by Jade Kerrion
“Nicole!” Rico shouted. “Enough. This is a family thing. It has nothing to do with you.”
She spun on him. “A family thing? Abuse isn’t a family thing, or is it?”
“Will you keep your voice down?”
“And now you’re afraid your neighbors will hear that your brother-in-law is hitting your sister? What are you trying to protect, Rico? Your sister or the illusion of your perfect family?”
“You’re making this worse.”
“I can’t make anything worse. The worst thing has already happened. Your sister is in there, believing that she’s somehow to blame because her good-for-nothing husband beat her. Worse, I bet your parents are in there telling her to be quiet next time, don’t stir his anger, don’t upset him, don’t make demands of him.”
“You don’t know my parents.”
“I thought I knew you, and now I realize I don’t.”
“Let us all go inside and talk about this.”
She shook her head. “You want to take this showdown off the streets, fine, but I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Nicki, you’re completely overreacting. This isn’t about us.”
“You’re wrong. This is about you, who you are, and if we have a relationship, then it’s about us.”
Phil made a snorting sound. “Is this your girlfriend, Rico? She’s got quite a mouth.”
Nicole turned on him. “Like your wife? What are you going to do about it?”
Phil took a step toward Nicole, but he was stopped by Rico’s outstretched hand. Phil glared at her. “What’s between me and Marie is between me and Marie. It’s not your business. Stay out of it.”
“Should I stay out of it until you kill her? At that point, you’ll need a lawyer, and at that point, I’ll quit private practice to join the state attorney’s office so that I can put you in jail.”
His face mottled. “I would never hurt her like that.”
“You already have. A bad day is all it takes to go from an open hand, to a closed fist, to a gun.”
“You’re wrong.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re a goddamned bitch!” Phil raised his fist.
Big Guy lunged. His sharp teeth clamped down on Phil’s leather-covered arm before he could make contact with Nicole.
Shock, rather than pain, made Phil recoil. He sagged back against the car and stared at the dog whom he had sworn was as gentle as a lamb. “He attacked me!”
“That’s because the dog is the only male out here with any sense,” Nicole snapped.
The Belgian Malinois’s ears were flat; his teeth bared. His black eyes, grim and watchful, fixed on Phil.
Nicole touched the dog’s head. “Come on, Big Guy. Let’s go.”
Rico swore under his breath. “Wait, Nicole. I’ll take you home.”
She kept walking.
He raced after her and grabbed her arm. “Don’t walk away in a huff.”
“I am in so much more than a huff right now. But do I hit Phil? No, I don’t. Because beating someone up is never an acceptable solution—regardless of the trigger.”
“There’s a lot more going on here than I’ve told you.”
“Maybe, but what I’ve seen doesn’t bode well for you or your family.”
“Look, it’s a high-stress situation. No one’s really at his or her best in a situation like this. Will you come back and give me a chance to explain?”
“A chance to explain why you’re buddying up to your brother-in-law after he hit your sister? After all, he’s your best friend from high school. Figures. How many times have you taken his side over your sister’s?”
“It’s not about taking sides. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I’m surprised your sister even had the guts to call you after what your best buddy did to her.”
“My sister knows I’m always there for her.”
“And that’s why you’re out there, chatting with Phil, instead warning him to stay away from your sister forever.”
“They’re married.”
Nicole’s throat caught. “Marriage is just a piece of paper. Easily signed. Easily shredded.” She shook her head. “And you said the one thing I’d hoped I’d never hear you say?”
“What?”
“‘They’re married,’ as if it makes it all okay. You’re going about relationships all wrong, Rico. I’m sorry I wasted a single moment on you. You’re wrong for me and I’m glad I found out now, before I allowed myself to love you any more than I already did.”
“You love…Nicole.” Rico held his hand out. “Will you just hear me out?”
She closed her ears and her heart to the plea in his voice, turned, and walked away. Big Guy—her only true protector—followed her.
Chapter 7
Less than twenty-four hours later, Nicole glanced down at the address she had scribbled on a piece of paper. She sucked in a deep breath. Rico wouldn’t like what she was about to do, but she was through with thinking about what he would or wouldn’t like. She should have known that he was just like all the other men. She should have trusted her experience instead of allowing love to blind her.
Even so, her heart ached, the pain so real she wondered how it couldn’t be physical. Her head throbbed with the onset of a migraine. She couldn’t believe how much she was hurting over a man who was wrong for her.
Fool me once, shame on you. But never again.
Nicole rang the doorbell of the apartment and waited until it opened a crack. The chain bolt slung across the door permitted a glimpse of the woman behind it.
“Marie?” Nicole asked.
“What do you want?”
“I’m Nicole Lefton. I was with Rico at your parents’ house yesterday when you arrived.”
Recognition flickered over Marie’s face. “You were gone when I came back out.”
“Yes, I had to leave.”
Guilt muted Marie’s tone. “Sorry about what happened. I didn’t mean to drag my parents, or Rico, or you into it.”
