Chapter 29
On Thursday, Aubrey dressed with the meticulous intent of a woman who knew she would not be the one undressing herself at
the end of the night. On a whim, she’d brought a matching bra-and-panty set from New York, certain she wouldn’t actually need
it, but now she layered her clothes over the crimson satin, grateful she had something to commemorate the occasion with.
Sleeping with Gallant tonight wouldn’t be so much a decision as an inevitability. Over the past three days, she’d read his
letter countless times, and with each new pass, a hidden door within her had cracked wider. Now she could peer through, to
a future where his words glittered with promise.
She swiped eyeshadow onto her lids and put the finishing touches on her makeup. By the time he pulled into the cul-de-sac,
a low hum flowed through every nerve.
Aubrey shrugged on her coat and ventured outside. Gallant’s hello kiss added yet another frisson to the anticipation rolling
down her spine. She clung to his lapels and breathed an eager sound into his mouth.
He pulled back, heavy-lidded and smiling. “I guess you liked my letter.”
“I guess I did.”
He gave her a meaningful look and helped her into the car. Downtown, he parallel-parked and came around to open her door.
Every brush of his hand carried significance, a secret message for her alone, building toward . . . later.
She shivered at the thought, then ambled down the sidewalk with him, their combined breath frosting the air. Most of Henderson
had turned out for the parade, and an ocean of light and laughter brightened the chilly dusk. People converged in the square,
where an acapella group harmonized in the brightly lit bandstand. Aubrey pulled Gallant toward a row of stalls that offered
hot drinks and handmade crafts.
He draped a few silk scarves around her neck, playfully pretending to lasso her, then bought her one in watercolor hues and
ordered a round of mulled wine. In between sips, they traded knowing looks that made the crowd fade to white noise.
Aubrey grinned over the rim of her mug. “Promise me something?”
His lips quirked. “Hmm. Depends what it is. Nothing too risqué, I hope.”
She laughed. “Risqué? Me? Never. I just don’t want you to stop writing letters to me.”
His budding smile faltered. “They mean that much to you?”
“They mean everything.” She leaned up, planting a kiss on his lips. When she pulled back, he wore an expression she couldn’t
interpret.
It passed quickly. He took her hand, squeezed it, and tugged her toward the edge of the square. “Come on, let’s find a spot
for the parade, before all the good ones get taken.”
Aubrey followed, forgetting his lack of answer as soon as the procession began. Floats drifted by in a fizzle of color.
“That one!” She pointed at the turkey sailing down the street. “Paige and Nick and I did that! And that one!”
A replica of Indiana glided past, sharing a truck bed with a barbershop quartet. In the gap between floats, Aubrey spotted a familiar pair of blue eyes across the street. She waved. Paige grinned, returning the greeting with a waggle of her fingertips.
Aubrey’s attention slid to the hulking shape beyond Paige’s shoulder.
Her throat thickened. She hadn’t seen Nick in nearly two weeks—not since he’d left her in a tearful puddle on her living room
floor—and now her face couldn’t decide what to do.
Meanwhile, his betrayed nothing. He held her gaze from across the road, his features carved into grim lines. His eyes were
a hard black glint, firmly locked.
Except . . . No, she knew that look. No one else would have recognized it, but she did.
He was miserable. Abjectly, horrifically desolated. She didn’t delude herself into thinking it had anything to do with her—no, this came from someplace deeper. This was a towering
mountain of pain, locked behind an obsidian wall.
Her heart tripped and went splat. In that moment, it didn’t matter that he’d refused her, that he’d left. A blood-deep desire engulfed every nerve. She needed to go to him, to smooth away the line between his brows with the press
of her thumb. To pull him close and lend him a shoulder, like he had for her when she’d first come back.
A float cut off her view. Breathless moments sailed by. When the way cleared again, Nick and Paige had disappeared. Aubrey
cast around, but the crowd had absorbed them.
“Damn it,” someone said at her side.
She jolted, then turned to find Gallant staring into the blue glow of his phone. For a moment, she’d forgotten him.
“What? What’s wrong?”
He gritted out a frustrated sound. “It’s one of my tenants. A pipe burst in the bedroom and flooded the house. Which means I need to go deal with it. Right now.”
Her stomach quivered. Briefly, her awareness traveled to the lingerie hugging her body, but she thrust the thought aside.
“Then go. We can see each other later, if you want.”
He glanced up, his expression anguished. “I’ll have to rip up the carpets and get all the water out of there, which’ll probably
take all night. Even though I really, really don’t want it to.”
