Nick doesn’t say a word until I’ve placed the flowers to the side. Then I sit down, drawing my knees up and burying my head against them. What he finally says burns through my soul. “How can you absolve me from that night, Maris? I hurt you and I never meant to.” Aching sadness permeates his voice.
I lift my head, and instead of focusing on Jed’s tombstone which is what I normally see when I sit right here, the first thing I focus on are Nick’s jean-clad legs. Behind him is the swirling sea. “All I found that night was the truth, Nick.”
“Which was?” His voice is a low growl.
“I followed where my heart led. Yours wasn’t there. I was wrong to have blamed you for that—punished you for it. I’m sorry for being so brutal. I’ve wanted to say that for a long time.” Some part of me feels clean sitting here saying the things I should have long ago in front of my brother.
After all, he thought them about me. His journals said so.
Out of the corner of my eye, I catch his jeans shifting until he’s squatting in front of me. Resting his hands on my knees, he draws my attention from the tumultuous sea. I twist my head just as his mouth opens. Expecting him to accept my apology, I’m shocked when his first word is “Bullshit.”
I blink. It takes me a moment before I manage, “Excuse me?”
“You didn’t read that letter wrong, Maris. I agonized for hours over how to write it so it didn’t come off that I was begging you to fly down and see the fight—I wanted you there so damn badly. I wanted you to see that I’d done it. And then I was going to claim you.”
Clean anger whips through me. I shove Nick back on his ass hard as I scramble to my feet. “You bastard! Then what the fuck happened, Nicholas? Couldn’t wait until I got through security to sink your cock into something?”
“No! What happened was someone decided to grill me during the interviews about my damned past. And it made me realize—again—I wasn’t good enough for you,” he roars as he surges to his feet.
Whirling around, I yell to my brother’s tombstone, “Do you believe this crock of shit?” I begin to pace back and forth. I feel a pang of empathy for the groundskeeper for the work they’re going to have to do on repairing the wear and tear on the grass.
“He should as I told him the next morning.” Nick’s voice is calm.
That halts my stride as I’m pivoting. “Excuse me?”
“Jed knew. I told him the freaking media circus it became once that damn reporter opened the door. He ripped me a new asshole about how I decided to handle my—how did he put it? ‘Emotional turmoil’ was the phrase, but…”
“Stop.” I hold up a hand. I need a second to process his words because Nick’s not feeding me a line.
He’s telling me the truth. I should know. Jed used those exact words when he wrote about my emotional state after the fight. He said that Nick’s breakdown—his “emotional turmoil”—couldn’t be tolerated in this case. Not when it hurt the most important person in Jed’s life.
Me.
“Let’s leave it at we both made mistakes. We start fresh from here, now. I won’t let you down as a friend again, Nick.” He starts to speak, but I talk over him. “Can you promise me the same?”
“Yes. Unequivocally.” He holds open his arms.
Tentatively, I move into them. This is different than the hug from last night at the Brewhouse; it’s about two wounded hearts yearning so badly to be healed because of the pain they heaped on each other. No, I correct myself silently, because of the pain I caused.
After a few long moments, I pull back and wipe my eyes. “So, what do you think about the stone?”
“It fucking sucks,” Nick tells me bluntly. Of course, he says this as a teary-eyed couple passes us.
I slap my hand across my mouth to contain my laughter. “Nick…”
“He shouldn’t be gone, Maris. So who the hell cares what his damn tombstone looks like?”
Kara waxed poetic about the beauty of the stone. Brad and Rainey thought it was gorgeous. Nick, God love him, said exactly the right thing. I decide to tell him something he might not realize. “I missed you more nights than I hated you.”
And that’s what brings tears to Nick’s eyes. He tries to speak but ends up just running a hand over my hair.
For a long time we stand by the sea, over someone we both loved with our whole hearts, and remember without articulating the many words that need to be said between us. Because sometimes it’s not words that need to be said.
Sometimes it’s time that’s more precious between two people.
And we haven’t had nearly enough of that.
After a long while, we begin to walk back. “Do you need to call Brad?”
“Actually, he’s been locked in his office by Rainey. Do you mind dropping me off?”
“Wait, let me guess?” I stop walking and grin up at Nick. “His business is a mess since Meadow left?”
Nick tosses a friendly arm around my shoulders. “Got it in one.”
“I’m not sure if Rainey mourned the loss of her sister or her husband’s office manager more,” I muse.
Nick barks out a laugh. “I know at the dinner table last night, he was swearing he’d put an ad in the paper.”
I scoff. “I’ll let you know if that actually happens. He swears that every tax season except the one where Meadow worked for him.”
Nick stops. “Seriously?”
I nod. “Not kidding.”
“What do you do about all this stuff?”
I think back to those dark days after the accident and the classes I enrolled in once I healed. “I run the books for the Brewhouse.”
Nick frowns. “Isn’t that a lot?”
I roll my eyes. “Not you too.”
“Me too?”
I begin ticking all the people who had an opinion about me working so many hours over the years off on my fingers. “Jed, Kara, Dean, Brad, Rainey, Kevin—when he was old enough, Jennings—after he and Kara got married. All of them have harped on me working too many hours.” Before Nick can comment, I break away and stand in front of him. “I’ll tell you what I told Jennings. I’ve cut back on my hours working at the actual Brewhouse. Now I only go in when someone needs assistance. It’s why I realized I need more to fill my life than just work.” I scrunch my nose and turn my head away, a sure sign I have something else to say.
Nick picks up on it immediately. “What? What else is there?”
“I thought if I filled my life with everything that was the Brewhouse, I would forget the most important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I was lonely.” Despite Nick’s obvious shock, I start walking. He quickly catches up. “It was just me. Jed was in Florida, and then he was…he….”
“Maris. I get it.” At the conviction of Nick’s voice, I get myself together.
I continue. “When I finally snapped back from the agony”—and after I’d read some of Jed’s private thoughts, I think silently—“there was a still heartache. But it was different. It was for what I was missing.”