Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
Nico
Annie “Whom I Love” Li is gone in the morning.
I check my phone, though, and she’s left me a text.
I’ve gotta be with May all day today. But we’ll talk.
Thank you.
I scrub my face and throw the phone on the pillow next to me, right where her head used to be.
The sheets still smell like her warm and faintly citrusy, sweetened with skin and sweat and the ghost of champagne and sex. The whole room is haunted by her. Her gold dress is draped over the back of a chair. A single heel lies on its side next to the balcony door, like it made a break for it.
God, I love her.
There. I said it! Mentally, at least. Quietly, in the echo chamber of my skull, because it’s something I don’t know what to do with yet. But it’s true.
Annie Li, the girl with impossible compassion and loyalty, who will defend me to the death. Not just to others—but to myself.
I hadn’t realized how small I’d gotten, how much I’d been hiding. From the world, from my family, from the version of myself I didn’t want to explain. But she makes me want to be seen again. Not just tolerated—claimed and fuckin’ proud.
And not a nameless, faceless, fuckin’ porn star, some ghost floating through fuckin’ postdoc purgatory. Just a man. A man with his hands on a woman who is somehow too much and not enough and exactly right, all at the same time.
I sink back into the mattress and stare at the ceiling. It’s white and perfect and impersonal. It cost me a lot of fuckin’ money a night to feel this detached.
And still. There’s this tiny, minuscule part of me that’s waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Because Annie is… complicated.
Not just emotionally. Though, yes. That too.
Her feelings arrive in full technicolor, with their own weather system.
But she’s also restless in a way that makes my bones ache because I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to keep up if I tried to follow her forever.
And what if she doesn’t want to be followed?
What if she just wants to burn hot and bright and then vanish?
What if I’m just the guy she kissed in a car on a borrowed week?
I sit up and stare at my phone again, like it might cough up some answers.
Seven days.
It’s only been seven days.
That’s not enough time to know the full story. Not really. Right? There are chapters I haven’t read yet. Pages she hasn’t let me see. Maybe whole volumes she’s burned before anyone could get to them.
And don’t I know better than anyone that people are full of secret selves? Hell, I have one. A whole identity I’ve kept hidden for years.
I told her everything, though. Not all at once. Not perfectly. But she knows. And she didn’t flinch. In fact, she called it hot as fuck.
But what if she’s still hiding something from me? What if the next version of Annie is one I don’t know how to hold?
But it hasn’t only been seven days. It’s been nine months, hasn’t it? Nine months of Chef and Ali.
I press my palms against my eyes and blow out a breath.
This is what happens when someone cracks you open. When they sneak in through the cracks in your logic and nest there, quietly rearranging the furniture.
Now I’m sitting here, fuckin’ alone, wondering if I’ve fallen for someone who might bolt the second she thinks she’s become a burden. Who might sabotage us just to prove she doesn’t deserve to be loved.
But damn it—I want her. All of her. I don’t just want the easy parts. But wanting it doesn’t make it easy.
I’m going to have to work for it. That’s the real truth.
She’s not the kind of woman you win once and coast with forever.
She’ll test me and push and run as fast as she can.
Which probably isn’t very fast, but still.
I’ll have to hold my ground and chase her.
I’ll have to make it safe for her to come back, every single time.
And some part of me—a tired, cynical part, the part of me alone in this bed right now—wants to ask: Is that what you want, Nico? Are you ready to exhaust yourself for someone who might not stay? Someone who might always think you’re just another one of her bad ideas?
But then I remember her face in the mirror. The way she looked with my hoodie as armor, covering the marks I made on her skin underneath. The way she gave herself to me, and the way she is mine.
What’s the truth I want to live with?
The next time I see Annie “Who I’m 99.9% Sure I Love,” she is a beautiful, bossy whirlwind of activity.
She flits across the vast, yawning space of the trendy restaurant that is currently holding the welcome party.
She’s fixing flowers, checking in with her parents, getting them water, getting May drinks, getting Tom drinks (begrudgingly, but still doing it).
Asking waiters and waitresses if they need help.
Grilling the wedding planner, but in a firm, supportive, I’ve got you way.
Stopping to socialize with every single person in this room, putting the “Welcome” in Welcome Party.
Drawing everyone in as she does, muttering inside jokes under her breath, making them laugh and stare in awe of this gorgeous, spectacular woman and feel lucky as hell to be granted her genuine attention.
I can’t help but smile, because I fuckin’ get it.
