Chapter 28
28
Mateo
E very. Single. Time.
Mateo’s eyes followed Nikki as she strode across the property toward the building where she spent most of her time. He could sense her before he saw her. And every time he did, he’d turn, and he couldn’t tear his eyes from her.
Even after he knew she’d gone behind his back to have lunch with some random guy, he couldn’t make himself hate her.
He rubbed his fist over the place where his heart used to be. In its place was probably a shriveled up organ that couldn’t pass for anything. His soul ached. There was a piece of him missing now.
The worst part was that the more he thought about it, the more things weren’t adding up. Nikki didn’t go anywhere frequently enough to be seeing someone. And he would have heard if someone came here to see her. He’d asked Paxton some vague questions about his mother, and the boy had answered innocently enough.
There was simply no evidence that she was interested in dating.
But he’d seen the picture. Caroline might have been vile, but she wasn’t good enough to photoshop a picture of Nikki with someone else. And Nikki had come home wearing the same clothes that she’d been wearing in that picture.
He’d pulled it out several times to try to make sense of it. At one point, he’d nearly messaged Caroline to demand more information. Why was she at the same place Nikki had been? And how had she known that he was dating Nikki? Sending him the picture had been a calculated decision on her part.
“You need to stop obsessing,” Daniel said at his side. “The two of you broke things off a week ago.”
And yet, Caroline continued to reach out. She’d extended her trip, too. On top of all that, she’d asked several different times if she could help Mateo forget about Nikki.
Mateo dragged a hand down his face and finally met his friend’s eyes. “I’m not obsessing.”
Daniel laughed. “You definitely are.” He jerked a chin toward the building where Nikki had disappeared. “I don’t get it. You two ended things. It was mutual. So why are you acting like she’s the one who broke things off with you?”
He hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell Daniel about the picture. And while he’d been immensely curious about why Nikki thought he was lying to her, he wasn’t willing to confront her about that aspect either. It was better this way—to leave things the way they were.
“There’s something you’re not telling me, isn’t there?” Daniel said.
Mateo scowled at Daniel. “If I’m not telling you something, then it’s clearly none of your business.”
Daniel lifted both hands with a smirk. “All I’m saying is that if you want to talk about it, I won’t breathe a word to anyone. Not to Aria, not to Sophia… no one. Maybe there’s something you’re missing.”
His friend was starting to sound like the echoes in his head. Nothing about this breakup felt right. Sure, they’d hashed things out. She didn’t feel loved, and he couldn’t trust her. Both of those things were necessary in a relationship.
He sighed again and raked his hand down his face. “Fine.”
Daniel’s brows lifted.
“You heard about my ex, right?”
“The witch who cheated on you and left you at the altar?”
Mateo flinched. The way Daniel could say it so easily still cut. “Yeah, that one.”
“What about her?”
“You know she was Nikki’s best friend back then, right?”
“Sure, okay.” Daniel shifted in his seat as if he knew this story wasn’t going to be short and sweet.
Mateo cringed inwardly at what would come next. He rubbed the back of his neck, then forced himself to continue. “Caroline reached out to me a few weeks ago. She insisted she was going to be in town visiting a friend and wanted to reconnect.”
Daniel’s only reaction was to lift a brow.
“I ignored her, of course. I didn’t need that kind of toxicity in my life. But when I was in town one day getting flowers for Nikki…” He blew out a breath. “We bumped into each other, and she insisted she wanted to get me a coffee so she could apologize the right way.”
A groan came from his friend, and he shook his head. “Big mistake.”
Mateo shrugged. “Yeah, well, maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. She didn’t even really apologize. I told her that I didn’t want to see her, and I was happy with someone else. But she continued to try to see me. Even stopped by. I don’t even know how she figured it out, but she realized I was seeing Nikki. She sent me a picture of Nikki having lunch with some guy.”
The way Daniel was looking at him made him uneasy. It was like Daniel could already see where everything had gone wrong.
“What?” Mateo demanded.
“I can’t believe you actually sat down with her.”
“ That’s what you got from my story? Did you not hear that Nikki was having lunch with some dude? She said she was going to run some errands, and like an idiot, I agreed to babysit her kid while she went on a date.”
Daniel didn’t even flinch at his outburst. “Did she tell you why she was having lunch with that guy? What if it was a business meeting?”
Mateo’s stomach dropped.
“Or what if he was an old friend or family member who wanted to catch up?” Daniel shrugged. “You seriously expect me to believe you trust Caroline?”
“Well, no, but?—”
“And you showed Nikki the picture from Caroline?”
