Chapter 33
At home, Nick found Tansy bent over the sink in their single cramped bathroom, brushing her teeth. Half an hour remained before
his shift, which gave him just enough time to ask. He had to do it now, before this tranquility wore off.
At his approach, Tansy snapped off the water and glanced up, catching his gaze in the mirror. For some reason, that bolstered
him, that he could face this reflected facsimile instead of the real live person.
“You didn’t come home last night.” One corner of her mouth twitched. “I guess you’re going to tell me you were with Jackson
again?”
“No.” To his amazement, he sounded calm. Steady. “I was with Aubrey.”
“Mmm. Finally being honest, I see.”
“Yeah, well. One of us has to.”
The amusement fell right off Tansy’s face. She straightened, slotting her toothbrush into the holder without wresting her
gaze from the mirror. “What does that mean?”
“I’m sure Paige already asked, but can you roll your tongue into a tube?”
A harsh inhale skated through her teeth. She set both palms against the edge of the counter and squeezed. She didn’t answer.
His lungs corralled as much air as they could hold. Point of no return. “I’m not her dad, am I?”
To his shock, she answered without missing a beat, without so much as a flicker of her eyelids. “Not biologically.”
Nick swayed on his feet. Hot, white silence blotted out his mind.
He’d already known, on some level. But the confirmation still sent him spiraling into space, unbound by gravity, wheeling
into an alien nothingness where he couldn’t tell up from down.
Tansy studied him in the glass. “You’re her father in every way that counts, though.”
When the spinning finally slowed, he forced his spine straight. He had to get through this, all of this, right now, or he’d
never marshal the courage to ask the rest. “That night. When you picked me up off the road. What really happened?”
Her lips pressed together. “You mean did we sleep together?”
“Yes.”
Her knuckles whitened around the counter. “Which answer would be better for you?”
“The truth.”
She chewed on that for a while, maybe shaping the words before setting them loose. Maybe knowing her answer would push them
past the breaking point. “You cried. About Aubrey. I tried to fuck you, to make it more believable, but you said you couldn’t.
I couldn’t even get you hard.”
His throat closed. He was sucking air through a straw, now. But he hoarded the knowledge, a sliver of gold salvaged from the
caustic storm raining from the sky. He wasn’t his father, after all. Thank fucking god. “You already knew you were pregnant?”
“Yeah. But . . . Paige’s dad didn’t want to have anything to do with it. He told me to get rid of her.” Her lip curled. “Which I obviously couldn’t do. And I needed to give her a better life than the bullshit I got. Which meant she needed a father. A good one.”
He had to will his next heartbeat into existence. “Who was he?”
Doubt swarmed Tansy’s eyes. “Does it matter?”
“I’ve spent sixteen years raising his child as mine. So yeah. It matters.”
She dipped her chin. “Okay. But you’re not going to like it.”
He groped for the wall to prop himself up. He had no idea how he was still standing. “Just tell me.”
She did.
The name pierced him, a mile-long needle pushed into his chest and pulled out the other side. He fought for a breath. “Are
you kidding me? I’ll fucking kill him.”
“Don’t,” Tansy said. “Just leave it alone. He doesn’t know. He thinks she’s yours. I lied to him, told him I’d gone to the
clinic. I printed up a fake bill and everything. And I made sure Paige hasn’t been anywhere near him, that he’s never had
a chance to look at her too closely. I couldn’t risk anyone destroying this family. You and I are the only people who know.”
“We’re not, though. Paige figured it out.”
Tansy let go of the counter and spun to face him, her eyes wide. “How, because of this stupid tongue thing? No, she suspects,
but she doesn’t know. She can’t. We’ll tell her—”
“No.” He brought the word down like an axe, hard and final. Severing. “I won’t force this conversation on her, but if she
asks me, I’ll tell her the truth. It’s the least she deserves.”
Tansy’s lower lip quivered. Her eyes filled and spilled over. She didn’t make a sound.
Nick stood motionless, wondering if he’d ever seen her cry before. He couldn’t call a single time to mind. And yet her tears summoned absolutely nothing in him, just a blank wall where compassion should have been.
“I know I screwed up your life,” she said, “but all I ever did was put Paige first. Before you, yes, but before me, too. And
I’m not sorry for that.”
“Do you have any idea?” Accusation weighted his words. “What you took from me?”
“Yes.” She tipped her chin up. “And the honest truth is I’d do it again. Because if someone held a gun to Paige’s head and
told me to stab you, the only thing I’d stop to think about is where to aim the knife.”
He laughed. Actually laughed, somehow. “And I’d do the same to you. In a heartbeat.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s why I chose you.”
It was the most honest conversation they’d ever had. And for a moment, just one, he looked down into her face and found her
beautiful.
But that didn’t change the fact that she’d taken away his choice. Though maybe that was why she’d pushed him toward Aubrey
with such gusto—as some kind of consolation prize, a peace offering for all she’d stolen.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
“I want to make one thing clear.” His voice dropped. “I’ll stay a little longer, for Paige’s sake. I’ll do whatever I have
to in order to help her through this. But I want a divorce, a real one, and I won’t live with you anymore. You’re the mother
of a child I still love like my own, one I’d die for, but I don’t owe you a goddamn thing.”
Tansy squared her shoulders. “Fine.”
He left her there.
In his bedroom, he dressed with record speed, then climbed into his truck and headed for the mill. He needed heat. Fire. He needed the volcanic roar of the blast furnace to melt him down to numb, dead ash.
And then, when Paige was ready, when she came and asked him, he needed to have a very, very difficult conversation. And somehow,
he had to make sure they both survived it.