He nodded.
“With . . . me?”
He looked around the room, then back at me. “You see anyone else here?”
The whites of his eyes were bloodshot, which made the blue of his irises all the more brilliant. He stared at me, waiting, utterly serious. I had a fleeting image of four beautiful dark-haired children running around a park, screaming in glee, as Nico and I watched on, holding hands and smiling.
My heart alternated between wild throbbing and stalling out altogether. I felt a little dizzy.
“I’m tellin’ you this because I’m not gonna waste any more time on anything that isn’t real. Always wanted a family. Not gettin’ any younger. And now that I have you . . . ” he pressed a soft kiss to my lips, “I can’t see any reason to put it off.”
There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. I was having trouble breathing. Memory was wreaking havoc with my emotions, and I was in danger of either breaking out in tears or throwing up.
“Um . . . can we wait to get started until after I pee?”
I should have learned by now that Nico would see past my attempt at lighthearted evasion. His sleepy gaze sharpened. He lifted to an elbow and hovered above me, searching my face. “What’s wrong?”
I turned away, swallowing hard.
“Kat—”
“Just give me a second,” I whispered, trying desperately to catch my breath. I pulled myself from his arms and sat up abruptly, covering my naked breasts with the sheet. Nico sat up beside me, tense and watchful, his gaze riveted to my face.
Gulping air as I stared out the windows to the city below, I flattened my hand over my heart. I knew I was going to ugly cry—my watering eyes, clamoring heartbeat, and shaking hands attested to that—but I hoped I’d be able to get through the next few minutes without breaking down completely.
I’d never spoken aloud what I was about to tell Nico. Not since it had happened, more than eight years ago. But he’d been so honest with me, risking everything, I had to be completely honest in return.
No matter how much it hurt.
“When I was seventeen, I got pregnant.”
The first of the tears crested my lower lids and spilled down my cheeks. I didn’t bother wiping them away. Beside me, Nico was silent.
“My mother was terminally ill with breast cancer at the time. She was sick a lot after my dad left, but this was different. Watching her die was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It was brutal. Over the course of a year, she wasted away right in front of my eyes. I was just a kid, with no dad around, no siblings, facing the fact of being totally alone in the world, and I just . . . I just went crazy.” I closed my eyes, the pain of remembering sharp as a blade scraped across every nerve ending. “I had an affair with the school counselor.”
Nico slid his hand up my spine, beneath my hair. He cupped the back of my neck and squeezed. Somehow his support made me feel worse.
“Logically I can look back and understand I was just a scared teenager looking for a father figure, but at the time I thought it was love. Glenn wanted me to have an abortion. I can’t really blame him. If anyone had found out about us, he’d have been fired, probably prosecuted. But I didn’t tell anyone. And because I didn’t want to have an abortion he cut off all contact with me. He quit his job right in the middle of the school year and moved away. I never saw him again.”
Nico muttered, “Motherfucker.”
My laugh was humorless. “Yeah. So there I was, a pregnant minor with a dying mother. I was friendly with the hospice nurse who was taking care of my mom, and confessed my condition to her. I couldn’t tell my mother, of course. Obviously that wasn’t a choice. But the hospice nurse referred me to an adoption agency, and I registered with them.”
My voice kept breaking. Tears streamed down my cheeks, dripping onto my chest. Nico scooted closer to me, wrapping his legs around my hips. He pulled me back against his chest and I rested my head on his shoulder. I kept my eyes on the view, on the beautiful clear sky, focusing only on my next breath.
“I got to decide who the adoptive parents would be. There were a bunch of applicants; I had no idea so many people who wanted babies couldn’t have one of their own. But there was this one couple, Brian and Diana. They were both from big families and always wanted kids, but she couldn’t have any because she’d had cancer. The chemo had put her into early menopause. I decided on them. Because of my mom, and her cancer. I felt as if there was a connection. Like it was meant to be.”