I spend the first ten minutes here just standing by the bar and watching her. On high alert.
It turns out to be worth it, because there’s suddenly a moment, a split second in time, when panic crosses her face while she’s talking to May. Something is wrong. And I wait for it… and her eyes fly around the party. Looking for something.
She’s looking for me.
I all but shove through the crowd, plowing whoever the fuck over to get to her. And when she sees me, the relief that crosses her face almost brings me to my knees.
I open my arms, and she comes home.
“Nico,” she breathes, all the tension immediately leaving her body once it’s wrapped up in mine.
I love you, I don’t say. “What’s wrong, honey?”
She sighs. “Nothing, anymore.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to say it.
“May just told me there was a massive miscommunication with some of our cousins.” She peers up at me, resting her chin on my chest. “They’re all bringing their kids, Nico, and this is supposed to be a child-free wedding. But it’s fine. I can handle it.”
“You need my help with anything?”
“No,” she says firmly. “This is on me. There’s a bookstore down the block. I’m gonna go get some books, and we’re having story time. They’ll probably have crayons and coloring books and arts and crafts, too.”
“I’m gonna go get it, Annie,” I tell her, with a kiss to her forehead. “Let me.”
She shakes her head. “You should be enjoying yourself—”
“Stop. I’m gonna go for you.”
“For May. And Tom, you mean.”
“Sure,” I say. “But mostly for you.”
She suddenly has that (previously to me) unreadable look in her eyes. And then, shocking the hell out of me, she says, “I missed you this morning.” But the way she says it is almost like a dare.
“Annie. Baby.” I’m so relieved that I squeeze her so hard her ribs flex. “This was the worst morning I’ve had all week.”
Her face gets gentle and dreamy. She gets on her tiptoes and presses a soft kiss to my lips. “We’ll talk, Nico.”
I can’t help it. I grab her whole face and make out with her in the middle of this Welcome Party. ‘Cause her mouth is throwing a Welcome Party for my tongue.
She finally peels herself away, laughing softly. “Go,” and I do.
Later, I find myself wandering over to the corner of the room, where Annie is reading to a whole bunch of kids. Because I want to watch Annie interact with kids. For no reason at all.
I am waylaid by Tom.
“Thanks for this, big guy,” he tells me, with a slap to the back that sort of misses the mark.
“Welcome,” I say, but I don’t feel welcome. ‘Cause after what he said about Annie in the car?
“So you’re fucking Annie,” he grins. Leers, almost. His eyes are drooping and unfocused. Jeez. Has this guy always been like this?
“Careful,” I warn him, that murder and danger tone coming back into my voice.
“I want you to be careful,” he slurs. “Outside of getting your dick wet—it’s a bad fuckin’ idea, Nico,” he tells me, leaning over to one side, repeating my own words from just… a few days ago. “She is batshit insane. She is selfish and narcissistic. Main character energy, chaos monster—”
I see red, then black. Rage. I grab his arm.
“Listen to me, Tom. If this weren’t your fuckin’ wedding right now, I would beat the shit out of you.
” I probably wouldn’t, but maybe I would ask Annie to help me set his car on fire.
“Never, and I mean never, ever say shit about her to me or her or your fuckin’ fiancé and her fuckin’ twin ever again.
Do you hear me? Because if you don’t, I’m gonna make you fuckin’ hear me,” I whisper in his ear with an arm wrapped around him and a fake-ass smile pasted on my face.
“Because we’re not gonna have any problems here.
For Annie’s sake. For May’s sake. Got it? ”
Tom frowns at me, a sort of vacant look in his face. He doesn’t look like he hears me. He shrugs and walks away.
I blow out a breath and refuse to think about it.
I move towards Annie.
And this is an Annie page I have never read.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the floor regardless of her fancy-ass dress, a book open across her knees, six kids practically draped over her, all wide-eyed and slack-jawed. And Annie? Annie’s not the sharp, sarcastic woman, or that bold, impulsive, terrible-at-dancing, grouchy force.
She’s soft here. Unarmored. Animated.
Her eyes are wide and bright, her hands flying with each sentence like she’s physically painting the story into the air for them. Her voice lifts into silly accents and singsong rhythms, and she laughs loud and open and delighted. The kids are rapt. And so am I.
She glows. Not in that sexy, slow-burn, feel-my-wrath way I’ve gotten used to. This is something easier, more sunshine. Warm. Effortless. Kind.