Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
“Jane, wait!” Nik’s voice called from behind her.
Jane kept moving, pretending she didn’t hear, speed-walking down the sidewalk. God, it was freezing out now. Had the temperature dropped ten degrees in the last half an hour? Or was it that last encounter that had left her shaking?
“Jane, wait!” It was Nik’s voice again, and then the thump of footsteps on the sidewalk behind her. “Where are you going?”
“Home.” She walked faster, but Nik fell into step beside her, his long legs effortlessly matching her pace.
“You shouldn’t be walking alone at night.”
Jane huffed out an ironic laugh. Tonight’s stroll through Linden Falls would be the safest she’d been in… well. Maybe ever. “I’ll take my chances.”
“Jane.” He reached out to take her arm. “You’re freezing.”
“I’m fine,” she said, through chattering teeth.
“Let me drive you.”
Jane was about to refuse, but at that moment, a cold gust of air blew past, swirling her hair in her face and burning the exposed skin on her hands. She wasn’t used to this weather. “ Okay. Fine.” She sighed, realizing how ungrateful she sounded, and added, “Thanks.”
Nik gestured across the street to a car parked next to the sidewalk. He drove a basic sedan, which didn’t really surprise her. He probably wasn’t making a lot of money yet, not that Nik was in the medical profession for the money. And Nik wouldn’t buy a flashy car even if he could afford it. Not like the Tesla Matteo drove.
Jane shuddered. Matteo had wanted her to take the Tesla on this trip. He said it would handle better on the highways than the Toyota. Thank God she’d talked him out of it, told him she was afraid she’d scratch it. That Tesla was nothing more than a two-ton tracking device.
Jane turned her attention to the interior of Nik’s car as they both climbed inside. There were no crumbs on the dash or food wrappers in the back seat. With a car this clean, he clearly didn’t have kids.
Or maybe he did. What did she know?
Nik started the car and sounds of the local college radio station drifted through the speakers, the same station that had played all their favorites when they were kids. They used to spend hours calling that station and making requests. The DJ came on to announce the next song, and Jane could have sworn it was the same late-night announcer as when they were kids, too. His throaty voice was oddly soothing, and she leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Nothing has changed in this town, has it?” she mused.
“Plenty has changed,” Nik said, and the sharpness in his tone had her eyes flying open again. “I know it’s not glamorous like LA, but Linden Falls isn’t so bad, you know.”
“I didn’t say it was bad. And I didn’t say LA was glamorous.” Not even remotely.
“I know you wanted to get out of here the second you could. ”
“So did you ,” Jane said, sitting up in her seat and turning to look at him. “You always talked about leaving. You were just as excited to go to Cornell as I was. You could have been a doctor anywhere. So, why did you come back here? What are you still doing here?”
Nik fell silent for a moment, staring at the road in front of him. Finally, he turned to face her. “I actually never left,” he said, in a voice so low she almost missed it.
Jane’s head jerked up. “What do you mean, you never left? What about Cornell?”
“I didn’t go to Cornell.”
“You…” Her mouth dropped open. Was she hearing him right?
“I went to Westbrook Community College. And then commuted to Buffalo for medical school.”
For a moment, Jane was speechless, and then she managed to choke out, “ Why? You had a scholarship. You could have gone anywhere.”
“Right. The scholarship.” Something darkened across Nik’s features, almost like he was angry about the scholarship. But that couldn’t be right. He’d earned it with his volunteer EMT work. That scholarship had been his ticket out.
Why didn’t he take it?
“I thought you wanted to leave here. Was it—” Jane remembered running into Mrs. Andino the other day. She’d looked great—healthy, like she’d barely aged at all. But what if she’d been sick? And Nik had been left to navigate that on his own. “Was it your mom? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Better than ever.”
Jane blew out a relieved sigh. “So, why would you stay here when you wanted to leave?”
Nik braked at a stop sign and turned to look at her. “ You wanted to leave. I wanted to go where you were going.” He blew out a breath. “Anywhere you were going.” That darkness was back. “But that wasn’t an option.”
Jane looked away. “So, because I left and didn’t end up going to Cornell, you just… stayed in Linden Falls?”
Nik stared straight ahead as he accelerated into the intersection. “No.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “It’s complicated.”
Jane wanted to ask for details. Tell me what made it complicated . But she had no right to. And it wasn’t like she’d ever be able to share her own reasons for doing everything she’d done for the past ten years.
