“When will you be back?” he asked.
“Not sure,” I said, pulling away a strand of hair that blew in my face. “This trip was kind of on a whim. So, whenever the mood strikes, I just pick up and take a drive out here.”
He pulled a card out of his shirt pocket. “Give me a call next time you’re in town,” he said with a smirk. “We can hang out. Have a drink or something.”
The sound of dirt crunching under Nico’s feet as he walked toward us got our attention, and we both turned to look at him. The murderous glare wasn’t missed, and somehow, he looked even bigger and menacing than earlier. Steve immediately lifted his hand. “That’s if you don’t mind of course.”
“I do mind,” Nico said without a flinch, and my heart thudded.
“I’m sorry,” Steve said quickly as Nico continued to approach. “I-I just thought you know b-because she was in her car out here alone and you’re her sister’s ex and all you were just helping her out.”
“Well, you thought wrong,” Nico said, walking past us to inspect my car. “Let’s go get this cleaned up.”
Just like that, he was done addressing Stuttering Steve. Steve apologized again, but Nico knelt to get a closer look at the caked-on mud, ignoring him completely. Steve then turned to me giving me this oh shit face. He then said good-bye and hurried off to his tow truck and started it up. Within minutes, he was gone, and I was left there in the dust cloud with Nico.
“What was that about?” I asked, feeling the pitter-patter of my heart in my chest.
“I told you I didn’t like the douche,” he said, straightening out and standing back up. “Your sister wouldn’t have either. Just looking out.” He walked past me, even as my heart continued to pound wildly. “I really think you need to get those rims cleaned up. I know a good place in town. Follow me.”
As saddened as I was that I wouldn’t be riding back with my body wrapped around his, I was also secretly thrilled that we weren’t just parting ways. I wasn’t ready to think about that yet.
I followed him back to town, my mind racing about everything that’d happened this weekend the whole way. He pulled into a parking lot outside an auto-detailing place. “Detailing?” I asked as I got out of the car. “I thought we’d just hose it down or something. Maybe go through a car wash.”
“Nah, you don’t wanna mess with anything being stuck in there or underneath,” he said as we walked toward the entrance of the place. “Looks like your car was in there good and deep. You have a long drive home. Better to be safe than sorry.”
His concern warmed me, but then I’d since concluded there was nothing about this man that didn’t make my body react to him. He spoke to the guy at the body shop, who said it’d take at least an hour, maybe longer. I turned to Nico. “An hour?”
“We don’t have to wait here,” he said, handing the guy my keys as my heart sped up again for the millionth time. “Just make sure you get it up on the lift and get in there good.”
We’d be spending even more time together. My heart swarmed with excitement. Since we’d already eaten, killing time by grabbing something to eat wasn’t an option. We drove to a park with a big waterfall in the middle of town. Mama and I had driven by it the times we’d come out here, and she’d told me it was where Madeline and I would wait for her after school. It was just a block away and saved her from having to deal with the after-school jam of cars just outside the school. So, I knew I’d been there plenty of times. Still there’d never been any flashes.
“Nolan mentioned you’d been living with someone until just recently. Did you live with him long?”
The question came out of nowhere as we got off Nico’s bike. “Um, no, not really.” I said, shaking my head. “Few months. I’d just moved in with him this past spring. Didn’t even make it through the summer.”
He glanced around the empty park. “You feel like sitting or walking?”
Actually, I felt like riding with him, just holding my body against his and riding and enjoying the hum and vibration of his bike between my legs and my arms wrapped around him forever. But I also wanted to talk to him a little more. Pick his brain and see what other revelations I could make, and we couldn’t really do that on his loud bike. “Let’s walk,” I said and we started walking.
“So, what happened?” he asked again, his interest surprising me.
I shrugged. “Ryan had been perfect in every other way. Then he put his hands on me, like no man ever should.”
“He hit you?” he asked, almost coming to a stop, but I shook my head and we kept on.
“No. But I wasn’t going to stick around and wait for it to get to that. He just grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise it. I moved out of his house the very next day.”
“Next day? You didn’t leave that same day?”
I explained how things happened and how Ryan had showed up at Mama’s the next day, apologizing profusely, but I wasn’t having it. How that same day I’d rented a U-Haul and Mama and I moved my things out.
“Good for you,” he said, staring ahead with a hardened expression. “Assholes like that don’t deserve second chances. Any guy who ever considers it okay to put his hands on a woman like that for any reason deserves to be cut off completely.”
I cringed, remembering my agreeing to see Ryan that coming week. Fortunately, he had a follow-up question regarding my being out here this weekend.
“Any other reason why you’re out here all alone on your birthday weekend?”
Yes. You! And everything you do to me. I need answers.
Deciding I’d better go another route, I shrugged. “I’ve just been obsessing about this for so long. I told you I’ve had all kinds of flashes and whatnot for years. When they happen, it can be a little overwhelming, like yesterday at the river. After I witnessed so many of them and nothing ever came of them, Mama asked if I could just try and let it go, accept that I may never remember anything about my past. I promised I would, and then I started having nightmares and other dreams, and I just had to come back one last time and see if I could find some answers.”
