He still looks a little bit like the teenager I met when I was five. He’s not as lean as he was back then. He’s filled out a lot, his shoulders are wide and muscular. He’s taller too, and his hair is darker now. And his face—while perfectly proportioned with a square jaw and those brown eyes that look into my soul—his face is that of someone who knows things. Has seen things.
He is wise.
We’ve always been almost fourteen years apart in age, and of course that’s never going to change, but he’s gotten wiser over the years and I’ve only gotten more confused.
He makes me want to lean on him and that scares me.
I don’t get out of the truck. Not yet.
I just need a minute to enjoy him. Because these visits, they always end the same way. With a fight. With us mad at something. Each other, specifically. We’re like that scene in Ghostbusters. Don’t cross the streams—it would be bad. All life as we know it stops instantaneously when Nick and I are together. Every molecule in our bodies explodes at the speed of light when we are close.
That’s always how it ends.
And usually it’s me who causes this rift in the fabric of spacetime.
I love him. Like so much. After Chek, Nick has always been my number one. He’s my guy. He’s my go-to. He’s my best friend, and my only boyfriend—like ever. And my rock.
But sometimes I just want to kill him.
And that’s not like… a metaphor. I get urges when I’m with Nick and I don’t know what to do about them, so I start a fight to create the separation we seem to thrive on.
We have spent more time apart than we ever did together. And even though I lived with him on and off for almost six years back when I was a kid and he was raising Lauren, there is still so much empty space between us. Nineteen years. That’s how long we’ve been friends. And there are more angry phone calls, pissed-off voicemails, and fuck-you handwritten letters over that period of time than there will ever be soft, casual, intimate conversations.
And I hate that.
So I just want this one moment. Before we have that fight, I just want to appreciate how beautiful he is. How perfect he is. How… mine he is.
“What are ya waiting for?” he calls, loud enough so I can hear him through the closed truck windows. Like I need to hear him to hear him. “Get your ass in here. It’s fucking cold out.”
I open the truck door. It creaks a little, breaking the almost surreal stillness surrounding the cabin. Then I grab the bag of mail from the passenger side and turn to him as I close the door.
“Uh.” He’s eyeing my bag of mail. “What do ya got there?”
I hold up the bag. “Mount Pleasant mail.”
His eyes narrow for a moment. “How long has it been since you picked up the mail?”
I cannot stop the smile. “Why? Did you write me fuck-you letters?”
He chuckles, but it’s a nervous chuckle.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
He walks forward and jumps down the porch steps with his hand out. “Give me the bag.”
“No.” I turn when he reaches me, laughing. “I want to read them all. I want to hear all the silent fuck-yous you sent over the past two years.”
“You haven’t picked up Mount Pleasant mail in two years? Wendy. Give me the bag.” He’s using his serious voice.
“How many fights is that? Ten? Twenty?”
“Give it.”
“No!” I’m doubled over, protecting the bag like it’s an infant, laughing harder as he comes up behind me, wraps his arms all the way around me, and hugs me. He doesn’t even pretend to reach for the bag. I drop it anyway. I turn in his embrace until we’re face to face. Well, he’s a lot taller than me, so I’m looking up and he’s looking down, when this happens.
Those brown eyes.
I have always wished for brown eyes.
Because if I had brown eyes, instead of these evil blue ones, I would not be the girl I am.
I would be more like him.
I would be sane, and rational, and maybe even normal.
He places both hands on my cheeks and smiles again. “I’ve fucking missed you.”
“Me too.”
“Why were we fighting again?”
“I have no idea.”
He laughs as he kisses me. And that laugh fills me up so much that all the bad shit hiding inside is pushed out to the furthest edges of my limits. I love the way we kiss. It’s like… paradise. That’s what our kisses are.
He pulls back just enough so our lips separate. “Come on. Let’s go inside. I’m making cookies.”
“You are not.”
“I swear to fucking God.” He casually reaches for my mail bag on the ground and I don’t move to stop him. He’s not going to burn them or throw them away. We keep every letter like we’re archiving some historical moment or something. We don’t even erase voicemails. Each one of these things is a precious record of us and our weird, unorthodox relationship.
He pulls away for real, then walks over to my truck and opens the back cab door. My truck is full of bags and most of them are not presents. My truck is my home. I mean, I don’t sleep in it. We don’t sleep in our trucks, Nick and I. But this is just how we live, I guess.
Wanderers.
For as long as I can remember, Nick and I have been wanderers.
He’s the only person on this earth who gets me anymore. Chek died before I truly turned into a drifter. And Chek never did the wandering like Nick and me. When I lived with Chek, we had this place, of course, which we came home to when we weren’t working. But we worked a lot when I was a kid so we spent most of our time living in Company safehouses with other assassins.
Nick slings a duffle bag over his shoulder and then grabs the bag of presents.
“Here,” I say. “Let me help you.”
But I reach for the bag of mail and not the presents, so he moves out of reach and grins. “Nice try.” Then he nods his head towards the cabin. “Come on, let’s go inside. I made a big deal about this year.”
“How did you know I would come? We haven’t had Christmas in two years.”
Our boots thud on the wooden steps of the porch as we climb them. “Two’s your limit, Wendy. We’ve never gone more than two.”
Huh. I hadn’t actually noticed that, but he’s right. Two is our limit. In more ways than one, though. We’ve never spent more than two in a row together, either.
Even though his hands are full and mine are empty, he pulls the door open for me and lets me go first. I really like Nick’s manners. It’s such a contradiction, but that’s what makes it so appealing.
When I step inside, I stop so abruptly that he bumps into me. “Keep going,” he laughs, pushing me forward.
I go all the way inside and get out of the way so he can close the door behind us. But I can’t move after that. I’m too stunned by how the cabin looks.
“Wow,” I sigh. “This is… wow. It looks like something out of a magazine.”
“You like it?” Nick is already dropping my duffle in my bedroom.
“It’s…” It’s fucking gorgeous, is what it is. I mean, I don’t even know how to process what I’m looking at. My little cabin has been transformed. And it smells like… love.