Chapter 32
Halfway through his story, Nick’s voice had almost failed him, because Aubrey had started to cry.
He’d faltered when the first tear had rolled down her cheek. But after so many years of regretting and wishing and despising
what he’d done, he could no more hold back than he could stop from loving her. He wanted her to know. He needed her to understand.
So he’d gathered a raggedy breath and forced himself to finish. Then he’d listened as she’d told him about her father, how
she’d fought with him that night, how the relationship had never recovered.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said, once they’d both gone quiet. “I always figured you two patched things up, eventually.”
“No.” Aubrey sounded so small in the shadows of the truck cab, so broken. “I loved him still, even if I didn’t want to. But
I never forgave him.”
He didn’t know how to respond. He didn’t relish knowing he’d contributed to the rift between them.
“And whatever I imagined with Tansy,” she continued, “it wasn’t that. I assumed . . . Well. Something else. I don’t even know.”
She sniffled. The urge to kiss away her tears swelled, so powerful his back trembled with the effort of restraining himself.
Aubrey scrubbed both palms across her cheeks, then pointed her gaze at the ceiling and breathed deep. She scooted back, opening
space between them. It took everything he had not to close it again.
“So it sounds like you don’t even know if you two had sex that night.” Her voice wobbled in the shadows. “Tansy could’ve been
pregnant already.”
He gulped down the sourness creeping up his throat.
She chuckled, thick and humorless. “You know, she asked me about you once, in the pharmacy, the day you fought Brent Reinholdt.
She was upset about something, and we got into a conversation about you, somehow. I said you were the kind of guy who does
the right thing no matter what. Which interested her. Enough that it freaked me out. And then I just . . . completely forgot
about it. Until now.”
His pulse surged, charring his veins. He didn’t want to examine that revelation too closely. Or at all.
“What will you do?” she finally whispered. “If Paige isn’t yours?”
Jesus Christ, he wished she would hold him again. He needed her to. He didn’t know if he could survive this if she didn’t. But he pinned his hands to his sides and gritted his teeth.
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”
Her fingers crept from the darkness and curled around his. He clung to them, to this lifeline thrown from an impossible height.
“I hope you realize,” she said, “that no matter what the truth is, you did right by Paige. She is who she is because you’re
her father. And she’s so, so lucky that you stuck around. What you’ve done with her is some kind of miracle.”
“Thank you,” he breathed.
Aubrey exhaled. She unlaced her fingers. “Will you . . . be okay tonight? On your own? Once I get out?”
His throat worked. He felt like he would never be okay again.
For some reason, Jackson’s words chose that moment to come rushing in. Someday, you’re going to do something just for you.
“I don’t want you to go,” Nick blurted. He didn’t stop to consider what he was saying, because if he did, he wouldn’t dare
continue. “I mean, I know I need to go home. Look Tansy in the eye and ask her this question. But the truth is, I’m scared.
I’ve been scared shitless all week, and right now, I just want to be with you. Because sometimes that’s the only way I can
actually breathe.”
She stilled. “What?”
He fidgeted. Stupid. Too much honesty. Why did he always do that?
“What was that last thing you said?”
He had no idea whether it would be better to repeat himself or pretend he’d said something else. But fuck it. Maybe Jackson
had a point. “I said when I’m with you, I can breathe again.”
She stared for the longest time. Something deep and infinite moved in her eyes.
He braced. “What?”
“Nothing,” she murmured. “Nothing. Just . . . a weird coincidence.”
Silence layered between them. He mentally cursed himself for his desperation, for—
“Maybe you should come inside,” she said.
He stilled. He waited for the but. None came.
“You could . . . stay, if you wanted.” Her eyes skewed away. “I promise I wouldn’t try anything, like the other day. Which I’m sorry about, by the way. I get why it’s a hard line for you. And I couldn’t anymore, anyway, not with the way things’ve gone with . . .”
She trailed off, chewing her lip.
Gallant, he silently finished. Under different circumstances, the sentiment would have clawed bloody furrows into his ability to
function. But his equanimity had gone out the window when Paige had left him at the dinner table Monday night. Now Aubrey’s
invitation granted him the first ounce of relief he’d experienced since.
