Chapter 3
3
Nicole
“ Y ou said you’re not from around here!” I yelled into Invi’s ear.
The music on the dance floor was so loud, even yelling didn’t always help, forcing us to repeat the same questions and answers often.
“No.” He shook his head.
“Is it your first time in the city?”
“Technically, yes.” He nodded after a moment of hesitation.
The club music was fast. People jumped, twerked, and gyrated against each other all around us. With his hands on my waist, Invi led us in a slower tempo. Skipping every other beat, he swayed gently with me in his arms. Several couples next to us were making out heavily. However, Invi’s hands never strayed from their position on my waist. Yet he still made the dance feel intimate somehow.
I splayed my palms high on his chest, over the buttery soft leather of his dark burgundy jacket. His alluring scent enveloped me, and I tried to figure out what it was. Jasmine flowers with an earthy note, something like moss or green tea. Must be his cologne, one I had never smelled before. And now, it would forever be his scent even if I would smell it on anyone else in the future.
As one music track replaced another, I found myself leaning closer and closer to Invi. Eventually, my entire body ended up pressed against his, my cheek resting on his chest. My arms somehow wound themselves around his neck. Something pulled me to him stronger than a current, and I had to actively fight the pull, lest it drag me under.
“Maybe we should go,” I suggested, glancing up.
A soft, dreamy expression lingered in his face. He seemed relaxed and content, like hugging me here in the middle of the crowded floor was exactly what he wished to do.
“We should go!” I yelled over the music in response to his questioning gaze.
“If you wish,” he agreed, then maneuvered me off the dance floor to get my coat, then out of the club.
The cool autumn air chilled my flushed cheeks. The busy street appeared silent in comparison to the deafening music back on the dance floor.
“Are you hungry?” Invi asked, hiking up his collar against the wind and zipping up his jacket. “I’d love to take you for dinner.”
“Thank you, but it’s way too late for dinner for me. I’d be up the rest of the night if I eat this late, and I have a big day tomorrow. But if you want to eat something…”
“No. I don’t get hungry. I’m just looking for an excuse to spend more time with you.”
“Well…” Flustered by his honesty, I wondered if I should confess that I didn’t feel like parting from him yet, either. “My hotel is just a few blocks that way. If you want, we can walk together instead of me getting a ride. We can talk while we walk, which would be easier on the street than back in that noisy club.”
“A walk sounds lovely.” He offered me his arm, and I threaded my hand through it with a smile.
“You have excellent manners, Invi. Your mom raised you well.”
“My mother?” He exhaled a laugh. “She had very little to do with the upbringing of either of us. Me and my siblings developed and matured largely on our own.”
That was the first time he mentioned his childhood, and now I wanted to know more.
“I’m sorry to hear that. But what about your dad? Was he around?”
He shook his head, hiding his chin from the wind behind his collar. “A father wasn’t necessary for our creation.”
What was that supposed to mean?
“Um… You don’t have a dad?”
“No.”
Was he conceived through a sperm donation? Or maybe the trauma of his father leaving early in his life made him deny his existence now?
“My father died two years ago,” I blurted out. “Heart attack.”
The loss was still too fresh and the pain too raw to speak about my dad’s death with the man I hardly knew. I wasn’t sure why I shared it with Invi. But his speaking candidly about his childhood with an absentee father and a neglectful mother prompted me to open up too.
He gave me an inquisitive look. “Do you miss him?”
“I do. Very much,” I sighed, bracing against the familiar sting of longing in my heart that came every time I thought about my dad.
“Were you close with your father? Did he love you?”
The questions weren’t what people usually asked when learning about my father, but the sincerity in Invi’s voice implied it wasn’t just small talk on his part.
“He was my best friend,” I said. “After my parents’ divorce, I stayed with my dad, and he practically raised me. He was my favorite person, as I was his.”
“Then you’ll see him again,” he promised with such certainty as if he personally was in charge of making that happen.
“Oh, I hope so.” As it had been a norm when talking about my dad, I expected sadness to bring tears to my eyes, but it didn’t happen this time.
“You’ll see him again.”
Invi’s words weren’t anything I hadn’t heard from well-wishing people before. But the way he said them was different. It sounded like a promise, and I believed him. The confidence in his voice gave me hope stronger than I’d ever felt before.
Instead of tears springing to my eyes, a smile stretched my lips.
