Isaac Ngata woke alone in his bed, as he did every morning since he’d screwed up things with Nat, and stared at the ceiling.

“I don’t want to adult today,” he told the empty room.

The room said nothing, keeping its cards close to its chest, refusing to engage. Much like Natalie for the past three weeks.

He shifted restlessly under the covers, every muscle in his body a dull ache. He’d pushed himself too hard at yesterday’s Saturday practice, running all the drills with the girls, then heading to his home gym to punish himself with weights. Although a sullen, wounded-eyed Olivia had arrived with Morgan yesterday, Nat had been a no-show, and Olivia took off the moment practice was over. Before he’d had time to ask her in private how her mum was doing.

Because after unreturned texts and phone calls, and on one memorable occasion nearly getting his nuts frozen off by Vee’s icy glare while she barred the entry to Nat’s place, he’d no fucking idea. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess she wasn’t doing well.

“Give her some space. She’ll come around,” was the general consensus of Owen and Sam.

So he’d given her space, sitting on his hands for the past week since his last abortive attempt to talk to Nat, feeling so goddamn helpless he was a walking time bomb. He was at the mercy of his emotions that kept sucking him down like a whirlpool, spitting him up for a moment to catch his breath, then pulling him under again. It was alien to him, this barbaric need for Nat. This urgency pounding with every beat of his heart to hold her, to reassure her, to somehow transfer every drop of her pain onto his shoulders so he could bear it for her.

Was that love?

Hell if he knew.

Isaac rolled over and pressed his nose to the pillow whose slip he refused to launder because it still smelled like Nat.

Ding-dong.

He groaned at the cheery sound of his doorbell. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

With his luck it’d be his mother prepared for a heart-to-heart kōrero, one where she’d do all the talking and he’d pretend to listen while drinking endless cups of coffee. Or his brother or Owen, showing their solidarity for him by doing the only thing guys knew how to do when their mates were hurting—just show up, shut up, and be there.

Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong.

Isaac huffed out a sigh and hauled ass out of bed. He dragged on a pair of basketball shorts and headed out of his bedroom. On his porch, a solitary person stood in front of the door. This time he didn’t mistake the figure for a Girl Guide selling cookies.

He padded down the hallway, pulse racing faster every step, and opened the door. Olivia stared up at him with her father’s eyes, accusing and red-rimmed. She wore her rugby windbreaker, the hood pulled tight over her face, her jeans soaked from the rain driving down behind her. He cracked the door open wider, surreptitiously glancing over Olivia’s shoulder just in case Nat hovered somewhere behind. Nope, his driveway and the street outside were empty.

“You walked here?” he asked.

She nodded with a shiver, and droplets of rainwater dripped off her chin.

“Where’s your mum?”

Her eyes narrowed to tapered slits. “In bed.”

Bloody hell. “You’d better come in.”

She gave him the stinkeye, but squelched past him, heading for his kitchen. He followed, watching her peel off her soaked jacket and climb up onto one of his breakfast barstools. What was the correct protocol when confronted by the wet, pissed off teenage daughter of the woman whose heart you’d broken?

He gave Olivia a wide berth and headed to the pantry, retrieving a little-used packet of drinking chocolate. “Hot chocolate?”

She nodded again and he flicked on the kettle. Turning back to her, he lifted a questioning eyebrow. “If we’re gonna converse in gestures or interpretive dance, this will be one hell of a trying conversation for this time of the morning.”

That earned him another stinkeye.

“Mum didn’t get out of bed yesterday,” she said. “And there are no tissues left in the house—guess why?”

“I have a feeling you’re here to tell me.” Isaac collected two mugs and spooned instant coffee into one. Instant was kept for his plebeian father and Uncle Manu who wouldn’t know good coffee if it bit them on their asses, but today he needed a caffeine fix, well, instantly.

Olivia folded her arms and leaned them on the countertop. Her lower lip wobbled for a moment, then firmed into a pale line. “Because she hasn’t stopped crying since she found out about Dad and that woman.”

His molars clicked together while his gut swooped in a sickening arch toward his knees. “Your mum told you?”

Stinkeye number three. He’d lose count soon as one blended into the next.

“Of course she told me. I’m not a little kid, and me and Mum tell each other the truth. At least, we used to before you and her…” Olivia’s mouth puckered into a grimace and her eyes grew suspiciously shiny. “Anyway, everything sucks now.”

“Yeah,” he said, irrationally thankful when the kettle came to the boil because he had no freaking idea what to say.

He finished making the drinks, set the hot chocolate in front of her, and leaned against the counter, racking his brains for some nugget of wisdom, something profound to share with Olivia that would make everything better. Three sips of vile instant coffee and many molasses-slow seconds later—nope, he had nothing.

