Chapter 16 #2
It sounded more like a question. “The hell you could. It’s fourteen miles. Not to mention you sprained your ankle two weeks
ago. I’m driving you, and that’s the end of it.”
Her mouth turned down at the corners. “Okay. Fine.”
“Okay. Great.”
Neither of them moved.
“Ugh,” she said, throwing her hands up. “This is so stupid.”
“What, me taking you home?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, this awkwardness. I mean, why’re things so weird? So what if we dated in high school? So what if we were in love when we were kids? So what
if we slept together one time? That was a million years ago. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
He stared, a spike of outrage hammering into him from nowhere. If she thought she could . . . “Oh, no. No way. You don’t get
to do that.”
Her gaze thinned at his tone. “Do what?”
“Are you kidding me?” He lowered his voice, pushing words from a graveled throat. “You don’t get to talk about it that way.
You don’t get to diminish it. Look, I get that what we were doesn’t matter to you anymore. But it did to me. Then and now. So think of it however you
want, but don’t you dare include me in your dismissal. Don’t even try to take away what you meant to me.”
She blinked so many times he lost count.
He ejected a short, burnt-up breath. He hadn’t meant to say all that, but something about her demanded compulsive honesty.
It always had, ever since they’d first sat down on her couch and a gut-deep part of him had recognized himself mirrored in her.
She’d waxed poetic about math, and a wealth of feeling had shone from her—the very same light that cast its blaze across the inner walls of his heart.
He’d already gotten into the habit of shuttering his, but right then, it had spilled forth, because for the first time in years, he hadn’t been alone.
After an eon of silence, Aubrey said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . diminish anything. I just meant we should be able to
talk to each other. Be civil, regardless of the past.”
“I’m being perfectly civil,” he snapped.
She huffed and dropped her eyes.
His irritation ebbed. “Look, if this is your weird-ass, roundabout way of asking me to be your friend, then fine. If that’s
what you want, I can do that.” Sort of. Mostly, it would be like lighting himself on fire and trying to smile through it,
but for her? Sure.
She toed the ground with a boot. “Maybe that is what I’m trying to say.”
“Okay. Then we’re friends. All right?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
“So will you get in the car now?”
Another nod. In the truck, she huddled against the passenger-side door. He started the engine and urged the vehicle down the
lane. Aubrey faced the window, and just like in the barn, he couldn’t help but steal glances. Words flooded into him as he
drove, ones he wanted to brake for and scribble down. He wanted to capture the way her hair fell around her face, the way
her bottom lip sloped inward when she breathed.
She looked so different than she had the other night, when he’d glanced through the window at Wilder’s and gotten slapped
in the face with the unexpected. Then, the timing couldn’t have been more uncanny, because he’d finally admitted to Jackson
what had been weighing on him. Then, as if his words had summoned the real live person, Aubrey had appeared.
She’d looked desperate, then. A little wild. But he didn’t want to ask about it now, didn’t want to risk this progress between them, however tenuous.
Halfway to her house, she broke the quiet. “Your daughter’s wonderful, by the way. I mean, it was weird, meeting her. I won’t
pretend it wasn’t. But she’s impossible not to like.”
His mouth hitched upward. “I’m glad you think so. She can be a little much for some. Kind of like . . . getting shot in the
face with a glitter cannon. But I love that about her.”
Aubrey half-smiled. “She’s so different than you.”
He rasped a laugh, devoid of mirth. “Yeah. Also what I love about her.”
She cut him a glance, but he looked away.
“So . . .” She twiddled her thumbs in her lap. “You’ll be back next Saturday? You and me and Paige’ll be working together?
Every week?”
“Looks that way. Unless you ask Megan to switch.”
She mulled that over. “I’d rather not. I did tell her I was completely . . .”
“What?”
She bit her lip. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter. She’s done a pretty impressive job of backing me into a corner, either way.”
He cracked a smile. Maybe not so innocent, then. “Don’t worry, you’re not the first. And you definitely won’t be the last.”
“Yeah. She even went to the trouble of giving herself a defense before I suspected anything. Which is pretty diabolical.”
He grinned, relishing her word choice. Diabolical was a favorite of his. “She’s basically just a tiny, pregnant Machiavelli.”
Aubrey snorted. Her green eyes warmed, and the moment of shared understanding flared into connection. Just for a second, but
it was one Nick took hold of and stuffed into a mental pocket, for the express purpose of torturing himself with it later.
He eventually pulled into Aubrey’s cul-de-sac.
“Thanks for the ride.” She was in the process of unlatching her belt when he reached out to stop her. She snatched her hand away, so he raised his in a show of contrition.
