eighteen. A hell of a lot more than what I got. A five-line letter? Some half-ass explanation that you had to go and you’d be back, with no indication of when? Even teenage you could have managed a damn sight more than that.”
His eyes closed, big hands curling around his coffee cup.
“What would have been wrong with just saying your mother was relocating to Michigan for a job and you’d decided to go with her? I would have understood that. Completely. Agreed with it. Helped you, even. I knew what was going on, what people in town were saying. Of course, she would have benefitted from starting over. But you and I still could have made it work, even long distance.”
He directed his stare to the table, all while his jaw worked as if he was chewing on unsaid words.
“You just disappeared, and all I got was that letter from my mother. That’s how much I mattered, apparently. Didn’t you know, if you didn’t want to go through with our plans, you could have just told me? And not planned an escape?”
Anguish, wet and hot, fought for clearance to my throat and eyes. I swallowed it back.
“That’s the thing, one of the things, that hurt the worst.”
“Zora—”
“No, listen. You disappeared and I waited around like a dumbass, thinking you couldn’t have done it without a good reason. Then I drove to Ann Arbor with Leigh—”
His eyebrows shot up.
“Intending to, I don’t know, see if you were okay, for God’s sake. That’s how stupid I was.” Stupid for him, I thought, but didn’t say.
He leaned forward, brows furrowed. “And what happened?”
That’s right. He wouldn’t know.
Even all these years later, talking about it constricted my heart, stopped my pulse. Here I was, thirty years old, near tears remembering the betrayal of a twenty-year-old Nick. How stupid was I? Why was I not using this time and mental space for something that actually mattered?
But at least now, finally, I was able to address it.
Closure, right?
“We went to that stupid hippie coffee shop you worked at, and saw the girl, your coworker. The redhead. Kissing you.” My eyes closed against the memory. “And you kissed her back.”
He sat back against the booth with a thud, his face blank.
All the promises I’d made to myself to be polite, professional, accepting, a lady á la Ellie Leffersbee’s design, flew out the window as I watched the dumbfounded expression on his face. “You were busy kissing your coworker, while I was pining for you, you selfish asshole.”
His expression didn’t change, but both silvered heads of the occupants in the booth behind him swiveled in our direction.
My breathing wasn’t steady. I tried to remind myself of the truth: I was angry at him. Hurt at what he did all those years ago.
But more than that, I was angry at myself. For somehow still loving him.
I hated myself for that.
“What you said yesterday.” My voice came out steady and I was glad of it. “About wanting more from me? It’s completely unfair, and uncalled for. Jackson and I—”
“I didn’t cheat on you.”
His gaze on mine was direct and unflinching. He shook his head, eyes still on mine, and repeated, “I swear, I didn’t cheat on you. It took me a minute to figure out what you must have seen, and I do remember now. That was my coworker, Rebecca, although she wasn’t always a redhead. I think her hair was every color of the rainbow in the year I worked there.” His hand snaked across the table and gripped mine, exerting warm pressure. “But I did not do anything with her. I wish you would have stayed. I wish you would have come inside.”
I yanked my hand away, mouth agape. So, this is how he wanted to do this? He wanted to deny what I’d seen with my own eyes? “Are you serious right now?”
“Zora. Listen to me. If you’d come inside, if you’d even waited just a second longer, you’d know I pushed her away. That situation, what happened, it was my fault. She was flirty, and she’d been flirty for some time. I should have shut down her advances prior to that but I just . . . I didn’t know. So I kept ignoring her, thinking she’d finally get the hint and stop.”
“You had every opportunity to pull away.”
He hesitated. “I agree, and you’re right. But I remember,” he said, his voice straining in earnest, “in that moment, being torn between not wanting to hurt her and disbelief that it was even happening. I should have handled it better, and I should have moved faster. But you’ve gotta believe me, I stopped it, I did. I’m sorry I didn’t do it when you were standing there, but I did.”
I folded my arms. “Is that supposed to make it all better? You explaining this is just some soap opera melodrama, a case of ‘she kissed me, I didn’t kiss her’? If even none of that happened, you didn’t so much as pick up a phone to even call me. Or write another letter. For two years.”