“How could he do that to her?” Olivia said softly. “Didn’t he love her anymore?”

The question that had plagued Isaac for years. If you were in love with a woman as incredible as Natalie, how could you possibly have room in your head or your heart for anyone else?

He met Olivia’s gaze. “I don’t know what your dad was thinking or feeling that night. But I do know he wore the woven friendship bracelet you made him under his wrist tape so you’d be with him the whole time during the match. And that one of the first things he said to me when we hit the locker rooms after that final game was that he couldn’t wait to call you in the morning to tell you we’d won.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Oliva’s mouth. “I remember he said he’d wear the bracelet before he left. I was so proud.”

“He was proud of you. He loved you more than anyone else in the world.”

“And Mum?” she asked. “Did he love my mum?”

“That’s not my call,” Isaac said, “and it’s not my right to comment on your parents’ relationship. As you said, you’re not a little kid, so you’re old enough to understand that parents make mistakes and do dumb things, too.”

“I’m so mad at him.” Olivia’s lip wobbled again. “But I miss him as well.”

“Me, too.”

Though he felt like his guts were being torn apart in two different directions, he missed Jackson. Even after all these years his absence was like a muted toothache that would flare up at unexpected intervals. But a selfish part of him was grateful that he’d had this chance to be with Nat—even though he’d blown it, and even though he knew Nat never would’ve acted on their attraction if Jackson had been alive.

“Isaac?”

He hadn’t realized he’d sunk deep into thought until Olivia’s voice dragged him into the present. He glanced up. She had a milky, chocolaty moustache along her top lip, making her suddenly appear years younger, the gap-toothed kid that Jackson carried a photo of in his wallet.

“Yeah?”

“Do you love my mum?” she asked.

His heart stopped on a dime, threatening to burst out of his chest and head for the hills behind his father’s farm. Fingers tightening on the coffee mug, he lowered it to the counter before he crushed it to white powder.

“And don’t tell me it’s none of my business or it’s complicated. Tell me the truth. You owe me that,” she added.

Guess he did. Not that it made any difference to the way things were, the way things had to be between him and Nat now. “I do love your mum,” he said. “And I hate knowing she’s hurting so much.”

“She’s not just upset about Dad. That’s why I’m here. I guess I was a jerk when I found out about you guys and realized why she’d been so happy. I think she loves you, too.”

Isaac cleared his throat with a noncommittal grunt, shoving down the little bubble of warmth Olivia’s words caused to rise in his chest.

“You two need to talk,” she said.

“She refuses to see me, she won’t talk to me, and she sure as hell doesn’t want to listen.”

Did that sound like it came out of a petulant twelve-year-old boy? Isaac shoved a hand through his hair, wincing when his fingers caught on a bed-hair tangle. It totally did.

Olivia dug into the pocket of her jeans and removed a keychain, one single key dangling from it as she held it out and shook it. “Got it covered. This is to the back door. Go and make her listen.”

She dropped the keychain on the counter and slid off the stool. “And I’ve already checked with Gracie to see if I can hang out with Morgan at their place for a few hours. You can drop me off on the way to see Mum, okay?”

Isaac doubted his ability to make Nat do anything she didn’t want to, but they should talk. Even though he might’ve screwed up everything good between them, Olivia was right about one thing. He owed her to at least try and make amends for his part in hurting them both.

* * *

This was pathetic. She was pathetic.

Curled up under the bedcovers like a prawn, dressed in a pair of flannel pajamas with a flying-pigs print, Nat stared at a spider crawling up the wall. Any other morning and she’d be flailing out of her bed to lunge for the insect spray and a rolled up newspaper. This morning?

Meh. Go well, little spider dude. Enjoy your reprieve, courtesy of a messed up beyond belief former arachnophobe.

Thinking of spiders made her eyes well up again. Yep, even a spider could trigger memories of the man who’d taken care of a few of them on her behalf.

Nat shuffled over to the edge of her bed, pulled yet another tissue out of a half-empty box, and honked into it with a sound like a panicked goose. She slanted a glance at her nightstand and the growing pile next to her open jewelry box, tossing the crumpled tissue at it in an effort to cover the two wedding bands she’d been staring at. She missed, and the tissue fell to the floor. Whatever. Once her ears had stopped ringing—they were so blocked up from the constant crying jags—she caught the sound of footsteps in the hallway.

Olivia must be up and about.

The good thing about having a teenage daughter was Nat no longer had to be up at the crack of dawn making porridge or pancakes or eggs on toast for breakfast. The other good thing about having Olivia as her teenage daughter was Olivia had been freaking amazing these past two weeks taking care of Nat on her worst days, starting with coffee in bed.

