Chapter 23
Somewhere nearby a cell phone rings. I open my eyes at the same time I feel movement behind me and hear Nick’s drowsy groan.
It’s morning. And we’re in bed together, me lying on my side and him spooning me from behind.
The phone’s ringer is abruptly silenced, then his arm comes down around my torso and draws me farther into the warmth of his naked body.
His voice croons against my ear. “Good morning.”
“What—” I swallow on a parched throat, confusion tangling my thoughts. How did we get here? Had I been dreaming last night?
But no, the lingering queasy feeling in my stomach wasn’t put there because of any dream, not even a nightmare.
Nick’s anguish a few hours ago—the night terror that pulled him away from me—was real.
As real as his heated body pressing against my naked curves now. The rigid length of his arousal moves in a slow rhythm between my legs, priming me for his entry.
“Nick, last night—”
He kisses my nape, the heat of his mouth on my sensitive skin short-circuiting my already sluggish morning brain. I take a breath and try again.
“How did we get back to bed last night?”
“I carried you.” Another kiss, accompanied by the fluid motion of his hips behind me, his cock gliding distractingly through my slick folds. “I’m sorry if I disturbed your sleep.”
Disturbed my sleep? I shift on the mattress, extricating myself from the enticing tangle of our bodies. As much as I enjoy the feel of his nakedness against mine, I can’t pretend what I witnessed last night didn’t actually happen.
Which is apparently what Nick intends to do.
“Nick, we should talk about it.” I sigh when the head of his cock seats at the opening of my sex and gently pushes inside. Oh, God. It feels so good. I moan, trying to hold on to my sense of reason but he’s not making it easy.
“Stay, baby.” His voice vibrates against me while he begins to move in a soothing, seductive rhythm. “I don’t want to talk right now, all right? I just want to be inside you like this for a while.”
I relax, loving the feel of him. Loving the feel of us.
He groans, and he sounds so content it’s hard for me to deny him. Or myself. After the terrifying experience I had with him last night, I need this contentment too. I need this peaceful sense of intimacy, possibly as much as he does.
But I can’t give in to it without knowing that he’s okay.
I need to understand what he’s struggling against because ultimately I am struggling against it now too.
I turn my head and place a tender kiss to the muscled biceps that holds me so tenderly. I know Nick feels me go still in his arms. He slows at my resistance, then stops.
“Am I hurting you?”
His concern wrenches me. “No. But I’m hurting for you, Nick.”
I move out of the circle of his embrace, closing my eyes in regret as our bodies separate. Rolling to face him, I place my hand against the beard-roughened shadow that darkens his cheek. His eyes search mine, yet I can see how badly he wants to hide from me right now.
“I’m worried about what happened last night,” I confess gently. “I’m worried about what I saw.”
His lips flatten with the furrowing of his brow. “I sleepwalk sometimes. Just a bad habit that comes and goes sometimes.”
“It never happened before,” I point out. “I was with you for several months, most of the time sleeping right here in this bed with you. This never happened, Nick.”
He attempts a look of nonchalant, mild disbelief. “I’m surprised it didn’t. Glad too. It’s embarrassing as hell to know I stumble around in the dark and say a lot of crazy, nonsensical shit whenever I’m under stress.”
“Are you under stress now?” The fact that he doesn’t answer with a quick retort or a deflecting joke speaks volumes. “Am I adding stress to your life?”
“No. Never.” He cups the back of my head and pins me with a solemn stare. “You’re my touchstone, Avery. My only true peace. Being with you makes everything else bearable.”
“What is everything else?”
More silence, then his cell phone begins to ring again.
He rolls away from me on a curse to mute the interruption. For a long moment his head hangs down, staring at the screen. On another curse, more virulent this time, he slaps the device onto the nightstand.
I push up onto my forearm, staring at his bowed back. “Are you having issues at the office? Sounds like someone really wants to reach you this morning.”
He grunts, seated on the edge of the bed. “It’ll be a cold day in hell first.”
The venom in his tone takes me aback. We’re not finished with our conversation but he stands up, casting me a remorseful glance. “I need a shower. I’m ripe from those fucking night sweats.”
A knot forms in my throat as I look up at him. I want to tell him to stay, scream at him to talk to me, to let me in.
If he pretends this isn’t important, if he simply walks away—even if it’s just into the next room—it will be impossible for me to believe that we’ll ever get past this moment.
After what happened last night, all of the strides we’ve made together will be for nothing if he can’t trust me with his heart . . . with the secret I dread he’s been keeping since he was a boy.
“Avery,” he says gently, catching my chin on the edge of his hand. “We’ll talk some more. I just . . . give me a little time to sort it out, all right?”
I nod, relief leaking out of me in a heavy sigh. “All right.”
His palm curves along the side of my face, his eyes filled with tender regard. “All right.”
Mesmerized and so in love my chest aches with it, I watch him stroll toward the bathroom. He’s just disappeared into the spacious en suite when his phone goes off again.
