by Liz Fenton
I stare at the jeweled pineapple on the side of the purse cradled in my arms—wanting to understand why it’s here in Nick’s walk-in closet.
The hairs on my arms stand on end again, and sweat trickles down my back. I keep thinking I hear a key in the lock.
I check my phone again, which I had set to silent mode. More texts from Nick.
Hey!
I tried calling you. Are you still at your place?
Hello?
Quickly I shove the box back up on the shelf. I remove James’s sweatshirt and wrap Dylan’s purse in it and hurry to the elevator, pushing the button over and over, but it won’t come.
My thoughts unfold one by one.
Nick has Dylan’s purse, which was stolen less than an hour before she died.
I take the stairs two at a time, lose my balance, and grab the handrail, the purse flying, its contents spilling.
He could only have her purse if he’d been the one to steal it.
I scoop up Dylan’s things, shove them back into the bag, and wrap it in the sweatshirt again, my hands shaking. Finally I’m in the parking garage standing next to my car. I push the button on my fob and hear the click of the doors unlocking.
Which means Nick was in Maui when they were. That he’d been inside their Jeep just before they died.
I gasp for air as the realization sinks in.
“Surprise,” Nick says from behind me, his breath on my neck.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
JACKS—AFTER
I freeze, squeezing the sweatshirt, the purse beneath it pressing into my ribs. “Nick . . . you scared the shit out of me—” I try to swivel around, but his lips are still pressed against the back of my neck, his arm around my shoulder.
He plants a light kiss on my cheek. “Aren’t you happy to see me?” he asks.
“Yes, even though I can’t exactly see you,” I say, his hot breath tickling my ear.
My mind is racing, the strap of the purse poking me. It won’t let me forget what I now know. That he was there. Inside their Jeep. Was he a stalker, a jilted lover who had spun out of control?
Or more?
I release a long breath. There has to be an explanation. Maybe Officer Keoloha didn’t mention that the purse was found. And maybe Nick has it because it was sent back to him because he had been still engaged to her. His touch feels like the Nick I know—the Nick who could never have lied to me. “That feels good,” I say, and he spins me around.
“I tried calling you about thirty minutes ago to let you know I got off work early . . . why didn’t you tell me you were here?”
“I . . .” I was so focused on not getting caught ransacking his place, I hadn’t decided what I’d do if I did. I feel my cheeks redden as I try to think of a reason. “I came here to surprise you actually. When you got off your shift. Funny, we were surprising each other!” I force a laugh.
“Well, it’s kismet then—us surprising each other. I decided something today, you know,” he says, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I’m a pretty lucky guy.” He smiles.
I smile back and take a deep breath. There’s going to be an explanation. There has to be.
“Hey, so where were you going just now? It looked like you were leaving.”
He furrows his brow.
I stare at him for a beat, searching his eyes, looking for the assurance that he’s not questioning me because he knows I was up to something. That it’s all in my head, and it’s my Nick I’m looking at. “I took the stairs to get a little cardio in,” I say, the sweatshirt feeling like a neon sign pointing toward my lie. “And I got hot while I was running—so I was about to throw this in my car,” I add. I hate drawing attention to James’s sweatshirt, but I can’t think of any other reason I’d be holding it.
“I’ve never seen that one before,” he says.
My heartbeat speeds up again. “I found it in the back of the closet today. I’d forgotten I had it.”
“You okay?” He squints at me.
I nod.
“Hey . . . let’s get out of here—go for a drive. There’s supposed to be a beautiful sunset tonight. I know a spot where we can watch it on the cliff in Newport Coast. It’ll be chilly, but you have that.” He motions toward the sweatshirt, and I think I see a flicker of something—doubt?—cross his face.
I hesitate, because I need time to think—to talk to Beth. To figure out how I’m going to explain why I have the purse. But I already told Nick I was surprising him.
“C’mon, let’s go. Gorgeous sunset. Me. What more could you ask for?”
Nick’s eyes are lighting up. He’s him. The funny one who sent me a hilarious cat meme yesterday. The sexy man whose eyes almost disappear when he’s laughing hard.
“Okay,” I say, and open the back door, gently putting the sweatshirt on the seat as I calm myself down.
“Good answer!” Nick says, and gets in the passenger seat.
"What do you think is the best way to get there?" I ask, starting the car.
“Head down the one thirty-three; the place I’m thinking of is in Newport Coast off PCH—best views ever.”
We head toward the beach, and Nick rolls his window down, resting his arm on the top of the door. Then he turns to me. “You want to stop for ice cream first?”
I think about last night. How we toasted our love with our cones. Mint chip for me. A double scoop of vanilla for him. I remember thinking it was the first time I’d really felt peaceful in as long as I could remember. And I’d love to have that feeling again. Because I know once I ask him about the purse and the ID, there’s no turning back.
“That sounds nice.”