She wriggled upright, smoothing down her bed hair from hell and debating whether putting sunglasses over her puffy eyes would fool her daughter even for a moment. This is the last day my baby will see me wallowing in the pit. Footsteps stopped outside her bedroom door. Tomorrow I’m climbing out and getting back to my ass-kicking self.

A soft tap on the door caused Nat’s scalp to prickle. Wait a minute—Olivia didn’t knock when bringing her coffee because she had both hands occupied with not spilling it. Before her dulled senses could react, the bedroom door swung open and Isaac stepped inside looking big, sexy, and scarily serious enough to put the fear of God into the spider still trundling up her wall.

She stabbed a finger sideways. “There’s a spider on my wall.”

And I couldn’t even call you over to take care of it because everything is so wrong between us now and—dammit, the floodgates opened again.

“I’ll deal with it,” Isaac said.

“Don’t kill it.”

So wrong but so right between them that Isaac didn’t question her weird opening statement, but crossed straight to the wall, cupped a hand beneath the spider, and flicked it into his palm. He cracked open a window and dropped the critter onto a shrub.

“Better?” he asked.

For the spider; not so much for her since she was effectively trapped in her suddenly-too-small bedroom. Trapped with the man she’d foolishly given her heart to before checking they were on the same page. Nat folded her arms and sent him the most imperious stare a woman could give while wearing piggy-printed pajamas.

“How did you get in? I didn’t hear the doorbell,” she said.

“Olivia gave me her key. She showed up at my place this morning—and before you panic, she’s fine and staying at Owen and Gracie’s for a while to give us time to talk. Her idea, by the way.”

Oh. He hadn’t come voluntarily. Good to know. Not that she’d been in any state to have a rational conversation with him on the previous occasion he’d come to talk to her.

“Why did Livvy come to see you?” she asked.

“She’s worried about you. I’m worried about you.”

Isaac came over and sat on the edge of the bed. Giddy butterflies swooped around her stomach as his weight made the mattress dip beneath her. If she leaned a little to the right and let gravity take over, she could topple into his arms. But Isaac being worried about her wasn’t enough. Instead of falling back into the old pattern of her teenage years and the later years of her marriage, accepting what she was given and being Invisible Natalie again, this time it wasn’t nearly enough.

“I’m working through some stuff,” she said. “And some of that stuff is about Jackson, and it’ll take time before I can pack it up in a mental box and put it to one side.”

“Understandable.” He eased his legs up onto the bed and leaned against the headboard next to her, crossing his bare feet.

He wore basketball shorts, and her gaze skimmed down the bunch of muscles flexing beneath his calves and caught on his scar. It meant something different to her now. Strength of character. Sacrifice. Protectiveness.

“But what I can’t pack up in a mental box is you. I keep going back to why you lied to me once we became involved and the reason behind that lie.”

She paused, slanting him a sideways glance to see if he’d take the opportunity to fess up his motivations instead of letting her draw her own conclusions. But he remained impassive, arms relaxed at his side, bent at the elbows, fingers laced over his flat stomach. Apparently a spot on her ceiling was more interesting than her, naked under pajamas, sitting next to him.

“And all I can think of,” she said after letting that long silence stretch, “is that you set yourself up in a position where having any kind of long-term relationship with me would be impossible. That it really was just about sex between two lonely people. Because if you felt about me the way I feel about you, you’d know we had no chance building anything worthwhile based on a lie. Don’t get me wrong,” she continued quickly, expecting him to interject. “Olivia and I are in your debt for protecting us and Jackson’s family with what you took on your own shoulders.”

“You and Olivia don’t owe me anything.”

Any emotional resonance had been clipped from his tone, like he’d waved away her debt as if it were a couple of bucks of loose change. As if the backlash and vitriol he’d suffered over the years meant nothing. And so she waited again for him to correct her, to tell her that the reason he’d done what he did was because of the depth of his feelings for her.

Silence.

More silence as his gaze slid over her head to her nightstand and the pile of snotty tissues, then returned to the study of the ceiling.

Silence so silent it made the blood thudding in her ears so loud it sounded like a percussion band marching around her head. The giddy butterflies in her stomach turned into mean drunks, punching from side to side, rearranging all her internal organs into one big ball of hurt. She tucked her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, letting the tangled curtain of her hair sweep across her cheeks. She couldn’t bear to see the expression on Isaac’s face.

“I guess we’re squared away, then,” she said. Points for her for keeping her voice even and the tears at bay. “And since sex, lonely or otherwise, is off the table, and I’ve found the best way to break a bad habit is by going cold turkey, please leave.”

Before I cave like wet cardboard and beg you to love me, you big jerk, she stopped herself from adding.

She felt rather than saw him climb off her bed. His footsteps padded across the room and the door gave a soft creak as he opened it.

“See you ’round,” he said.

And then he was gone.