Chapter Forty-Eight
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Nick
I KNOCK ON THE office door before opening it without waiting for her answer. She’s hunched over the desk, tracing over the lines of a document with her finger before glancing up at the screen and back down. This will be the first time she has faced the board since they learned of my return—alive and well, back from the dead. No matter how much I ask what she thinks will happen, she says she doesn’t know. I know her better than that. She has a plan. She always has a plan. Nina Villa never walks into a board meeting without some idea of the outcome. Whatever the outcome is this time…she doesn’t want me to know.
Things between me and Alex haven’t smoothed over since our fight last week. He left Colorado the same day—or, he left the house, I should say. According to Pop, my brother and his fiancée drove to Denver to catch a flight the next morning, and Alex spent the whole drive sulking. Pop wasn’t exactly happy with me kicking him out, but he understood why I did it.
Should I reach out to Alex? Maybe, but I’m sticking to my guns about this. I don’t care if he’s my brother, he’s not allowed to disrespect my wife and get away with it. And until he apologizes to her, there won’t be a conversation between us.
“Hey, you,” I say.
Nina looks over the rim of her glasses on the edge of her nose. The line of her lips finally curves upward.
“Want to grab lunch after your meeting?”
“That would be great.”
“You think it’ll be a long one?” I ask, coming to the back side of her desk and sitting on the edge next to her, our faces inches apart.
“I don’t know, maybe.” Nina stretches. She’s been here since at least seven this morning after coming in for a few hours last night after we landed. “They’ll have a lot of questions.”
“What could they have questions about?” I chuckle. “It’s not like they need to know—”
“I’m stepping down.”
It takes a second for me to register the words, and at first, I think she’s kidding, but nothing about her expression says this is a joke.
“W-what? Nina, you can’t. You—”
“I think it’s time.”
“Nina, if this is about—”
“No, it’s okay. With everything that’s happened, I think it’s best.”
With her hands in mine, I pull her to stand before me. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, I kiss her. “Nina, I don’t want you to walk away from this if it’s not what you want. This company, the work being done here…it’s all you. You’ve taken what your dad started and grown it into something greater. I can’t…No, I won’t ask you to walk away from it.”
“But you and Elena—”
“Will always be here.” I wrap my hand around the side of her neck and my thumb grazes her cheek. “We’re not going anywhere. What I said before…it wasn’t fair. I’m sorry. You have always made us a priority. Always. I shouldn’t have ever suggested otherwise.” She melts into my embrace when I kiss her again, hands gripping the front of my polo. “I only want you to step down if that’s what you want. If that’s what will make you happy.”
Tears brim in her green eyes, and she rolls her lips between her teeth, looking away. I know she doesn’t want to walk away, not yet. Maybe in a few years, but she’s not ready.
“Nina, the board is—Oh!” The door flies open when her assistant, Sydney, walks in. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you come in, Nick. Still gonna have to get used to seeing you again.”
I chuckle. “Good to see you too, Syd.”
Nina wipes under her eyes and takes a step back. “I’m on my way, Syd. Due minuti. ”
Sydney nods, agreeing to the two-minute request, and closes the door behind her.
When Nina looks back at me, she smiles. Before she can say anything, I close the gap between us. She gasps when I deepen the kiss, her fingers raking over my shoulders. A satisfied hum fills the air when we part.
“I have to go,” she whispers, wiping the corner of her lips.
I wipe my lips, pulling away to find some of her red lipstick on my hand.
“Red looks good on you, Fossette. ” She giggles.
“Go to your meeting,” I say, ushering her out of the room with a smack on her ass.
When Nina reaches the door, she looks back and holds her hand to me. I take it, walking her down the hallway to the conference room. Standing outside the door, I see the way her shoulders begin to tense.
“Hey,” I say, turning her to face me. “Relax, you have nothing to worry about. Whatever you decide, I’m right here. My life is wherever you are. Whether that’s here in New York or Haven or Winchester.”
Her shoulders loosen and she smiles when I repeat the same words I said seven years ago when I found her in Central Park and asked her to marry me. I meant them then, just as I mean them now. No matter where life takes her, next to her is where I want to be. As long as I’m by her side, that’s enough for me.