“I couldn’t.” He growled it, gripping the end of the table. “Don’t you think I wanted to? I’d never been out of Green Valley, never been away from you for more than a week at a time. All of a sudden I was in a completely strange state with a handful of family I barely remembered, finishing college and preparing for grad school. If I’d spoken to you again, if I’d written . . .” He shook his head. “I would have come back. I would have walked away from every responsibility, every obligation just to be with you, and I couldn’t. I had to do what was right for you and for my mother.”
“Your mother didn’t want us to be together?”
“No, my mother was—” He shook his head again, breath whistling between his teeth. I had the distinct impression that he regretted what he’d just admitted. “My mother needed my help.”
What was he implying?
“You don’t think I wanted the best for her, too? I have never suggested you shouldn’t do all you could for your mother. I tried to help, but you never let me, and you never told me all that was going on at the time. But what does that have to do with you letting me know you were okay? That you were perfectly fine on campus, French-kissing rainbow-haired girls?”
His face turned to stone.
I studied him, the tightly drawn lines of his upper body, the rigid set of his mouth.
“This isn’t supposed to be easy for you. You did a shitty thing. You need to own up to it.” I was suddenly weary with all of it, with the both of us, and wanted nothing more than to be back home.
“I didn’t cheat on you.” His speech was slow, measured. “Please hear me saying it. I didn’t sleep with that girl, I didn’t sleep with any girl for a while after you sent back that ring. It’s true, I’ve done things I’m ashamed of, but never that. I would never betray you in that way. I would never have left you at all but I had to do what was best for you. I already questioned whether or not I deserved you. If I was good enough for you.”
“What about when you bought that ring? You doubted whether or not you deserved me when you asked me to marry you? None of that mattered after you moved away?” I gave a derisive sniff. “Okay.”
The older couple behind Nick rose from the booth; both snuck furtive glances back at us. The man took his time helping the woman into her jacket. I spotted the quick pat the man delivered to Nick’s shoulder as they walked past us toward the door.
“He doesn’t need encouragement,” I said, scowling. A sympathetic smile flicked across the woman’s face be
fore they passed us.
Nick raised a brow. “I don’t need encouragement?”
“You’re a man about to hide behind a defense as old as Adam and Eve. You’re going to tell me you didn’t do it and expect me to magically be okay with it, to somehow believe it.”
“I’m not asking you to just believe it. I’m asking you to remember what you knew of me, all those years ago. You knew me better than almost anyone else on this planet. If I’d done it, Zora, I’d own up to it. God knows enough has happened, I’ve already messed up enough, it would just be one more item on the list. Just one more thing for me to confess. But I didn’t. If I had, I’d be man enough to tell you. I would.”
I watched him, considered his words as I took in his steadfast gaze. There was no denying the sway his words held. He was right; I remembered Nick as a kid. Clever, sly? Yes. But never with me. Never to my detriment. And when he’d done wrong, he’d always confessed. Every single time.
Even when he was afraid of the punishment.
Damn it.
Damn it. I believed him.
I lifted my eyes to him and unknotted my hands, nodding to indicate an acknowledgment of his words. “I believe you. I’m sure I’m a fool for it, and I’ll probably regret it, but . . . up until you left, you’d never lied to me. And you’re not lying right now. I can tell,” I admitted.
His entire body seemed to release its tension. “Thank you, Zora. I know you’re afraid to trust, what with all that happened. So thank you for believing me in this instance.”
We were silent for several beats in the space of our concession, each of us looking elsewhere before he suddenly asked, “Did you know your father paid our mortgage?”
Startled, I frowned at him. “What?”
“Your dad. The last year my mother and I were here, he paid our mortgage. Every month. I guess he knew my mother had trouble getting another job after she lost hers . . .” He shook his head. He didn’t have to remind me what had happened. We both remembered how his mother’s access to medication on the hospital floor had ultimately been too much of a temptation. “I had to figure it out. I knew she wasn’t paying it, and I’d learned the hard way, before I’d started paying the utilities, that there was no peace in assuming everything was okay. So I went to your father and asked him.” His jaw clenched. “And he said—”
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