“Yeah. I think.” I checked the street again. No signs of Kate’s car or Nina walking home from the bus stop.
“Good. I want to thank her for being so generous, letting us stay here. And what says thank you better than a big juicy bratwurst?” Dad clinked his beer bottle against mine I had yet to take a sip from. “Elena dropped off a Black Forest cake she found at a bakery in town, so your wife-to-be will get the full German cuisine experience.”
Hearing Elena’s name made my back tense. “She dropped it off? As in she won’t be here for dinner?”
“She had to work.” Dad drained the last half of his beer. “You seem surprised.”
“I am.” I hadn’t seen Elena since I stormed out of the house last night, but I’d made good and sure she was out of the house before I came back. According to Mom, she was all set in a hotel near the Lloyd Center and would be so busy with work, we’d be lucky to see her.
I was of an opposing point of view.
“I know Elena and you have some bad blood, but you have to allow a person to change.” Dad popped the cap off his next beer. “Whatever happened, she really just wants the best for you, Max.”
“Of course she does,” I snarled. “Because Elena’s just that big of a person.”
Dad pointed his tongs at me, like he was about to scold me, when Kate’s silver Honda raced around the corner. I stood up from the porch swing, straightening my tie. Nina had been gone when I woke up this morning in my office. No note. No explanation. No nothing.
It had taken every ounce of willpower in my possession not to track her down to find out why she’d slipped out like I was the one-night stand she was ashamed of. I’d stayed at the office, worked, did what needed doing, and occasionally called her. Ten times.
Kate didn’t pull in the driveway. Instead, she screeched to a stop at the curb, firing a glare at me that had my brows pulling together.
“Fan of yours?” Dad nudged me.
A sigh slipped out. “Not today.”
Kate was shaking her head all animated-like, throwing her arm back at me. Whatever she was saying, I got the distinct impression she was advising Nina to turn and run.
A minute later, Nina crawled out of the car, shaking her head at Kate.
Throwing her arms in the air, Kate’s reply was loud enough for me and the next block over to hear. “Fine!” Then she aimed another glare at me before stabbing her middle digit in the air in my direction. She drove away like that, waving a fuck you good-bye at me.
“Here comes the blushing bride now.” Dad pinched his tongs a few times in Nina’s direction.
She wouldn’t look at me. She was moving slowly, like each step closer became harder and harder to take. She was in her overalls, which meant she’d managed to get back here to change before disappearing wherever she had. Seeing her today, remembering last night, all I wanted to do was wrap her in my arms and hold her tightly. I wanted to kiss her and touch her and love her body the way I had last night.
What Nina appeared to want was the exact opposite.
Dad scooted closer, leaning into me. “What did you do?”
“Something I probably shouldn’t have.”
Moving closer to the top of the stairs when she reached the bottom, I cleared my throat, willing her to look at me. To acknowledge my presence and, like it or not, what I’d shared with her last night.
“Hello, Nina.”
Her shoulders stiffened as she climbed the steps. “Max.”
“How was your day?” I asked. She still wouldn’t look at me. “I missed you this morning.”
A sharp exhale lashed past her lips as she kept moving past me.
“Nina—” I spun after her as she headed for the door.
“Oh, yeah, sorry, that’s right.” She broke to a stop, snapping her fingers. “I’m your fiancée.”
Twisting around, she marched back toward me, not stopping until her body smashed into mine and she lifted up to kiss me. Then she tugged me over to the swing, shoved me down, collapsed beside me, and stole the beer in my hand.
She lifted it to her lips and started to chug, which was just fantastic. Nina couldn’t be around me now without getting herself good and drunk. Fuck. I thought we’d been okay last night.
“So the big day’s just a couple of months away.” Dad was back at the grill, giving us peculiar looks as he tended to the bratwursts.
Nina nodded, smacking her lips. “March thirty-first. The day before April Fool’s day.” Then she finished the rest of my beer.
“You still want to marry me?” I kept my voice playful for my dad, but my face said something else to Nina.
She barely gave me a cursory glance. “Pretty sure that’s what this means.” Lifting her left hand, she rolled her fingers in front of my face.
“But do you want to?” Still the playful tone in my voice, the serious tone in my expression.
Nina thanked my dad with a nod when he exchanged her empty beer for a new one. “I want to keep my promise.”
“What does that mean?”
Nina slid a bit away from me. “It means I’m marrying you on March thirty-first.”
“Nina—”
“The girl wants to marry you, Max. Sounds like she can barely wait to seal the deal. Can’t wait to become Mrs. Max Sturm.” The skepticism in his voice was so heavy, I was surprised Nina wasn’t glaring at my dad the way I was.
“Mrs. Nina Burton-Sturm.” She pointed her beer at Dad before practically upending this one too.
“Nina—”
“What, Max? I, unlike others, like to keep my promises when I make them. So when I told you I was going to marry you, I meant it. Just because other people’s promises might stand for shit doesn’t mean mine do.”
My molars gnashed together. She wasn’t saying anything that wasn’t true—I hadn’t kept my promise regarding not having sex with her.