“You’re not dragging me into it. I’m here because I want to be; I’m worried about you.”
“Me?” Marie’s eyes widened.
“Can I come in please? I’d like to talk to you.”
Marie pressed her lips together. The door closed briefly before reopening fully. Marie wore a robe over her pajamas. Her hair was in disarray, but not enough to conceal her bruised eyes and swollen lip. “Sorry, I wasn’t expecting guests. I called in sick today. I couldn’t deal with the questions and the stares.”
“I understand.” Nicole took a quick glance around the clean apartment.
“He’s not here,” Marie said. “He didn’t come back last night.”
“Where is he?”
“Out drinking?” Marie shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t ask anymore. Do you want coffee?”
“Only if you do.”
“I don’t, but making coffee gives me something to do with my hands. Otherwise…” Her voice wobbled. “I don’t know.”
Nicole followed Marie into the kitchen and leaned against the kitchen counter while Marie prepared coffee and reheated croissants in the microwave. Marie’s shoulders slumped as she tugged her robe around her shoulders. “So why are you here? Rico said you’re a lawyer, or something like that.”
“I’m also a volunteer at Hannah’s Home.”
“What’s that?” Marie asked as she reached for her cup. Her hands shook.
Her heart aching, this time for Marie instead of for herself, Nicole wrapped her hands around Marie’s, steadying them. “Many years ago, when I needed it most, Hannah’s Home was my home.”
The heat of the afternoon had passed into the cool of the evening when Rico scribbled his name into the visitor log. “Is she home?” he asked the doorman who, by now, recognized him as a regular visitor to Nicole’s condominium.
The doorman nodded. “I saw her come in about a half hour ago from her evening walk.”
“Good.
” A muscle ticked in his jaw as he waited for the elevator. On the short ride up to her floor, he jerked backward and forward on the balls of his feet. The emotions roiling through him made it impossible to be still. What the heck had she been thinking—?
Her door opened before he could raise his hand to pound on it.
She stared up at him, her face expressionless. “Hello, Rico.”
“Don’t ‘hello, Rico’ me.” He glared at her. “I want to know what you told my sister.”
“I told her the facts.”
“And what are those, exactly? Do you know she’s filed a police report and taken out a restraining order against Phil? She even had the locks changed.”
“Good for her.”
“What are you doing? You’re interfering in something that isn’t your business.”
“And when does it become my business? When he shoots her?”
“He won’t do that.”
“He has a gun in the apartment, did you know that?”
Rico’s heart clenched. “No, I didn’t.”
“Your sister knew. You never bothered to ask.”
“Look, let me in. I don’t want to talk about this in the corridor.”
The Nicole who smirked at him was practically a stranger. “You don’t have to worry about your precious family reputation here.”
“Let me make this clear.” He pointed a finger in her face. “This isn’t about me or my family reputation.”
“It certainly isn’t about your sister. So tell me, what is it about?”
“You don’t know what’s going on.”
“So tell me.”
“I tried to tell you yesterday before you walked out on me.”
“Fine, so tell me now.”
Rico raked a hand through his hair. “Phil’s had trouble ever since he came back from Afghanistan. He lost a couple of his buddies, including Big Guy’s handler, in one attack. He survived it without any lasting physical injuries, but it’s all the invisible damage that’s hardest to get over.”
Nicole’s expression gave no indication of softening.
He continued. “He has PTSD. He’s on medication. He’s getting help for it.”
“Oh, really?” She did not sound convinced.
“Look, he was my best friend in high school. I know who he is, and what he is now isn’t it. He needs some time and lots of support. Confront him directly and he’ll go on the defensive; he’ll explode. What he needs is time to wind down, and he’ll acknowledge his own problems. That’s what I was trying to do yesterday—giving him time to cool down.”
“Until the next time he explodes. It’s been going on for a year, and it’s getting worse.”
“But Marie…” Rico paled. “She didn’t say that.”
“What was she supposed to say when she saw you on Phil’s side?”
“I’m not on Phil’s side. I’m trying to help him calm down, and it’s not by getting in his face when he’s trying to work through all the stuff in his head that followed him home from the war. You had no right jumping into the middle of all this—visiting my sister and convincing her to shut him out. He needs her to get through this.”
“He needs a punching bag—one that isn’t flesh and blood.”
“What do you think he’s going to do now? He’s furious that he can’t get back into his own house, that Marie can call the cops and have him arrested for being within twenty feet of her. You’ve made things so much worse for both of them.”
“Or have I saved her life?”
Rico snorted. “You’re making it worse than it sounds. He would never hurt her.”
“He already did. Everything else is a matter of scale, and the slope is a lot more slippery than it looks.”
“You had no right to interfere. Who do you think you are? You don’t even want to acknowledge that we have a relationship, but you stick your nose into my family’s affairs?”
“This isn’t about us.” The coldness in Nicole’s tone drenched him. “And you had no right to sit back and do nothing.”
“I wasn’t doing nothing. I was working on making it better. He needs her.”