Nik turned the car down Clinton Road, past the ice cream shop where they used to go on summer evenings. Was there any place in this town that didn’t remind her of Nik? There were ghosts of the two of them everywhere she went. Jane peeked at his face, wondering if Nik ever felt that way, too. For a second, his gaze lingered on the shop’s flashing neon sign, and she wondered if he remembered stealing her sprinkles or that face he used to make when she ordered mint chocolate chip. But then he looked away and kept driving.
Of course he wasn’t haunted by the memories of this town the way she was. He lived here, he’d made plenty of new memories with Hannah, and Ali when she came back to visit. He probably took Hannah’s daughter, Amelia, to the ice-cream shop for milkshakes and made silly faces at her. Maybe he’d made new friends at the hospital who he met for picnics in Randall Park and movies at the refurbished cinema on Spring Street.
Ahead, the old wooden sign for Pine Bluff came into view, the blue-painted letters so faded that unless you knew better, you’d think they read Pin luff. Jane was willing to bet Nik didn’t even think of her when he passed that gravel fire road that wound up the mountain. He probably had a girlfriend now who he’d take up to the Pine Bluff overlook to watch the sunset.
The sign drew nearer, and Jane looked away, hoping that soon it would be behind her. But before she could register what was happening, Nik had jerked the steering wheel to the left, sending the car swerving onto the fire road. Jane looked from Nik’s profile to the patchy gravel lines illuminated only by the car’s headlights, and then back. “Where are we going?”
“For a drive.”
“I thought you were driving me home.”
“I will.” He shrugged. “Eventually.”
“You can’t just— kidnap me.” She peered into the darkness, shivering at the skeletal outlines of trees forming a canopy over the road. It wasn’t that Jane was afraid of the darkness, or of Nik. It wasn’t even the memories of what had happened ahead. It was the avalanche those events on Pine Bluff had triggered that still had the power to leave her battered and broken. “I need to get back.” Jane needed to get out of here.
“What’s the rush?” Nik took the curve in the road a little too fast, and Jane’s stomach lurched. He swung the car around the next bend, and Jane’s heart fell to somewhere around her knees. Because suddenly, the narrow road opened up to reveal a wide gravel clearing that dropped off abruptly at the edge of a steep cliff. Beyond it, the sparkling lights of the town spread out in all directions below.
Nik brought the car to a stop and shifted into park, but Jane could only stare out the windshield in front of her. That view hadn’t changed a bit. Not that she’d been looking at the view last time.
Jane’s cheeks flushed pink as she peeked over at Nik. Here in the darkness of the car, with his face cast in shadows except for the dim light of the dashboard, it all came rushing back.
The two of them in an old sedan not much different than this one. The melancholy guitar opening of a folk song playing on the same local radio station. His eyes boring into her with equal intensity .
“What are we doing here, Nik?” Jane said, her voice shaking.
“Do you ever think about it? That night we came up here together?”
The question took her breath away. Do I ever think about it? The night she’d leaned over, propping one arm on the center console, setting the other gently on his shoulder. They’d touched hundreds of times before that night, had hugged by her locker, snuggled under a blanket, tumbled together into a snowbank. But never like that night at the overlook. She’d slid her hand from his shoulder to his neck, feeling the brush of his dark hair against her fingertips, the heat of his skin on her palm. He’d shifted in his seat, turning his body to face her, angling closer. And then their lips had touched, and the world outside had fallen away, the heat from the sun dropping beneath the horizon no match for the fire burning in that car that night.
They’d kissed until her lips were swollen and her cheeks raw from the razor stubble on Nik’s jaw. Then he’d shifted his mouth to explore the sensitive skin of her earlobe and the curve of her neck before running his tongue along her collarbone. Desire had exploded inside her, a low moan escaping from the back of her throat. She’d woven her fingers into his hair, coaxing him to the swell of her breast at the neckline of her flowered sundress.
It wasn’t long before that dress had ended up crumpled on the dashboard along with her bra and Nik’s button-up shirt. They’d climbed into the backseat to escape the barriers of consoles and cupholders, so he could free himself of the rest of his clothes and she could wrap her legs around him.
“Jane,” he’d murmured, brushing a lock of damp hair off her forehead. “Is this okay? Are you sure you want to do this?”
