Chapter 26
She didn’t have to wait long for Niko’s text that he was outside. The only thing she grabbed on the way out was her desk lamp, wrapping the cord around the base to keep it out of the way.
She put it in the bed of his truck before leaning in the open passenger-side window.
“Hey, handsome. Is there a Mrs. Crested Peak?”
He turned to her as she climbed in next to him, still looking a little punch-drunk but unable to hide the grin blazing across his face like a sunrise.
As always, the sight of him was enough to banish every doubt that had crept in in his absence—or at least silence them.
He was still wearing the sash, and she wrapped her hand in it, tugging him in for a kiss.
“I still can’t believe it,” he said.
She smiled against his lips. “I can.”
Niko shifted gears and pulled away from the curb. “Do you want to go to Off the Rails? I think there’s some kind of after-party thing happening there. Or we could go to my place, but I’m not sure who will be home.”
“Actually,” she said, “I was thinking we could go to the house.”
His brow furrowed. “Your house?”
“Yeah. Do you still have all those pillows and blankets from when we had that picnic on the mountain?”
The crease in his forehead smoothed, and he stole a glance at her, the corner of his mouth lifting. “Not with me, but we can stop by and grab them on the way. I just washed them, too.”
As they drove, he filled her in on the final tally of the silent auction, Merritt gasping in delight when she learned they’d raised almost two hundred thousand dollars.
“Did you see how much your donations went for?”
“Ten thousand for the table,” he said, and she could tell he was trying to sound casual about it. “And a few thousand for each of the paintings.”
Merritt’s mouth dropped open. “Holy shit. Niko! That’s incredible.”
He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “I kind of feel like I’m waiting for someone to wake me up from this whole night. Oh, and do you know Randi, who owns the gallery? She came up to me and, um. Asked me if I was interested in maybe doing a show there.”
“Oh my god,” Merritt said, clutching her chest, as exhilarated as if all of this were happening to her. “Please tell me you said yes.”
He shrugged. “I told her to come by this week and I could show her what I have, but I don’t want to get too ahead of myself. There might not be enough there that she likes for a full show.”
“Wow, listen to you,” she teased. “One night as a professional artist and your ego is already out of control. Didn’t anyone tell you to stay humble?”
He grinned, taking her hand. “Speaking of staying humble. Guess what the most expensive listing ended up being?”
“The jacket Ethan wore in Dirtbags?”
“That did go for a lot. But it was your song. Someone bid thirty-five K for it.”
It felt like the ceiling had been shattered on Merritt’s capacity for surprise. “What? Who? How?”
She’d spent a long time debating with herself about what to donate, deciding in the end to write a song for the winner on the topic of their choice.
Even if her own well of inspiration had run dry, she had faith that she could cook up something decent if given the ingredients by someone else—although she’d expected it to go for a few hundred, at most.
“Jo was saying some pop culture site found out that you guys had donated stuff, and it blew up. Anyone could bid since it was all online. I don’t think the winner was even here.”
“Wow. For that amount, I feel like I owe them an opera.”
Niko laughed. “Save that for next year. You’re going to have to top yourself somehow.”
She shot a sidelong glance at him, smiling in a way that felt borderline unhinged. “I guess this does kinda make me Mrs. Crested Peak, huh?”
He met her eyes, and it looked like he was trying to restrain himself from an equally unhinged grin. “I guess it does.”
After a quick stop at Niko’s, they pulled up to her house.
They stopped in the kitchen first, where they’d left a few cases of seltzer and beer in the fridge.
Merritt pulled out a can for each of them and balanced them on top of the blankets and pillows in Niko’s arms before she led him upstairs to what would soon be her bedroom.
It was clean and empty, since it hadn’t needed much other than new fixtures and a fresh coat of paint.
Instead of turning on the harsh overhead light, Merritt set down the lamp she’d brought in a corner and plugged it in, casting the room in a diffuse golden glow, their shadows climbing up the wall.
A huge half-moon window on the opposite wall that overlooked the town during the day was now an inky black mirror, doubling their movements right back at them as they laid out the pillows and blankets on the ground in a makeshift nest.
“You really have done an amazing job in here,” she murmured once they were seated, facing each other, ankles hooked together.
He popped the tab on his beer, casting his gaze around the room. “Well, I didn’t do much in here.”