“I got it.” I reach over and grab the device, thinking I’ll just run it to him in the bathroom and he can decide what to do with the persistent caller who’s apparently not about to give up anytime soon.
But then I glance down at the screen and my heart does a small freefall when I see the Florida area code. It could be anyone, but given the way Nick has been acting—given the awful way I found him last night—I know this call isn’t coming from just anyone.
He’s already come back out of the bathroom by the time I take a handful of steps away from the bed, the phone held numbly in my hand. I lift my head and our eyes meet. I’m sure that mine look confused, questioning.
His look is rueful. Haunted.
Resigned.
The phone is still ringing when I hand it to him.
He silences it without even glancing at the display. “My father had a stroke five years ago. I understand it was debilitating. He never recovered, and since then he’s been living in a nursing home south of Miami.”
Nick’s voice is toneless, as if he’s talking about the weather, not the man who raised him, mistreated him . . . nearly killed him the day Nick and he fought for the last time.
“They tell me his dementia has gotten worse in recent months. Apparently he doesn’t remember anymore that we hate each other. Or, hell, maybe he does. For the past couple of months he’s been calling me, but since the bastard can’t talk anymore he just sits there on the other end of the line. Breathing. Waiting. Fucking with my head.”
I walk toward him, trying to find a way to reopen our earlier conversation without pushing him too quickly. I don’t want him to shut me out. “Does the nursing home know this?”
He nods tightly. “His caregivers at the home think it would do him good to have contact with family. Lucky me, I’m it.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I told them I don’t give a damn about what might be good for him. I told them they could tell the son of a bitch I said so.”
A memory niggles at the back of my mind. Something I’ve hardly thought of until now. “That morning at my house, Nick . . . after you spent the night. When I came downstairs you were on the phone with someone and those were almost your exact words. That’s who you were talking about? Your father?”
He clutches the phone in his fist, his expression taut with leashed anger. And pain.
I look at the torment in his handsome face and there’s no need to ask how long he’s been suffering night terrors again. I have no doubt they started around the same time his father began trying to reach him.
“What the fuck does he want from me, Avery? After all this time, does he think we can patch up a lifetime of despisement?” He scoffs brittly. “Does he actually expect he can mistreat me for the first eighteen years of my life then come looking for sympathy because he’s rotting away in a nursing home somewhere? Or isn’t he satisfied that he already fucked me up enough?”
I close the distance between us as he speaks, yearning to ease the agony that’s festering inside him. I want to obliterate the demons that are destroying the man I love.
But in order to do that, first Nick is going to have to face them.
“Maybe those are questions you need to ask your father.”
He glares at me as if I’ve betrayed him just with the suggestion. “Ask him?”
It’s not easy to hold his outraged glower. Our connection is too strong. I feel his anguish and fury simply by looking at his face. And I know something of what he’s going through because I’ve been in a similar hell. One that Nick helped see me through at a time when I was certain I’d never fully heal. I had an ugly secret, too, and if not for him it would still be eating me alive.
“I know what it’s like to carry pain and hatred in your heart,” I remind him. “It’s corrosive. It’s self-administered poison, Nick. The only one it harms is you.”
“I can’t face him again, Avery. I don’t care what he thinks he wants or needs from me now that he’s on death’s door. We’ve already said everything we have to say to each other. I’ve got the goddamn scars to prove it.”
“Nick,” I say softly. “I don’t want you to go down there for him. Do it for yourself.”
He shakes his head, his gaze shuttering even before he’s considered it. “I don’t need anything from the bastard now. He had his chance to be a father. Hell, he had his chance to be a decent human being, but evidently even that was asking too much. I don’t need answers from him, if that’s what you think. I sure as fuck don’t need his apologies.”
“I know you don’t.” I reach out to him, resting my palms against his chest. “But I think you need to forgive him. If you and I are going to try to build a future together, you need to find a way free from the pain your father caused you.”
Something dark flickers over his features now. I can’t name the emotion, and when I try to study it more closely, Nick blinks and it’s gone. He’s put it away now, somewhere he doesn’t want me to find it. My heart aches to see that subtle withdrawal. If we stand any chance of making it this time, he needs to trust that he can show me all of who he is.
He needs to be able to take me into the darkest corners of his past and know that I won’t ever leave him.
“I know what I’m asking isn’t easy for you. It won’t be easy for me to see you hurting either.” I hold his face, imploring him to see how much he means to me. “But I also can’t watch this issue between you and your father destroy the man I love. I love you so much, Nick. That’s why I’m asking you to do this. For you. For me. I need you to do this for us.”
“If I go . . . I don’t know what I’ll find there.”
The sober confession is so vulnerable it brings the prickle of tears to the backs of my eyes.
“I know you don’t. And I know how terrifying that must be.” I rest my cheek against his sternum, listening to the strong, steady beat of his heart. “But you won’t have to do it alone. I’m going with you. We’re going to do this together.”