Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
“Is Daddy here?”
Nik’s head jerked up at the alarm in Scarlett’s voice as the little girl stepped into the house. After hearing about Matteo, Hannah had volunteered to bring Scarlett home. But Nik knew that Hannah wouldn’t have breathed a word about him to Scarlett.
So, why would the little girl think Matteo was here? Nik glanced around the room, looking for some evidence the man had been in the house and finding none. Matteo’s boots had still been on his feet when they’d wheeled him into the ER, and his jacket had been crumpled at the end of the stretcher where the paramedics had tossed it after they’d cut it off him. Nik had vaguely registered their presence as he’d taken in Matteo’s lifeless form on the stretcher, after he had died.
With that thought, Nik steeled himself against that clutch of grief he felt every time he lost a patient. It came automatically from years of doing this work and decades of dealing with his dad’s untimely death. But then he took in Scarlett’s wide-eyes and the way her arms wrapped tensely around her midsection .
“Your bruises, Mommy. You have new bruises.” Her voice shook.
And with that, the rage crashed in, displacing any bit of regret that might have lingered over the loss of Matteo.
“No, Daddy isn’t here, honey,” Jane said, holding out a hand to lead Scarlett into the living room. The way Scarlett’s shoulders relaxed at that news wasn’t lost on Nik, either.
Mrs. McCaffrey followed, sitting on the couch on the other side of Scarlett, placing a comforting hand on her knee. Nik lingered in the doorway, torn between his desire to give them space and his need to be here for them.
“I have something to tell you about Daddy,” Jane said, turning on the couch to take her daughter’s hand. “There’s no easy way to say this, but he died this morning. He had a heart attack. It happened really fast, and he didn’t feel anything. He didn’t suffer.”
Scarlett stared at Jane, blinking once, then again. And then her blue eyes filled with tears and her face crumpled.
Jane’s arms flew around her. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
Scarlett pressed her face into Jane’s chest. “I don’t want him to be dead.”
“Of course you don’t, honey.” Jane shot the briefest of glances at Nik. “None of us do.”
“I want him back,” Scarlett wailed, her shoulder shaking with sobs. “I want Daddy.”
“I know.” Jane’s voice wavered, and with that, she was crying, too, tears rolling down her own cheeks as she held Scarlett against her.
It nearly did Nik in to see Jane sobbing like this. Rationally, he knew her sorrow was for Scarlett’s pain, and she was crying over the complicated emotions of this entire fucked-up situation. But he had to wonder if Jane had loved Matteo. Would she ache for him now that he was gone? Would she miss him?
Scarlett’s cries grew louder, and he had to admit that hurt, too. It hit him suddenly how much he’d lost if he really was Scarlett’s father. The three of them could have been a family for ten years . Instead, Matteo had been given this gift, and he’d… tossed it aside. Literally tossed it aside , Nik thought, his hands curling into fists as he remembered the man sending Jane flying into the doorframe.
Across the living room, Jane rocked Scarlett back and forth as they sobbed together, lost in their own world of heartbreak. Mrs. McCaffrey ran her palm up and down Scarlett’s back, murmuring soothing words, and Jane reached for her other hand, pulling her into the embrace.
From his place on the outside, Nik backed away slowly and then turned and headed down the hall to the kitchen. Mrs. McCaffrey had scrubbed it spotlessly while they’d waited for Scarlett to get home. He settled in to wait.
Nik had barely even had a chance to process the revelation that he might be the one who was Scarlett’s father. He had no idea if he was or not. All he knew for sure was that when he’d believed Matteo might have hurt her, the terror had lodged in his chest like a thousand shards of glass, deflating the air from his lungs. He hadn’t cared about a DNA test or all the secrets that had piled up until they threatened to topple. All he’d cared about was that Scarlett was safe.
All he’d known, with complete clarity, was that he wanted to be a part of her life.
It should have been him for all these years, not Matteo.
But as Nik sat there at the gleaming kitchen counter, the sounds of cries from the room down the hall mingling with the slow drip from the faucet and low hum from the refrigerator compressor, the doubts settled around him. Was it too late? After everything they’d been through, could he and Jane navigate this together? Could Scarlett accept him in her life? Could they finally move forward together, or had they lost too much to ever have a chance at happiness ?
It took hours for Scarlett to calm down, and even then, it wasn’t so much that she settled as that she passed out and Jane put her to bed. By that point, it was after dark and Mrs. McCaffrey had gone to bed, too.
It was three hours earlier on the West Coast, and Jane had to call the club to let them know Matteo wouldn’t be coming home again. She broke the news to someone named Yolanda. Nik could hear the woman on the other end of the phone, her voice deep and raspy but hitching with sobs at the same time, calling Jane “honey,” telling her she would be okay. Jane cried too, silently, so many tears spilling over her cheeks and dripping onto her T-shirt that Nik filled a glass with water and put it in front of her just to help her rehydrate.
Jane and Yolanda talked about all the people they’d need to tell—names Nik had never heard before. A whole world that he knew nothing about.
