Win Some Love Some (The Locke Brothers #3)

Chapter 1

1

Six Years Ago

Nora

“ H appy birthday dear Nora. Happy birthday to you! ”

A room full of my family and friends and not a single one of them could sing in key.

Still, they sounded beautiful. A chorus of love and flat voices – I wouldn’t have it any other way. Our tiny house was full to the rafters for my 18 th birthday. People were leaning over the staircase banister and wives were sitting on husband’s laps. Kids were everywhere.

“Thank you everyone, except you, Matt Sullivan. I saw you not singing.” I said and everyone laughed.

“He’s not much of a singer,” his wife, Carrie, said.

“Well,” I said, everyone’s attention on me, which I didn’t hate. “From what I just heard, none of you are.”

The room filled with good natured groans and happy insults. It was the middle of August and the doors were open, letting in a badly needed cool breeze that smelled like summer and the ocean and home.

“Blow out the candles!” My sister Charlie shouted from where she was hanging over the banister.

“I’ll help you, Nora.” Will, my youngest brother, shouted from the back of the room.

“No, me. I’ll do it.” Bethany, my youngest sister, would not be outshone by Will.

The two of them muscled their way through the crowd, stepping on feet and throwing elbows.

“Will,” RJ, short for Roy Junior, my oldest brother, barked from his spot near the kitchen. “Let Bethany.”

“Yeah, Will, let me.” Bethany was only four but she was the toughest of all of us. She wore a sparkly pink party dress, mud boots and was going through a “don’t brush my hair or I’ll scream” phase. She kneeled up on one of the bench seats closest to the table. Her eyes bright with candlelight and victorious glee.

Will crossed his arms and looked peeved – an exact replica of our dad, but he would always follow his big brother’s lead.

“They’re Nora’s candles,” Roy grunted from across the room, I didn’t know where my mom was. Normally, she would be standing right by his side. Maybe rounding up the young kids playing out back to come inside for cake?

She would be upset that she missed this part. Blowing out the candles. Later she would ask me what I’d wished for. I never told her, but it never stopped her from asking.

I smiled at everyone assembled around the table – Sheriff Bobby and Mari, who had made the cake. Uncle Jackson and Aunt Lola. Mal and Jolie. And there…leaning against the wall, next to Sheila Hedgemore, who worked at the dress shop, the candlelight reflecting in his eyes – was my Birthday Wish.

Nick Renard.

My first friend. My best friend. My partner in crime.

My soul mate.

Our path to being together had been complicated by the fact that I was younger than him, by a few years. Like eleven of them. But turning eighteen…becoming an adult - a woman – changed everything.

Nick smiled at me, that lopsided smile like he wasn’t ready to commit to showing anyone he was happy. But I knew the truth. I knew he was happy. More than that, I made him happy. He lifted his beer in a little toast. It hurt sometimes to look at him. His dark hair, those eyes that were sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes brown. The nose that had been broken once or twice from his time in juvie. His lips with the little scar in the corner. I knew that face by heart and tonight…tonight I was going to know the rest of him.

He just didn’t know it yet.

Just you wait, Nick Renard, tonight I’m going to blow your mind.

Not that I knew how to do that. Exactly. But he was a man, he’d had a few girlfriends over the years – he’d know what to do. I just had to tell him it was okay now.

With all her heart, Bethany blew out the candles, basically spitting all over the top of the cake.

I closed my eyes and made my wish.

Nick. I just want Nick.

Everyone cheered and it was perfect. The whole day had been perfect.

Eighteen.

There were times I thought this day would never come. Like I was going to be stuck being a teenager for the rest of my life.

Only now I was an adult. Things with Nick would change and I was going to start college in a few weeks and my life would finally, finally begin.

I loved Nick. Adored my family and my hometown and wanted to get my degree so I could come back and teach English at the high school. I knew this town and these people were my future. I just wanted to be…different. Older. An adult who could make my own decisions.

“Did I miss it?” Vanessa came bouncing in through the sliding glass door, with someone’s child in her arms and another three trailing closely behind her. My mother was the Pied Piper of Calico Cove. Where she went, kids followed. I think it had something to do with her Disney Princess voice and her capacity for mess.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Bethany announced. “I blew out the candles for Nory.”

Mom’s shoulders slumped and she looked at me over the throng of people between us and mouthed, I’m sorry. Then, What did you wish for?

I just smiled and shook my head.

