Elastic Hearts (Hearts #3)

by Claire Contreras

  I blinked. “Oh. Okay.”

  He reached out for my hand again and placed it over his open palm, looking at it as if he were measuring it.

  “I’ve never seen you wearing this,” he said, turning the bottom of my wedding ring in his fingers.

  “Cameras,” I said as way of explanation. There was turmoil in his eyes that made my stomach flip. “Does it bother you?”

  He stayed silent for so long, just staring at me, reaching deep within me for something unknown to me, that I thought he wouldn’t answer. I watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, and finally he nodded slowly.

  “It does. A lot,” he said, threading his fingers through mine and bringing his free hand up to my face. He used it to brush back some of the hair that had fallen out of my ponytail and caressed my jaw with his knuckles, those deep hazel eyes still on mine. I couldn’t close my eyes even if I wanted to, and my heart felt like it was at the point of no return, kicking into overdrive as his hand continued to move down to my neck, my collarbone.

  “I want to take you to dinner,” he said, voice low. The only thing I could do was nod. I would have agreed to just about anything. “Somewhere public, where I don’t feel like ripping your clothes off, but you know how the media will get if we do that.”

  I smiled at the thought. “And let’s be honest, regardless of where we are, you’d still want to rip my clothes off.”

  His eyes darkened. “Who wouldn’t?”

  My smile dropped momentarily thinking of Gabriel. He obviously wouldn’t. Not that it mattered. Not that I cared at this point. But, God, how many women could a man have sex with in order to stay satisfied? Wasn’t one enough? I tried to lift my lips back into a smile before I gave my thoughts away, but Victor noticed. He brought my hand up to his mouth and kissed the back of it, his soft lips moving down to my wrist, over my pulse as he kept his eyes on me.

  “If you were a cockatoo, your flock would’ve killed you already,” he said, lowering my hand, but keeping it in his. I frowned, shaking my head as a laugh escaped me. I was glad for the distraction, so I went along with it.

  “Random. Why’s that?”

  “They try to hide their ailments, but the flock usually notices, because they feel it, and they gang up on them and kill them off.”

  “That’s harsh,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “And you feel something? In me?”

  He chuckled. “I can make a million jokes about that statement, but I won’t. And yes, Nicole, I feel something, in you, for you. I thought that was clear.”

  His admission was so natural, so nonchalant, but my veins thundered at the words nonetheless. He picked up my hand and kissed it once more before turning to get out of the car. “But the flock still would’ve killed you.”

  I got out and walked beside him down the side of the house. I inhaled the smell of the ocean.

  “You would let them?” I asked as I walked behind him. “The flock, I mean. You would let them kill me?”

  “It would be one against a flock of birds, because you’d probably be crying in a corner.”

  “So you would let them kill me.”

  He shook his head and stopped walking. I could sense him smiling before he turned to look at me. “I wouldn’t.”

  “Do you do this much for all of your clients?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood with a smile. I half expected him to joke about how much they pay him, but instead he brought a hand down and held the side of my face, dipping his closer. I felt like I was going to seriously combust right there if he set his lips against mine. He didn’t, though. Instead he kissed my cheek, then the corner of my mouth before moving on to the other. He backed away from me slightly, gazing into my eyes with an intensity that made my heart flip.

  “I think you know I don’t,” he whispered, still holding my face. “And I think you know this has passed the client boundary by now.” He paused, dropping his hands from my face. “All jokes aside, I’d do anything to make sure you were safe, Nicole.”

  I felt his words roll through me as he turned around. It took me a second to get my feet to move and follow him down the side of the house, toward the door.

  MY SISTER’S HOUSE was a mess. I should’ve called ahead of time and let her know I was bringing someone with me, but I didn’t have any time to process the fact I was bringing someone with me. When Nicole called me I had just left the courthouse. I didn’t have time to do anything other than haul ass to the ice cream shop and pick her up. Once I got there and saw the impending breakdown written all over her face, I thought she’d be a sobbing mess, but she wasn’t. It surprised me and disappointed me, which caught me off guard. I hated dealing with emotions and shit. Why the hell did I feel so desperate for hers? Probably because she didn’t give them to me.