“So, Nina?” Dad piped up, totally oblivious to the storm culminating on the porch swing a few feet away. “What are your thoughts on starting a family?”
She was quiet, probably as surprised by his question as I was. She let the rest of her beer help her fill in the answer. “I guess I haven’t given it much thought.” She aimed a lethal glare at me from the side of her eyes. “Max kind of snuck up on me out of nowhere and took me by surprise.”
“Do you want kids?” Dad asked.
“I think that’s a little early to say,” I answered him, hoping he’d read the shut-up-already in between the lines. “We just got engaged.”
“I don’t know.” Dad shrugged, swirling his beer in the bottle. “It seems normal for most couples to talk about family planning before getting engaged. So if one doesn’t want kids and the other wants a dozen, that can be worked out before the vows get exchanged. Forever is kind of a long time.”
Nina crossed her arms, staring into the yard with something unreadable on her face. “I don’t know. What do you want, Max?”
Was she asking to appease my dad or because she genuinely wanted to know? I’d guess, given the sideways glare fired my way again, I had my answer.
“I’d like to have children.” I shifted on the swing. “One day.”
“Well, there you go.” Nina flourished her hand in front of her. “Max wants kids. Max gets kids.”
My body twisted toward her. “What does that mean?”
“Oh come on, sweetie, you’re the kind of man who gets what he wants.” Her voice was overly sweet, her expression overly tart. “Right?”
For a moment, she locked eyes with me and I thought I saw it—the fire. Not the one born from anger but from the kind we’d surrendered to last night. It was extinguished before she looked away.
“I can understand your hesitation though, Nina.” Dad pointed those damn tongs at us again. “After watching your dad leave. Your mom after. Surely that must have an effect on a person when they think about starting their own family.”
Nina’s head twisted in his direction. “What do you mean?”
Dad’s shoulders lifted. “The worry of wondering how can you be a good parent when you didn’t have one to model from?”
My eyes closed at his words. I’d been right about them going after Nina instead of me in their plans of breaking us up. He’d found her weak spot and had just driven a damn dagger into it.
The swing whined when Nina stood. She didn’t say a word. She just shoved through the door and disappeared inside.
“Christ”—I burst up from the swing to follow her—“if that’s the bar for parenthood, I’m in the same boat as Nina.” I threw him a look before pushing through the door. “Dad.”
Slamming the door behind me, I powered down the hall, knowing where she was. It was where she always went whenever we’d gotten into an argument or she needed to be alone. The only place in the house that she could lock me out of—her bedroom.
I rapped on her closed door. “Nina.”
“Leave me alone, Max.” Her voice was quiet from the other side.
My chest tightened. “No.”
“Go. Away.”
My hand dropped to the doorknob and I twisted, expecting to find it locked. It wasn’t. I didn’t ask, I didn’t knock again—I threw the door open and stepped inside. It was already closed before she’d had a chance to whip her head in my direction.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” She eyed me standing inside her room. “You don’t seem to care about or respect what I want. You care about what you want. When you want it. Whatever the cost.”
I slid my hands in my pockets to keep me from doing something stupid like rushing across the room and pulling her to me. With the screwdriver she was clutching like an icepick, she’d probably drive it straight through my heart if I got within swinging distance.
She was hurt. Because of me. She felt betrayed. Because of me. She was scared. Because of me.
Maybe I did deserve that screwdriver in the heart.
“Are you okay?”
She snorted, getting back to tightening the glass knob on the bathroom door. “Yeah, I’m fucking awesome. Can’t you tell?”
“What’s wrong?” I asked gently.
“What makes you think something’s wrong?” She started beating at the doorknob with the screwdriver because, I guessed, it doubled as a hammer.
I fought the urge to go help before she drove the screwdriver through her thumb. But she didn’t want my help. That was obvious. “The fact that you’ve been avoiding me, ignoring my calls, and using my face as target practice for your lethal looks.” I cocked a brow at her, but she wasn’t looking. She was too busy beating at the doorknob. “Plus, you do home improvement when something’s wrong.”
My answer made her glare at the doorknob. “I do home improvement no matter how I’m feeling because if I didn’t, this place would have collapsed by now.”
She kept whacking at the handle until it popped off. It rolled across the wood floor of her bedroom and disappeared under her bed. I couldn’t stand to look at her bed. Not now. Not with the way she was acting like I was everything bad and painful in the world.
“What do you want, Nina?” I rubbed at my forehead, ready to give her whatever it was if it was anywhere in my ability to give it to her. Anything.
She was quiet, staring at the spot where the doorknob had disappeared, seeming to collect her breath. When she took a deep inhale, most of the anger seemed to wash away from her face. The apathy that took its place was worse than any loathing.
“I just think we need to slow things down.” Her eyebrows drew together. “Two days ago, everything was going according to your finely tuned plan, and last night, we were in your office doing . . . stuff.”
Her choice of word made me almost smile. “Lots of stuff.”
She exhaled through her nose. “Three different times.”
“Four,” I corrected automatically because I’d been counting. It had been the damn best night of my life—I practically had the entire thing committed to memory. When she shifted and crossed her arms, I fought the question on the end of my tongue. I lost the battle. “Do you regret it?”