“It’s okay.” Her lips curled. “You go. I’ll catch a ride with someone. It’s not a big deal.”
He hesitated. “Are you sure? Can I see you tomorrow?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Tomorrow.”
“Oh, thank god.” He leaned down and kissed her with surprising thirst, considering they stood amid a bustling crowd. He tasted
like wine and spice and the promise of more to come. For an all-too-brief moment, he caught her around the waist and buried
his nose in her hair. “I can’t wait.”
“Me, neither.”
He gave her one last peck and arrowed away, his leading shoulder cutting through the crowd like a blade.
Aubrey lost him in seconds. She turned back, scanning for Nick, but if he’d had any desire for contact, he wouldn’t have disappeared
like that. He must need solitude. Not . . . complications.
A small hand clamped around her arm. “Aubrey!”
She pivoted and was immediately pulled into a hug by Megan Shimamoto, whose belly pressed against her, an unexpected combination
of firmness and give.
“Wow.” Aubrey pulled back. Megan had definitely popped in the past few weeks. “Look at your bump!”
“I know.” Megan’s grin rivaled the sparkling floats. “It’s kind of a relief, actually. People have stopped wondering whether I’m overloading on Halloween candy and have started holding the door for me, instead. And someone asked when I was due the other day. Which was surprisingly awesome.”
Aubrey chuckled. “You look adorable.”
Megan did a little spin. She wore a green maternity sweater and leggings with shearling boots and a knitted pom-pom hat. “Don’t
I?”
“Yes. And this parade! You should be proud. Look at you, making things happen.”
“I couldn’t have done it without you.” Megan gripped her hand. “But . . . you didn’t come alone, did you?”
“No. Gallant was here, but he had to go.”
“Oh.” Megan’s mouth thinned. “Well, come on, you’re with me now. Let’s go get some cider? I haven’t seen you in weeks, and .
. .”
Megan chattered on. Aubrey let herself be tugged along, then sipped from the cup she was handed. Megan greeted half the people
who passed, thanking them for this, asking about that.
Aubrey hid her smile in her drink.
“Hey, how’re you getting home?” Megan piped up, in between chats.
Aubrey glanced around. The crowd had thinned. Empty cider cups rolled across the asphalt while stars twinkled overhead, an
icy bluish-white. “I’ll probably just walk.”
“What? No. It’s miles.”
“It’s a mile.” Aubrey chuckled. She tossed her cider cup into a nearby trash can. “Of which I’m perfectly capable.”
“No, no. We can’t have that. What if you freeze? What if you get lost?”
“I grew up here. I’m not going to get lost.”
“Nuh-uh. I don’t care if you built this town, I’m not letting you go off on your own. Here, let’s find you a ride. I’d take
you myself, but I’m suddenly having a ton of Braxton-Hicks and . . . well, you know how that goes. Time to go home and get
in the bath.”
Aubrey blinked. She did not, in fact, know how that went. Or what that even meant.
Megan’s hand shot out and clamped around a passerby’s arm. “Hey, you. Are you leaving?”
The man turned.
Aubrey bit back a sigh. Of course.
“Oh.” Megan’s tone shot skyward. “Wow, it’s you. What’re the chances?”
Nick leveled a pointed look at the hand clutching his biceps. Megan’s fingers didn’t even make it halfway around. “What do
you want, Megan?”
“For you to give Aubrey a ride home. You can do that, right? It’s only a mile, and—oh, look! There’s my husband. I’ve been
looking for him all night. ’Scuse me.”
After tossing an apologetic look Aubrey’s way, Megan swanned off.
Nick just stood there, his hands jammed in his pockets.
“Wow,” Aubrey said. “I’d say that was Oscar-worthy, but . . . Honestly, she didn’t even try, did she?”
He shrugged. The iron set of his mouth didn’t budge. “You said it, not me.”
“Well.” She ground a toe into the asphalt, wondering when the temperature had dropped. She hadn’t noticed until right now.
“I’m fine walking. I know you’re with Paige.”
“Nah. She went off with one of her friends.”
Aubrey tried to smooth over the sudden throb in her throat. “Oh. Okay. Well, I’m sure you’ve still got better things to do.”
She started to make her escape.
“Aubs.”
The nickname pulled her up short. When she looked back, Nick’s shoulders hunched, his muscles piled like boulders. God, he
looked miserable. So incredibly, beautifully, gorgeously wrecked.
“Nick?”
“Just get in the truck, will you?”
“Yep. Okay.” Because really, what else was there to do? If even a sliver of him desired comfort, she would give it. Whatever
had chewed him up and spit him back out looking like that transcended any hurt feelings that lay between them.