“By going to the pier?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
“Well, yeah.” I lifted and dropped a shoulder then huffed. “Thing is I have no idea what I’m looking for. I’m grasping.”
“Did you get any answers?”
I shook my head, staring straight ahead. “If anything, I have even more questions now.”
“Tell me about the flashes.”
I stopped in my tracks, feeling like an idiot. Here I’d had him most of yesterday evening and all this morning and I’d yet to ask him about them. There had just been so many other things to cover.
“Does the photo booth at the vintage theater mean anything to you?”
His staggered expression almost made me regret asking the question. If there was any truth to what I was beginning to suspect, I may have to come clean, depending on why he was looking at me the way he was.
Before he answered, he shook his head. “Maddie told you about it,” he said as if he were answering his own unspoken question. “She told you everything, right down to the last detail.”
“Told me what?”
Once again, my stomach was in knots. After all these years of wondering, I wasn’t sure I was ready to hear the answer.
“It’s where I first kissed her.”
Poof!
I closed my eyes, my heart nearly bursting, and I watched the visual of Nico kissing me in the booth: a peck at first as we gazed into each other’s eyes but then a longer deeper kiss until it turned frantic like last night’s.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, making me open my eyes. “Is it happening again?”
I nodded, but I couldn’t tell him. Not yet. Not until I knew for sure what the truth was. How could it possibly be true? Then I remembered Nico’s very words back in Radcliffe when Xavier admitted to never having been able to tell Madeline and me apart.
I could.
Nicolas had said it with such conviction.
I had to keep in mind that there were still other possibilities aside from the most unthinkable one. Either something had happened between us and he was so full of regret now that she was gone he’d never admit it. Like with what happened last night, he’d rather pretend it never happened. Or this was all in my broken brain. It was easy to see how I could’ve been secretly in love with him and because of my loyalty to my sister never admitted it but instead, took the next best thing—his brother—someone who didn’t make me feel even close to what Nico did, yet I let him be my first. Had that been because he was the closest I’d ever come to being with Nico? Was I that obsessed? I sure as hell felt like I was now.
“I just had another flashback, same as when I had my first, of that booth the day Mama and I first came to Huntsville.”
“What was the flash about?” he asked, searching my eyes even more deeply.
“Just of the photo booth. Nothing more. It’s why it never made any sense to me.”
“It could also be because you and your sister and Shelby used it to take photos of the three of you often. You and Maddie.” He shook his head with a smile. “It’s like you two were one person, not whole without the other.”
“Mama says the same thing.”
It could be why. But I knew now that it wasn’t. Only I nodded anyway. I was almost afraid to ask, but I had to. “I had another trigger when I came across another painting in our storage unit of a couple on a bridge overlooking a river.”
He nodded. Only unlike with the first flash I told him about of the photo booth when he appeared almost staggered, he smiled this time. “I remember that,” he said as his Adam’s apple moved noticeably. “You took the picture she painted. The day I kissed her for the first time I’d followed her into the theater. I told you she’d driven me insane for over a year. Every time I saw her, every time I ran into her in town, she brought me closer and closer to my knees, but I’d been warned by everyone to stay away from her. Only she didn’t make it easy. We’d been instantly attracted to each other from the moment we first met. I think I was crazy about her by the end of our first conversation. Only at the time all I remembered was feeling stunned by what she’d made me feel after just one conversation. I just couldn’t act on it. I wouldn’t and it pissed her off. So instead of chasing after me, she had me chasing after her without me even knowing it’s what she was doing. The moment I let on what seeing her with someone else did to me, she used it to lure me in.”
He stopped to ponder something then smiled, turning back to me. “The very first time my weak ass gave into letting her ride with me was because it was either that or watch her get into some other guy’s fucking car—a guy who made it as obvious as numb nuts today that he was interested in her—and we didn’t talk much. But when I dropped her off up the street from her house, the only thing she said to me, aside from thanking me for the ride, was, ‘Just remember it’s you I want, not anyone else.’ So, I was hooked. Anytime I saw her with someone else, it drove me insane, and I’d end up either driving away pissed as shit or telling her to hop on my bike. She always did, and I took her straight home.”
He smiled, glancing up and gazing into the sky—into heaven. “You were mine before we made it official, and we both knew it.”
Nico turned back to me as I felt my heart bursting so much again I nearly choked up. That Adam’s apple was back at work again.
“Earlier that day, I followed her into the theater. I’d run into her outside of the Five & Dime that used to be over on 5th Street. I was walking out of the bank next door in a hurry and I’d collided with her. Touching her had been as electrifying as all the times she’d hopped on my bike and I felt her body against mine. But that day more so because I was looking right into those beautiful baby blues. She wasn’t as wickedly playful as she usually was, and for a moment, I wondered if it wasn’t you because she’d gone as mute as I had when our eyes locked that close. It was a vulnerable side of her I hadn’t seen much of—if at all at that point. But once she snapped out of it, I knew it was her when she said the exact thing I was thinking ‘So this is what they mean by missing someone even before they’re gone.’”
