“Could we talk—?”
“Goodnight, Nichole.”
And though he walked out without another word the message couldn’t have been more clear. He’d just given her a lesson in meaningless sex. And the way this felt she’d never need another.
SEVENTEEN
First jealousy. Then shame. And now, as if the past two days hadn’t been shaping up to suck enough, Garrett was topping them off with a solid helping of guilt.
“Her fiancé?” A string of hot vulgarities spilled out of his mouth, and even after he’d realized they were pouring straight into his little sister’s ear he couldn’t manage to curb them.
That explained the familiarity he’d seen. The intimacy. And, hell, even the questions in their eyes.
This was the guy who’d been Nichole’s first...everything. Her first boyfriend. First kiss. First lover. First fiancé... First broken heart.
And he’d been little more than a kid through it all. Which meant as much as Garrett didn’t want to be able to relate to that feeling of having bitten off more than he could chew...he did. He understood how a kid could have someone as incredible as Nichole ready to offer him her forever and not be able to take it.
Only Paul wasn’t a kid anymore. And, thinking back to the night at the gallery, Garrett was pretty sure he’d seen all the familiar shades of longing and regret in the guy’s eyes as he followed Nichole’s every word, laugh and move.
“Ex-fiancé. But, yeah. And F.Y.I. he was asking Sam about her after you guys left,” Maeve sniped. When he didn’t offer whatever threat of beat-down she was looking for, she let out an irritable huff. “Maybe you missed the subtext of what I was saying? He’s interested in Nikki. The guy she once told me would probably have been the one if she’d met him ten years later. So what are you going to do about it?”
Garrett raked a hand through his hair, looking out the window of his office at the darkening sky.
What was he going to do? Get lost in work for a while—like the next month or so—however long it took to get past this situation with Nichole. To stop wondering when he’d be able to see her next. What she’d think of some development at work. How hard she’d laugh at the tasteless jokes he’d picked up at the site. He needed to get past that place where so much of what he looked forward to was tied to her.
Because it wasn’t fair to hold on to her when all he could offer was less than she deserved. When she’d let him offer her so much less than she deserved.
“I’m not going to do anything. Nichole and I are through. It’s up to her if she wants to give this Paul another chance.”
“You’re through?” Another huff—this one edged with a growl. “You’re a jackass, Garrett.”
Totally. Without question.
But he was through being a bastard. Nichole might have thought it would be easier, but he’d barely been able to stomach himself. He owed Nichole an apology, but every damn time he got near her it seemed he took something he shouldn’t. So, rather than using this as another excuse to get into her space, he was going to give her what she’d been asking him for for over a month. He was going to get out of her life for real.
The fact that they’d left things on such a foul note... Well, it just meant it would be easier for her to put him out of her head and move on with the life she was supposed to have.
* * *
When Garrett didn’t turn up at her door the next day or the day after that Nichole realized he wasn’t coming back. That this time it was truly over between them.
She should have been relieved. Maybe she was. Only it was hard to identify much of anything beneath the ache in her heart.
After a couple of weeks of carefully avoiding the topic of her brother, Maeve had let it drop that Garrett hadn’t been out since that night at the gallery either. Though her friend had simply meant to let her know it was safe to get back in the water, Nichole had taken no comfort in the assurance.
Garrett had built a life around sacrifice and putting his responsibilities before himself. He’d missed out on so much already. Just when he’d found his way back to his friends, to the kind of full life he’d been missing all these years—she didn’t want him to give it up for her.
It was time someone else made the sacrifice so Garrett didn’t have to. She’d moved on with her life before...found a new path when she’d needed to. She could do it again.
* * *
The twins’ birthday was the typical run of insanity Garrett had come to expect over the years. The boys were jacked up on cake and presents and what was probably going on their fourth glass of chocolate milk. Bethany’s mother-in-law was in the living room, narrating a digital slideshow chronicling the boys’ lives from news of fertilization through their soccer game the week before. Garrett sat through it each year, but today it was more than he could take.
It had been a month since that last night with Nichole, and instead of it getting easier with the passing of time her absence from his life had become a hole in his chest...growing bigger every day. Numbing all the parts of him that were necessary to live.
This morning he’d woken with the absurd notion he might run into her tonight. He’d shaken the idea off immediately. In all these years she’d never been invited. And, though she’d become closer to all his sisters over the past months—even if Bethany had asked her to come—from the scant intel he’d gathered, she’d gone off the grid completely. Yet somehow he’d retained a shred of hope, because upon arrival the first thing he’d done was walk through the place, scanning each room as he went.
Now, an hour in, he was trying to keep up the façade of easygoing uncle... But the second the boys were distracted by a new guest’s arrival it fell away. He needed to get out of there. Needed to walk outside. Get some air. See the sky.
He needed to breathe and it just didn’t feel like he could.
Walking through the party, he looked for his sisters—only to discover they were conspicuously absent. What the—?