We eat our cones at a table outside the parlor and watch the waves slowly roll in. It’s peaceful, hypnotic—almost enough to let me pretend I wasn’t in Nick’s walk-in closet just an hour ago. He talks mostly about his last shift—and I try my best to listen. But I can only go a few minutes without thinking about the ID and the purse. And how he will explain them. If he can explain them. Beth would tell me I’m crazy to be sitting here eating ice cream when I should be confronting him. But—and there are so many buts. Because either way, someone is going to get hurt by what is said. And I’m tired of being hurt. I think back to when I’d glanced through my peephole that day the police came to tell me James was dead. How I would have loved to have just a few more moments of not knowing! Just one more day of having my biggest problem be a leaky faucet. I ponder those last moments more than I should—wishing I could go back and be the naive girl behind that door.
“You were on my mind today,” Nick says when we get back inside my car.
“Oh?” I ask as I turn the ignition and back out of the parking space.
“I think about you a lot.”
“And?”
“Well, I don’t want to scare you away by saying this—in fact the guys at the station told me I’d be nuts to admit this to you right now. But I’m going to take a risk and do it anyway . . .” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I realized that you’re my soul mate.”
I let the words sit there for a moment, turning them over in my mind. I’ve never believed there’s just one person for everyone.
“Too much?” He laughs lightly, searching my face.
“No,” I say, and pause before adding, “I’m just taking it all in.”
Taking him in. Wondering if I know him at all.
“I realize it’s probably too soon when we’ve just said the l word, but it’s different with you.”
“Wow . . . I’m . . . flattered.”
“Flattered?” he asks, and I cringe.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean flattered. I don’t know. I’m a little caught off guard is all.”
Nick stares at me, almost as if he’s looking through me. And I feel pressure to say something to take the weight of his gaze off me. “I love you,” I say, but my stomach knots at the words. They feel wrong. Like they’re the last thin
g I should be saying right now.
“But that’s not the same thing, is it?” he asks, sounding hurt. “Do you believe you’re my soul mate?”
His phrasing of the question throws me off. Am I understanding him right? That he isn’t asking if he’s mine? Just if I think I’m his?
Dylan’s purse and ID are practically screaming at me from the backseat, and I know I can’t ignore them for much longer—hiding the truth no longer seems like a viable option. Could Nick have lied to me about how he came to have her purse—but be telling the truth about thinking I’m his soul mate? Were things with me really different than they had been with Dylan? I’m going to ask him about the purse as soon as we get to the hotel. Until then, my instincts tell me to be agreeable. “I do. I do think we’re soul mates,” I say.
“Do you think you’re mine?”
“Yes, that’s what I just said.”
“Not exactly,” he says.
Why is this so important to him?
Before I can respond, he continues. “Because the thing is, Jacks, for this to really work between us, we need to be on the same page.”
“We are on the same page—I love you.” I feel squeamish after I say those words. There’s something off-putting about his tone, his demeanor, his needing me to say this a certain way.
“But do you love me more than you’ve loved anyone else?”
His question feels like a punch in the stomach, because I know he’s asking about James. You’re two different people. I can’t compare you,” I manage, judging the distance to Newport Coast Drive in my mind. I ask, judging the distance to it in my mind. My heart thuds in my chest as I calculate; it’s still several minutes away. I know I need to ask him, but I’m so scared. Maybe I should turn the car around. Drive to Beth’s. Have her there when I question him.
“Yes,” he says. “And you’re probably going to need your sweatshirt. It will be chilly once we get outside.”
Nick reaches into the backseat to grab the shirt. “Wait,” I say, but he’s already unbuckling his seat belt.
“What the—”
He doesn’t finish. But he doesn’t have to. His face freezes as he sees the purse. “What are you doing with this? This doesn’t belong to you.”
“I—”
“You went through my things?” He raises his voice. “Is that why you were in my place?”
“Nick, I—”
“You don’t trust me?” he asks, like it’s the most inconceivable thing in the world.
As I look into his eyes, my first instinct is to say that I do. Because he’s been there for me through the worst time of my life. I’ve confided in him. He’s listened. But the purse. The purse doesn’t make sense.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You know, I love you more than I loved Dylan. But you obviously don’t love me more than you loved James,” he says, and I feel myself getting defensive. My love for James isn’t in the past tense. I’m not sure it ever will be. Or if I ever want it to be. That love is deep. With roots. It is complicated and quirky and now he’s gone, but it’s still ours. And that can’t be measured. But before I can respond, Nick dives in again.
“He cheated on you. I would never do that to you. But yet it’s my home you snoop through?” Nick says, and when he puts it this way, it does seem wrong.
“Nick, I was going to tell you. Because obviously we need to talk about what I found and why you have it—”
Nick turns away, and his shoulders start shaking.
“Nick?” I say his name a few times, but he doesn’t respond. Finally he turns, and there are tears streaming down his face. There’s something about his overwhelming emotion right now that warns me not to reach out to him. Like he’s deliberately creating a wall between us with his tears.
“I thought you understood me, because you’d been through the same thing. It’s like you don’t care about me the way you should. And neither did Dylan. And I hate it when I give, give, give and get nothing in return. When I lose.”