“My mother thought my father needed her too. That’s why she stayed with him. That’s why she kept taking him back even though his beatings often landed her in the hospital and my sister and I in foster care.”
Rico stared at her. “You have a sister?”
Nicole’s face was pale, almost white. She gripped the edge of the table as if it were the only thing keeping her upright. “We were thirteen. It was Valentine’s Day. Mom and Dad were supposed to go out to a dinner, but they didn’t. He was late coming home from some dead-end job he was barely holding down, and when he did, he was drunk. He and Mom got into a fight. She had worn a pretty dress for him, but he tore it off and said she was dressed like a whore. He started beating her. Trisha and I stayed in our bedroom—we knew not to go out or he’d hit us too—but when Mom started crying and screaming and pleading with him not to shoot her, Trish…she ran out. She ran to our mother.”
Chill squeezed merciless fingers around Rico’s heart. He had seen recent pictures of an older woman with Nicole—her mother, apparently. He had not seen any pictures of Nicole’s twin sister. He had not even known, until minutes earlier, that Nicole had a sister.
It didn’t take a genius to guess what happened.
Rico finally managed to find his voice. “Where is he now?”
“Serving thirty years. He pled insanity, but deliberate drunkenness isn’t insanity, and threatening to kill his daughters before they grew up to be whores like their mother isn’t insanity. It’s abuse. It’s violence. It’s murder.”
“What happened to you…after?”
“We didn’t need Hannah’s Home after the police took him away, but for the two years before, it had been our retreat when he beat her hard enough that she ran away. The volunteers at Hannah’s Home told her he needed professional help, and that she needed to stay away from him, but she insisted that he wasn’t really like that—that it was the stress of not being able to hold down a good job that made him drink. Each time she returned to him, she brought us back to him.” Nicole turned her back on Rico and walked to the window. She pressed her hand flat against the windowpane.
He had never seen her look so alone.
Finally, he understood.
Nicole continued in a tremulous monotone. “I blamed my mother for Trisha’s death. I wanted the state to take me away from her. I was willing to take my chances in the foster system; it couldn’t possibly screw me up any worse than she had, but a social services aide who had never met her or spoken to her decided she was a competent parent, so I had to stay with her.” She laughed, a hollow, humorless sound. “The house was just a place to sleep at night. After school, I hung out at Hannah’s Home. I did my homework there, had my meals there, and eventually started to help there. It was one way I could give back to the people who had tried so hard to save my sister and me.”
“And your mother?”
“She got a job and tried to clean up her act. She had a tendency to pick lousy men, but I wasn’t around, so it didn’t bother me.” Nicole turned to face Rico. A self-mocking smile curled her lip. “They never stayed around long anyway; usually long enough to smack her around once or twice. Each time, she swore it would be different. It never was.”
“But you’ve made up with her.”
“I see her a few times a year, but almost never on special occasions. It hurts too much when we look around and realize who’s missing. She takes a polite, academic interest in my life. I tell her enough to not seem rude, and we leave it there.”
“It’s not her fault.”
Nicole’s eyes widened. “Of course it is.”
“You’ve said it’s not Marie’s fault her husband hit her.”
“No, but if she goes back to him and puts herself in a position of being hit, then she’s stupid, and at that point, it is her fault. I’m helping your sister walk away.”
“You don’t know my dad.”
“But I know Phil.”
She tilted her head. “Do you? A charming and intelligent young man with bright prospects is unexpectedly derailed by life. A job loss and a damaged reputation in my father’s case. A career-ending physical attack and PTSD in Phil’s case. What they thought defined them is no longer there, but the girl from their previous life is. She’s still pretty. Still hopeful. Still thinks he’s the wonderful provider he no longer is. He doesn’t know what’s worse—the way she looks at him or the way he feels inside when he wonders what she’s looking at. He wants to make it stop, and the only way he knows how is to make her stop looking at him.”
Rico’s heart clenched at the lyrical way Nicole told the story—a layer of gloss over the heartbreaking ugliness of a man falling apart. “Phil needs help,” he said quietly.
“Yes, but he doesn’t need to be around Marie while he’s sorting out his life.”
“She’s the key to sorting out his life.” Rico’s shoulders slumped as he sighed. “She was hands off for him for the longest time because she was my sister. It was an unspoken bro code—you didn’t make any moves on your best buddy’s sister—but I know he looked at her differently. Phil straightened up whenever she came into the room and watched over her probably more protectively than I did. The day before he left for training, he told my sister how he felt about her. They dated through the months he spent at boot camp and his first domestic tour of duty. He proposed before his first international tour of duty, and they married when he came back on leave. Phil was already making plans to leave the military; it was supposed to be his last tour. He loved the military, but he knew she needed him to be around. That’s why I’m telling you—this isn’t him.”
“It’s him now,” Nicole said. “And now is the only reality that matters.”
“If now was the only reality that mattered, I would never have started that affair with you. I was working toward something I wanted in the future.”
“If you’re talking about a relationship—”
“You said you love me.”