Chapter 21
Rick and Nika climbed back into the Beast an hour later, both a little subdued.
Nika stared out the windshield, a faint frown on her face as she buckled in.
“I’m not sure that got us anywhere. Bryce hurt her pretty bad, though she’s trying to put a good face on it, and I just don’t think she’d kill him over it.
Not now. Maybe when it happened and she was spinning out, but now?
” She lapsed into silence, her fingers plucking at the seat belt while she thought.
He made a noise of agreement, but he wasn’t fully listening.
The tea and cookies sloshed unpleasantly in his stomach.
Rick was still having a hard time eating.
He would get hungry, take a few bites, and then suddenly not want any more.
Sometimes he wouldn’t get hungry at all, even though he knew he should eat.
And like everything else, he was tired of it.
Rick sat there for a second, tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel.
“I’m not hungry.” He wasn’t sure why he’d said anything.
He felt kind of stupid blurting it out like that anyway, like she’d be able to make sense of it.
Rick just somehow knew on an instinctual level that Nika would make things better.
Which was silly, really, because what did he expect her to do?
He collapsed into his seat, staring at her helplessly, unsure how to really explain what he meant.
Nika stopped fussing with her seat belt and turned to look at him. “I know.”
“You know?” Rick barked a laugh. “Of course you know. I don’t even understand it, but you…” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Explain it to me?”
He expected her to rattle off facts from an article, or something her dad said, but Nika surprised him. She always did. “When my mom left, I lost twenty pounds. Not on purpose. I just…Nothing sounded good. I wasn’t hungry or my stomach hurt, so I didn’t eat.”
The corner of her mouth quirked. “My dad had me drinking those protein shakes or whatever, like the kind they give to older people.” She frowned, her fingers tracing her seat belt, the gesture reminding him of Allison’s fingers plucking at her blanket.
“I really freaked him out. And I felt so stupid about it. I knew I needed to eat. The human body needs fuel, I knew it, I just…couldn’t. ”
Exasperation leaked into her voice. “I was too sad to eat, and that made me feel worse, because logically I knew better, and I thought I should be in control of myself, but somehow I wasn’t. The sadness didn’t care about logic. It just wanted to be sad.”
Rick reached out and grabbed her fingers, stopping the frenetic motion. He kept them, holding them loosely in case she wanted to pull away. She didn’t, sending him a grateful look instead.
“It was frustrating, my own body letting me down. That’s how I saw it. I’ve always lived in my head. I’m supposed to be smart, and my brain was failing me. That’s how it felt.”
“I ate just fine when my dad left,” Rick said.
“But I was angry more than sad. Then I was just too busy trying to help my mom.” Those initial days were hazy now, shock bleeding into anger, and all of it leading down the path to hurt.
It had hurt when his dad left. “I try not to think about him much. How did you get over it?” He gave her a tired grin.
“Did you read a book on it? I bet you read a book.”
She answered his smile with one of her own.
“That would be my usual go-to, but in this case, one morning I just started crying when I burned a piece of toast. It was toast. But suddenly it was one failure too many.” She snuggled deeper into her seat.
“I’d finally been hungry, and I screwed up toast. My dad found me sobbing in the kitchen. ”
Rick held out his free hand, mimicking Allison’s gesture from earlier. “Boom?”
“No boom,” Nika said. “I understood what Allison was saying—about expectations, pressure, and how she reached her limit, but I never got that at home. My dad has always been happy just to see me happy. It’s my life, I get to lead it, and he’s there for support.
” Her brows furrowed slightly. “There was some pressure from my mom—we were never really enough for her, either of us. She seems much happier since she ran off with one of the other lawyers in her firm. I don’t know. I don’t really talk to her.”
“Sounds like she wasn’t enough for you, either,” Rick said. “Or maybe she just sucked.”
Nika laughed. “Why not both?”
“But your dad was?”
“Yeah,” Nika said. “My dad’s great. He threw away the toast. He made me a new piece. Then he got me to talk about it. So no, no books. Just my dad explaining a few things.”
“Like what?”
“I was so mad at the symptoms that I wasn’t paying attention to the cause,” she said.
“Feelings don’t go away, and when we tuck them aside, ignore them, what we’re really doing is storing them in our bodies.
Stress becomes tension in the shoulders, which becomes a headache or a knot of muscles.
Anxiety becomes lack of sleep, an uncontrollable eye twitch, or an asthma trigger. Sadness becomes a stomachache.”