“Ti amo, Fossette.”
“Ti amo, Dee ,” I whisper, kissing her again.
“Oh, before I forget.” Nina pauses mid-step. “There’s something I need your help with. I left it in that conference room,” she says, pointing to the door two down from the one she’s about to walk into. “Can you work on putting it back together for me?”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see,” she says with a soft smile, kissing my cheek. Nina takes a deep breath before walking through the door Sydney holds open. Before it closes, I hear her begin, “Good afternoon, everyone. There are a few things I’d like to discuss before we get to the quarterly numbers...”
Twisting the knob of the conference room door, I’m shocked to see the thing I’m supposed to help my wife put back together. “What are you doing here?”
My little brother looks up from his folded hands where he sits at the other end of the table. He looks disheveled like he hasn’t been sleeping much. His normally clean-shaven face bears a few days’ worth of scruff.
I grip the back of the chair at the head of the table and stare down at him, still waiting for some answer to my question. “Well?”
Alex looks back down at his folded hands. “Nina called.”
Why am I not surprised? Of course, she would try and fix this. Still, I ask, “Why would she call you?”
“Because she wants us to fix this.”
The air between us is thick, awkward, and weird. It’s never been this way between my brother and me, ever. We’ve been by each other’s side for over three decades, but there has never been this much tension. Not even the one time I punched him because he was right about the reason Nina was upset with me—you know, the whole Brina and Nina’s ex-boyfriend thing—but I didn’t want to hear it. Not even then was there this suffocating awkwardness.
“There’s only one way to fix this, Alex, and until you apolo—”
“I apologized.”
“But did you mean it?”
“Of course, I meant it, Nick! I never…I would never call her a bitch and mean it. I was hurt. I was upset. I was…” Alex scoffs. “You have to understand, I was facing a reality where you were gone. I was supposed to get married twice already and kept pushing it back because I thought you’d come home, but you didn’t. Nina…she—she’s supposed to be able to do anything, be anything. She’s a Villa for godsake.” He shakes his head and blinks away the wetness in his eyes.
“So, your first instinct is to attack her for getting help from Beau?”
“Is that what you call it?”
I sigh, white-knuckling the chair. “Alex, you have got to let this go.”
“Have you?”
“Yes! I’m not going to hold it over her head when she thought I was dead. How can I?”
Alex locks his jaw. “Have you forgiven Beau, too?”
“Beau is the reason my wife is still here!” I slam my palm down on the table. “He’s why my wife and daughter were taken care of the last year. There is nothing to forgive.”
“I’ll take that as a no.” He shakes his head.
Breathing through gritted teeth, I rub the crease building between my brows. The truth is, yes, I have forgiven Beau, but it’s hard to forget. Especially when I’m not whole. I’m not who I once was, and I don’t know if that’s good enough anymore.
“Alex, I don’t need you to go to battle for me about this. This isn’t your fight. The only thing you need to do is let this go and apologize—” I stop him from trying to argue. “ Apologize . A real, sincere apology to my wife. She is the only person in this world who never gave up on me and I will not let you take that away from her, Beau Turner be damned.”
Nina looks exhausted when she walks into the conference room two hours later. While waiting for her to finish the board meeting, I allowed Alex to ask me anything and everything he wanted, and vice versa. Things between us aren’t perfect, but I think they’ll get better with time. My wife smiles when she sees us having a conversation instead of my brother dead on the floor, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. As much as I want to ask her what happened, and what she decided to do, it can wait.
“How’d it go?” Alex asks, not willing to do the same.
“Fine.”
That doesn’t sound good.
She looks between us, placing a hand on my shoulder. “Things seem to be okay between the two of you. I half expected to walk in and find one of you dead and the other bleeding.”
I bring her hand to my lips before she caresses my cheek. “We’re getting there.”
“Yeah, we’ll get there,” my brother agrees. His eyes meet mine briefly before he looks up at her, rubbing the back of his neck with a sheepish grin. “Hey, Nin, I—I just want to say, I’m sorry. I’ve been a real dick to you lately and…you didn’t deserve it. I should’ve never said those things I said to you. I was upset and grieving. I know it’s not a good enough reason to take it out on you.”