  “Estelle?” I called out, picking up the sweater by the door. I turned to Nicole, who was standing behind me, looking nervous. “Sorry. This place is a mess today.” And almost every day since Oliver went back to work, really. I couldn’t even imagine what it would be like when they started having kids. A shiver ran through me and I shook it off. Nicole laughed.

  “Did you see something that creeped you out?” she asked.

  “Hey,” Estelle said, appearing in the hallway. “I didn’t hear you.”

  I didn’t say anything, I let my eyes do the talking as I looked at every surface of her crazy house. She rolled her eyes.

  “Don’t start with your shit, Victor,” she said. “I need your help to set this up so I can pick up before Bean gets home.”

  “What you need is to hire somebody to help you pick up this insanity,” I said, walking in all the way. “Oh, this is Nicole. Nicole, this is my messy little sister, Estelle. She’s an artist,” I said by way of explanation. It seemed like most artists were messy. Then it hit me. Shit. Nicole was in the fashion business. Was she this messy?

  “Oh,” Estelle said, her eyes widening as she looked from me to Nicole and back to me. “That’s fine. Sorry about the mess.”

  “Totally fine,” Nicole said, waving her words away. “This is my house on a good day.”

  My head whipped to her. What? She shrugged in response, a little smile forming on her face. I sighed and looked back at Estelle, who was still studying the hell out of Nicole.

  “She’s—” I was going to explain to her who she was when I remembered my sister seemed to know more about Nicole than I did.

  “I know who she is,” Estelle said. I held my breath, waiting for her to start freaking out. “You’re on TMZ right now, you know? I literally just saw you and Gabriel in an ice cream shop.” She paused and frowned, looking at me momentarily. “Was all of that an act? Wait. Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. Sorry. I’m sure you’re sick of people asking you about him and stuff. Make yourself at home.”

  All I could do was stare. My sister was an idiot. Nicole surprised me by laughing.

  “You’d be surprised how many regular people don’t ask me about it. I only get questions from the paparazzi.”

  “Oh. That must suck so bad, being followed like that,” Estelle said, walking over to the kitchen. “Do you want wine? Is it too early for you? Do you even drink? Sorry, I kind of assume everybody drinks.”

  “She does,” I said. “She assumes a lot of things. Forgive her. I’m starting to think maybe my thirteen-year-old self had been right about her being adopted.”

  Nicole laughed. “I drink, and it’s never too early for wine.”

  Estelle came back with two glasses and handed one to Nicole with a smile. “I hope you like Riesling.”

  “I do. I have a hard time discriminating when it comes to alcohol.”

  Estelle laughed. She looked at me, and I already knew what she was thinking. I glared at her so she would take that out of her mind, but she smiled wider.

  “So, you’re a costume designer, right? That sounds like such a cool job. How did you get into that?” Estelle asked.

  “Umm . . . where’s my drink?” I asked, raisi
ng an eyebrow. She shot me a look.

  “You know where the kitchen is.”

  I shook my head and headed over there. Either way I was going to change my clothes before I started this process. I went to the guest room, where I kept some just-in-case clothes, for late nights drinking when I didn’t feel like driving home, and changed into a pair of basketball shorts and the first shirt in the drawer, which happened to be a Born Sinner shirt from the J. Cole concert Jensen and I went to a couple years ago.

  “I think my room is the neatest place in this entire house,” I said, walking back to the living room, where Estelle and Nicole were sitting facing each other like old high school girlfriends reuniting.

  The sight made me smile. It was like she’d been here countless times. My sister had met all of my past girlfriends, and some girls I dated briefly. I liked bringing them around her before I took them anywhere near my parents. I couldn’t remember the last time she acted so comfortable around one, not that I was dating Nicole, but then again, my definition of dating differed from the rest of America it seemed.

