Chapter 35
The next morning, Aubrey packed her bags, then booked a hotel in New York for the following night. She would spend most of
Sunday on a Greyhound bus before starting back at Osos on Monday. Over the coming week, she’d have to find a new apartment
to lease, but moving wouldn’t present much challenge; all her things still sat in storage in Brooklyn.
She’d known, all along, that she would be back.
At noon, Aubrey blocked Gallant’s number, then deleted all eight of his voicemails without even listening. Then she did Pilates
until her midsection blazed white-hot. Afterward, she drank tea and thought about Nick.
She would have to see him before the day ended. She couldn’t just skip town without a word. She’d have to go tell him goodbye,
get closure, finally.
Yet her whole body buzzed when she thought about it, all the frazzled energy from yesterday still running rampant. Closure.
Ha. Was that what this bone-deep thirst was? This ache that permeated her on a cellular level? She could probably repeat the
word until her lips turned blue, yet it didn’t soothe the lightning-bolt hum inside her, or quiet her suspicion that coming
here had only raveled the knotty equation of her life tighter.
Shit. How was she supposed to look Nick in the eye again, knowing what she knew? That even though his letters had been passed to her through another’s hands, he must have, on some level, always intended those words for her?
Except that, for all that everything had changed, nothing had changed. She had to go. Nick had to stay. She understood, now, after meeting Paige, why that was true.
At least . . . she understood why it was true for the next two years, until Paige graduated.
Then again, what was two years, in the grand scheme of things? Who the fuck cared about two years, when she’d already endured
seventeen without him?
A fragile hope budded inside her.
Outside the window, it began to snow. Aubrey went and looked out. The snow thickened, fat flakes gushing from the sky.
When it began to pile up, she went and took a long, hot shower, which did nothing to soothe the chaos inside her. By the time
she finished, evening had fallen, along with a heavy blanket of white. Aubrey reached for her phone, then realized she didn’t
have Nick’s number. She’d have to track him down some other way, so she dug tall snow boots from her closet, paired them with
fleece leggings and her overcoat, and ventured outside.
The freshly fallen snow sighed apart before her footsteps. Cold nipped at her cheeks. The sky hung low, the clouds a hazy,
reflective orange.
Somehow, she knew exactly where to go, and twenty minutes later, she found herself peering through the lit window of Wilder’s
MMA Academy.
Nick was inside, alone at the back, pummeling a sandbag to within an inch of its life. The great muscles of his back rippled
as his fists blurred. One glance, and she could read the lines of his body like poetry, see anguish written in the hunch of
his shoulders.
Her heart squeezed out a thickened beat. Clearly, he’d asked Tansy about Paige. And he hadn’t gotten the answer he’d wanted.
His desperate sadness opened up a canyon inside her. Maybe she should leave. Give him some time to process before—
“Are you going in?”
Aubrey startled. A hulking, absurdly tall man stood beside her. She squinted up, recognizing the smiling giant Nick had sparred
with the first time she’d stood here.
“I was just trying to decide,” she said. Her candor surprised her, but despite this man’s size, he exuded an aura of gentleness.
Enough that the words had just slipped free.
“You should,” he said. “He’s waiting for me, but seeing you walk through that door would make him a whole lot happier.”
Her brows flicked upward. “You know who I am?”
“Oh, yes.” He grinned. “Aubrey MacLean. I know all about you.”
She groped for a response and came up empty.
“I’m Jackson.” He stuck out a mittened hand.
She shook it. “I take it . . . Nick’s talked about me, then?”
He laughed, his rich baritone chasing away the cold. “Oh, he never shuts up. It’s always Aubrey this, Aubrey that. I’ve never
met anyone who’s got it as bad as he does.”
She swiveled back to the window, trying to absorb that. Nick landed a punch that sent the bag swinging away.
“Which is why you should go inside,” Jackson said. “He’s had a rough couple days, and he could really use a friend right now.”
“You’re his friend,” she said pointedly.
“Yeah. And I could go in there and beat him up and that’d help him out a little. But you know what’d be even better? A friend
who could give him some TLC. If you know what I mean.”
She glanced at him wide-eyed. He grinned, his smile bright enough to compete with the snow dusting his woolen cap.
“Do you always talk this way to people you’ve just met?” she said.
“I just call it like I see it. Anyway. I’ll leave you to it. You have yourself a good night.”
With a wink, he melted off into the snow. She gaped after him. When she finally turned back, Nick was facing the window. Staring
directly at her.
Her heart slammed against her ribs. Well, now she had no choice.