“Sorry. Look. There’s just something I want to say. Something that’s been weighing on me since the other day.”
She stilled.
He hesitated, but he had to get this out. It had been crawling around inside him for more than a decade now, trying to find
the light of day, and this was his chance. Probably his first and last, because once Aubrey returned to New York, he wouldn’t see her again.
He cleared his throat. “The other night, when I said I didn’t regret how things ended, I only meant because of Paige. Because
she’s . . . everything to me. My pride and joy. The family I never had. Regretting her would be like regretting my life’s
meaning, and I can’t do that. But that doesn’t mean I don’t regret hurting you. Because I do. I’ve regretted it every day
for seventeen years.”
Aubrey’s lips parted. She stared, her chest hitching. Something complex moved across her face, so deep and wide he had no
hope of untangling it.
Not that he needed to. This was for her, not him.
“And I want you to understand,” he continued, “that if there’d been any way to raise Paige right and keep from losing you,
I would’ve done it. I would’ve done any fucking thing. If I could’ve sawed myself in two and given each of you half, I would
have. In a heartbeat. But I couldn’t, and I’m sorry for that. I’m so sorry for the way I hurt you, Aubs. Really. For losing
you. I can’t even tell you. I’ve wanted to say that for years.”
A faint whimper snagged in her throat.
He curled his hands around the steering wheel and squeezed, mostly to keep himself from reaching out again.
A thousand other confessions piled onto his tongue, about loneliness and longing and guilt.
But he knew how it would come across, like he was asking for something, and he wasn’t.
He just needed to give this to her, needed to hand her his truth so she could do with it what she would.
“I . . . don’t know what to say.” Her voice warbled. A sheen misted her eyes. “Except thank you, I think. And . . . maybe
I understand, now. After meeting her.”
Honeyed relief cascaded through him. It was more than he could have hoped for, and he clenched the wheel so tightly his fingers
ached. If he didn’t, he would do something idiotic, like slide across the bench seat and hug her.
“I guess you should also know that . . .” She fumbled and stopped, deliberating. “You did mean something to me. You meant everything, actually. Then and—”
A razorblade breath sliced into his lungs. He waited, but she didn’t continue, and the unsaid word dangled in the air, a promise
so sweet he couldn’t bear to have it broken.
Now. Then and now.
He willed her to say it. If she did, he would tell her he still loved her. Fuck everything else, all the doubts, the should’ve-known-betters, because there went her pulse again, a frantic shimmer in the divot between her collarbones. He swore he wasn’t imagining
it. Or the heat in those verdant eyes.
He just needed that word. One now, and he would confess everything, even if it changed nothing.
Yet Aubrey stayed quiet. She blinked back whatever emotion had overtaken her and looked away, a fist pressed to her mouth.
When she met his gaze again, she’d raked hers to smoothness.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to get heavy on you.” Her voice was measured. “And you won’t have to take me home again. I’ll ask Gallant
next time.”
The name hit him like a slap. “Gallant?”
“Yeah.”
“Why? What does he have to do with anything?”
Her eyes changed. This time, he could read them, because a crack zig-zagged down the center of his chest. “Wait. You’re . . . seeing him? You two are dating?”
“Yeah,” Aubrey said. “We are, actually.”
A desolate stillness descended, so complete he couldn’t even find his own heartbeat within. Gallant Nobel.
It felt six kinds of wrong, and yet he should have seen it coming, because Gallant was the choice who’d made sense for her
from the beginning. The picture-perfect poster boy for all-American maleness. The rich, successful counterpart to Aubrey’s
genius and drive.
Also kind of an asshole, but probably only in Nick’s imagination, because Aubrey would never get involved with someone who
didn’t treat her like a queen.
He forced a swallow. Someone had clearly deposited a half ton of crushed glass in his throat at some point in the last five
seconds. “That’s great. That’s . . . right. Great. I hope he makes you happy.”
Aubrey’s lip folded under her teeth. What did that reaction mean? He couldn’t tell. Not that it mattered. All his deductive reasoning had drained away, along with his stupid,
delusional hope and every last red blood cell in his body.
“Thanks again, for the ride,” she said softly. “I’ll see you next week?”
“Yeah. See you next week.”
She thumbed off her seat belt, hopped out, and disappeared into the house.
He sat there for a long time, trying to find his composure. But it had abandoned him, so he eventually slid the gearshift into Drive and crept across town at half the speed limit. He didn’t want to go home. He had no desire to face Tansy and Paige like this, hurt and bleeding and freshly shredded.
But he should probably get the fuck over that, and quick, because this seemed to be rapidly becoming his new normal.