She only took a few seconds to answer, but I felt like I’d died a hundred different deaths in that short span of time, waiting for her answer.
“No.” Her head shook once, her eyes narrowing on the floor. “I just wish I would have stopped to think, you know? Everything happened so fast . . . maybe we should slow things down to make sure this is what we want.”
She was talking, communicating, not trying to kill me with her eyes anymore. This should have been measured as progress, but instead, it felt like failure because she was saying the exact opposite of what I hoped she’d feel. The complete contrast to the way I felt.
“You keep using the word we, but I’m not conflicted about any of this. You are. So let’s get that straightened out.” For the first time since closing the door, I took a step further into her room. Closer to her. “What do you want?”
Her answer came instantly. “To slow things down. To get back to the way things were.” She was tapping the end of the screwdriver into her palm, a dozen emotions playing on her face.
“Okay,” I answered, because what else was there to say? I’d give her anything she needed—even if that meant backing off.
Her eyebrows squeezed together. “I think.”
My shoulders fell. “Nina . . .”
“You and me.” She flailed the screwdriver between us. “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“I know.” I nodded once, stepping closer. “And I don’t care.”
“How can you say that?”
My stomach hurt from watching her. She was so scared. So unsure. I’d never seen Nina like this—never expected her scars ran so deep—but watching her now made me feel like everything inside me was twisting in on itself. I didn’t want her to feel this way. I didn’t want to be the cause of it.
“Because it’s true,” I said slowly. “I care about you. I want to be with you. I don’t care about what was supposed to happen and what wasn’t.”
She leaned into the wall behind her, shaking her head. “You, the man burned to ashes, as against commitment as I am, how can you look at me, say that, and mean it?”
The ice in her voice was meant to send me back. Instead, I drew closer. “Because it’s the truest thing I’ve ever known.”
A sharp laugh spilled from her. “Said every human being to another who made them feel a few butterflies.”
I felt something bubble up inside me, and I couldn’t find the lid to trap it before it exploded out of me. “Dammit, Nina, you want to pretend things are back to the way they used to be between us? Fine, go ahead. You are free to make your own choices, but don’t for a minute expect me to do the same.”
My body was trembling from adrenaline, and at the same time I wanted to drive my fist through the drywall, I wanted to tuck her close and kiss her gently. I was a mess. A fucking wreck and it was my fault the woman in front of me was in the same position.
“There is no going back for me. And if you want to pretend there is for you, fine. Let me know how this is going to play out.” I paused to let her speak, but she didn’t, so I kept going. “You want to fuck then go to separate bedrooms after? Fine. You want to never touch again? Fine. You want to hate me? Love me? Despise me? Fine. I don’t give a fuck. I want you. However I can have you.” My eyes locked on hers. “Whatever piece of yourself you’re willing to share.”
She slid down the wall until she hit the floor. Her head fell into her hands, the screwdriver tumbling from them. “Max. I’m confused.” She rubbed her forehead. “So damn confused.”
Something settled in my throat that made it hard to talk, so I moved toward her. I’d barely made it two steps before her head lifted enough to give me a warning look. She didn’t want to be comforted. Not by me.
The realization made me feel like someone had just swung a bat into my stomach. “Yeah, well, I’m feeling knocked on my ass too.” I moved toward her again, warning glares be d
amned. I knew why she was pushing me away, because it was the same reason I wanted to push her away. Fear was a powerful thing. “But I know what I want and who I want. Instead of letting all of the reasons why I shouldn’t want you get in the way, I’m hanging on to the reasons I should.”
Nina kept rubbing at her head, her red hair spilling around her face. “Why should you want me?
My shoulders lifted. “Because every part of me wants every part of you.” They lowered as I cleared my throat. “That’s why.”
Nina’s body shook like she could have been crying, but she wasn’t making any noise and I couldn’t see her face. When I moved closer, her body tensed instead. Then she shoved off the floor, leveling me with a look.
“I believe one part of you wants me.” Her narrowed eyes dipped to my crotch before she pushed inside the bathroom. “Again. And again. And again.” She continued to repeat the same thing even after she’d slammed the door. Even when the shower cranked on a few seconds later.
Her words echoed in my head, making me wonder if that was really what she believed. That the only part of me that wanted her was my dick. That that was all I needed from her. That the rest that resided above and below and within me didn’t long for her in the same way.
She didn’t want to see me. She didn’t want to talk. She’d made that clear.
I should have accepted that, walked out of her bedroom, and let her come to me to dictate how we should proceed with the rest of our arrangement, whatever was left of it. I should have given her the space and time she needed. I should have let her go like she’d clearly let me go.
I was incapable of any of that.
When I shoved through the bathroom door, a cloud of steam rolled over me. Nina’s bathroom was small, but she must have had the water boiling-hot to create that much steam so fast.
“I’m not letting you do this.” I pushed the door closed and leaned into it, staring at the shower curtain she was behind. Her clothes were scattered across the bathroom floor, her smell filling the air.
“Get the hell out.” She didn’t sound angry. She sounded tired. Worn out.
“No.”