Nico hugged me hard. “That’s beautiful, baby. You did the right thing.”
My face screwed up. I couldn’t see anything anymore because of all the water in my eyes, so I closed them tight, shaking violently in his arms. “I’m not done with the story yet.”
It was several long moments before I composed myself enough to continue. “By the time my mother died, I’d turned eighteen. The day they called me from the hospice to tell me she’d passed, I went into labor.” From my mouth came a strangled sound. I gasped for air. “I wasn’t due for almost another two months.”
Nico fell completely still. His arms around me were crushing.
My final words were whispered. “It was a baby girl. She was so tiny. So frail. I couldn’t believe she made it at all. For three days, Brian and Diana and I slept in the NICU at the hospital, watching her fight. And then on the third day, our little baby girl died.”
Nico breathed in horror, “No.”
“The doctors weren’t clear if there was a genetic component, something wrong with the baby that would have made her premature anyway, or if the stress of my mother’s death put me into labor, but I didn’t have any money for testing, and what difference would it have made? My baby was gone. My mother was gone. And Brian and Diana suffered almost as much as I did. Maybe more, in a way. All their hopes and dreams, dead.
“And I felt responsible. Even though I hated myself for it, part of me wished I’d had the abortion like Glenn wanted me to. Part of me thought it was my own fault, all the suffering I’d caused this sweet couple. Part of me wanted to die, too.”
Nico turned me to face him. He was shaking his head, tears welling in his own eyes.
I cut him off before he could speak. My own words were sobbed. “So I don’t know—if there’s something wrong with me—if maybe I can’t have a healthy baby—”
“Angel.” Nico crushed me against his chest, kissing my face, my neck. “Angel, stop! It doesn’t matter! What matters is us—”
“But you want a family!” I wailed. “What if I’m broken? What if I can’t give you what you want?”
Nico rolled onto his back, taking me with him. He hugged me so tight I could barely breathe, but I didn’t care. I clung to him, crying hard, my face in his neck.
His voice in my ear was gentle, but determined. “You are what I want. You are what I need. Anything else is a bonus.”
“But—”
It was his turn to cut me off, his voice firmer. “No buts! There are doctors we can see if you’re really worried about it. We can get answers from professionals before we make any decisions, okay? Jesus, I’m sorry. If I’d known anything about what you’d gone through, I’d have brought this up in a whole different way.”
He kissed me again, stroking my hair away from my tear-streaked face. “How about this.”
I blinked up at him through wet lashes.
“How about if we get married, and work out all the rest of this stuff later? Let’s take care of the important thing first.”
My tongue wouldn’t work. In fact, none of my bodily functions seemed to be working. I felt like I was floating, weightless, in outer space.
Nico frowned. “I’m not likin’ that look on your face, darlin’.”
I managed, barely, to say his name. Whatever he saw in my face then made his own face crease into a smile.
“It’s settled, then. We’re gettin’ hitched.”
“Wait,” I said, breathless, reeling. “Wait.”
His frown retur
ned. “What?”
“You can’t propose without a ring.”
His brows shot up. “No? ’Cause I just did.”
“Now? But . . . yesterday. What happened with Avery.” I hated to say it, but it had to be said. “And soon, the funeral.”
Sorrow welled in his eyes. His voice was quiet. “Yeah. The funeral. Need to know I’ve got you there by my side. Need you standin’ next to me. Gonna need you more than ever, that day. And every day after.”
When I began to protest again, he shook his head. “No more secrets between us. And no more distance. It’s you and me, a team. And I want to know you’re legally obligated, baby, because you’ve got a bad tendency to bolt for the hills.”
I studied his face, my heart racing. The future was rushing at me, enormous and beautiful. “Grace is going to have an absolute fit.”
Into his eyes came a mischievous light, though his expression remained serious. “Almost worth it to say ‘yes’ just to see that, isn’t it?”
“One more thing.”
“What’s that?”
I swallowed. “You haven’t said you love me yet.”
