TENSE - Volume Two (The TENSE Duet Book 2)

by Deborah Bladon

  I never copied what anyone else was doing. Even back then, I knew that creativity is born from within and every person who presses the tip of a pencil to a sketchpad needs to find themselves in their designs.

  I'd sketch page after page of dresses, skirts, and tops and then at the end of each month, I'd trash most. I'd always choose one as my favorite and when I'd gather enough money from babysitting the neighbor's kids, I'd go to the fabric store and buy whatever was discounted.

  Then I'd work after school and on weekends on creating my design. I'd take buttons from the jar of odds-and-ends my mother and I would find on the ground whenever we were out. I'd rip zippers out of my brother's old hand-me-downs to use to fasten the dresses I'd sew.

  When I'd wear those items to school, I'd draw the attention of my classmates. Sometimes their glances were accompanied with compliments but more often than not it was insults and giggles that were leveled at me.

  I didn't change. I'd design, sew and wear my own clothing because I knew deep in my soul that one day I'd be in New York City launching my own collection. What I couldn't have imagined is that I'd be in a room with so many people I idolize.

  "This is all for you, Soph." Cadence wraps her arm around my shoulder. "I can't stop crying."

  She hasn't stopped since I got here. I saw her across the restaurant when I first arrived. She towers over most when she wears heels and it's easy for her and Tyler to stand out in a crowd. They're a beautiful couple, especially tonight. He's dressed in a gray suit and she's wearing a maternity dress that I know was designed by Evlin Dawn.

  She apologized profusely in a text message earlier but I told her that I understand. If she could, Cadence would be proudly wearing one of the dresses I made for her to this event, but she can't. The designer label that's sewn into her blue dress doesn't change how much I love her or how grateful I am that she's here on the most important night of my life.

  "It's overwhelming." I lean into her. "Sometimes I feel like I'm living a dream."

  I feel her breath hitch, so I look up at her face. "Did the baby kick?"

  She shakes her head slowly, her eyes glued to the entrance of the restaurant.

  I turn to look but I don't see anything but a steady stream of unfamiliar people walking through the door. "Do you see someone you know?"

  She nods, her mouth closed tightly.

  "It's not your ex, is it?" I inch up to my tiptoes, using her arm as leverage. "You had that same look on your face when we saw him at the movies last month."

  "It's not him." She tugs me closer. "It's your ex, Soph. Nicholas Wolf is here."

  ***

  "This party is invitation only, Nicholas."

  He slides his index finger over the screen of his phone and turns it toward me. I scan the view and instantly realize it's the same email Cadence and my parents received. He's on the guest list which means Mr. Foster is behind this.

  "I'll leave if you'd prefer," he offers. "For the record, I'd like to stay."

  "For the record, I'm still mad at you," I bite back through a smile. People are looking in our direction and I know it's not because I'm the head of Ella Kara's design team. It's because Nicholas Wolf, author extraordinaire, just walked into the restaurant.

  "I'd like to discuss that." His hand rises in the air as he waves at someone.

  He looks way too good in a suit. I try not to focus on that and let my ever present anger take the reins. "Not here."

  "I agree." He swallows hard. "What about after this? There's a quiet bar near here that we can go to."

  I should say no. There's no reason why we need to talk. He destroyed me emotionally the last time we were in this restaurant together. "I don't think that's a good idea, Nicholas. What we had is over. We can't go back."

  He steps closer to allow a server, carrying a tray of champagne flutes, to pass behind him. "I don't want it to be over. I fucked up. I own that but I can make this right again."

  I don't know how. It's not that I can't forgive him for what he said. Words are words and sometimes the pain they cause is deep but I've always been able to move past anything said to me in anger by someone I care for.

  What I can't get over is the fact that he believed that I was responsible for the leak of his book.

  "I don't think that's possible," I whisper. "You don't even know me."

  "I know me," he counters. "I know that I felt exposed and vulnerable. I know I lashed out at you without considering who you are. I regretted what I said to you immediately, Sophia. I knew that I'd made a mistake before I left this place."

  I glance around the room. "I don't think we can come back from this."

  "Do you want to?"

  "Do I want to?" I parrot back. "What does that mean?"

  His hand brushes my forearm. "Do you want to try and rebuild this? Are you open to giving me another chance?"

  "I can't answer that," I say honestly. "I thought what we had was special. I felt a lot of things when we were together. Now, I feel let down and bitter."

  "Sophia." I hear a deep voice call my name from behind me. "Come here. I want you to meet someone."

  "Gabriel needs me." I don't look at Nicholas. "I have to go."

  "I'll be waiting by the door at midnight. I've told you before I just want thirty minutes, Sophia. Give me that."

  I glance back over my shoulder to where Gabriel is standing next to a woman I don't immediately recognize. When I turn back, Nicholas is staring down at me. "I'll have one drink with you, Nicholas. You can say your peace and then this is over."

  A smile ghosts his perfect lips. "I'll count every second until midnight."

  I will too. In three hours, I'll be sitting face-to-face with the man who broke my heart.