Vanessa and Roy, who were one hundred percent in the running for Best Adoptive Parents in the United States of America, were still parents. And their expectations and their rules were beginning to…chafe.

I was ready for freedom.

And Nick.

Bethany stood on the bench and bowed from the waist, soaking up every bit of the attention. She was an absolute ham. The world was going to have to watch out for her. Unable to stop myself, I leaned forward and jammed my fingers into her armpits. She screamed and curled up into a ball that I pulled off the bench and set on the floor, because she knew the rules of the house.

No standing on the bench at the dinner table.

Rules that hadn’t applied to me in about thirteen years, but prior to growing out of that habit, I had been a regular abuser.

I met my dad’s eyes from across the room again, and for a second we shared one of our quiet moments. We didn’t have to say a word to communicate. The two of us had a hive brain and it made everyone else in the family a little nuts.

When did you get so old, kiddo?

I love you, too, Dad.

“Toast!” Someone shouted, maybe Jackson, and the chant caught on. “Toast! Toast! Toast!”

“Okay, okay,” I said.

“Someone give her a drink.”

Nick pushed one of Mom’s champagne glasses in my hand, full of bubbly liquid.

“She’s eighteen, not twenty-one!” Dad yelled.

“It’s Sprite,” Nick shouted back, but winked at me.

“I saw that,” Dad said.

I lifted my glass and everyone fell silent. Not going to lie, Bethany and I had a lot in common. I didn’t mind the attention.

“Sometimes,” I said, “It takes my breath away to think what a miracle it is that I ended up here. In Calico Cove. With you.” I looked at everyone, but landed on Nick. “A million tiny things had to happen to get to this point and when I look back on it, it looks like fate. Like I was meant to be here. If it weren’t for Dad…” My throat got tight and I took a second to breathe. I got weepy whenever I thought of my dad. “And his willingness to take on an infant he didn’t know, the child of a cousin he barely remembered, none of this would have happened. I don’t remember when it was just the two of us…”

“He wore you in one of those infant carriers on the boat. Pulling in pots with you on his chest. Darndest thing I ever saw,” shouted Frenchie, who worked with Dad down at the docks. Everyone laughed.

“But I remember when Mom came and made us a family,” I said. There was a chorus of cheers and I caught sight of Mom in the back of the room, right next to Dad. Crying. Of course.

“Meant to be!” Madame Za, who was eighty now and sat in the corner of the couch, still dressed in her scarves and rings, telling weird fortunes to anyone who wanted one.

“Anyway, I just wanted to say I would not be who I am,” I lifted my glass. “Without all of you and a little help from fate.”

And I never would have met Nick.

Our eyes met and he made a big show of rolling his. He didn’t believe my fate theory. The most he would concede was good luck. He’d been adopted by a family in Calico Cove – Antony and Birdie Renard. But he’d been older. A teenager, who’d been beaten, abandoned, sent to juvie and left to fend for himself for too long before he’d found family.

Me.

Love.

“Here, here!” Dad shouted and everyone raised their glasses towards me. I sucked down the glass of champagne (not Sprite, sneaky Nick), accepted a ton of birthday hugs and felt more love than I thought possible.

The low chuckle next to my ear made all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Goose bumps raced down my arms and I had to cross them to hide the way my nipples reacted to the sound of his voice so close to me.

“Hey kiddo, good toast. What did you wish for?”

You. Only you.

“I can’t tell you,” I said, turning towards him. “Or it won’t come true.” And you’re going to find out soon enough.

“You’re eighteen now,” he said. “Too old for fairy tales.”

“That’s the difference between us,” I said. “I’ll never be too old to believe in fairy tales and you’ve always been too old to believe in them.”

He jerked back, like I’d punched him in the gut. “Swear to God, Nora, sometimes you say shit that makes me feel like you should be Madame Za.”

“I can see your future,” I pretended to wave a hand over a crystal ball. “You will have to learn how to invoice your customers and schedule appointments-”

He punched me in the arm.

“Ouch.”

He rubbed the spot he’d punched and I felt like a puppy who wanted to roll over onto her back for the handsome man.

Nick was turning thirty in a couple of months, something I teased him about mercilessly. But he was only getting hotter. There wasn’t a single woman in Calico Cove, ten years his junior or ten years his senior, who wasn’t interested in dating Nick Renard.