“Oh.” He considered it. “That’s true.”
I waited. “So?”
Very seriously, he said, “You love me.”
“Nico!”
He tried to look innocent, and failed miserably. “What? You said, ‘You haven’t said you love me yet.’ So I did. Are you gonna be this difficult to please as my wife?”
Hearing him say “wife” recalled the tears to my eyes. “You’re a jerk,” I whispered, not meaning it.
All the teasing left Nico’s eyes, his face, his voice. He gently cupped my face in his hands, staring up at me in a sort of wonder, as if the sun were shining right out of my head.
“What I am is yours. All yours, body and soul. And I can’t live without you. I don’t want to spend a single minute from this moment on without you. I sleep better with you. I feel better with you. Everything seems brighter when you’re around. I can’t imagine a future without you in it, and if that’s not me tellin’ you ‘I love you,’ I don’t know what would be.”
Overloaded with emotion, I burst into a fresh onslaught of tears.
Nico sighed. He lowered my head to his chest and let me sob against it, combing his fingers through my hair. “Woman, you’re a damn handful.”
I cried even harder, and let the man I loved hold me until I was all cried out.
We agreed not to tell anyone about our engagement until an appropriate amount of time after Avery’s funeral had passed. However, our opinions varied greatly about the correct definition of how long was appropriate. Nico thought a few days or weeks. I thought a few months, maybe even a year. For the time being, we agreed to disagree.
I was having a hard time processing everything. Part of me was convinced I was lying in a coma somewhere, dreaming up the whole thing. Another part of me was blissfully happy.
And another part, a darker part, was terrified. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I knew fairy tales were just that: tales. Made-up stories. How could I—Kat Reid, regular girl, sometime fuckup and full-time cynic—be in love with, and engaged to, the force of nature that was Nico Jameson Nyx?
An unanswerable question. The more pressing issue at hand was Avery’s funeral.
Four days after her death, the memorial was held at Hollywood Forever, a sprawling cemetery adjacent to Paramount Studios, where some of the most famous legends in the entertainment industry were buried. When Nico and I pulled up in the Escalade driven by Barney, security was tighter than tight. Staff was denying to callers that there was a service for Avery Kane, even though it had been reported in all the papers. Police cars were parked in a line in front of the entrance, blocking the public from the grounds. Even the flower delivery vans were being searched. A large white tent had been erected over the burial site so the helicopters couldn’t get photos of the grave, or of anyone who attended.
Goddamn helicopters. Just the sound of whirring could now make me jump a foot in the air.
Nico had insisted the funeral be family only. Which meant it was him, Barney, me, and Michael, Avery and Nico’s brother, who’d flown in from San Francisco that morning.
The minute I laid eyes on him, I knew he was trouble.
The family resemblance was striking. He had Nico’s height and coloring, the same square superhero’s jaw. But where Nico had an indefinable glow about him, a compelling ease in his own skin, Michael was all hard angles and edges. Whippet thin and full of nervous energy, with sharp, darting eyes, he carried himself like someone who’d just robbed a bank.
I found him unnerving. He seemed to take an even stronger dislike to me. When Nico introduced us, Michael stared at me with such unconcealed hostility, my breath caught in my throat. But as soon as Nico turned to look at him, Michael’s expression went blank.
“Nice to meet you, Kat. Nico’s told me a lot about you. Sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.”
When he turned and walked stiffly away, going to speak to the sad-eyed priest across the tent who would preside over the service, I squeezed Nico’s hand.
“He doesn’t like me.”
“It’s not about you.”
“Why do you say that?”
Nico ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “He blames himself for introducin’ Amy to Juan Carlos. He’d never admit it, but I know him. He’s sufferin’ as much as I am. You just met him at the worst possible time.”
It sounded reasonable. But the little twinge in my gut had me thinking twice. I decided not to make a mountain out of this particular molehill. Not now.