  Chapter 12

  Nicholas

  It's do-or-die for me at this moment. I have one chance to convince Sophia that I'm the man for her. I've watched her all night. She confidently moved through the crowd, talking to countless people. Her gaze never wandered from the face of the individual she was engaged in a conversation with. She took her time, smiled, laughed and then at the end of the night, gave an eloquent, off-the-cuff speech about what fashion has meant to her life.

  If there was any doubt that I was in love with her before tonight, it's been erased.

  This is the woman I want in my life. She's everything I need and more.

  Now, all I have to do is get her to understand that I'm not the man who stood in front of her in one of the private rooms of this restaurant a few weeks ago. I'm not the guy who spat out hate-fueled words.

  "Your thirty minutes starts now, Nicholas." She glances down at her watch.

  "It'll start after we order a drink." I push open the door of the restaurant to allow her to step through and onto the sidewalk. Most of the partygoers have already left, but there are still a few people hanging back to enjoy the free drinks and food supplied by Foster Enterprises.

  "I set the rules." She tosses me a look over her shoulder. "I say your time starts now."

  I won't argue. I saw the hesitation on her face when I caught her eye at five minutes to midnight. I thought she might bail although if she had, I would have argued my case.

  "Now it is." I rest my hand on the small of her back to guide her down the street. "We're going to that bar over there. A friend of mine owns it."

  That's not meant to impress her. It's not a warning either. The owner is a woman, twice my age who is close friends with my mother. I don't want Sophia to question the embrace I'll receive when I walk through the door.

  It happens as if on cue. Shirley Bartlett rushes toward me the moment Sophia and I step through the nondescript glass door of the small establishment. It's been a neighborhood staple for years. It's also where I took my first swallow of a cheap whiskey that burned my throat. I was fifteen at the time and the memory of that day, sitting next to my father at the bar, is as vivid now as it was then.

  "Nicky." She yanks me toward her. "Look at you. You're a big deal now."
r />   Sophia eyes me up before her gaze moves to Shirley. The long dark braid down her back is a signature look for her. That and the dark rimmed glasses she's always wearing.

  "Shirley Bartlett, I want you to meet Sophia Reese."

  Sophia smiles shyly. "It's nice to meet you, Ms. Bartlett."

  "Shirley. You'll call me Shirley like the rest of the world does."

  Sophia nods before her gaze drops to her watch.

  My time with her is rapidly running out, so I scan the space for an open table. "We'll take that back table, Shirl. I'll have my regular and Sophia will have a glass of red wine."

  "White wine," Sophia corrects me. "Tonight I'm drinking white wine."

  I smile. "White wine it is. A glass from your best bottle, Shirley."

  "House white is fine." Sophia smirks.

  "This is her, isn't it?" Shirley turns to face me directly. "This is the girl your mama told me about. This is the fashion designer."

  Sophia shuffles on her feet.

  "Yes," I answer clearly. "This is her. Sophia is the woman my mom told you about. She's the most incredible woman I've ever known."

  ***

  "What I said to Shirley is true. You are the most incredible woman I've ever known."

  She traces her index finger around the rim of her wine glass. "I guess I should thank you for the compliment."

  She hasn't said a word to me since we sat down. We waited in silence for Shirley to bring our drinks and then as she went on about a conversation she had earlier today with my mom, I listened fully aware that every second was eating into my time with Sophia. I finally asked Shirley to give us a minute and she did without question.

  "I'm sorry, Sophia."

  Her gaze trails over my face. I see the sadness in her eyes. It's been there since that night at Hibiscus when I accused her of the unimaginable. "I know that you are."

  My heart buoys with her words even though I know she's the forgiving type. She's more compassionate than most people. I saw that tonight when she gave a piece of herself to everyone at her party. "I should have taken some time to decompress after I found out the book was made public. I was angry and when I lashed out, that was completely wrong. There's no excuse for the way I treated you."

  She nods. "I get that you were upset about your book showing up online, Nicholas. What I don't get is how you jumped to the conclusion that I was responsible for that."

  It's a fair question. I know she's not referring to the fact that at the time I believed that the only two people who had access to that file were the two of us. She wants to know how I thought she was capable of something so underhanded. "I wasn't thinking straight. I was panicked. I didn't take a minute to think about the woman I had spent all that time with."

  "You only considered the cold, hard facts?"

  "It's all I could see in front of me at the time," I say truthfully before I take a swallow of whiskey to fuel my next words. "I was enraged. It took months to write that book and in an instant, I lost all that effort."

  "And money," she adds. "I know you must have lost a lot."

  "Money is money." I sigh. "Whatever I do get from the book is going directly to charity."

  She rubs the back of her neck, the motion shifting the front of her dress, exposing a sliver of the side of her right breast. "That's generous of you."

  "It feels right to me. It's a shitty situation but if something positive comes of it, I'll be happy."

  "You're a good person."

  I can't tell if that's surprise that laces her voice or not, so I take her words at face value. "I am a good person. I fucked up. I've regretted it since that night."

  "It showed that you don't trust me." She takes a sip of wine; her lips leave a faint imprint of red lipstick on the glass. My cock stirs at the sight. I want that lipstick on me. On my lips, my jaw, my chest, and rimmed around my dick.