And he’d dated plenty of them over the years – the older ones. Not the younger ones. And that didn’t bother me…much.

Because I didn’t want to date Nick. I had my eye on a much bigger prize.

“Okay, I wished for you to stop calling me, kiddo, old man.” I lied.

He laughed. “Fair enough. You’re an official adult now. I’ll call you Nora, if you drop this old man business. You’re giving me a complex.”

He made like he was going to ruffle my hair, but I avoided his heavy palm, which probably had engine grease caked under his fingertips.

“Stoooop! You’ll get me dirty.”

I was wearing a white sundress with spaghetti straps that was so tight to my waist I’d kept the dress hidden from Dad until it was too late for me to change. It was loose and twirly around my knees and it made the most of my summer tan and dark hair.

I looked like a beautiful adult woman.

There was not a single part of me that wanted to be something or someone else. My hair was wavy, but I didn’t straighten it or make it curlier. I had freckles, but I didn’t hide them. My clothes were basic because while my mom came from a family with money, my dad was a fisherman who believed nothing should ever be wasted.

I had one dress that my mom tailored for all my dances, making a new dress out of magic and good material. That prom dress was now my sister, Charlie’s, prom dress and would probably be Bethany’s one day. That’s just how the Barnes family rolled.

But for my eighteenth birthday, I’d wanted something special. Something grown up.

I’d wanted to be seen and this dress made me feel like that.

Nick pulled his hand back. “Since when do you have a problem with a little engine grease?”

“If you mess up my new dress, I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”

“Okay,” he stepped back and looked me up and down in a way that made me feel breathless. When he looked at me like that, I could only believe that he felt what I felt. That he’d been waiting, just like me, for this night. “You look beautiful, Nora.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling a blush burn over my skin. “You look nice too.”

“Well,” he said with a smile. “I showered.”

“You know how to make a girl feel special,” I joked. But he pulled me back in for a hug and I breathed in the soapy clean smell of his skin and the fresh laundry scent of his clothes. I could have just spent the night right there, tucked under his arm.

“You are special,” he said and kissed the top of my head. “Don’t forget about me when you go off to school, yeah?”

“Never,” I whispered.

I had one hand on his rock-hard stomach, the other one on his back. I could feel the muscles along his spine and it took everything in me not to run my hand across them. I was hyper aware of his hand against the back of my dress. Could he tell it was so tight I didn’t wear a bra under it? Could he feel my heart beating?

I shook myself away from him so I could be reasonable.

“Soooo…” I said.

“So what?” he said.

“Do not tease me, Nicky.”

He winced. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll stop calling you kiddo if you stop calling me Nicky.”

“That doesn’t seem fair. I’m giving up two nicknames and you’re only giving up one.”

“I’ll stop ruffling your hair.”

“Deal,” I squealed.

We reached for each others hands to shake on it.

Did he notice how our palms slid into place like a key into a lock? His fingers folding perfectly over mine. We didn’t shake hands, we joined them. A moment in time.

“So? Where is it?”

He genuinely looked confused. “Where is what?”

I rolled my eyes, my cousins ran past and jostled me back into his body. “We’re seriously going to play this game every year?”

He shoved his hands into his front jean pockets and checked out the ceiling. A sure sign he was lying. Nick could never lie to my face.

“Nor, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“My birthday present.”

“That’s pretty presumptuous of you.”

“Not when you get me a present every year. Now, how about we don’t do the thing where you pretend you didn’t get me a present and just…gimme, gimme, gimme.” I did a little gimme dance like I was my four-year-old sister and he smiled his full smile. Showed off his teeth and everything. It felt like I won the lottery.

“I don’t know. I figured you were eighteen now, so you were too grown up for all that kid stuff.”

“Presents aren’t kid stuff!”

That kid stuff he was referring to had included the following:

When I was ten he gave me a kid’s bike he’d built from a discarded frame, painted pink, with a white wicker basket on the front and a bell on the handlebar.

When I was fourteen, he painted my room a hideous dark magenta, a color I believed expressed my deepest, darkest emotions.

The next year, he’d changed it back to powder blue when I was done expressing my deep, dark emotions.

There were flying lessons when I turned sixteen and insisted I was going to be a pilot. Dad had refused to let me take them and made Nick sell them for cash and put the money into my college fund.

There was a part of me that still hadn’t forgiven Dad, but my drive to be a pilot had faded over time. So maybe not a bad idea.