“Dad used to say that he’d send a dragonfly to check on me even from beyond the grave. I live in our old farmhouse, surrounded by trees with no water nearby. But I saw a big green dragonfly on my porch last summer. I’d like to believe it was from him.”
“It probably was,” Invi said confidently, and I trusted him on that, too, maybe because I simply longed to believe that keeping the connection with my dad was possible somehow, even now when he was gone.
“Thank you.” I glanced up at Invi.
“For what?” He arched an eyebrow in question.
His light brown skin had turned ashen in the cold. His lips had gained a slight violet hue. With his shoulders hiked up, he held his hands deep in his pockets, and I feared his trendy leather jacket failed to keep him warm.
“You’re freezing. Here, take this.” On impulse, I unwound the long, woolen scarf that Jess knitted for me still back in high school. It was soft, wide, and warm like a furnace.
I gestured for Invi to bend down to me. He was taller than an average man, and I was shorter than an average woman. If he stood straight, I’d have to literally climb up him to toss the scarf over his neck.
He leaned down to me, and I wound the scarf around his neck, covering his ears and chin then draping the rest over his wide shoulders.
“You’re so not dressed for the weather.” I tucked in the ends of the scarf to keep it from unraveling. “Don’t you know how brutal our winters can be?”
There was my fault in his predicament. He’d probably arrived at the club by a cab or even a limo, and I made him walk.
A shiver ran across his shoulders as he nested his chin into the scarf. “It’s only November, not winter yet. It shouldn’t be this cold, should it?”
“It’s cold here at least six months of the year.” I fought a sudden desire to kiss the tip of his nose to warm it up. “And the rest of the year, it can be breezy, chilly, nippy or sweltering hot.” I shrugged. “We get everything.”
He hugged the scarf closer to his neck.
“It’s…it’s incredibly kind of you.” He seemed confused, unsure about how to respond to a random act of kindness like this. “But how about you? I can’t possibly allow you to be cold.”
“No worries.” I zipped my puffer jacket all the way up and drew the hood on. “I’m already wearing my winter coat. See? Warm and snug as a bug.”
He chuckled, giving me a once-over. “I can see the resemblance to a bug, or more like a silkworm in a cocoon.”
“Hey!” I nudged him with an elbow. “It’s better to be warm than sorry, even if it makes me look funny.”
“Not funny but adorable.” He squinted at me with a smile. “Nicole, dearest, you are the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”
He drew me into a side hug with one arm as we kept walking, and I snuggled into his side, feeling almost giddy but unsure why. I’d been called cute and adorable before. That was what people usually called me instead of pretty or beautiful. It was the look that Invi gave me that was new to me. I couldn’t remember a man ever looking at me with such warm affection, definitely not a man I’d just met, a man who still remained largely a stranger to me.
I cleared my throat, needing to learn more about him.
“So…how many siblings do you have?” I asked.
“There are fourteen of us,” he replied casually. “Seven brothers and seven sisters.”
“Wow. That’s a lot.” Maybe I’d judged his mom too harshly by thinking of her as neglectful. Bringing up fourteen kids all on her own couldn’t have been easy. “Are you guys close?”
“Not particularly. No. Some of us get along better than others. But most seem to dislike me.”
“Why?” I couldn’t believe it.
He gave me a curious glance.
“You don’t think there are reasons to dislike me?”
“Well, I don’t know you that well, but so far, I honestly haven’t seen anything unpleasant about you. Other than your appearance, of course,” I teased. “You look disturbingly handsome.”
“That can’t be helped,” he said earnestly. “I have no control over my appearance in this world. Frankly, I find it extremely limiting.”
I laughed, because it sounded like a joke, and he smiled in response, gazing at me with that unique expression of his, as if he’d searched for someone like me forever and couldn’t believe that he had finally found me.
I ran a hand over my face, trying to break the spell of his brilliant green eyes directed at me. Invi’s presence made it increasingly difficult to stay in touch with reality.
“It’s not far to my hotel now,” I said, trying to ground my mind in reality.
“Why are you staying in a hotel?” he asked. “You don’t live in the city?”
“No. I’m from a small town. Flat Field. Have you heard of it?”
“No.”
“No one usually has.” I snorted a laugh. “It’s about a five-hour drive from here. Jessica and I grew up there. And now, we have a bakery together. We came to the city for the Fantastic Cake Decorating Challenge.”