  “If you’re so concerned about the mess, then pick it up,” Estelle said. I caught Nicole’s smile before she hid it behind her glass of wine. I held back my comment because talking about somebody’s mouth on you in front of people was inappropriate, but there were a million things I wanted to do with that mouth of hers. Stop thinking about her mouth. Stop thinking about her tongue and the way it feels against yours, and her soft skin beneath your grip. Deep breath. I turned around quickly.

  “Where’s the box?”

  “Right there beside the table.”

  I sighed, putting my hands over my head. This fucking girl. I let them continue to have their conversation about elastic and glass hearts and started to pick up everything in my way from a pair of flip-flops to a box of canvases. Once I was finished I realized it really wasn’t as much as I originally thought. It just looked like a mess when it was in the way. I would keep that to myself, though. I took the TV mount out of the box and all the screws and stood up to get the drill out of the garage.

  “You know I’m going to need your help after I’m done with this part, right?” I asked when I saw my sister serving more wine as I walked back to the living room with the drill in my hand.

  “I know,” she said, smiling. She blew me a kiss as she walked back to the kitchen with the bottle of wine, which I assumed was empty. “I love you, brother.”

  I made a face as I sat back down on the floor. Of course she loved me now. I heard Nicole get up from the couch, but didn’t look up from the instruction booklet in my hands. She kneeled down beside me.

  “You look hot with a drill in your hands,” she said in a whisper.

  My heart jumped. I tilted my face to look at her. Her cheeks were flushed from the wine, and her hair was falling out of her ponytail again. I reached out and pulled on her hair tie, letting it flow down her shoulders. I kept my hand at the nape of her neck. It was a beautiful sight. So beautiful that all I could do was picture all that hair splayed over my pillowcase.

  “I always look hot. It’s a curse I’ve had to live with all my life,” I said. She smiled, a small laugh leaving her lips as she tilted her head to better meet my gaze.

  “Are you going to help me set up my TV?” she asked, leaning forward, brushing her breasts on my arm.

  I inhaled sharply, gripping her hair a little. Her eyes widened, darkened, her lids lowering at the move. It didn’t help the situation in my pants. None of it did. I dropped my hand and stopped breathing for a moment, stopped inhaling her sweet scent. Maybe if I didn’t breathe I could cut off some of my blood supply and I wouldn’t get hard.

  “I’ll help with whatever you need,” I said, swallowing thickly.

  My eyes were on her breasts, which were covered in that stupid Mowgli’s shirt she wore. I was a fan of the band, but not when I couldn’t make out whether or not she was wearing a bra, though I’m pretty sure she was. I looked back into her blue eyes; they were soft and light, the color of a cloudless sunny day. Fucking perfect, like she was.

  “Do you guys want something to eat? I have leftovers from last night,” Estelle called out from the kitchen.

  I cleared my throat. Nicole sighed and stood up. She leaned down and her hair cascaded over both sides of my face as she placed a kiss on the left side of my neck. I closed my eyes, wishing I was free to pull her onto my lap and kiss her.

  “That depends,” I said loudly so Estelle could hear me. “What did you eat last night?”

  “Black bean burgers,” she said.

  “On bread?” I asked. Oliver had a thing about bread. They normally didn’t keep any in their house.

  “Lettuce.”

  I rolled my eyes, pivoting my torso to look at Nicole, who was typing on her phone.

  “You want black bean burgers on lettuce?” I asked. She looked up, blinking. I repeated the question, and she nodded.

  “Sure. That sounds great.”

  “We’ll have some,” I shouted as I went back to work. I stood up with the measuring tape and started to mark the wall.

  “Okay, it’s ready.”