“Yeah, of course. I didn’t want her to think I was being paranoid. I could tell she was pulling away?—”
Daniel shifted and rested his forearm against the saddle horn. “And what did Nikki say when she saw that you’d been messaging Caroline?”
“I haven’t been messaging her!”
His friend rolled his eyes. “Okay, how did she react when she saw Caroline was messaging you?”
Mateo froze. She hadn’t said anything. In fact, there hadn’t been a lick of surprise on her face. It was almost as if she knew that Caroline had reached out to him. He groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. Then he let out a curse. “I screwed up,” he muttered.
“You sure did.”
He shot Daniel a dark look.
“But just so we’re on the same page, what exactly are you referring to?” Daniel smirked.
A sick and twisted feeling stirred in Mateo’s midsection. He didn’t want to believe it. In fact, the thought made him feel like he was going to retch right there. Nikki had tried to talk to him about Caroline as if she knew he needed some kind of closure, but he’d refused. He’d continued to kick that can down the road, so he didn’t have to relive the feelings those memories stirred up. It was entirely possible Nikki read his refusal as an inability to move on—especially if she had figured out that he'd reconnected with Caroline.
“I never told her,” Mateo rasped.
“Never told her what?”
“I never told Nikki that I’d bumped into Caroline. I figured it would be better if I kept it secret. I didn’t think anything would come of it. Nikki kept insisting she wasn’t Caroline’s friend anymore.” He tore his hat from his head and raked a hand through his hair. “She had to have figured it out.” Mateo lifted his eyes to Daniel. “Nikki figured out that I saw Caroline. I don’t know how, but she did.” He let out a growl. “No wonder Nikki has been distant. She’s probably thinking that I was interested in going back to Caroline.”
Hot, fiery rage simmered within him at the possibility. It was all just assumptions at this point, but he wouldn’t be surprised if he was right. This was the piece that had been missing.
A flicker of hope lit within him but was immediately doused as another revelation assaulted him. “It doesn’t matter. I might have kept this from her, but she kept it from me to.”
“What do you mean?” Daniel asked.
“I mean that she’s been keeping secrets too.”
Daniel sighed like someone might for an insolent child. “How do you know?”
“Because how else would Caroline have been at that restaurant? How else would she have known that I was dating Nikki? I never told her. I specifically kept that information from her because I didn’t want her to retaliate. I know Caroline. I know the depths she would go to knock Nikki down a peg.”
“And if you’re right about Caroline’s motives, you’d have to admit that this whole thing could be orchestrated.”
Mateo shook his head. “Even if Caroline had a hand in setting this up, she wouldn’t have been able to without connecting with Nikki. She doesn’t live here. She came to visit a friend.” And that friend could have been Nikki.
His heart was being torn in a million different directions. The betrayal. The fury. The desperation. Everything was culminating into one massive, angry bomb, and he wasn’t sure what was going to happen when it finally exploded.
“Hey,” Daniel murmured, drawing him out of his spiral. “Let’s say she was talking to Caroline. She’s allowed to have friends, right? Even ones you despise.”
But that was just it. Nikki had said so many times how much she disliked Caroline. They weren’t friends. “Yeah, I guess,” Mateo said.
“And if they weren’t friends, she must have had a reason for meeting with Caroline. I mean, you got wrapped up in the chaos with that woman. No one knows better than you.”
Mateo hated to admit that Daniel was sounding far too logical for his own good. There was only one problem. Mateo’s heart had been destroyed too deeply for him to be able to march right back into a situation where he could get hurt again.
Before he could voice this, Sophia came running over. She was breathless and her face was red. Not only that, she looked madder than a hornet whose nest had been knocked down. “Mateo,” she gasped. “I know what happened.”
He shifted uncomfortably and glanced to Daniel.
“Caroline is sabotaging you and Nikki. She planned the whole thing, and it’s all my fault.”
“What do you mean it’s your fault?” Mateo demanded. “What did you do?”
She winced, then shook her head. “That day she came to see you? I told her about Nikki. I wanted to rub it in her face. I think that’s what pushed her over the edge.” Her eyes darted to Daniel. “Rachel heard Caroline bragging about it at the salon. She said she was going to get you back and that she was going to make you forget all about Nikki.” The fury in her eyes returned. “She said a lot of nasty stuff, Mateo. But it looks like she drew Nikki to the restaurant and asked the bartender to sit with Nikki, since she was upset or some nonsense.”
Daniel cleared his throat, and Mateo didn’t have to look at him to know that he was likely smugger than the first frog who learned to move on land. He was right. The guy in the picture wasn’t Nikki’s date.
Caroline had played them both.
And he’d messed everything up.
Would Nikki ever forgive him?