Nick started toward the door, so she did too, slipping into the bright warmth of the gym. He stopped halfway across the mats.
The overhead lights gleamed on his sweat-dampened skin. Bruised shadows collected beneath haunted eyes.
A twinge gripped her chest. “Hi.”
“Hey. Were you just talking to Jackson, outside?”
“Yeah.”
“He’s not coming in?”
She fidgeted. “No. He . . . uh, left.”
“Huh.” Nick’s feline eyes slitted. “What’d he say to you?”
“Nothing much.” Heat bristled in her cheeks. “Just that you and I should talk. So here I am. Talking. And I wanted to start
by saying I’m sorry. About Paige.”
He inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. He didn’t ask how she knew. She wouldn’t have known how to explain, anyway. I can read your pain in the way you move, and somehow it belongs to me, too.
He opened his eyes. “Thank you.”
“Yeah. Are you all right?”
“I don’t know.” He shifted. “I mean, no. Not really. I told Tansy I want a divorce. That I’m moving out.”
Her blood careened to a stop. It shouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t. And yet her mouth didn’t seem to realize that. “Well . . . then you should probably know I ended things with Gallant. But I’m leaving Henderson. Tomorrow. I got my job at Osos back.”
Nick took a mile-long breath, as if steeling himself. Then his mouth kicked into a brittle smile. “That’s great, Aubs.”
She hesitated. Hope, wicked and cruel, pricked at her heart. He would ask. Any second, he would ask. What are you doing in two years?
“I’ll miss you,” Nick said quietly. “Forever.”
She recoiled, the lights overhead heating to a blistering glare. His words struck her squarely, bringing home a searing realization
she couldn’t seem to escape—he’d never fought for her. Not the way she’d fought for him. All he’d ever done was let life tear
them apart, then shrugged and walked away. And now here he was, doing it again.
Why had she even come? She couldn’t remember. “I’ll miss you, too,” she choked out, then stumbled back through the door.
Outside, the night assaulted her, doubly frigid the second time around. Snow hissed down in sheets. Her boots flung drifts
aside as she fled toward home.
Her pulse thrashed. God, when would she learn? When would she stop throwing herself at someone who continually refused to
catch her?
She’d made it a quarter of a mile before Nick’s truck came roaring out of the darkness. Aubrey backed away, against the nearest
building, doing her best to meld with the brick. Anything that might buttress her against the hurt curling around her heart.
The truck jerked to a stop. Nick jumped out, leaving his door wide-open. He arrowed toward her through the snow, his face
hard. He looked so unforgivingly beautiful that some inner piece of her crumbled.
“Aubs.” He shaped her name into a broken plea. “Come on, don’t do that. Don’t leave that way.”
She pressed herself flush against the wall. “What way?”
He came close. “Like you hate me. Like you’re mad.”
A sob choked her throat, but she pushed it down. “Like I’m mad? Of course I’m mad. I’m furious. You’re single, and so am I, and even after all that, you still don’t want me badly enough to try.”
“What?” He stared at her. “Jesus Christ, how can you even think that?”
She tried to keep her lip from quivering.
He swallowed a gnarled sound and planted one hand on the brick beside her head, crowding her. “Let me tell you something.
If you had any idea of what it’s like inside my head, you wouldn’t even consider saying that to me. You think I don’t want
you? That’s bullshit. I want you every minute of every day. I want you when I’m dreaming, and when I’m awake, and when I’m
so tired I can barely remember my own name. I want you so much that it survives every stupid, desperate thing I hurl at it.
Every punch I throw and every letter I write and every shot of tequila I swallow. My whole fucking existence spins on an axis
of wanting you.”
Her breath thinned and died. Oh yes, he had definitely written those letters. As if she’d had any doubt.
“Wanting you isn’t the problem,” he growled. “It’s that I can’t leave. At least not now. Fuck, I wish I could, but I made
a promise, Aubs. I told Paige I wasn’t going anywhere, and I can’t break my word. Not without being the exact kind of person
I can’t stand to be.”
She trembled. Longing clawed its way up her throat. The symmetry of the moment mocked her, like she was staring back across
seventeen years to their first kiss, reflected upside down in a water droplet poised to fall. The wall, the winter night,
those eyes that threw such impossible heat . . .
The only difference was that he’d already let her go once. And now he was trying to do it again.
“I get that,” she spat. “But you could ask. You could fight for it. Just once in your life, you could fight.”
“Fight?” He sounded perplexed. “For what?”
“Us,” she hissed.