CHAPTER NINETEEN #2
Nova turned toward the railing again, her mind already circling back to the ownership transfer and all the implications that came with it.
There were documents she needed to see, questions she needed answered, and one very important conversation she apparently needed to have with Rick before she made any decisions.
“What about Rick?”
She knew she needed to talk with him. But right now she had other priorities, like helping bring down a possible arms-dealing operation in the middle of the ocean.
“I’ll talk to him. Can you please let him know that I’ll get with him as soon as I get back?”
“Sure. How much longer do you think you’ll be?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully, not too much longer.” And she really hoped that was the truth.
“Okay. If you want to talk later, call me.”
“I will. Thanks, Soph. And thank Rob and Wallace for me too.”
“I will.”
They said goodbye a moment later.
When the call disconnected, Nova slowly lowered the phone and stared at the dark screen for several seconds before realizing she had wandered farther across the upper deck than she had intended.
The last remnants of the sun sank into the ocean, leaving her standing under the rising moon.
The water stretched endlessly in every direction, reflecting the moon’s light in a way that should have been peaceful.
On any other day, she probably would have stopped to appreciate it, maybe even taken a picture, but tonight the beauty surrounding her barely registered.
Her mind was too crowded with everything Sophia had just told her, each new revelation colliding with the next until she wasn’t sure which part she was supposed to be angriest about.
Moving to the railing, Nova wrapped both hands around the cool metal and stared out across the water as the pieces began settling into place.
Her father had announced her engagement without asking her, without warning her, and apparently without giving a damn whether she actually intended to marry the man whose name had been printed beside hers.
The realization should have shocked her more than it did, and maybe that was the part that hurt the most. Somewhere deep down, she knew Leonard Hart was capable of something like this because he had spent most of her life arranging the people and opportunities around her with the same precision he used when preparing a case.
He had chosen the right schools, encouraged the right internships, introduced her to the right people, and nudged her toward the areas of law that would benefit the firm most. Even her relationship with Rick, something she had once believed had developed naturally out of years of friendship between their families, had apparently been another carefully positioned piece on a board she hadn’t even realized she was playing on.
For years, she had told herself she was ambitious, that every long night and every sacrifice had been made because she wanted the career she had built.
She had worked her ass off to graduate near the top of her class, fought for every promotion, taken on difficult clients, and become one of the best attorneys at the firm because failure had never been an option she was willing to consider.
Yet standing there now, with her father’s latest manipulation still glowing like an accusation from the phone in her hand, Nova couldn’t stop wondering how many of those choices had actually belonged to her.
How many times had she mistaken doing what was expected of her for doing what she wanted?
How many times had she accepted Leonard’s approval as proof that she was moving in the right direction when, in reality, she had simply been traveling down the path he had chosen for her?
And now there was Rick. That part was somehow even harder to untangle.
She was still angry with him, and nothing Sophia had said changed the fact that he had slept with Piper.
Whatever pressures Rick had been under, whatever expectations Merrick had placed on him, he had still made that choice, and Nova wasn’t ready to forgive him for it simply because she had learned there was more to the story.
But for the first time since discovering the affair, she could see that perhaps Rick hadn’t been standing on the opposite side of this mess after all.
Maybe he had been trapped inside it with her, making his own bad decisions while trying to live a life that had been planned long before either of them had been old enough to understand what their parents were doing.
Sophia’s words returned to her then. He didn’t even want to get married.
Nova swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat.
She knew Sophia hadn’t meant that Rick hadn’t wanted her, but the words still stung in a place she didn’t want to examine too closely.
The embarrassing truth was that Nova wasn’t even certain she had wanted to marry him either.
She had cared about Rick—maybe even loved him in the comfortable, familiar way that came from knowing someone for most of your life—but had she ever experienced the kind of breathless certainty people talked about when they described finding the person they wanted forever with?
Her thoughts unexpectedly drifted to Snow, and Nova squeezed her eyes shut. That was absolutely not something she needed to think about right now.
Except apparently her traitorous mind disagreed, because for one fleeting moment she remembered dinner, the warmth in his eyes, the way his fingers had circled her wrist, and those few suspended seconds when they had both leaned closer, and she had known with absolute certainty that he was going to kiss her.
There had been nothing comfortable or predetermined about what she felt in that moment.
No family expectations. No carefully constructed future.
Snow was so different than the men she was used to being around. And he was definitely someone she could see herself spending a lifetime with.
Nova opened her eyes and focused on the horizon again.
She drew in a deep breath and told herself she was angry, because anger was something she understood.
Anger gave her somewhere to put all of this.
It gave her something to hold onto, something useful she could eventually turn against the man who had decided he still had the right to control her life.
What she did not have time for was crying on an offshore oil platform eighty-eight miles from land while she was supposed to be focused on a potentially dangerous investigation.
Unfortunately, her emotions appeared to have stopped taking instructions.
The first tear slipped free before she could stop it, tracing a warm path down her cheek.
Nova immediately swiped it away and let out a frustrated breath, annoyed with herself for allowing even that much to escape, but another tear followed before she could regain control.
Then another. She tightened her grip around the railing and bowed her head, fighting against the pressure building behind her heart as years of anger, humiliation, disappointment, and hurt suddenly became too much to keep locked away.
“Damn it,” she whispered.
She had held herself together through everything up until now. Every time something hurt, she had shoved the pain into some distant corner of herself and kept moving, convincing herself she would deal with it later. Apparently later had finally arrived.
“Nova?”
Snow’s voice came from behind her, quiet but unmistakably concerned.
She froze for half a second before turning, and the moment she saw him standing near the doorway leading onto the deck, whatever fragile thread had been holding her together snapped completely.
His expression changed the instant he saw her face, concern sharpening in those blue eyes as he started toward her, and Nova knew what she should do.
She should wipe away the tears, straighten her shoulders, and tell him she was fine.
She should make some joke, blame the wind, or ask him what he needed—anything that would allow her to pull the walls back into place before he got close enough to see just how badly she was falling apart.
Instead, she did none of those things. She crossed the distance between them before she had time to think better of it and threw herself into his arms.
Snow caught her without hesitation, his strong arms closing around her so quickly and securely that it felt as though he had been expecting her to fall.
One hand spread across the middle of her back while the other wrapped firmly around her, pulling her against the solid warmth of his chest, and as Nova felt that strength surrounding her, the last of her control disappeared.
She buried her face against him as the first sob tore free, then another followed, harder this time, carrying with it every emotion she had been refusing to acknowledge since the moment her carefully ordered life had started crumbling around her.
Snow didn’t ask what happened, nor did he try to tell her everything would be okay when he couldn’t possibly know that yet.
He just tightened his arms around her and held on while Nova clutched the front of his shirt in her fists and cried, letting the anger and hurt finally pour out because, for once, she didn’t have enough strength left to force it back down.
And standing there beneath the moon, surrounded by miles of open water with Snow’s arms wrapped securely around her, Nova finally stopped trying to be the composed attorney, the dutiful daughter, or the woman who could handle everything thrown at her.
For the first time in her life, she just let herself break.