Chapter 30
“Thanks for coming.” Tiana said goodbye to her last student and then immediately checked her numbers for her livestream.
That’s before you had a team, you’re not alone anymore. A little voice that sounded a lot like Pops piped up in her head.
It was true. Niko wasn’t just Niko. Niko was a package deal.
He came with his twin brother, AJ, who had been the brains behind the setup, and his sister, Frankie, who had handled the legal side of things and run the admin of the studio for an entire week.
Not to mention Liam, who made house calls Tiana didn’t remember.
AJ’s mom had sent care packages, including romance novels for her to read while she recovered, not that she’d done much lying around.
Then there were his friends, like world-renowned photographer Zion Ash and Oscar winner Shayne Fox, who had taught her classes because she’d be playing a yoga teacher in her next movie and wanted to immerse herself in the research.
In fairness, Tiana knew Shayne as well as Niko did, but she never would have asked anyone for help if Niko hadn’t been around.
She would have just closed the studio, which would have been a loss of income, which would have postponed or perhaps cancelled Pop’s surgery altogether.
No. She wouldn’t have let that happen. That would have been a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency situation that she would have absolutely used Brock’s money for.
But thankfully, she hadn’t had to because Niko was there to save the day.
Not all heroes wear capes. Although, the thought of Niko in a cape did something to her.
And maybe a mask, too. Yes, a cape and a mask.
She imagined him coming into the room, his black cape trailing behind him, his dark stare barely recognizable through the holes in the Eyes Wide Shut style role-play mask.
She wasn’t sure where this new freaky side of hers had come from, but she wasn’t mad at it.
It was the first time she’d ever felt adventurous and safe enough to vocalize her feelings about that adventure.
She still couldn’t believe what she’d done at the fundraiser.
First the table, then the storage closet. Last night was…
Then there was the declaration. I love you. It kept playing over and over in her head. When they got home, he had a lot of other things to share. Things that Pops had told him about her, apparently. She wasn’t sure how she felt about any of it.
It was a lot. Too much. Or maybe she was just broken.
She grabbed her tote from beneath the counter and locked up the shop.
Before she went home, she wanted to stop by the hair salon.
Tiana wanted to know what was going on with her friend and Deacon St. Claire.
She hoped her friend was ready to talk about it, if not, she’d at least tell her that she would be there when she was ready.
On the short walk down Main Street to The Beauty Spot, Tiana’s mind was spinning with all the things Niko had said to her in that storage closet.
They’d gone home from the fundraiser, and he’d doubled down on the sweet nothings he’d professed.
He’d said he loved her, really loved her.
She would have thought that was insane, that there was absolutely no way he could possibly be in love with her, but the truth was, she felt the same way about him.
She hadn’t told him that, obviously. Or maybe not so obviously. Feelings were not easy for her. More than feelings, trust, trust was what she really battled with. Trust took time. Time was not something they’d had on their side.
So why was there a little voice in the back of her head saying, “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known him, he’s the one. Go for it. Go all in. Put your cards on the table.” And whatever other poker or card metaphor there was for gambling with her heart and her life.
But that was the thing—she wasn’t sure she could do that. She wasn’t sure she was actually physically capable of doing that. It felt like trying to would be going against every part of her DNA.
She walked into the shop and was surprised to find no customers. Jenna was behind the counter, looking down at her phone, engrossed in whatever was on her screen. So engrossed, she didn’t even realize the bell had rung, indicating a customer had walked in.
Tiana made it all the way up to the counter and said, “Am I interrupting something?”
Jenna’s eyes flew up, and so did the phone. She fumbled in an attempt to catch it as it arched toward Tiana, who put her hands up out of sheer instinct. She wasn’t trying to intercept it, but when something is flying at your face, your arms lift to block it, which, thankfully, she did.
No sooner had her fingers wrapped around the device than Jenna snatched it away from her.
“Sorry,” her friend apologized.
Tiana wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for.
“Oh, it’s okay. What was, who was that?”
“Nothing, it’s just my um…financials.”
Tiana would bet her yoga studio that Jenna had never lied to her before, so why was her friend lying to her now? There was no way she was looking at her financials. She had to be messaging Deacon. Right?
“I was looking for you to say goodbye last night, but I couldn’t find you.” When Tiana and Niko left the storage closet, after she went to the bathroom and refixed her makeup and hair, she went looking for Jenna and couldn’t find her anywhere. Her or Deacon.
“Oh, yeah, I had to, um… I left.”
“You left.”
“Yeah.”
The salon phone rang, and Jenna appeared relieved for the distraction.
Okay, it was obvious something had occurred between her and Deacon St. Clair the evening prior, so why wouldn’t she tell Tiana about it?
She couldn’t be embarrassed. The man was a billionaire.
Literally. Not only that, but he was hot, kind, and funny, he gave millions to charities, and oh, and he was brilliant—he graduated from MIT at twenty with two degrees or something.
That wasn’t even scratching the attraction surface.
When Jenna hung up the phone, she chirped, “So what’s up?”
“I was just going to ask what happened last night. You looked, I don’t know…stressed. Upset.”
Her brow furrowed. “Last night?”
"I saw you in the hall with Deac—”
“Oh, no,” Jenna cut her off before she even got Deacon’s name out. “That was, um…” She licked her lips, and her cheeks flared with color. “That was a misunderstanding.”
A misunderstanding that made her blush three different shades of pink. Okayyyyy. So clearly her friend didn’t want to talk about whatever was going on with her Mr. Billionaire, she hoped that whenever, if ever, she did, she’d come to her.
