Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTY
NOW
THE FAMILY ARRIVED IN Haven for the anniversary and spring break this morning, and it has been utter chaos since they walked in the door. I keep getting pulled in five different directions at once, trying to manage everyone’s needs and wants. You would think they’ve never been to my house before. I’m starting to regret giving Elena’s nanny the weekend off. She would have been a great buffer to some of the chaos, but I didn’t want to subject her to the craziness, even if she was used to it. I had to practically shove her out the door last night because she knew what was coming. We both did. But it’s fine…I only need to get through the next two and a half days and then I’ll be a comfortable distance away with my feet back on the ground in New York.
Until then, I will take every opportunity to sneak away, like now…For the past two hours, I’ve been hiding in the office. I snuck down after putting Elena down for her nap—which she fought me on, saying she was “too excited to take a nap” and there “was so much to do!” She loves having the family together because she has her cousins to play with and her grandparents to spoil her. But when she crashed ten minutes later, she crashed hard.
I didn’t plan on being down here as long as I have been, but I needed a few minutes alone and something to distract me. If I couldn’t escape long enough for a hike work was the second-best choice. Then a few minutes turned into almost two hours of researching the house’s resale value based on all the work we had done to it.
When Nick and I bought the house a few years ago, we gutted it down to the studs and redesigned the entire thing, together. Bringing our combined visions to life was the most fun I’d had on a project in years, but now…it made my heart yearn for those moments again. I couldn’t go anywhere in this house without thinking of him.
“You have a minute?” Someone knocks and I’m surprised to see Nick’s little brother, Alex, standing in the doorway.
“Sure,” I say, motioning to the chair on the other side of my desk. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, I just wanted to talk.”
Alex and I haven’t talked much since everything happened. Truthfully, I can’t remember the last time we had a conversation outside of a family function, and even then…it was mostly small talk. It wasn’t the normal banter I’d become accustomed to over the last decade.
He fidgets with his hands, seemingly unable to get comfortable.
“What’s up?” I ask, leaning back in my chair, a little fidgety myself. I grab a pen from my desk to keep my hands busy.
Alex tries to get the words out about five times, but he can’t seem to find what he’s trying to say. He sighs. “What am I supposed to do, Nina?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I’m getting married next month.”
“I’m aware.” I stare at him blankly, not seeing his point yet. What does this have to do with me?
I swear it takes a full minute for him to say, “He’s not here, Nina. My brother…He’s not here . Still. How am I supposed to get married without him?”
It’s my turn to sigh, pushing my thumb and forefinger into my eyes to pinch the bridge of my nose.
“I can’t push it again. That wouldn’t be fair to Lara. We’ve already pushed it twice. I can’t—I can’t ask that of her.”
“No, you can’t,” I say.
When it became obvious Nick wouldn’t be home in time for Alex’s wedding last June, he and Lara decided to push the date back six months. Five months later, they postponed to May this year. Alex didn’t want to get married without his best friend. I didn’t blame him. Had the roles been reversed, Nick wouldn’t have wanted to walk down the aisle without his little brother, but at some point, Alex needs to be realistic and accept that Nick isn’t coming home. At least not how we want him to. He’ll have to do the unthinkable: get married without his older brother.
Alex sighs. “I can’t get married without him.”
“So, you’re not going to get married?”
“Of course, I am!”
“Then I guess I’m a little confused. What is it you’re trying to get at here, Alex?”
He shakes his head and tears his gaze away from me to look out the window taking up almost the entire exterior wall. Alex pushes his hand through his hair, cut shorter than it was at Christmas. The curls he shares with his brother when it’s long are now gone.
“I have done everything I can to try and bring him home,” I say, trying to regain his attention. “To find him. It’s not—”
“That’s why you spend almost every night with the sheriff?”
My heart stops. Full on stops for at least a second. What did he just say?
His blue-eyed stare is lethal when he turns back to me. “What? Did you think we didn’t know? You don’t hide it as well as you think, Nina. Hell, you didn’t even wait a fucking month before he went missing to jump into—”
“I’m going to stop you right now. Before you say something you’re going to fucking regret.”
Alex doesn’t back down, though.
“I’m going to let that one slide because I know you’re upset about your brother and your wedding and whatever else you have going on. But so help me God, Alex, if you ever say something like that to me again—”
“What?” He scoffs. “What are you going to do, Nina? Nothing. You’re not going to do a damn thing, because—”
“Alex. Shut the actual fuck up.”
It’s silent for a moment, the only sounds from someone walking above us and the patter of raindrops that have started to hit the window.
“Do you even care that he’s gone?”
“How dare you?” I practically spit the words at him. “I have worked my ass off to try and bring Nick home. I have exhausted every resource, every favor, every debt owed to me to find something—anything—that will lead me to him. And do you want to know what I’ve found? Niente. I have found nothing, Alex. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the fucking planet.”
Alex swallows whatever bullshit he thought of spewing a moment ago.
“You think I don’t care? You think I’m not upset?” I scoff and toss the pen I’ve been holding on my desk, pushing up from my chair. “I don’t have the same luxury of being able to break down and worry like the rest of you. Someone has to keep shit going around here. Someone has to hold shit together and it isn’t going to be any of you.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“Make no fucking mistake, Alexander Davis; I break, too. And I am completely fucking broken. I could lose everything, every single fucking thing in this world, and as long as I had your brother…I would have been okay. But now, I have no choice. I have to be okay because someone else depends on me. That little girl upstairs misses her daddy, and she spends most days wondering when he’s coming home. I have no choice but to continue to be strong for her.”
“None of this justifies spending your nights with the sheriff.”
A dry, humorless chuckle emanates from my lips. “Alex, I am warning you—”
“You don’t deny it!”
“Nothing is going on between me and Beau Turner!”
The sounds from upstairs have quieted down now. Whoever is up there is trying to listen, to hear what’s going on.
“Beau feels guilty because his deputy refused to take the police report. He feels guilty because he wonders what might have happened if you had tried harder to talk to him instead. If you had pushed a little harder to make someone believe you!”
“This isn’t my fault.”
“Need I remind you why your brother was out here, to begin with?”
Too far, Nina.
“You’re a bitch,” Alex says without remorse.
“Maybe.” I shrug. “But at least I know I’ve done everything to find him. Have you?”