Last year it was a homemade cedar wood box, with my initials carved into the top and a trick lock only I could open to keep my brothers and sisters out of my stuff. Especially my closest in age sister, Charlie, who stole every article of clothing I’d owned that wasn’t locked down.

This dress, for example, had been in that chest until I put it on for the party.

I held both my hands out, palms up, and waggled my fingers. He wasn’t fooling anyone. He’d definitely gotten me a present for my eighteenth birthday, and it was going to be epic.

“Now please. Before I turn nineteen.”

“Stop fucking with her, and just give it to her.” Dad said, coming up behind me to sling his arm over my shoulder.

“Okay, fine,” Nick said, obviously disappointed his fucking around with me was cut short. “It’s out front.”

I bolted around him toward the front door. Hugging people as I walked by and accepting their birthday wishes to get to my prize. I was hopeful, but not certain, I knew what Nick had planned for me this year.

Parked out in front of our house in a place of pride, with a giant red bow on the hood, was a powder blue Mini Cooper. Soft top.

I squealed the second I saw it and started clapping my hands. It was perfect.

“Oh wait, you think that tiny blue car is yours?” Nick teased. “No way. I saved that baby for myself. Yours is that mini-van in the driveway.”

“That’s Sheriff Bobby’s mini-van,” I said, rolling my eyes.

Sheriff Bobby Tanner and his wife Mari, and a whole bunch of other people, came out to see the gift. Bobby cupped his hands over his heart. “Kills me every time someone calls me out for my mini-van.”

I booked it across our front lawn to the Mini Cooper and threw open the driver side door.

It was clearly used but restored to mint condition. Nick opened the passenger side door and squeezed his big body inside. He looked ridiculous in the compact car.

“Did you drive this here?”

“I did,” he confessed. “With my knees up around my chin.”

“It’s beautiful and amazing,” I said softly, running my hands over the steering wheel. “It’s so me.”

“It is so you. I have to confess though, this gift is not just from me. Your folks were in on it too.”

Nick gestured with his thumb back up at the house. Roy had his arm around Vanessa’s shoulder, while Vanessa was waving at me ecstatically. Her infectious joy on full display.

Tears burned in the back of my eyes as my throat swelled up. Nick hated when I cried, so I waved my hands in front of my eyes to stop it from happening.

“Oh, hey kid-” he stopped himself. “Nora. Don’t cry.”

“I can’t stop,” I whispered. “It’s all just so good. You know?” I asked him and he nodded because of course he knew.

“I’m so lucky,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “We both are.”

“We are,” he said with a nod.

“We’re lucky our families found us,” I said, turning towards his big body folded up so awkwardly. “We’re lucky we have each other.”

He nodded, his own throat working hard. We were in a bubble, the two of us. A warm, soft, safe bubble. Where I could say anything, because no one would take care of me the way Nick always took care of me. Courage rose up in me out of nowhere. My hands went numb and my head was floating off my body.

I was going to do it. It was happening. Right now in this perfect gift from this perfect man. “We’re lucky we have all this love. Nick. I-”

My siblings and cousins came tearing out of the house, yelling and screaming, and smacking the windows as they ran around the car, demanding rides. Nick reached over and honked the horn, sending them racing away.

“Monsters,” he said with affection in his voice. “I’m glad you like the present, Nora. And I’m glad you’re feeling loved. You deserve that.”

“You do, too,” I said. “Feelings aren’t something you have to be afraid of.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he joked. “I don’t have feelings.”

“You know that bullshit doesn’t work with me.”

He had a hard time with feelings. Talking about them. Feeling them. It was like he let me feel them for him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“Don’t you ever wonder how different it could have all been if you didn’t find your way to Calico Cove? To Antony and Birdie. To me?”

The street light shone in his eyes, turning them into stars in the shadowy car. His skin was so pale, his hair so dark. He looked like a romance hero brought to life.

“I don’t want to think about it,” he said.

Honest to God – that was love in Nick Renard’s language. Accept things as they are, don’t wish for anything different.

I reached for his hand, linked our fingers together. He didn’t flinch away or think this was weird. I’d been holding his hand like this since we were kids.

There was no doubt that the car was my best gift so far today, but it wouldn’t be my last. There was something else Nick was going to give me tonight.

And something I was going to give him.

Just the thought made me bold.

“Thank you,” I said and pulled his hand to my mouth so I could kiss his knuckles. Putting every ounce of feeling into that simple gesture.