He smiled so brilliantly it took my breath away. “I swear to God that’s the moment I knew just how hopelessly in love I was. For months, I’d hated knowing that the rides I’d give her to get her away from other guys were only for as long as it would take me to get her home. I loved every moment of having her on my bike, her body pressed up against mine, and I hated that it was always so short-lived.”
He stopped as our eyes met in that way I was certain would forever leave me breathless. I had to wonder if he knew what I was thinking. That I knew just the feeling. I hated knowing that, after today, I may never see him again. I, too, already missed him, and he was still here standing before me.
He cleared his throat, glancing away, and went on. “That afternoon, as I drove by the theater, I saw you two and Shelby getting ready to go in. Then I saw the guys who rushed to catch up and followed you girls in.” His jaw tightened and he closed his eyes. “There was no fucking way I could keep driving. I turned back and went in. You and Shelby were at the concession stand, and Maddie was by the photo shop, talking to another girl and a guy. It was different this time from all the others. You guys weren’t out by the lake or the river, and she wasn’t getting ready to get in a car with another dude. I couldn’t just tell her I was taking her home. You’d all just paid to get in. Then she saw me, smiled big, and said it, ‘Happy birthday to me.’”
Nico smiled that beautiful smile that filled me with such happiness now. Something about seeing such a hardened man with all the tattoos smile so sweetly just touched my heart, but mostly he touched my heart.
“It was her birthday,” he continued. “By the way, I just realized yesterday was your birthday. I’m sorry.” He shook his head with a frown. “I didn’t even say happy birthday.”
“No worries,” I assured him. “It’s easy to forget when you have so many other things on your mind. Mama forgot too.”
His eyes went a bit dark. “She did?”
I explained quickly about the new man in her life and her driving out to meet his daughter and her family for the first time. But I was anxious to get back to what he’d been telling me about.
“So, was it a birthday kiss? Is that why you agreed to kiss her?”
“Agreed?” He laughed. “She didn’t ask me to, but she did say she was taking a picture in the booth and asked if I wanted to join her. Since the guy she’d been talking to looked just too fucking eager to join her if I didn’t, I pulled her in and sat her on my lap. The kiss just happened. Having her in my arms and that close, there was no way it wasn’t going to. She’d just turned seventeen and easily convinced me that was close enough. Since I knew there was no way I’d stay away from her after that, I gave in, and for a year after that, we snuck around. Though I made sure every guy in town knew she was mine. Then when she turned eighteen, she took me to the hospice, and I met your grandma. I was officially introduced as her boyfriend to your mom. But that other painting,” he continued as we walked down a stone path that circled the park. “That was one of our first official dates. Well, one where I hadn’t just barged in on her like at the theater.”
He laughed, but like me, I could see it was a bittersweet mood he was now in. While I was glad I’d gotten the opportunity to talk to him, spend time with him and get more answers, it gutted me that we’d be parting ways soon. I still had no idea if, after this weekend, he’d prefer to never see me again. Get away from me.
For good this time.
Then he hit me with a question I wasn’t sure I should answer honestly or not. “Those dreams or nightmares you said you had . . .” His inquiring eyes zoomed in on mine. “What were they about?”
I almost didn’t answer truthfully. Like all the other times I’d lied so effortlessly, I already had a fabricated answer. But then I thought why not? I may never see him after today. What harm would come from telling him t
he truth? “They were about you.”
Chapter 21
As expected, not only did Nico’s intense green eyes seem to darken; he stopped walking altogether and faced me. I’d only been around him a day and a half, but already I felt like I knew all his expressions and mannerisms. I knew my answer stunned and confused him as much as it intrigued him. I also knew that, like me, he was beginning to question things.
“About me?”
“Yes.” I nodded, glancing away for a moment because I couldn’t take his heavy gaze anymore. “They didn’t start until after the day I saw you at the cemetery. Before that, I didn’t know you existed.”
“And they’re nightmares?”
I nodded again, taking a deep breath, wondering where best to start and just how honest to be, especially about the erotic ones. But I needed to ease the tension in the air now, so I started walking again. Nico followed along.
“I have no idea what to make of them. Maybe I was just in so much shock to learn you even existed, but I started to dream of you that day, the day that for me was my first meeting with you. That day, when I first saw you, there were flashes”—I hesitated to say too much— “mainly of your face, your eyes, everything I was seeing at that moment anyway, so like the others, it didn’t make sense. You’ve seen for yourself. The flashes can be overwhelming, so I think there’s this sense of negativity that comes with them sometimes. Fear of the unknown, you know? So maybe it’s why when I dream of that day, when I had one of more intense ones, it’s always alarmingly frightening, and I cry out until I either wake myself or Mama wakes me.”
Bravely, I glanced up at him and met his eyes. Nico stopped walking again and tilted his head. As if that weren’t enough of an indication, I could see the doubt in his eyes—like he knew me now too well, even after only a day and a half. “What about it made you cry out?” I gulped, somehow knowing he knew I was leaving a lot out. "What did you cry out?”