Nik got up from the counter, needing to move, to have something productive to do. Since Jane hadn’t eaten in hours, he made her a piece of toast smeared with strawberry jam—one of her favorite snacks from when they were kids. When she finally hung up the phone, her eyes were swollen into slits, and the purple smudges of exhaustion under her eyes nearly blotted out the bruises on her cheek.
He slid the food in front of her and she picked it up, but then put it back down on the plate, uneaten. Nik shoved his hands in his pockets, watching her from across the kitchen. The room had gradually grown dark while he’d been sitting there, as he hadn’t switched on the overhead light. A single bulb over the stove illuminated the corner of the room, casting Jane’s face in shadows, making it impossible to read.
“Jane, tell me what you need. I want to be here for you, but if you need a little space, I can go. ”
Jane stared at him for so long, exhaustion tugging on every feature of her face, that he began to wonder if she’d heard what he said. And then she slid off the stool and slowly crossed the room until she was standing in front of him. “I don’t want you to go.”
He released a breath.
“I want you to take me to bed.” She took his hand, tugging him toward the hallway. “Right now.”
Wordlessly, he followed her, stepping carefully so the creak of the old wooden staircase wouldn’t wake Scarlett or Mrs. McCaffrey. It had been years since he’d been on the second floor of the house. He remembered how nervous he used to feel when they hung out in her bedroom, the intensity of knowing she’d let him into her most personal space. He used to perch on the edge of the green-striped bedspread, keenly aware that Jane slept there every night. Nothing had ever happened there—not in her bedroom anyway—but that bedspread had starred in more of his teenage fantasies than he could count.
And now, so much had changed, and nothing had changed at all. They weren’t kids anymore, and this wasn’t a fantasy, but he was filled with that same anticipation, that same need for her.
She led him into a dark room at the end of the hallway. Vaguely, he could make out a queen-sized bed against the far wall, flanked by two side tables. She didn’t turn on a light, just closed the door and pulled him over to the bed. He sat down, facing her, and she climbed on his lap, her legs bent and straddling him, breasts pressed against his chest.
His hand automatically reached for her hip, but he forced himself to stop there. “Jane,” he murmured, “are you sure that after everything today?—”
Jane leaned even closer. “Please, Nik,” she whispered against his mouth. “You’re the only person in the world who can make this okay. Please let me feel something that’s real and right and beautiful.” And then with the slightest tilt of her head, she was kissing him, sliding her tongue along his bottom lip, grazing it with her teeth.
Giving in to her need, to his need, he tumbled back onto the bed, pulling her on top of him. In a flurry of hands and mouths and clothes peeling off, he rolled over and slid inside her, savoring the way her eyes closed and lips parted as she exhaled a low moan. He moved slowly and then faster, following her cues, pouring all of himself into giving her the joy and pleasure she deserved.
Afterward, as she lay across the sheets in a slant of light shining through the window from the streetlamp outside, a tear trickled down her cheek.
“Hey.” Nik rolled to his side, feathering a hand across her shoulder. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” He’d tried to be careful, conscious of her injuries. He looked at the freshly mottled skin on her arms, and a jagged red line along her collarbone from what looked like a surgery incision from a broken bone.
“No, you didn’t hurt me. You could never hurt me.” She bit her lip. “But… Nik, I do have scars.” She grasped her wrist with her opposite hand, running her thumb absently over a faded crosshatch of lines. More stitches, probably from another surgery or broken bone. “And I need you to understand that I’m not the girl you knew ten years ago.”
His heart ached. “Jane,” Nik whispered. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” He leaned forward and pressed a trail of light kisses across the scar on her collarbone. “Each one of these scars is a place where you healed and grew stronger. And the ones inside you, too. I’m in awe of your incredible bravery. I don’t want the Jane that I knew a decade ago. Believe me, I loved her. But I only want the woman that you are right now.”
Another tear spilled over. “But can we move past all the pain? The secrets?” she asked, echoing his fears from earlier. “ And Scarlett. If we find out she’s yours, how will you ever forgive me?”
Nik shuddered, remembering the shot of pure terror when he’d discovered Matteo on the stretcher and feared the worst about Jane and Scarlett. “Jane, I love you. When I was in the ER trying to save him, before I even knew it was Matteo, I just kept thinking about my dad. How he was around the same age when he died. How that could be me in ten or fifteen years.” Through the darkness, his eyes found hers. “I hope Scarlett is mine.”
Jane’s chest hitched and another tear spilled over.
“But if she’s not, it’s just DNA. I want you both in my life, and I’m not about to waste any more time.” Nik slid a hand to her cheek to wipe away the dampness. “So, are we in this together? Finally? Forever?”
And the next thing he knew, she was in his arms, her mouth pressed to his. He fell back against the pillows, his hands roaming over her bare back, her shoulders, feathering across her scars.
Jane paused, pulling back just far enough to look into his eyes, a hint of a smile tugging at her lips. “Finally. Forever.”