Chapter 18
My phone rings for the third time this morning, Nick’s number lighting up the screen. Ignoring the pang in my breast, I mute the call and send it straight to voicemail—just as I have all the other times he’s tried to reach me in the past couple of days.
He’s left messages, but I can’t bring myself to listen to them yet. I don’t want to hear his excuses or apologies. Even worse, I don’t want to hear accusations that I overreacted or that I’m being unreasonable in my demand that we strive for something more than just sheet-scorching sex and amazing orgasms.
I want something real with him.
I want his heart as open to me as mine is to him.
I thought it was, or that we were working toward it at least. At his penthouse the other night I saw that I was wrong. Evidently what I need are things he’s not capable of giving me.
Maybe Nick isn’t capable of giving himself to anyone like that.
“Avery?” My mother’s voice sounds from somewhere behind me, inside the rustic Pennsylvania lake house that once belonged to my grandparents.
It’s early, not even eight o’clock, but I’ve been up for a while already, soaking up the solitude of this place I used to love as a child. There is a tranquility here, comfort in the memories of being on the lake with my grandpa in his small sailboat, and decorating Christmas cookies with my grandmother when I was a little girl. Years before my daddy, Daniel Ross, died. And long before my mother met Martin Coyle, the monster who became my stepfather.
“Avery, honey? Where are you, baby?”
“Out here, Momma.” Seated on one of the old rocking chairs on her back porch, I set my phone facedown on the wicker table next to me and try to erase the sadness from my face.
I’ve been here at her house for the past two days, having taken a bus out of the city to Scranton where my mother picked me up. It’s only been a few weeks since my last visit, but considering we have a decade of separation to make up for since her parole from prison eight months ago, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to see her enough.
But it’s not only that. I needed somewhere soft to fall after my fight with Nick.
I’m not ready to call it a breakup, but right now it’s difficult for me to see a clear path toward anything else with him.
The screen door creaks as my mom steps out to join me on the covered porch. “Well, there you are. You’re up early again today. How long have you been sitting here, honey?”
I shrug. “For a little while, I guess. I just wanted to watch the lake.”
She makes a pleased sound, somewhere between a sigh and a hum. “I spend a lot of time out here too.”
Paused where she stands, she simply looks out at the landscape before her. I see her small smile grow as she drinks in the tree-studded, gently sloping hill that leads down to the rickety wooden dock below and the tranquil lake that glistens like quicksilver under the pale morning light. She’s wearing a long cotton nightgown with tiny butterflies printed on it. Her feet are bare, and I can’t hold back my own smile when I see the bright red polish on her toes, and the sun-kissed color of her tan skin.
Her once-blonde hair has turned yellowish gray and her face is lined beyond her fifty-one years, but she is still beautiful. Still the vibrant, strong woman I admired all my life.
After the decade she spent in a small prison cell convicted of killing my abusive stepfather, she is finally free.
Thanks mostly to Nick.
“I thought maybe we could go to the farmer’s market this morning,” she says. “We can get a bunch of fruit and some peppers and onions to put on those kabobs we’ve got marinating for dinner tonight.” She turns an eager look on me. “You might even be able to twist my arm into making Grandma’s apple dumplings.”
My mouth practically waters at the idea alone. “Brownies last night and dumplings today? You’re spoiling me.”
“Yes, I am. And I’ve been waiting a good long time to have the chance, so you’re going to let me spoil you however I want to.”
“Even if it puts twenty pounds on my hips?”
She laughs, full-throated and joyful. It almost makes me forget about everything that’s going wrong in my life back in New York.
Almost.
She walks over to me and leans down, cradling my head against her breast as she kisses the top of my head. “Do you have any idea how much I love you?”
I nod. “Yes, Momma. I love you too.”
She’s quiet for a while, just holding me close like she used to do when I was a child. “How long do you plan to hide up here at the lake with me?”
I draw back, lifting my gaze to her. “I’m not hiding.”
I’ve told her about Nick—more or less. She knows I love him, and that I spent the past year miserable without him, despite all of my other personal successes. As of last night she also knows it was Nick’s money and connections that helped make her parole happen. I figure I owed it to him to give him that credit.
What I haven’t explained to her are the darker nuances of my relationship with him. I’ve glossed over the things that would only make her worry about me or question the soundness of my judgment when it comes to men. But Nick isn’t just any man. And I don’t expect anyone, perhaps especially my mother, to be able to understand the kind of relationship we have.
Or had.
I blow out a sigh, uncertain how to explain it to myself after what happened the other night.
She combs her fingers through my hair, sweeping it away from my face. “Is he a good man, sweetheart?”
“Yes.” I press my lips flat, shaking my head in frustration over all the good things I know Dominic Baine to be. “He’s a very good man, Mom. The problem is he doesn’t know that.”
“Not your job to fix him, baby.” She looks at me solemnly, sagely. “The only one who can do that is him.”
I nod because she’s right and I know it.
I can’t fix what’s broken in Nick any more than he can fix what will always be broken in me.
But what hurts even more than failing is the fact that he won’t even trust me enough to give me the chance to try.
There’s still a hopeful part of me that believes he needs me as much as I need him. He just has to be willing to see that too.
He only has to love me enough to finally let me in.
Fool that I am, I actually thought he might.
I smile up at my mom. She’s concerned about me, and I don’t want to burden her with my unhappiness. She’s already carried enough of my burdens over the years. “Let’s get to the market early, okay? And when we get back, we can make those apple dumplings together.”