Nina squeezes my shoulder and I return the gesture, giving her hand the same amount of pressure. I’m with her. No matter what she decides, whether she accepts the apology or not, I’m with her. “Thank you, Alex.”
“Does this mean you guys will come to the wedding?” Alex looks between us, eyes full of hope, and they only brighten when I nod. He jumps up from his chair and pulls my wife into a bone-crushing hug; one she’s not expecting, based on her expression. But slowly, her hands relax on his back, and return the hug. When they part, he outstretches his hand to me. I take it, shaking his hand. “I have to go call Lara and tell her. She’s going to be so happy.”
The door practically slams behind him, a product of his happy mood, and I laugh when Nina flinches. That isn’t exactly how things go at the corporate office, especially this one, where the suits are stuck-up and boring compared to the laid-back atmosphere you’d find at any of the DV Designs offices.
“Are you still going to the hospital later?” I stand from my chair and follow her out the same door my brother just ran out of. Our hands intertwine as we walk down the hallway to her office.
“Unfortunately.” Nina had agreed to go with Kai to the hospital to visit Brina. She regretted extending the offer she’d made well before we returned to the city, but she didn’t want her brother to be alone, either. Eileen can’t go with him. Correction: Eileen won’t go with him. His wife uses Ophelia and Fallon as her excuse. She could ask the nanny to help, but she doesn’t want to. Like the rest of us, she isn’t Brina’s biggest fan.
As someone who lost their mother, I empathize with my wife because despite what she says, I know Nina is upset about her mother’s diagnosis. Upset by the reality that she will never know the same person her brother did at one time, nor get the closure she deserves about everything that has happened between them over the years. She grieved this loss a long time ago, but having to face this prognosis head-on is like reopening the wound.
“Want me to come with you guys?”
“You don’t like hospitals, and you’re supposed to watch Elena,” she says, walking into her office. “Nick, I’ll be fine. Spend some time with our daughter and when I get home, you can help take my mind off things.”
My brows wiggle in a suggestive wave and she laughs, slapping her hand on my chest. I take hold of her hand, not letting her slip away from me, and pepper her neck with kisses. Giggles fill the air as my beard and lips tickle her skin. “I love that sound.”
“And I love you,” she says, swiping her finger across the tip of my nose.
“What happened in your meeting?” I ask, looping my fingers in the belt loops of her pleated black dress pants, pulling her waist to mine.
Nina sighs and stares down at her feet. “You promise you won’t be mad?”
“You didn’t resign. Did you?”
Nina shakes her head and looks back up. There’s a small amount of fear in her eyes and I hate that my past actions are the reason for it.
“Good,” I say, cupping the side of her face. “I want you to do this, Dee. I want you to take this opportunity and run with it for as long as you can…as long as you want to. We have been given a second chance at life. A chance to right the wrongs we made the first time and one of those wrongs was me trying to make you choose between me and your job.” Her eyes shine with tears beneath my grasp. I press a light kiss to her lips. “I want this. I want you. I want us. None of this matters if it’s not with you.”
She fingers the placket of my navy blue polo.
“I didn’t realize it was a problem until now. I assumed you knew I would be by your side no matter what. It wasn’t until you told me you were thinking about stepping down that I understood you were doing it because of me…because of what I said before.” I bring her gaze back to mine. “Nina, I don’t care where we are. I don’t care if you’re working here or if we’re taking time off in Haven. As long as I’m with you, I don’t care. Because my life will always be with you. Wherever you go, I go. That’s how this works, Princess. And it’s time for us to begin again.”
“What would you say if I told you I had an idea?” There’s a mischievous gleam in her eyes.
“I’d say okay, as long as it’s not another wedding.”
Nina’s laugh is like music to my ears, bringing a smile to my lips, and I kiss her. “It’s not another wedding.”
“You promise?” I stick my left hand out between us, pinky finger hanging in the air.
My wife rolls her eyes but wraps her finger around mine anyway. “Prometto.”