He swallowed, and looked away from me, like he was making sure my mom and dad and cousins weren’t all watching.

But he didn’t pull his hand away.

“I just want to take it for a drive,” I told my parents as I slowly crept backwards to the front door. The party was long over. We’d all done our part to help clean up the mess. The dishwasher was humming and all the leftover food was in the fridge. The kids were asleep, including Charlie, who would never have let me go alone on my joy ride if she’d been up.

Something I was extremely grateful for, given my plan.

“She’s an adult now,” Mom said. She was curled up on the couch with Dad, blissed out on Pinot now that all the guests were gone. “We have to let her go.”

“I don’t have to let my baby girl do anything,” Dad grunted.

“Dad. I’m eighteen. I’m going to drive around Calico Cove. That’s it. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Or was I? How long did sex take? I thought, feeling flushed and giddy and nervous.

“It’s her birthday. She wants a little freedom,” Mom cajoled with an elbow to his ribs.

“You text me if you have any issues,” he grunted.

“Absolutely,” I said.

I shut the door behind me and ran to my new beautiful car. I was still wearing my sundress, but I’d brushed my teeth, reapplied my lip gloss and gave my hair another brush.

This was happening. It was now or never. My stomach was in a knot and I had no idea how this was going to work, but Nick would take care of everything, I was sure of it.

I just had to get to him.

Ten minutes later, I pulled up next to the sidewalk in front of his garage. Actually, I might have been on the sidewalk, if that bump was any indication, but I think given the super momentous occasion I could be given a pass for bad parking.

The shop was closed of course, both large garage bay doors were locked down, but his apartment was above the garage. In the back there was a set of stairs that ran up to a landing where we would often hang out on chairs in the summer and people watch the tourists in the town square.

I got to the top of the landing and did a quick check of the streets. It had to be close to midnight, so everything was empty. Not that anyone would think it was strange that I was at Nick’s place, but the late hour might cause a few people to raise their eyebrows.

Or maybe that was just my paranoia.

“Breathe in, breathe out,” I told myself, trying to calm my heart rate. I smoothed my hair down a few times and knocked.

Nothing.

I knocked again. A little harder this time.

Behind the door I could hear the heavy thump of footfalls. The light outside the door went on and I stood, back straight and chest out.

This is happening. Don’t pass out.

Nick opened the door, wearing a pair of sweatpants and no shirt. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen him shirtless. We hung out at the beach and surfed together all the time, but for some reason it felt different.

Grown up.

I saw that chest and the size of it and the sprinkling of dark hair across it and the ridge and swell of muscles in his arms. I felt myself get breathless.

I felt myself get…wet.

“Nor?”

“Hey,” I said, “I have this whole speech planned and I need to get it out and so just let me. Okay?” I was talking too loud and too fast, but I was barely holding on.

“Nora, what the-” He glanced behind him and shut the door a little so I couldn’t see his dark couch or the big screen tv in his living room.

“No,” I said, holding up my hands to cut him off. “If I don’t say all this I think I’ll probably die, so just hear me out.”

My soul left my body and I stood there shaking and so wildly in love I felt sick to my stomach.

“I love you,” I blurted. “You know that. We know that. We’ve always just…loved each other. It’s just there. Like air and water. And…love.”

Oh no, I was repeating myself. That wasn’t the speech. Ugh! I’m messing this up, already.

“And I know I was too young,” I said, getting back on track. His eyes opened so wide I could see the whites around his pupils. Like I was alarming him. He was alarmed. Oh God, just…get to the point, Nora.

“But I’m an adult now. I’m not too young. And I’m going off to school, but I’m coming back. I’ll always come back. To you.”

“Nora,” he whispered. “What are you doing?”

“Making a mess of things,” I said, with like the craziest laugh that’s ever been laughed. “What I’m trying to say is…before I go, I want it to be you.”

“Me…what?” he asked, like he was scared.

“It can only be you,” I said. “I mean, seriously, did you think I was going to let Brett Jenkins take my virginity? Not happening. And since, in the end, it will be us, together - just like Roy and Vanessa, and Birdie and Antony - I wanted to start with you. I’m eighteen now. Totally legal, so no worries there.”

“Nor,” he barked. “Stop talking.”

“You know I’m talking about sex right now?” I asked, just in case I wasn’t clear. I probably wasn’t. I really messed that speech up.