The laundry room? One of Ned’s relatives had probably made a crack about Bethany’s nacho dip and the rest of the Carter girls were talking her down from the ledge.
Following the hall behind the kitchen, he saw the door to the little room was closed but an inch gap of light showed at the base. It was quieter here, allowing him to hear the murmur of voices from within.
Busted.
Swinging the door open with an intent to rib his sisters about hiding during a family event, he didn’t even make it a step into the room before a single word stopped him in his tracks.
“Pregnant—”
Whispered by Maeve and left hanging when all four of their faces swung around to his, eyes wide in varying degrees of fear and horror.
Pregnant.
Time seemed to stall as a slow burn worked across his chest, pins and needles of sensation spreading through organs that had gone numb but were suddenly alive.
The air whooshed into his lungs as he grabbed Maeve’s shoulders with shaking hands.
“She’s pregnant?” he demanded, a thousand things running through his head at once. Volvos and car seats, savings bonds and swing sets. A house with a yard and a fence and a back porch where they could watch the kids play while the sun set in the background.
What if something happened to her? What if they made a family and—God—what if she was taken away? If he lost her? What if he had to hold this tiny, precious little life that was Nichole’s legacy in his clumsy hands and he was alone?
His gut clenched hard, but then he thought of those big brown eyes looking across the pillow at him each morning.
What if he didn’t have to do it alone? What if this time it was Nichole standing beside him through the good times and the bad? Laughing with him. Letting him hold her.
Another gulp of air. This one deeper than the last.
“Garrett, just calm down,” Maeve pleaded, her eyes darting nervously back and forth.
She didn’t get it. She didn’t need to be nervous about him finding out because with lightning clarity it struck him that he was—
“You need to listen. Everything is going to be fine. She’s going to marry him and—”
“What?” His vision pushed in, going tunnel. The only thing he could see was Maeve’s face, contorting from fear to confusion to...amusement?
She thought this was funny?
“Oh, my God, no, Garrett. Not Nichole.” Maeve was really trying not to laugh now. “I’m sorry. But it’s...Erin.”
His chin jerked back as another set of feminine hands grabbed at his shirt, tugging him around to face his sister.
“Garrett, please don’t do anything crazy. He loves me—and look!” Erin was shoving her left hand in front of his face, showing him the neat cluster of diamonds in the shape of a heart on her third finger. “We’re getting married.”
Leaning back against the folding counter behind him, he met his sister’s eyes. Forced his head around the information in front of him that felt like too much to comprehend. “Do you love him? Really love him? Are you sure you want to get married?”
Erin blinked at him, then turned slowly to her sisters and back. “Umm...yes.”
Bethany hissed something from her corner by the dryer and Erin stood a little straighter and smiled.
“Yes. Garrett, we’ve been talking about getting married for months, before he found out about the baby. I guess he wanted to wait until Christmas—not because he didn’t want to have to get me a ring and a present or anything, but because he thought it would be romantic.”
Garrett held up a hand, almost too deflated to bear its weight. “Then, honey, I’m happy for you.”
He was. It was just that for a minute he’d been happy for himself. He’d thought he had it all. And the realization he didn’t had pretty well knocked the wind from his sails.
A second later the laundry room door opened again. George popped his head in, looked down at Erin’s hand still held in front of Garrett’s eyes, blanched and backed out with a quick slam of the door.
Garrett rolled his eyes as Maeve let out an indelicate snort. The girls started laughing, and him along with them. Looking from one sister to the next, he thought George was going to have to toughen up if he was going to be a parent. It was no walk in the park...but it would be worth it. Garrett thought about all that Erin and George were in for together and it struck him how incredibly lucky they were. How much beauty and awe lay ahead.
Then Bethany, Carla and Erin left the room, leaving Garrett and Maeve behind. His littlest sister cocked a brow at him and asked, “You okay?”
“Not yet,” he answered, rubbing at that bruised feeling over his chest.
She stepped into him and gave him one of those very sweet kisses that involved tugging him low even as she stood on her toes to reach his cheek. “You did such a good job with us, Garrett. You protected our family. And, as much as I hate what you had to give up to do it, I’m thankful you did—because you kept us together. But now it’s time for you to take care of yourself. I love you, bro.”
EIGHTEEN
Nichole shouldn’t have come. It was stupid and self-destructive. Equivalent to picking at the wound over her heart that already wouldn’t heal. But Sam had asked her to come over for dinner, wanting to talk. And when she’d tried to make an excuse, he’d rather effectively guilt-tripped her into it with a reminder about her month-long disappearing act.
He wanted her out of her apartment.
He wanted her to talk.
And so she’d come.
But now she was sitting on the rooftop of her dreams and nightmares. The chilly October air was biting her cheeks as Sam ran downstairs to grab them a couple of mulled ciders he’d whipped up.