“What do you mean?” I ask, a slow chill traveling up my spine. The red flags are becoming impossible to ignore. My gut tells me I already know the answers to my questions about the purse, the driver’s license, the stalking. The realization runs its way through me, quick and sharp.
“She gave herself to him, but she belonged to me.” Nick turns toward the window again.
There’s something about that word that pushes me to confront him. “Nick, were you engaged to Dylan when she died?”
He jerks his head around and stares at me. I grip the steering wheel tighter, bracing myself for his answer.
“Yes, I was,” he says slowly, and I let out a long breath.
So maybe there is an explanation for the rest of it.
After a beat, he says quietly, “In my heart I was.”
My stomach drops. “What do you mean, in your heart? You either were or you weren’t.”
He doesn’t directly answer me; instead he starts telling me about how she used Vaseline to get the ring off, that she told him it had never fit quite right. “I told her we could get it resized. Or I could get her a different one. But she didn’t seem to hear me. She just told me she had to go.” He rubs his hands on his jeans, lost in thought for a moment.
“Nick, did she break up with you?” I ask again, my frustration mounting.
“She said that’s what she wanted, but she didn’t have a reason. I knew she just needed time to think. That she’d be back.”
“Did she come back? Change her mind?” I press, sitting up taller in my seat.
“I was working on that,” he says, then shakes his head.
“What do you mean?”
“I needed to know how she was spending her time without me. I figured it wouldn’t take long for her to figure out she was making a mistake. So I followed her.” He chews on his lower lip. “I never expected to see her cheating on me with him.”
“But was she cheating if—”
He cuts me off and launches into a story. He tells me how one night she headed north toward Los Angeles. She took a downtown exit he didn’t recognize. His heart was hammering so hard, and his hands were getting numb—he thought he might be having a panic attack. Then he pulled his bike to a stop and watched her pull up to a hotel.
“That’s when I saw him for the first time.” He grits his teeth. “Your husband. He leaned down and kissed her. And she held him there against her mouth for too long. They were in front of people—in front of me. I almost rushed James right then—I wanted to beat the shit out of him. But I couldn’t move.”
I try to push the image out of my mind that he’s created, but I can’t. I see James’s eyes light up, him scooping Dylan up in his arms, covering her mouth with his. Where had I been that night? At home folding his underwear?
“I couldn’t stop imagining them up in a hotel room doing God knows what!” He stops, balling his hands into fists at his sides. “I didn’t sleep at all. I went to the gas station and got coffee to stay awake, and finally, early the next morning, I saw your husband come out, and I followed him.”
I can’t bring myself to stop him. Because he’s filling in the blanks. Blanks that I haven’t realized have been there for far too long.
He tells me James led him to our house. A few Google searches later, he had answers: His name was James Morales. And he was married to a woman named Jacks.
Me.
“I followed you. I watched you at Trader Joe’s as you loaded up your cart with frozen orange chicken and spring rolls. As you debated between the low-fat and the two percent milk. That was cute.” He laughs. “As you tried to fit everything in that clown car of yours.”
Goose bumps prick my arms as the real Nick becomes clearer to me. He stalked Dylan, then James, then me.
Nick describes trailing me through the aisles of the grocery store, then out into the parking lot as I struggled to shove my bags into tiny trunk of my Mini Cooper that James always chided me for buying because it was
n’t practical. Then to my home. Is that why Nick had seemed familiar when I first met him? Because I subconsciously remembered seeing him?
Rage burns inside of me as the weight of what Nick is saying hits me. He took advantage of me.
“I followed you for weeks. I realized we were kindred spirits, you and me. Even though we never spoke, I felt a connection. Because of what we’d both been through—”
I pound the steering wheel with my fist and accidentally hit the horn. “You lied to me!” I burst out.
Nick doesn’t react. “I never lied to you.”
“Yes, you did! What about when you came to my house? You acted like that was the first time you had seen me.”
“I never said that. I never told you I’d never seen you before.”
He was right. He hadn’t. I realize I’m speeding and ease my foot off the gas pedal slightly.
“But you just said you’d followed me for weeks. Why didn’t you mention that?”
“Jacks, don’t you understand I came to your door to help you? And that’s what I told you I was doing.”
“To help me? Is that what you call it?” My voice is shaking.
“Yes. Absolutely. I had information, remember? Like when I figured out Dylan’s email password and printed out all her emails to James. And showed them to you. It was so you could see what was going on between them. So you could know what he’d done to you.”
I think back to how much it hurt to read them. Had he really been trying to help me by making me read their loving thoughts to one another?
“Nick, you misled me. You said she was your fiancée.”
“She was my fiancée!” He lets out an exasperated sigh. “I didn’t agree to the breakup.”
I pound the steering wheel again. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “How could you do this, Nick? How could you misrepresent everything?” And how could I be so stupid?
“Calm down, Jacks. I never lied to you. I told you I loved her, and I did.”
My head is spinning. I try to calm my breathing, but it’s hopeless. I’m panting like a dog.
“Going to Maui together was to help us get over them. That wasn’t a lie either. And it did help—you even said so yourself.”