She’d never wanted anything more in her life. In the darkness, her eyes found his. “Yes,” she whispered breathlessly. “I’m sure. ”
“I want to protect you.” He’d reached for his trousers on the floor mat and fished a foil packet from the pocket. It had taken him a moment to get it open, and a few more to get the condom on. Jane had loved that he’d seemed a little bit flustered, a little unsure. This was his first time. He’d waited for her, just like she’d waited for him.
And in the next moment, he’d gently eased inside her, checking that she was okay all along the way. It had hurt, a sharpness followed by a dull ache, but she loved the feel of him on top of her, the strength of his arms around her, and soon the pain had faded, replaced by a throb of pleasure.
“Jane,” Nik had murmured against her ear as his hips picked up speed. “Jane, I need to tell you?—”
“Yes, Nik,” she’d gasped, partly in response to his words and partly to encourage him to go faster, deeper.
“Jane, I love you.”
She came apart then, her body tensing and releasing with the most intense pleasure she’d ever known. A moment later he followed, collapsing on top of her, the two of them in a heap of arms and legs and sweaty skin, naive hope and pure happiness.
And now, a decade later, Nik wanted to know if she ever thought about it.
“Or did you scrub it all from your memory?” he asked. “Like you scrubbed me from your life.”
“I didn’t—” Jane began, but then she stopped and looked down at her hands. Because she had scrubbed him from her memory and her life. She’d been in LA for a few months when it had dawned on her that there was no going back again. Matteo, the nightclub, and eventually, Scarlett… they were her future. After that, it had become too painful to think about Nik, to remember how safe she’d felt when she was with him. To accept that the night she’d hoped would be the start of the life she’d imagined had turned out to be the end.
“I used to drive up here after you left,” Nik said. “I’d stare out at the view and wonder where you were. Were you okay? Were you happy?” He ran a hand through his hair. “And then I’d wonder if it was my fault that you left. If I’d done something that night to drive you away.”
“ You didn’t do anything. ” She reached out to grab his arm. “Nik, if you don’t believe another word I say, please believe that none of this was your fault.”
The fine lines around Nik’s eyes deepened and his face looked strained. “You broke my heart, Jane.”
Jane wrapped her arms around her midsection as if that would protect her from this pain. As if anything would.
“No, that’s not true,” Nik continued. “Breaking my heart would have been kind. You crushed my heart. You destroyed it. I spent a summer lying on the floor writing terrible poetry about you. I spent years after that— years —looking for you and agonizing over what had happened.”
And with that, another crack opened up in her own heart. All this time, she’d told herself that he was fine. That she was the only one who’d come out of this battered beyond repair. But to hear the pain in his voice, to know that she hadn’t been able to keep one more person she loved from hurting…
“I’m so sorry, Nik.”
“Sorry? Really?” He gave a humorless laugh. “We had plans. We made promises to each other. And you poured gasoline on them and lit a match.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
Nik’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s great. But you know what that sounds like to me? A bunch of useless words ten years too late.”
Jane felt a flare of anger. “If it’s not an apology, what do you want from me?” She narrowed her eyes in his direction. “Or did you just bring me up here to torture me over the memories of everything we lost? ”
He reeled back against the driver’s side door. “Is that how you feel when you think about everything we lost? Tortured? ”
“Of course I do, Nik. You think you’re the only one whose heart was broken? You never knew me at all if you believe that.”
“Oh, I knew you, Jane. I knew you better than anyone.” Nik leaned across the center console, solidly in her space now.
She met his eyes, refusing to back up. To back down. But instead of fueling their anger, something else burned between them. That same heat that had stretched across a narrow space just like this one. How had it been ten years, and yet it felt like no time had gone by? If she inched forward, would he still smell like clean cotton flannel? Would his mouth still burn against her mouth, her cheek, her neck?
They’d been kids the last time, fumbling in the darkness with zero experience and an infinite amount of passion. What would it feel like now, to lean over and press her lips to his, to feel the scrape of his beard against her cheek, his solid arms around her?
Judging from Nik’s sharp intake of breath, he was wondering the exact same thing.
He inched closer, the intensity of his stare pinning her in place so she couldn’t move away even if she wanted to.
“Nik.” She meant it to be a warning, but his name formed in her mouth like a plea.
Nik.
Please.
The cold wind whistled against the window outside, but she was burning up inside that narrow space. “What do you want from me?” she asked shakily.
He reached up and slid a hand into the hair at the nape of her neck, tugging her even closer. “I want to know how you could walk away from this. I want to know how you could disappear into thin air.”