She paused, watching as a woman fast walked down the street, earbuds in as she exercised. “I was ignoring what my body was trying to tell me.”
Rick pondered this, letting her words churn about in his head. “All the indicator lights were on in your car, but you kept driving it, wondering why smoke was coming out of the hood.”
Nika wrinkled her nose. “People do that a lot?”
“Oh yes,” Rick said. “A lot.”
She turned back to face him. “Smoke’s not coming out of your hood yet, but your indicator lights are on.” She squeezed his hand. “For very understandable reasons.”
Rick ran a hand through his hair and let out a breath. “I thought I was doing a good job keeping it to myself. I don’t want to freak out my mom more, you know?” He studied her, watching the lines of her face, enjoying the way she looked at him, with all her focus. “How did you see it?”
That small smile came back. “Rick, those cookies were the best thing I’ve ever eaten, and you didn’t finish yours.
I’ve seen you eat. That plate should have been empty.
” She squeezed his hand again. “And your shoulders are tight. Almost hunched? I can see it when you walk. That’s not how you normally move. ”
Rick blinked at her. “You know how I move?”
Nika blushed. “Yeah.”
The idea that Nika Page might have been watching him as much as he’d been watching her filled him with sharp-edged happiness. He wanted to laugh. Maybe dance in his seat a little. Instead, all he said was “Huh.”
Nika grimaced. “That makes me sound like a creeper. Am I a creeper?”
If it did, then he was certainly in the same boat. He shook his head slowly. “Naw.”
Her eyes narrowed as she watched him. She glanced at her phone. “My dad’s cooking me and Camryn dinner soon. There will be plenty. If you want to join us.” She cleared her throat nervously. “Martina is invited too—I’m sure Cam can pick her up. He’s making stuffed shells. He’s a pretty good cook—”
“I might not be able to eat it,” Rick said. “Will that upset your dad? More, I mean. He’s probably not too happy with me already.”
Nika shrugged. “He’ll get over it.”
“Okay,” Rick said. “Dinner it is.”
He finally let go of her hand and started the van, winding their way back to her house.
—
Night had fallen by the time they parked the Beast a few blocks away from Nika’s house.
It wasn’t that late, but darkness was coming earlier and earlier as October ground on.
Tonight Rick was grateful—it was one more thing to hide them from the reporters as they snuck through the woods and up to the back door of Nika’s house.
Nika grabbed his hand, leading him through the damp grass in her backyard.
The sliding doors glowed from the light inside, framing the scene, which from this angle showed part of the living room as well as a slice of the kitchen.
Rick could see a man moving about, cooking something on the stove.
Camryn appeared carrying a bowl, with Zara right behind her, laughing at something.
It was a scene that promised warmth and safety in the dark night, and Nika was dragging him right toward it.
She bounded up the steps, dropping Rick’s hand to slide open the back doors. Rick followed her inside, the smell of tomatoes, onion, and garlic bread a pleasant assault on his senses.
“Hey, Dad, we’re home,” Nika said, kicking off her shoes.
Nika’s dad looked up, saw Nika, saw Rick, and then straightened, pulling off his oven mitts.
Her dad wasn’t much taller than Rick, average height and a medium build, though the way his T-shirt strained over his arms and shoulders told Rick he spent some time with a weight set.
His dark hair was cut short, his eyes not only the same shade as his daughter’s, but the same sharp yet steady energy emanated from them.
The look he was giving Rick wasn’t entirely friendly.
“If it isn’t my daughter and the boy who kidnapped her.” His tone was flat and dry as the desert.
Nika ignored it, standing on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Kidnapping implies that I was unwilling to go.”
He grunted, still staring at Rick. When he dropped his gaze to her, his expression softened. “A little more explanation next time, then. ‘Going to interrogate a suspect, back in time for dinner,’ please. Especially right now.”
“I was in a hurry,” Nika said, ducking around him to peek at what he was cooking. “Sorry to worry you.”
He grunted again, his attention sliding back to Rick right as the doorbell rang.
“That’s probably Martina,” Camryn said. She was moving toward the door before she finished talking. “Her mom was going to drop her off. I’ll get it.”
“Check the peephole,” Nika’s dad yelled. “Nika, go make sure your friend doesn’t get murdered on my doorstep. Zara, can you take the garlic bread to the table? I want to talk to this young man for a moment.”