“I’m sure you’re right. Ignore me, I’m premenstrual.”
Nico sent me a grateful smile. I knew I’d done the right thing by letting it go. But I decided to stay as far away from his brother as I could.
Unfortunately, Michael made that impossible. When the priest murmured that the service would begin, Michael came and stood right beside me, so close his shoulder touched mine. With Nico on my other side and Barney to Nico’s left, we stood in a row beside Avery’s dove-gray coffin, listening in silence as the priest began to speak. Nico held my hand so tightly my fingers went numb.
I noticed Michael’s hands flex open and closed several times, as if he was itching for something to hit. I wondered if a tendency toward anger was another thing that ran in the family.
Then it was over, as abruptly as it had begun.
“May her soul and the souls of all the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace.” The priest sprinkled holy water over Avery’s coffin. He made the sign of the cross in the air. All that was left to do was watch as the coffin was lowered into the ground.
Michael stepped away and crossed his arms over his chest, avoiding Nico’s eyes. I thought it strange the two of them didn’t embrace. “See you at the house later tonight?”
Nico frowned. “You’re not comin’ now?”
Michael shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and shook his head. “You know crowds make me twitchy. I’ll be over after everyone leaves.”
“It’s just gonna be us, the band, and a few of her friends.”
Nico hadn’t wanted anyone but us at the funeral, but I’d convinced him to have a small wake afterward at his house for a few industry people, Avery’s friends, her manager and agent, and the band, so they could pay their respects.
Michael’s unfriendly gaze settled on me. “Like I said. Crowds.”
It was official. Nico’s brother hated me.
“Suit yourself.” Nico pulled me close to his side and kissed my temple. Michael watched, his expression pained. He glanced away, but for a moment I could have sworn I saw pure rage cross his face, there, then instantly gone.
“Yep. Later.” He turned on his heel and strode away, exiting the tent through a curtain. He shoved it aside with disdain, as if it had personally offended him.
I exhaled a breath I didn’t kn
ow I’d been holding.
Nico’s voice was as dark as his eyes as he stared at the curtain Michael had disappeared through. “We were never that close. Not like me and Avery. And if I’m bein’ honest, which I always am, I probably blame him for Juan Carlos, too. Just as much as I blame myself for everything else.”
I saw how much he was hurting. Though his logical brain realized he wasn’t responsible for Avery’s overdose, I knew he couldn’t shake the guilt. I knew there was a voice whispering in his ear that he’d failed her.
I also knew—by the way he wouldn’t let me out of his sight, the way he now had to know where I was and what I was doing every moment in the past few days—Nico had transformed his guilt into an iron-clad determination to ensure he’d never fail me.
The two of us were going to need a shitload of therapy.
Barney laid his big hand on Nico’s shoulder. “You did everything you could, man. And then some. Not everything can be fixed. Not everyone can be saved.”
Nico looked around the tent. He looked at the forest of flowers. He looked at the priest. He looked at the coffin. He said, “Let’s get the fuck outta here.” And so we did.
“Oh, Kitty Kat, it’s good to see you again,” said Kenji, embracing me tightly. “Wish to hell it wasn’t because of this, though. Life’s a real twat sometimes, right?”
He released me, shaking his head. We stood in a corner of Nico’s living room, near the wall of windows where I’d stationed myself in an attempt to remain mostly invisible to the smallish crowd of Avery’s friends as they milled around the tables of food set out by the caterer. I felt beyond awkward, and didn’t want Nico holding my hand or showing other outward signs of affection, which, naturally, aggravated him. But I wasn’t giving in. Fondling your new girlfriend at the wake of (who everyone assumed was) your late ex-girlfriend was in the worst possible taste.
It was beginning to hit me just how delicate the situation really was.
I didn’t want to invite questions, or attention. I didn’t even think I should be there. But Nico had refused to consider the possibility. “Wherever I go, you go,” he’d said, all growly and Nico-ish, and that had been that.
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