The sun was doing its slow decent through the western sky, coloring everything in its path. In the quiet of the evening, removed from the street level rush, she drifted back through the months to summer. To that first toes-dip back into the pool. To Garrett.
If she’d had any idea what she was in for would she have done it anyway?
Yes.
Again and again and again.
Because while it lasted it had been incredible. Amazing. And having her heart break was better than never feeling it at all.
The scrape of feet moving over the rooftop sounded behind her and a tingle of awareness skirted across her skin.
Not Sam.
Garrett.
Her breath left her lungs in a rush and her fingers splayed wide over the rail as she tried to tell herself to be calm. To be strong. But all she could think was that he’d orchestrated this. He’d gone to the lengths of pulling Sam into whatever his plan was. After all this time, maybe he still wanted something.
Stepping beside her, Garrett set two mugs of cider on the rail and then wrapped a thick blanket around her shoulders from behind, so she wouldn’t have to turn away from the blazing sky before them.
His hands shaped her upper arms, but he left a space between them.
“I never should have left the way I did. I shouldn’t have behaved like I had some right or claim or justification for going nuts about you talking to another man. Not when you’d offered me something so much more and I’d turned it away.”
Her shoulders slumped as that crazy bit of hope she’d been clinging to slipped through her fingers.
He was here to apologize. After all this time. Because Garrett...was Garrett. She’d become a responsibility somewhere along the way, and he was simply incapable of not facing up to it.
“I wasn’t trying to play a game with you, Garrett. Not consciously anyway. I just... When Paul showed up—”
“You don’t owe me an explanation. It doesn’t change what I did. I’m sorry and wish I’d had the clarity of thought to do something else.”
Walk away? Maybe take that blonde who’d been flirting with him home?
She didn’t want to think about that night. Right now she just wanted to remember all the things that had gone right. The fun. The ease. The promises fulfilled.
“Okay,” she said, her following deep breath meant to be the break between one topic and the next. “So—been enjoying many sunsets lately?”
“I’ve been watching them—but, no. Not exactly enjoying them.”
She turned then, drawn more by the man behind her than the star around which her very existence revolved. “Garrett, you’ve to got to stop holding yourself accountable for everything. If you’ve been worried about me—”
“I have.”
This was why she was looking into accountancy firms across the country. Why she’d set up an interview for the next week.
She shook her head, but he just went on.
“Because if you feel even half as hollowed out and lost as I do, I don’t know how you’re surviving.” Garrett looked past her to the sky beyond and then back to meet her eyes. “I watch the sunsets I’ve been waiting years to be able to enjoy and all I can think is how empty they are without you. I tell myself this connection is nothing I can’t walk away from or get over. But there’s nothing—nothing about it. We have a bond, and I’m finally starting to understand just how significant it is. It’s about friendship and caring and attraction and the kind of sweet insanity of need I couldn’t understand until I met you. It’s about me wanting you to be a part of everything I do because everything I do is about a thousand times better when you do it with me. I was an idiot for taking it for granted, selling it short. Selling us short. Trying to let you go and doing such a poor job I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive myself.”
Nichole’s hands were on his chest then, the b
lanket slipping off one shoulder. Garrett caught it before it fell from the other. He tucked it around her and used it to pull her close.
“Garrett, what are you saying? That you want to give this a try for real? You think you might—?” Her voice cracked and she had to stop and blink back a tear. “You might want a future together?”
The muscles of Garrett’s throat worked up and down as his jaw flexed. He gathered her hands in the warm hold of his own and held her gaze. “No. I’m saying I don’t think I can live with a future where we aren’t. Today I—I misheard something and got it in my head you were pregnant.”
Nichole’s chin snapped back. “Oh, God. I’m not—”
“No.” He gave her a wry smile. “I know. But for the sixty seconds I thought you were...damn, Nichole, that might have been about the most terrifying, best moment of my life. Because suddenly I could see how incredible it was going to be...and how much there was to lose. A lifetime of everything I wanted condensed into a single minute. There was only one course of action and I wanted it. Get Nichole back and marry her today.”
Garrett drew a breath and closed his eyes. “But then it was over. Because it’s Erin who’s pregnant...not you.”
He wanted her. Not some casual bit of fun. Not just the good time while it lasted. Pure elation pushed beneath her ribs as her stunned mind tripped and staggered over the words she’d never expected to hear. Processing each one until—
“What? Erin’s pregnant?” She gasped, wondering if George still lived.
“Stop searching my clothes for blood. George is fine. They’re getting married and I’m happy for them—mostly. But that doesn’t matter right now.”
She couldn’t be hearing him right. Not about any of this. And especially not about his sister’s pregnancy and impending marriage ranking as a lower priority than what was happening with her.
But that was what Garrett was saying. It was what was in his eyes. In the way he held so fast to her hands. Like he thought she might get away before he’d had the chance to make his case.
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