  "I trust you, Sophia."

  "No." She shakes her head. "I'm sorry but I don't believe you."

  "I trust you more than anyone I've ever known."

  She chuckles softly. "Words are just words, Nicholas. Your actions that night say otherwise."

  "Let me prove it to you."

  "How would you do that?" The tip of her index finger traces the outline of her earlobe. "You can't prove to me that you trust me."

  "I'll bare my soul to you." I pat the center of my chest. "I know you have questions about me, about my life. Ask and I'll answer every single one with honesty."

  Her eyes run over my face as she considers my offer. I know it's late. The thirty minutes she granted me ended ten minutes ago. This is when she'll flee and any chance I had of getting her back will disappear with her.

  Her tongue slicks her bottom lip. "I do have a question. I want to know why that letter Briella wrote to you is covered in red specks of something that looks like…"

  "Blood," I interrupt her. "That note Briella wrote me is covered in her blood. She wrote it just before her father walked into her bedroom and killed her and our unborn child."

  Chapter 13

  Sophia

  "She was pregnant?" I try not to sound as shocked as I feel. Nicholas might have been a father right now if the mother of his child and his baby weren't taken from him. "I'm sorry."

  "We had just found out that afternoon." He sits back in the chair. "We were two kids who didn't have two pennies to rub together, but we were excited."

  "You didn't plan the baby?"

  His mouth curves. "I was in college. Briella had just graduated high school the summer before. She was working to save for tuition. It was an accident."

  I was an accident. My parents joked about it to some of their friends one night when they'd had too much wine. I heard the confession and the resulting laughs when I left my bedroom to get a snack. I wasn't more than ten-years-old at the time. I asked them about it the next day and as they both stuttered their way through an explanation about God's master plan for them, I knew from the expression on their faces that they were ashamed that I'd overheard.

  "I asked her to marry me once we found out she was pregnant."

  The confession stings even though it shouldn't. He loved her. He told me that weeks ago, and now that I know that there was a baby involved, it makes perfect sense why her picture is on display in his apartment. He lost what would have been his family that night.

  "We didn't know how we'd make it happen," he continues, his voice cracking. "I was going to quit school and get a job. She thought she'd be able to take on more hours at the café she worked at. We were determined to make it all work."

  "You would have made it work," I say with no hesitation. He's built an incredible life for himself. I don’t doubt that his talent for writing would have emerged back then too and his family would have been well provided for.

  "I wanted to." He swallows what's left of the whiskey in his glass. "I said goodbye to Briella right after dinner that night and told her I'd have a surprise for her the next day."

  The conversation feels intimate in a way that makes me long to hold him. He's in pain. It's a kind of pain I've never known. "What was the surprise?"

  "I never played sports in high school, so my grandfather gave me his varsity ring before he died. He was the quarterback. Tough as nails on the outside, but the most loving guy you'd ever meet on the inside."

  "He sounds amazing."

  "He died a year after Briella did." His face softens. "But that night when I told him she was pregnant, he fished that ring out of a trunk in a closet. He gave it to me to give to her."

  It's something my own grandfather would have done too. "That's a special ring."

  "I have it in my pocket almost every day." He shifts in his seat as his hand dives into the front pocket of his pants. "It's a reminder of both of them."

  I look down at the tarnished ring in his palm. Most people wouldn't see the beauty in it, but I do. It represents both love and loss to Nicholas. "You treasure it."

  "With my life." His hand closes around
it. "I couldn't wait to give it to her, so I went to her house."

  I swallow. "What happened?"

  He exhales heavily. "The front door was unlocked. I called out but no one answered, so I went in."

  I want to stop him because I can't conceive the horror of what he must have witnessed in that house. "Were you there when he…"

  "No." His head shakes faintly. "I heard footsteps on the upper floor so I took the stairs two at a time. I saw her sister collapse with a phone in her hand."

  "What about Briella?"

  He looks over my shoulder toward where Shirley must be. "I went into her room. She was already gone."

  "I'm so sorry." Tears well in my eyes.

  "I saw the note in her hand."

  God. Oh, God.

  "I took it, Sophia." He leans his elbows on the table. "I took it from her hand and when I heard the sirens approaching, I left. I fucking left her and our baby there on that bed all alone."

  ***

  "I need you to understand something." His hand brushes my neck as he helps me with my coat. "I wasn't planning on telling you any of that tonight. It just came out."

  I never doubted that. It was raw and unrehearsed. The fact that his hands are still shaking now is proof of that. "I know, Nicholas."

  "No one but you knows that I was in the house."

  "You didn't tell your parents or the police?" I glance at Shirley. The bar is closed and she's waiting on the two of us to leave before she shuts down. I see the impatience in her expression.

  "No one." He buttons his suit jacket. "I was in shock back then. By the time I could form a coherent thought, I didn't want to reopen the wound."

  "So you carried that with you all this time?" I can't help but feel sympathy for that. It's one thing to lose someone you love. It's another to bear witness to their lifeless body and the aftermath of a murder of that magnitude.