“Black’s a good color. So’s navy. I suppose when you get to college, you have to go with your school colors, I guess.”
“Yeah, I guess you do, buddy. And that might mean purple,” I warn him.
“Ugh. Okay. So, your brother…”
“You can call him Jed. He would have been okay with that.” If he lived to see the day I get to make this little boy my own, he would have loved Uncle Jed more, but all in good time. I swallow the lump in my throat, imagining Jed’s exuberance that I finally made it to this point of healing.
“So does Jed’s friend remember what it was like to find a permanent home?” David asks.
“He never found one. I found my brother’s journals a while back. But I think he was happier where he was. Overall, he’s a pretty special guy, regardless of who raised him.” I just wish Nick would realize these things about himself and not let the past define him.
The next thing you know, I’m being toppled back onto the grass by a slightly too skinny boy. “Hey, what’s this for?” I say as I absorb the hug.
“Because you’re the best, Maris. And…” He doesn’t say any more, but his arms hold me tight, conveying what I need to know in my heart.
He’s a piece of it.
When we look back on our lives together, I hope David will realize this is the moment he became mine. Not when all the inspections get finished and all the legalities become finalized. It’s at this moment, while we’re overlooking where the sea begins and ends in perpetual motion.
Later, after staying to enjoy dinner with David, Sarah, Hung, and their extended family, I drive home.
As is my usual, I remain tense until I pass the crash site. Once I do, I exhale and begin my mental to-do list. I need to make certain there’s been no changes to the schedules at the Brewhouse that require a miracle. I have chores around the house. Mentally, I groan when I realize that might mean chopping wood if I can’t bribe, beg, or borrow someone to do it. And, most important, I need to check in this week with Mrs. G. to make certain things are progressing on schedule with getting my home licensed to take over as David’s foster.
And I should check in with Rainey to see if Nick has gone back to Albuquerque instead of rising to the challenge of clearing out decades’ worth of email.
“Was it wrong to do it that way?” I ask aloud in my small tank. I navigate down my street and slow as I pull into my driveway and recognize the Subaru waiting there. “Uh-oh. Rainey’s here. I don’t think I’m getting much done tonight. I wonder if she needs wine.” Because if she does, nothing on my to-do list is getting accomplished.
I pull into the garage and turn off my vehicle. After sliding out, I walk outside into the cooling night air. “Hey. What’s wrong? Things getting crazy over at your house?”
But to my shock, it’s not Rainey who alights from the vehicle; it’s Nick. And his face is relieved. “You’re back.”
“I hope so. I live here.” But just as I’m about to brush past him to climb the front stoop, Nick swoops in and wraps his arms around me. “What’s wrong? Is it Brad? Rainey? The kids?”
He shakes his head. Instead he buries his head in the crook of my neck and breathes deeply. “Just give me this. Just for a moment, okay?”
Slowly, my arms creep around Nick’s waist. Tentatively, I squeeze him back. It’s not the first embrace we’ve shared since he came chasing after me the day of Jed’s funeral, but there’s something different about it. “Nick, I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.”
He mumbles something I don’t quite catch.
“Let me go for just a moment so I can close the garage, then we can talk.”
His head lifts and my breath catches. Swirling in his beautiful eyes are contempt, bitterness, and revulsion. I try to step back, but the bands of steel holding me to him preclude that. “Why are you looking at me like that?” I whisper. What on earth happened in just a few short hours?
“Like what?”
“Like I somehow caused your world to end.”
He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “That only would have happened if you’d actually died in that car wreck.”
Oh shit. “You’ve read your email.”
“Most of it.”
I rush out, “Nick, I’m so sorry. I realized earlier while I was driving you probably didn’t know. I had to make you realize there were other things that had happened. Some big, some small, but we’re your friends. As for me, I just can’t talk about it anymore. You were dissecting me in the car like I was some kind of science project, and I…”
His finger on my lips stops the words flowing.
I stand perfectly still, not even breathing, while his cool lips brush a kiss across my forehead, each brow, each cheek. He removes his finger, before his lips brush lightly across mine. He pulls back, searching my eyes, before admitting, “I’m not done yet. But I couldn’t go another minute without seeing your face. I don’t care how I felt about this place, if I would have known you were hurt, I would have been here.”
“I wouldn’t have seen you,” I tell him honestly. “I barely let Jed in.”
“And we’re going to talk about that.” A crooked smile crosses his lips. “But I have a training session tomorrow and more email to read.”
Slowly, so slowly, his arms loosen. “You’d better head inside.”
I’m confused. “That’s all you came for? To see me?”
“That’s all you’ll let me have until I’ve finished reading. Right?” Nick Cain is many things, but uncertain isn’t one of them. Seeing him suffocated with that emotion does me in.
“Wrong.” I step back into his arms and thread my fingers into his dark hair.
“Maris.” My name comes out as a rasp from his lips. “I don’t want you to look back on our first kiss and regret it.”
“The only regret will be if I have to wonder what it’s going to be like to wait one more night for it.” Then there’s no room for words between us as Nick lowers his head. His dark lashes lower, highlighting the fact he keeps his eyes on me as our lips connect and linger.
My head angles slightly as a sigh escapes, traversing from my mouth to his. He pulls back slightly. “Well, the world didn’t fall into the ocean.”
“Did you think it would?” I demand indignantly. I tug at his hair, but all it does is cause him to laugh.
“I was terrified over it.”
“Well, if you’re too much of a coward, Champ, then you can just—” But Nick cuts off my words by sealing his lips hungrily against mine.
Mine part of their own accord. My fingers trail into the hair at his neck. I wrap my arms around his shoulders instead. One of Nick’s hands tangles behind my head, holding my head in place as his tongue slides in and out of my mouth. The other moves down and cups my ass, his hips undulating to the same movement. In all the years I’ve had feelings for Nick, there’s no way I could have imagined this kiss. I would have had to stop my heart and restart it all while managing to float in the air with my feet on the ground.
In other words, it would have been a virtual impossibility.