He closed his eyes and covered his face with his hands. “Please tell me you’re not.”

“Nick,” I said, reaching for his hand. “It’s inevitable. We’re…inevitable. I want inevitable to start now. I want you to show me what it’s all about. So that I know how it’s going to be and-”

“Nick?”

All the blood in my body froze and for a second I let myself believe that I was imagining it. Imagining the woman’s voice coming from inside Nick’s apartment. At midnight. While he had no shirt on.

No. No. Nonononononono.

“Nick, who’s there?”

“No one,” he said over his shoulder and it was like getting punched in the stomach.

I’m no one? Me?

I reeled back, caught myself against the railing.

“I mean, it’s just…don’t worry. Go back to bed, Sheila,” he said.

Sheila Hedgemore. With the hair and the boobs. Who he’d been talking to all night.

“I’m going to be sick,” I whispered.

Nick closed the apartment door behind him, his face was unreadable in the dim light. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He really needed a stronger lightbulb out here. I told him that all the time.

“What the fuck, Nor?”

Oh, he was mad. Awesome.

Laughter came out of my throat like razor blades. I needed to leave. Now. Immediately. Before it got worse.

How could this get worse?

I turned to race down the steps but he grabbed me by the elbow. His touch made me flinch. It made me want to cry. The best thing in my whole world had turned into something painful.

“That was sort of the point,” I said, trying to laugh again but it sounded more like hysteria. “But you’re fucking…Sheila.”

Of course, I knew he’d had other women. But there was never anyone serious. Not ever. Nick dated, but he didn’t have girlfriends. Because…well, I knew why. Or thought I did.

He was waiting for me.

“What were you thinking?” he asked, like what I was doing was so out of line…so completely out of left field it was like I’d asked him to jump off the roof. The pain in my chest warped and twisted into something bitter, something that threw my shoulders back and allowed me to jerk my arm away and face him.

“Like you don’t know?” I demanded. “Like you don’t feel this? We’re in love, Nick. We have been…forever.”

He was my person. I was his person. It had always been this way.

Fate.

“No, I don’t know…” he whisper yelled because he didn’t want the woman he was banging to hear him breaking the heart of the eighteen year old on the stairs.

He stopped, took a deep breath. “Nora-”

“No. Don’t use that voice with me.” His stupid let’s be reasonable voice. Like he was my fucking father or something. When he wasn’t. He was the love of my life and he was breaking my heart. “And don’t act like this is crazy.”

“This is crazy!” he shouted. He ran his hand over his face a few times, and when he’d gathered himself enough, he looked at me and I knew, I knew I’d been wrong. So wrong. Like…change the course of my life wrong. Everything I thought was right was wrong.

“I waited for you,” I whispered, not sure how I could have mistaken every moment of our lives together. “I thought you were waiting for me.”

“Waiting? Of course not…You’re a fucking…You’re a teenager, you’re a…”

“Don’t say sister,” I said, my words now garbled in my throat. “You know that’s not true. We’re different.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head away so he wasn’t looking at me. Like he couldn’t bear to look at me. “You’re a friend,” he said eventually. “A close family friend. You got something mixed up in your head, and fuck…have you been drinking? So help me God, if you drove here drunk-”

“I haven’t been drinking,” I said. “I’ve been in love with you since I was a kid.”

His face got softer. Less pissed. More pity.

Oh, I realized, that’s how it gets worse. He pities me.

“You’re still a kid. And Nor, I don’t even know where to begin. This thing between us. It’s not love. It’s friendship. That’s all.”

“Nick? Baby, come back to bed. I’m getting cold.”

“Friendship,” I repeated, like I’d never heard the word before. Not love.

“Good friends. Lifelong…friends,” he said gently.

I glared at him. Because in my heart there was no way I could know something so deeply, so fundamentally at my core, and be wrong. It wasn’t possible. Was it?

Suddenly, I couldn’t be here one second longer. He was an asshole and the best night of my life had turned into the worst. I raced down the steps so fast he couldn’t grab me to stop me.

“Nora!” He cried, chasing me. “Come back. You shouldn’t drive when you’re upset.”

I got in the car, my favorite birthday present, and pulled away from the curb with a thump when all four tires reconnected with the road.

Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t be that girl. It’s bad enough.

But I couldn’t stop myself from looking in the rearview mirror.

Nick stood on the landing, watching me drive away.