“What’s that?”
“You haven’t heard of it?” I gasped in shock, then admitted, “It’s huge, but not as big as some others, I guess, especially if you aren’t a baker yourself.”
Since Invi wasn’t in the industry, he understandably didn’t hear about it. Tomorrow, the final round of the challenge was going to be broadcast on national TV. A lot of people would become aware of it then. But today, it was still mostly a secret to the general public.
“It’s a new challenge,” I explained. “Twenty bakeries from all over the country have been competing for the title of the best cake decorator. The semi-finals were today, with only two of us left to compete in the finals tomorrow.”
Early in the afternoon, I felt a tingle of excitement at that fact. But it had worn off by now, leaving nothing but a maddening vibration of anxiety in anticipation of the next day.
“I can’t stand competitions,” I confessed. “The stress is too nerve-racking. I keep reminding myself that it’s not about winning but?—”
“What is it about then?” He looked shocked by my admission.
“Oh… I don’t know. Exposure? Teamwork? Skill improvement, right?”
“Nonsense. Why compete if you’re not trying to win?” He said it with such a firm conviction that I had to ask.
“Do you like competing?”
He grinned. “It’s my most favorite thing. The thrill of going for the prize and winning it is incomparable to anything else.”
“Well… I don’t know. We’ve made it to the finals, but I’m not even sure if I can handle the last day now. It’s so much pressure, and it keeps building up with every round we win. If it wasn’t for Jess, I’d probably just drop out at this point. Second place is good enough.”
“Second place means someone else bested you. Do you think you could live with that? Without even trying to win?”
I could absolutely live with being the second best if that meant I didn’t have to go through all that stress tomorrow. I couldn’t even stay in my hotel room tonight, afraid that the anxiety would kill me.
“Second place in such a big competition is amazing,” I argued. “I would be completely satisfied with it, despite losing the prize money. But Jess has been dreaming about it so much. We stayed up many nights, working on our cake designs. She wants to win so badly. I can’t let her down. And also, if we drop out now, it means Aidan wins. And…aargh,” I groaned. “I can’t stand that guy. He’s so cocky. He’s already talking about himself as the winner. It’s infuriating, even if he’s probably right. We’ve never won anything before. This is our first challenge ever. We’re a small bakery?—”
Invi stopped abruptly, and I shut my mouth.
“Nicole, dearest, your mindset is all wrong on this one. Why do you settle for second place already when you still have the chance to win the first?”
I pondered his question for a moment but had no answer to give him other than that I’d prefer the path of least resistance at this point. Chances were, we’d end up coming second anyway. If I could spare us the aggravation of the competition, I would.
“Have you never lost, Invi?” I asked in turn. “Do you not know how rotten a failure feels?”
“Oh, I have lost, my dear. I’ve lost too many times to count. And every loss burns through my very core like fire, for eternity. But every time, it just makes me more determined to win the next time. There is nothing I wouldn’t do to win, Nicole. Nothing.”
The passion in his words was real, and I admired his drive.
“I wish I had your endurance and determination, Invi,” I sighed.
“I’ll lend them to you.” He grinned. “Whenever you need.”
There was something about his smile that made me want to stare at him all night long. I didn’t even notice as we walked past my hotel.
“Oops, sorry. Those glass doors behind us? That’s me.” I pointed at the entrance.
He glared at the lobby with so much resentment, it could’ve probably shattered the glass if we were any closer.
“I don’t want to let you go already,” he said.
I wasn’t ready to part from him either. But what else could there be between us? I had a busy day ahead of me tomorrow, with not a minute to spend. Then I’d be leaving the city on Monday.
He slid a finger under my chin and lifted my face to his.
“You’re overthinking it, aren’t you?” He freed my bottom lip from my teeth with his thumb and leaned closer, whispering, “Just feel instead.”
He tenderly touched my lips with his.
Breath hitched in my throat. Heat rushed me, spreading over my skin head to toe. I gripped his forearms to anchor myself in space and time.
It seemed to last forever. Yet it wasn’t nearly enough when it ended.
Breaking the kiss gently, he gazed in my eyes.
“How did it feel?” he asked.
Maybe it was a terrible idea, but the words rushed out of me before I could stop them.
“Do you want to come up to my room?”