  I set the pencil and tape measure on the floor. We walked to the kitchen together, playfully bumping at each other like high school crushes on their way to their next period. Before we reached the open doorframe that led to the kitchen, I put my arm around her shoulder and pulled her to kiss her temple. It was a quick move. I dropped my arm as quickly as I’d pulled her to me. She stopped walking, though. And I stopped walking. Her lips were parted as if she had something on the tip of her tongue, but instead she shook her head, blinked it away, and smiled as she stepped into the kitchen. I wanted to pull her against me and ask her what she was about to say. I wanted to slither my way into every single crevice of her mind and dig until I found her deepest thoughts, her darkest flaws. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t, so instead, I followed her into the kitchen and sat beside her at the small wooden table in Estelle’s kitchen.

  Estelle and Nicole talked about food and wine as I ate and watched the animated way Nicole moved her hands when she spoke. I had to make a conscious effort to look away from her. I looked at my empty plate instead, but when Estelle brought up the subject of the media, my eyes found their way back on Nicole’s face. I couldn’t help but notice the way her smile dropped, and the light in her eyes dimmed. She shot a quick glance my way before giving a slight shrug and a little smile that upturned the side of her mouth just slightly.

  “I don’t think they’ll follow me around anymore. I’m not that interesting. They only really follow me when I’m with Gabe anyway,” she replied.

  It was stupid that it bothered me when she called him that, right? She’d been with him for a long time. She could call him babe and I shouldn’t care. But I did. And it irked me. Why the fuck did I care? It was a nickname. Then again, even if she called him by his full name at this point it would bother me. Maybe I wouldn’t care if he was being amicable, but to get a call from her and know she’d been crying . . . I wasn’t okay with that shit. We spent the rest of our time eating and talking about Nicole’s new place on the beach. She took down Estelle’s number and promised to invite her over. I excused myself from the table when I finished because I really needed to drop by the office to pick up some files before I went home for the night, and that had to wait until after I finished putting the TV up and dropped off Nicole.

  I was almost finished drilling the stand when I heard footsteps approach. I glanced over my shoulder and looked at my sister, who had her arms crossed as she watched me. She came closer. I looked around but Nicole was nowhere in sight, and for a fleeting moment I panicked and thought she’d left.

  “She’s in the bathroom,” Estelle said.

  I swallowed and nodded.

  “You look at her funny.”

  “Funny how?” I asked, lowering my arms.

  She shrugged. “Just funny. Like how you used to look at Jenny Doherty.”

  I
felt my lips twitch at the mention of Jenny. She’d been the only girl I’d dated for well over a year. I wasn’t a player. Maybe back in high school I had been, but I’d had long-term girlfriends. It was just that my definition of long-term and my sister’s definition of long-term differed. Jenny had been a catch, though. She’d been top of our class and once we graduated and I went to law school, she’d done the same in Connecticut. And then she’d met another guy and married him and started a family. We’d been broken up for years by then, but I still had fond memories of her.

  I always thought if I settled down it would have to be with somebody like that. Not somebody who was as smart or as pretty, but somebody who cared about something other than her appearance or the amount of money in my bank account. Somebody who had a balance. That seemed like a simple request, but it wasn’t. Not these days anyway, when everything was about Instagram follows and Facebook likes, and who thought you were pretty and who didn’t. I would say that only extended to LA, but Jensen was in New York and had the same experience when he was dating, and I had clients who had more money than God and were in the same predicament.

  “Vic?” my sister asked, frowning. I shook my head.

  “Yeah. No. I’m her lawyer, and I care about her and want what’s best for her, but she’s not a Jenny.” She was better than Jenny. I knew it because while I had loved Jenny, she hadn’t made me feel like I was burning up inside. Nicole was a flame. And she wasn’t going out anytime soon. I knew that. I knew that, but I felt so lost in this, in the way she made me feel and the way I couldn’t control my feelings for her, and that scared me. She was my client first and foremost. I felt the need to reiterate that to myself when she wasn’t around, because when we were in the same room, I could feel myself getting too comfortable for my own good.

  Estelle patted me on the back and snapped me to again. “Whatever you say, Vic.” She paused. “Thanks again for doing this.”

  “Sure. I just need to drill this right here just for extra support and then I’ll need your help putting up the TV.”