The teasing made his mouth curve up on one side, but I could see he was resistant to the idea of going to the gala. I knew I should let it go, but suddenly I heard Greg’s voice in my head—stop settling for the diamonds in the rough, Annabelle, you deserve so much more—and I knew he was right.
“It’s important to me that you go to the gala, Nick,” I said. I felt very brave and equally nervous. I wasn’t great at asking for what I wanted in a relationship—thus my default mode as a pleaser—but if Nick and I were going to have anything worth having, I needed to ask for what I needed, too.
He went still. “Are you telling me that the gala is a deal breaker?”
I thought about it. Did I want to be in a relationship with a man who barricaded himself on a huge estate, who didn’t engage with the world? No, I didn’t.
I met his gaze and said, “Yes.”
A flash of hurt crossed his face, and I almost recanted right there. It caused me physical pain to see him hurting, but I just lay there unable to move. With a sigh, he rolled away from me and sat on the edge of the bed. He ran a hand over his face as he slowly pulled on his clothes.
“I can’t be what you want, Annabelle,” he said.
So there was my answer. It shouldn’t have gutted me, but it did.
“You don’t want to think it over?” I asked. “Mull the possibility of going?”
“No,” he said. “I can’t. That world, those people, they all know me as an unstoppable force in this city. Everyone thinks I retired, hell, even my own sister has no idea that I’ve had a stroke, and I don’t want her to. Annabelle, I could keel over dead from another stroke at any moment, and the lack of control I have over it eats me alive, every waking moment.”
He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe this was his life.
“I have to live with that every day. I’m not going to ask my sister or you to live with it, too. And as for the world at large, I do not need their pity. Can you even imagine going to a black tie event not knowing if you were going to fall on your face? Christ, the humiliation would kill me.”
I sat up. I wrapped the bedsheets around me to keep warm, but I didn’t think anything could ward off the chill that was creeping through my veins. It felt as if icicles were forming on my heart, and I wondered if it was some self-protection mechanism of which I’d been unaware until this very moment. As if my heart knew that if it was encased in ice, it couldn’t be broken.
“So your image of yourself is more important to you than having your sister back in your life?”
“That’s not what I said,” he snapped.
“Yes, it is,” I argued.
He stood and started to walk away.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “And I can’t explain it to you.”
“Oh, I understand,” I said. The ice around my heart was suddenly being consumed by the fire of my temper. “You’re afraid.”
He snapped back around as if I’d struck him.
“Hell yes, I’m afraid,” he said. He spread his arms wide. “I almost died. One minute I was on top of the world and then wham! Everything was taken from me like that.” He snapped his fingers. “And it could happen again and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
He strode from the room, and I hopped off the bed and followed. We were not done. Not until I had my say. “That’s not what you’re afraid of.”
He whirled around and looked at me with one eyebrow higher than the other. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not,” I said. He picked his shirt up off the floor and shrugged into it. Sir was asleep on the red throw and didn’t even pop his head up at our raised voices.
“You’re afraid to let anyone in,” I said. “You say you were on top of the world but you were alone up there, Nick.”
He put his hands on his hips and stared at me. It felt like yelling at a brick wall, but I did it anyway because I’m thick like that.
“Now you have people in your life who care about you and what terrifies you even more than that is that you care about them, too.”
He shook his head, and I knew it was more him shaking me off than disagreeing. I kept going.
“Yes, you do,” I said. “You think I don’t know that Emily and Elijah and Abigail are better off for having you in their life. You think I don’t understand that the Sunshine House is yours? That it’s your way of trying to save kids from the same childhood trauma you suffered?”
“Why isn’t that enough?” he asked. “Why can’t I just make a difference in my own way, from a distance?”
“Because that’s not how being alive works. You have to stand up for the people you care about,” I said. “And not just as a checkbook. Lexi needs you. She needs her big brother at the most important event in her life. And I need you, too.”
“No, you don’t,” he said. He gestured to his body and said, “What can I possibly do for you, for any of you, Annabelle, if I drop dead tomorrow?”
“You could be with me today,” I countered. Then I decided to go all in. “Listen, I get that you’re scared. We’re all scared. I’m terrified by how much I love you, but I’m standing here, loving you anyway.”
“I never asked you to love me,” he growled. “Three months, that’s all this was supposed to be, and now it can’t even be that. I can’t be the man you want me to be, Annabelle. I just can’t.”
He turned and strode out the open door without looking back. Not once.
Nick
26
“Two more reps,” Jackson said. “And two and one.”
I used the last of my arm strength to set the bar in the holder over my head. Jackson grabbed it, probably to make sure I didn’t drop it on my head. The knot on my forehead had gone down, but he’d been tracking me like a hawk the last few days, probably to make certain I didn’t do any more damage.
He handed me a towel, and I wiped the sweat off my face before taking a long drink of water. I could feel him watching me, but he didn’t say anything. It was annoying.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “I haven’t seen Annabelle around is all.”
“Are we going to braid each other’s hair and talk about our relationships now?” I asked.
Jackson ran a hand over his bald head. “You could try.” He laughed that big booming laugh of his that made the walls shake.