Chapter Forty-Two #2
Jesus. Security.
‘Right this way,’ Jacob said, taking off down the hall.
She followed Jacob, the suited giant, and his muscles.
By the time Jacob stopped at a door, Lucy was overcome by a sensation that was alarmingly similar to the one and only time she’d done ’shrooms in college. She felt woozy and like her bones were made of jelly.
Jacob knocked on the door before Lucy could stop him. To collect herself. To take a breath.
Lucy heard the lock click open and half expected to see another brawny bodyguard. Instead, it was Nicky.
Shock was the only thing she could read from his expression. Shock and maybe a little confusion. He was scruffy, like he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. The black T-shirt she’d worn in Vegas hung off his strong shoulders and highlighted the brash color of his tattooed arms.
Nicky nodded to the men behind her.
Jacob and the giant shuffled off.
Lucy dropped the handle of her suitcase and rubbed her hands roughly on her pants.
She blurted, ‘I fucked up.’ Not the words she had rehearsed in her head over the Atlantic. Still, she held his gaze, willing him to understand.
Nicky opened the door completely, stood aside to let her pass. Lucy was briefly spellbound by the amber and lavender show of sunset over the Mediterranean through the suite’s windows, then by Nicky who was rolling her suitcase into the room and shutting the door.
Lucy tried, ‘I was scared. I was closed off. I was … I was pot committed. Do you know what that means?’
Nicky nodded.
‘My career is the only thing I’ve ever really invested in, I think.
Other than Chloe. A lifeline. A crutch, maybe?
Safe and steady. Being on campus, with its permanence and its rules.
The seasons and semesters. It was where I was happiest. Was .
Past tense. Because now, I know I am happiest when I’m with you.
That I will be the happiest I have ever been with you . Wherever that is.’
Nicky stepped closer, further into the room, but remained terrifyingly silent. He leaned his back against the white-paneled walls of the living area and looked at his feet.
She blubbered, ‘I was scared. I was stuck. I think …’ Lucy was floundering.
Lost. ‘I think that night at the beach was pivotal for me, too. But instead of making me free, it might have … it might have made me careful. Too careful. I’m not saying it’s your fault.
I’m only saying, I couldn’t leap. I trained myself not to. ’
Nicky was still studying the carpet. She was screwing this up.
‘I quit my job,’ she said.
At that, Nicky looked up.
She pressed on, ‘I set a match to nearly every professional bridge I’ve ever built.
’ She chewed at her lip, racking her brain for any scrap of evidence that might keep him looking at her.
‘I, um, got a real estate agent. She’s putting my house on the market on Monday.
I sold my car. For one dollar to the grad students that live next door to me.
They’re from Cameroon. They have a baby named Marthe who still has that delicious new baby smell. ’
What the fuck was she saying? Why didn’t she know what the fuck to say? She had been giving lectures for most of her adult life. She knew how to speak! Where is that Badass Bitch when I need her?
She went on, ‘I emptied my cupboards and returned my cable boxes. I flew here on a one-way ticket. No return.’ Lucy thought her heart was going to crack open. She pressed her fingers to her tired eyes and felt two-day-old mascara crumbling beneath them.
Lucy said, ‘I love you, Nicky.’ She stared into those loden green eyes of his and repeated, ‘I love you in a way that is terrifying and shocking and like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m leaping now.
Upside down and backwards probably, judging by the look on your face.
But I’m doing it. I came here because I love you and I don’t want to spend the next twenty-eight years regretting you. If you … if you still want me.’
Nicky took three great strides toward her.
He wrapped his arms under hers and around her back, lifting her feet from the ground.
When his mouth came to hers, Lucy finally exhaled.
He breathed her in and swallowed her down, kissing her so hard that her body went limp under the weight of her relief and gratitude.
His grip around her tightened. ‘I’ve got you, Lou,’ he said. ‘I love you. I’ve got you.’
He steadied his gaze on hers. ‘Now we’re even, okay? I disappeared once. You disappeared once. Even. But that’s it. Next time you feel like running, you talk to me.’
‘I won’t run,’ Lucy insisted.
‘It might not be that simple. I hope it is, but just promise me that we can do this together.’
‘I promise.’
Nicky lifted Lucy up and carried her into a nearby bedroom. He placed her gently on the crisp white linens and began undressing her. First her shoes. Then her socks. The rumpled cardigan she’d put on in Ohio.