She followed him to his vehicle and situated herself in the passenger seat. Nick fiddled with the climate control. Within
minutes, heated air blasted her face, turning her cheeks hot and prickly.
She raised an eyebrow. “You fixed it.”
“Had to, before it snowed.”
Silence asserted itself. Nick drove stiffly, every line of his body carved from stone.
Aubrey waited for an in, but he didn’t offer one. He didn’t say a word. After three minutes of silence, she gathered her breath,
but hadn’t yet cleared the hurdle of opening her mouth when Nick stopped in front of her house. He shifted into Park, leaving
the ignition running.
“Good night,” he said, clipped. “Stay warm.”
She hesitated, but he couldn’t expect her to leave him like this. If she did, sleep would refuse her.
So she reached for his arm and grabbed hold. Her fingers didn’t make it all the way around, either. “What’s wrong?”
He kept his gaze on the windshield. “Who said anything’s wrong?”
“I know you,” she said quietly. “Something’s happened. Something . . . catastrophic.”
He scrubbed a hand down his face, then hauled in a few agonized breaths. “Fuck,” he said to the night beyond the dash. “Fuck,
this is not the time for this.”
She took it all in—his struggle to control his heaving chest, the posture cast from iron—and unclicked her seat belt. She slid across the seat, gathered him in her arms, and pulled his head to her chest, more than a little shocked at his lack of resistance.
He choked out a ruined sound.
“It’s okay,” she murmured into the velvet bristle of his hair. What was it he’d said that first night, by the fire? “You can
tell me. Whatever it is, I’ve got you.”
“Fucking hell,” he gasped, then began to weep. Mostly silently, but with such a glut of feeling that each sob drove a spear
of agony into her chest. She blinked back the mist in her eyes and squeezed harder, trying to channel empathy through his
skin, to infuse his every straining muscle with comfort.
After long minutes, his breathing stabilized, though the effort clearly cost him, because it took a few tries.
“What happened?” she murmured.
He sniffed wetly against her coat. “It’s . . . Paige.”
“Paige?” Alarm flared in her gut. “Is she okay?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. Or she will be. It’s more like I’m all fucked-up, and it’s about her. Because I’m not sure she’s actually . . . That she’s . . . I don’t think I’m . . .” A
dark, broken laugh splintered from his throat. “Jesus Christ, I can’t even say it.”
Aubrey’s stomach swirled. She waited.
He sucked at a racking breath, steeling himself. “. . . I’m not sure she’s mine. I’m not sure I’m actually her dad.”
She froze, her arms clamped tight. If there was a god, Aubrey was fairly sure she’d just been slapped across the face by him.
Or her. Because that . . .
No.
That couldn’t be right.
That could not be right, not after she’d endured a loss that had hinged around this single, unassailable truth. Paige was Nick’s.
Her stomach soured and her mind burned, but she forced her reaction to quiet. Whatever this meant to her, he must feel it
a thousand times over.
“I don’t understand. That . . . can’t be true, can it? I mean, you were with Tansy. While I was away. Weren’t you?”
Nick unraveled from her embrace but didn’t move away. The oceanic tang of his tears joined his singed-metal smell, filling
her nose with salt and smoke. Wetness gleamed on his cheeks, and god, no man had any right to look that beautiful when he
cried.
Some inner directive demanded that Aubrey lay a hand against his chest. Muscle and bone juddered, his breath coming in tatters.
He caught her palm and pressed it flat, sandwiching it between his heart and hand.
“It’s not . . . impossible.” His voice was as barren as a scorched stretch of earth. “But you won’t understand unless I tell
you the details. I know you didn’t want to hear them, before. But I’ve always wanted to tell you. All the ugly pieces.”
Aubrey groped for her equilibrium and, to her surprise, found it in the thud of his heartbeat against her palm. At eighteen,
she’d shut her ears against this, unable to brave the violence of her own shattering. Now, though . . .
“Okay,” she whispered. “Tell me.”
His eyes flooded with feeling. He tucked her hair back with his free hand, then kept it there to cup her face. “I wouldn’t
have betrayed you on purpose. Not ever. I’d rather have died. You know that, right?”
“I do,” she said. Some part of her always had.
He sighed and closed his eyes. “Good. And please don’t hate me for this, but the Tansy thing happened the day you were supposed
to get back from your vacation.”
Aubrey forced herself not to flinch.
“I went to your house that afternoon, looking for you.” Nick gulped. “And your dad answered the door . . .”