“What about you?” Jenna quickly turned the tables. “Did you talk to Niko? You sat with him, right?”
“We did more than talk.”
Jenna’s eyes lit up. “I like the sound of that.” She checked the time, hopped off the stool, rushed to the front door, locked it, and turned the Back in ten sign.
“I have fifteen minutes before Eleanor comes in for root touchups.” She hooked her arm through Tiana’s, dragging her into the backroom and flopping down onto the loveseat. “Tell me everything.”
Tiana took a deep breath. She had a hard time sharing personal things with people. She’d never had a mom or sisters or even a best friend, really, and for so much of her life she’d witnessed people weaponize information against one another, using it as leverage or emotional blackmail.
But she was in uncharted waters with her relationship with Niko, and she didn’t want to fuck this up.
“Niko told me he loved me last night.”
Jenna’s expression demonstrated equal enthusiasm, as if she had just won the lottery. “Tell me everything. I want every last detail. Don’t leave anything out.”
Okay, now Tiana understood why Niko had apologized for the circumstances in which he declared his love. Every time someone asked for details of the story, they were going to have to make a call as to whether or not they would tell them the truth.
“Basically he just said that he loved me, that he wanted to grow old with me and have grandbabies.”
Jenna held her stomach. “I think my ovaries are aching.”
“Do you want to have more kids?” She’d never asked Jenna that. Blake was almost fifteen, she wondered if she’d rather be done.
“No.” Jenna held her arms up in an X shape. “No deflecting allowed.”
“Fine, okay, so he told me all that, that was at the fundraiser—”
“At the fundraiser?!”
“Yes.”
“Shit, I knew I shouldn’t have left early.”
Part of Tiana wanted to put her friend out of her misery and say that it wouldn’t have mattered when she left, he’d done it in the privacy of the storage closet, but she wasn’t ready to share those secrets quite yet.
“And then when we got home—”
“Wait!” Jenna raised her hand. “Did you say it back?”
“No.”
“Got it, you lied.” She pretended to write on an imaginary notepad. “Lied. Noted.”
“I didn’t lie,” Tiana defended herself.
“By omission, but it’s still a lie,” Jenna stated flatly.
Tiana wasn’t going to argue. “Anyway, when we got home, he told me that he’d spoken to Pops about me.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I don’t know the entire conversation, but he did say that Pops showed him pictures I used to draw.”
Jenna’s face scrunched up. “Pictures you used to draw?”
“Yeah, there was this bridge by my first group home, and the day I arrived there I saw someone get engaged. I thought it was the most romantic thing I’d ever seen. So I used to draw that all the time, for years. I always thought that was my gold standard for my happily ever after.”
“Why did he show those to Niko?”
“I think Pops thinks that I’m closed off because of Brock, and he wanted Niko to know that I used to believe in love or something, I don’t know.
I was a kid. That’s not real. It’s a fairy tale.
He also said that Pops basically told him that it will be difficult for me to accept love and to trust someone. ”
“No cap.”
Tiana had to smile. Because Jenna had a fourteen-year-old she was always well-versed in slang, no cap meant he was telling the truth.
“Part of me is happy that Pops trusted Niko to speak to him about me like that, but then another part of me didn’t understand why Pops spoke to him about it. If he thinks I have all these issues, why not come speak to me about them?”
It bothered her. A lot. She thought she and Pops could speak about anything.
So why go to Niko? Had they really gotten that close that she was getting cut out of conversations about her?
He had always said he wanted a son. And baseball was his favorite sport.
Niko had done a lot for him in the short time they’d known each other.
It’s not that she didn’t want them to be close, but…
“Have you asked Pops about it?”
“No, I just found out last night.”
“Maybe the talk, even though it was about you, wasn’t about you.”
“What?” Tiana didn’t understand.
“I’m just saying, as a parent, I think…” Jenna took a breath and exhaled. “Okay, so Blake is very emotional. That’s not a good or bad thing, it’s just the truth. If she was going to be marrying someone—”
“Who said anything about marriage?!” Tiana snapped. She didn’t mean to. Apparently, it was a trigger.
Jenna didn’t seem to mind. “Niko did, last night. He said he wanted to marry you and have babies with you and grand—”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot. Sorry, go ahead.”
“Wow. Defensive much?”
“Sorry.” Tiana smiled.
Jenna tilted her head to the side. “Yeah, it’s so weird that Pops didn’t talk to you when clearly you are so open for and calm and—”
“Okay, point taken.”
Jenna smiled. “Anyway, if she was serious with someone, and I knew she was emotional a lot, someone who was going to be with her would need to know that. They would need to be patient and know that it was not going to be a smooth ride, there would be highs and lows, and they would just need to be there and love her. I wouldn’t go to Blake and tell her that.
I would go to the person who wanted to be with Blake.
I would want to look in their eyes and tell them what a beautiful, big-feelings girl she was.
I would want to see for myself if they really knew who she was and if they could handle that.
I couldn’t find that out in a conversation with Blake. ”
Tiana hadn’t looked at it from that point of view, but maybe Jenna was right. Or maybe not. Something about all of this still felt like it was just too good to be true. Something felt off. She just didn’t know what, but she did know the answers weren’t in the back of the salon.
“I feel like I should pay you for these therapy sessions,” she teased Jenna as she got up to go.
“Are you kidding me? I am fueled by tea and drama, and lately, you, my love, are Bridgerton-level supply of both.”
She wasn’t wrong.