‘How long were you on a plane, baby?’ he asked, laying the dirty cardigan carefully over a chair.
‘Thirteen hours plus layovers,’ she replied.
‘Shit,’ he mumbled.
‘I really need a shower, Nicky,’ she said, suddenly realizing where all the clothing removal was headed when she spotted the outline of a suspicious bulge in his sweatpants.
‘I don’t care if you don’t, Lou,’ he said, pausing with his hand at the button of her pants.
‘Go on then.’ She smiled. When Nicky smiled back, Lucy knew that whatever might come next, for a dozen years or a hundred, or five minutes it would be worth it. Whatever she had to give up was nothing compared to what she would get back.
‘You quit your job, Lou? Really? For me?’ he asked, pulling her pants and underwear down in one go.
‘Well, for me . To be with you. You were right – I wasn’t happy.
I hadn’t been for a while. Maybe you’ll turn out to be my toupee, or my Margaritaville,’ she said, referencing their conversation on the balcony of the Lusso.
‘But I know I was stuck … personally, professionally. All of it. Now I’m free to do what I want. ’
‘With me,’ Nicky added.
‘With you.’
‘I think I’d rather be the Porsche.’
He hopped on the bed beside her.
She laughed. ‘Like a classic model with a few miles under the hood?’ she teased.
‘Like a finely tuned, world-class machine. With power and speed.’
‘Oh, right. Of course.’
‘I love you,’ he said against her lips, pulling her shirt over her head.
‘Say it again,’ she begged.
‘I love you,’ he whispered in her ear.
‘I love you, too,’ she said, trying to hold herself together and not weep with pure relief.
‘I missed you,’ he said.
‘God, Nicky, I missed you so fucking much I don’t even know how to describe it. It felt like the whole world was a different place without you in it. I was lost.’
Lucy arched her back just long enough for Nicky to unhook her bra and fling it in the direction of her cardigan.
‘I’m here now. You’re here now. I can’t fucking believe you’re in Monaco.’
‘I can’t believe I’m naked and you still have all your clothes on,’ Lucy said, making a pointed glance down his still fully dressed frame.
‘ Shit ,’ he said as though just realizing he was the only one in the room with clothes on.
The bed was a flurry of motion, T-shirt, pants, boxers, and socks tossed haphazardly around the place.
When Nicky finally settled again, he put the full weight of himself – skin to skin – against her. Brought his soft lips to her ear.
‘I love you,’ he murmured.
Lucy felt her entire body relax, the tension of days – weeks – melting into the mattress beneath her. She carded her fingernails through his soft brown waves and replied, ‘I love you.’
Nicky slowly brought his lips to one cheek, then the other.
He touched their noses together and exhaled, long and slow as if he’d been holding his breath and was finally able to release it.
When she brought her teeth to his lower lip, his hips jerked and she could feel the hot length of him pressing on her hip.
She said, ‘I’m not going to be much help to you right now, but I want you close. Please.’
Nicky pushed up on one arm, trailed the other lazily over her breast. His calloused fingers lifted goose bumps on her exposed skin as he gently stroked her waist, then her thigh.
When his fingers found her wet, needy core she gasped, ‘ Nicky .’
‘God, I want to hear that forever.’
‘Okay,’ Lucy mumbled, losing herself in his touch.
‘Everything. Always,’ he whispered, rising up and slotting himself between her welcoming thighs.
When he slid slowly inside her, Lucy was struck by the sudden thought that they were made for each other.
It was astounding, really, that they had found one another at that dumb party a million years before.
That they had found each other a second time was nothing short of miraculous.
She resolved never to tempt fate again. Another miracle would be asking too much of the universe.
Time lost all of its meaning and power as Nicky kissed her, held her, worked himself inside her. She chanted his name like a prayer. Into his mouth, his ear, the soft curve of his neck that perpetually smelled like clean ocean air and sunshine.
‘ Nicky , please,’ she begged when the exhaustion and pleasure had become overwhelming.
He gently brought them both to their sides, his arm tucked under her neck. Her lips found his as he lifted her knee and hooked it over his hip.
She gasped at the friction. At the perfection.
Then, Lucy came apart. She pressed her hands on the firm swell of his ass to push him deep and hold him there as the muscles inside her grasped and squeezed at him.
She held him close until she could feel the pulse of him inside her and was deafened by his groans and her name breathed out like a sigh when he stilled.
Endings are beginnings. Sometimes, they’re the same.