“That would mean a lot to me,” he rasped. “It would mean everything, actually.”
“Then come inside.”
She didn’t have to say it twice. He silenced the truck engine and followed her out. On her stoop, he inhaled her sunshine
scent while she fitted her key into the lock. She looked up from beneath her lashes for a moment before opening the door.
Inside, he expected her to go to the living room, but she led him down the opposite hallway.
He hesitated, then followed. At the end of the hall, her bedroom greeted him like an old, familiar friend. The bedspread hadn’t
changed. Neither had the white dresser along the wall, or the plastic math trophies lining the shelves. Nor had the window,
which he’d clambered through countless times. Just looking at it made something tight and painful catch inside him.
Aubrey clicked on her bedside lamp. She sifted through her dresser for pajamas, then disappeared into the adjacent bathroom.
He hovered in the doorway. She couldn’t possibly mean for him to sleep in here with her. But when she emerged again, a vision
in white cotton, she peeled back the blankets, climbed into bed, and patted the empty half of the mattress.
Heat flooded him, writing words of gratitude in his blood.
Aubrey hadn’t spoken since coming inside, so he didn’t, either.
He just ventured into the room, kicked off his boots, and tossed down his jacket.
His fingers hesitated on his belt buckle, but the green of her eyes darkened in invitation, so he thumbed his zipper down and yanked his shirt over his head, then climbed into her bed wearing nothing but boxer-briefs.
She pulled up the blanket to cover them. He lay on his side and, when her hand found his chest, pulled her close. The pressure
of her palm burned a brand into his skin, tattooing him with her warmth.
He stared into her eyes as she stared into his. He swore the world grew bigger, all of existence expanding to accommodate
the way his heart kept swelling into forever.
It was better than sex, lying with her like that, looking into her. So much flowed between them, the silence more eloquent
than any letter he had or ever could write. It was a wordless, naked admission of all that had never been. It was regret and
longing and ecstasy all rolled into one, and he would have traded ten years of his life for the undiluted perfection of it.
He didn’t remember falling asleep. At some point, she clicked off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into darkness, and then
he was somehow studying her again, only now sunlight leaked in through the curtains, painting the lids of her closed eyes
silver.
As he watched, her lashes parted, almost like his attention had woken her. He wanted to believe it had, that she could feel
the weight of what she meant to him, even in her sleep.
She smoothed the pad of her thumb along his cheekbone. He synchronized his breathing to the rasp of her fingers against his
stubble.
She slid a leg over him and tugged. He obeyed the unspoken command by rolling onto her, hardly believing the way her body
turned supple and inviting, the way she parted her legs and let him settle within the heated cradle of her thighs.
He stared down and didn’t dare try for anything more. She’d made it clear he shouldn’t. Even this much counted as a gift beyond measure.
Aubrey breathed deep, as if soaking up his smell. Her fingers painted long strokes against his cheeks. Her attention drifted
downward, locking onto his mouth for the longest time, then she looked up again, into his eyes.
Awe coursed through his veins. He almost told her he loved her, but he knew she already knew, and he found the silence so
unbearably sweet that he couldn’t bear to shatter it. Instead, he reveled in the quiet, gathered it into himself like a held
breath he would never exhale.
She eventually pulled him down into a hug, and he curled his body around hers, awed by how perfectly he fit against her, now.
He nestled his nose in the crook of her neck and dragged in one drugged breath after another. He clung to her for an eternity
before finally pulling away.
He dressed slowly. Aubrey stayed where she’d slept, her eyes traveling across his bare skin like a caress. He smiled before
he left, and she smiled back, a sad and somehow perfect thing, and when he closed her front door he stood on the stoop for
a long time, gazing at the wide white sky.
He felt changed. Calmer, surer, more awake than he’d ever been.
Just yesterday, he’d considered that evening with her in front of the fireplace the best night of his life. Now he knew this
had been.
He just wished he didn’t have to follow it up with the worst day he would ever have.