She nudged his foot with hers. “You know what I mean.”
He grinned. “Thanks. I should be done this week, probably. We need to do a walk-through, but I think there are only a few things left to take care of. And your mural, of course.”
“Thank god I locked down your pre-fame rate.”
He ducked his head, still smiling. “Keep talking like that and you really are going to give me a big ego.”
“I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t believe it.”
He met her eyes. “I know. That’s why it means something.” They held eye contact for a long beat, and Merritt’s stomach swooped like she’d jumped off a swing. “I’d never want to be famous, though. You don’t make it sound very fun.”
“Sometimes it was,” she said. “My life is so much better now, though.”
He shifted to his side, propped up on the pillows, stroking one hand up her shin, his expression preoccupied.
“How are you feeling?” she asked softly.
“About what?”
“About leaving. After everything tonight.”
His hand stilled, and he exhaled audibly. “I don’t know. Bad. Weird. I wish I didn’t have to.”
“Do you? Have to?” She waved a hand vaguely. “If you wanted to stay, you would have so much support.”
He was quiet for a moment, then rolled flat onto his back. She lay down next to him, on her side, her hand on his chest, her thigh resting between his.
“It’s not just about finding another place to live,” he said, his voice low and pensive. “I don’t have any savings. If I got hurt and couldn’t work, I would be fucked. And even if I don’t, it’s still hard on my body, doing this. I don’t want to do it forever.”
She nodded. “But what about your furniture? Your paintings? If you started charging what they’re worth—”
He shook his head firmly. “I can’t count on that. I can’t build my life around it.”
For some reason, that comment scraped over her, leaving her feeling raw. “What do you want to build it around, then?”
He was silent, one hand moving to stroke her hair. “Family, I guess,” he said, finally.
“Like, your mom and sisters? Or your own?”
“Both,” he said. “That’s the other thing. I was always so freaked out about accidentally getting someone pregnant before I was ready. But I’m thirty, and I’m still not ready. I don’t know if I could ever feel stable enough here.”
It was her turn to be silent now, but he seemed to sense the direction her thoughts were drifting. He glanced down at her. “What about you? Do you ever want to, uh…be pregnant?”
“I have been pregnant,” she said quietly. “When I was twenty.”
“Oh,” said Niko. “I’m sorry.” He paused, clearly trying to get a read on her reaction. “Or…am I sorry?”
“No, it’s okay. It was a fling with this horrible guy; we were already over by the time I found out.
Having that baby would’ve been a disaster for, like, ten different reasons, so it was an easy decision.
Honestly, I don’t think about it much anymore, but it was not fun to deal with at the time, obviously.
” She shifted her head so she was more fully on his chest, his arm coming around her shoulder, pulling her closer.
“Other than that…I don’t know. I think for most of my life it was very clear I wasn’t in a place to be a good mom, and I never thought much about it beyond that.
Maybe I’d be better equipped for it now, but it feels like the clock is running down on my chance to make a decision either way.
Right now, I just want to be the best aunt I can be. ”
As soon as she said it, the reminder of her altercation with Olivia crashed over her in a jolt, so intensely that she sat upright. “Oh, shit,” she said, one hand braced against the floor, the other still on his chest. “I forgot to tell you. Dev and Olivia know about us.”
Niko sat up, too, instantly alert. “You told them?”
She shook her head. “No. She figured it out. From how we were together during the pageant.”
He winced, running his hand through his hair. “Were we that obvious? No one else said anything to me.”
“I think only to her. I hope. But I guess it doesn’t really matter if everyone knows now. I’m sure they all think we’ve been sleeping together for months, anyway.”
They were sitting hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, and he reached down to take her hand. “And she was upset? What did she say?”
“Not much. She stormed off before we could really have it out, which is probably a good thing.”
His mouth set in an unhappy line. “I hate that it has to be like this. Why can’t they just be happy if we’re happy?”
“They’re just worried we’re setting ourselves up to get hurt. Which…” She met his gaze. “I don’t think they’re wrong about that.”
He was quiet for a long moment, his gaze dropping to the ground. When he spoke, his voice was gravelly.
“So what does that mean?”
She brought her hand to his face, gently tilting his jaw until their eyes met again.
“If we keep going like this, it’s going to be really fucking hard to walk away. I know we talked about that going in, but…it feels a lot more real now.”