I’m still standing by the truck when Nick comes back out.
What I’m doing is not normal. I mean, I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here, but obviously something is on my mind and that’s why I haven’t gone back into the house with the groceries. But Nick says nothing. Just grabs the remaining bags, and dinner, and walks away. The screen door slams behind him.
I take my groceries into the house. Nick is already putting things away and the fridge door is wide open as he haphazardly shoves milk and eggs inside.
“You got a lot of fresh food.” He narrows his eyes at me from over his shoulder. “You plan on staying here a while?”
I study him, trying to figure out the mistake. Trying to retrace my steps to where it went wrong. It can’t be that far back. I mean, we’ve only been together a couple of hours. So I guess the hotel room.
But it doesn’t feel right.
That wasn’t when. I was careful then. A mistake happens when you’re not being careful.
I decide to be direct the way Sasha was. “I don’t know what you’re doing, Nick. But I know you’re doing something.”
He turns away from the fridge, shuts the door. Stares at me as he leans against the kitchen counter and crosses his arms. For as long as I have known him, I have had trouble meeting his gaze. And looking back, I wonder why that was. Those eyes, they’re brown, not blue. They’re not piercing or overly dark. They’re kinda amber, actually. But it’s like this man can see through me. Even when he was a kid, he saw things I never did because he’s had access to information I never will.
But right now, he’s not glaring at me. His eyes come off as rather lazy. He is comfortable, at ease, and unconcerned about what I might think he’s doing.
“So walk out.” He shrugs his shoulders.
It’s a casual dare. So casual, it comes off like a threat only people like us can decipher.
He knows I’m not walking out. I’m in. No matter what happens, I’m playing his game until it’s over. So when I don’t say anything back, he pushes off the counter, walks past me, and goes back outside.
I stand there for a moment, still holding my grocery bags.
“You know you owe me now, right?”
I glance over at the hallway and find Wendy. She’s dressed in Nick’s clothes—a pair of denim shorts that look like she just cut the legs off five minutes ago and a white Shrike Bikes t-shirt, which takes me aback a little. That fucker has a Shrike Bikes t-shirt? He has no fucking shame.
Wendy’s hair is still wet. It makes her look different for a moment because even though I can still see streaks of blonde, it’s dark. And she’s in the shadows of a dying sun, so her eyes come off dark too.
Illusions.
These girls are like that.
They trick you without even trying.
I set my bags down on the counter and start putting things away. She waits me out. So I finally say, “I’m good for it, Wendy.” Because I did take her mind without permission and if she were just some random nobody, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. But she’s not a random nobody. Something tells me that Wendy Gale is now a permanent fixture in my life. So she’s right. I owe her.
“Where’s Nick?”
I nod my head to the backyard. “Out there, I guess. You saw our conversation?”
She laughs a little. And this is when I notice it’s kind of a sweet laugh. Wendy is a dangerous girl and she’s not even close to being sane. But she’s not a mean girl. And she’s not nasty, either. She’s a lot like Sasha in this respect.
“What’s funny?” I ask.
“Just that you know him.”
“What?”
“You know. You said ‘saw our conversation.’ And that’s Nick for ya, right? When you have a conversation with Nick, half of it always takes place inside his head. But you heard all the things he wasn’t saying, didn’t you?”
I turn and look out the back window. Nick is just coming out of one of the outbuildings twisting a cap off a beer bottle. He must keep a fridge out there filled with it, because there’s no beer in this fridge. But I checked that building when I got here and there was nothing in it but a couple old trucks and a tractor.
“I guess you’re the same way.” Wendy laughs. “But I speak that language, Merc. Just so you know. I hear all the words you’re not saying too.” Then she nods her head at the window where I’m looking. “Yes. He has a little man cave out there in his shop. There are slot machines, and pinball, and a card table, and a pool table, and a fridge filled with beer. But no one comes here. No one but me, anyway. So I’ve always thought it was kinda sad, ya know? That he built a secret man cave but he has no family and friends to share it with. So I make a point of always asking to go out there when I’m here. Which is almost never, so. Yeah.” She sighs. “I didn’t know him before Santa Barbara but I do know that he’s not that kid. That he hasn’t been that kid since that day I met him on a superyacht. And whoever you think he is right now, that’s not who he is.”
“Who is he?” My response surprises even me. I didn’t mean to ask.
But Wendy answers anyway. “He’s mine. That’s who he is. And I know you think you got the best of me, but you didn’t. So if you even think about hurting him—”
Her threat is cut off by the sound of a low-flying small aircraft.
Both of us look up at the ceiling. Why do people do that? A reflex, I guess.
“Your friend is back.”
“Yeah.” I let out a long breath. Because I’m suddenly having second thoughts about the play I set in motion.
Wendy and I both walk to the front of the house and drag the cheap blackout curtains open just in time to see Harrison’s jet coming to a stop at the end of the driveway.
Neither of us moves and I’m holding my breath until the door opens and the stairs swing down, then it comes out in a long, low rush.
“What’s going on?” She feels it. Something is definitely going on.
Just as I think that, Nick appears to our left, his boots crunching on the gravel driveway as he walks towards the plane, beer in hand.
Wendy breaks for the front door. She’s got good instincts.
But I reach over and grab her arm before she gets more than two paces away. “Don’t,” I say. And I mean it.
“What have you done?”
I don’t need to answer her question because movement down the driveway draws her attention back to the window and that answer becomes obvious when Sasha Cherlin appears in the open doorway of the jet.
She stands there for a moment, shielding her eyes from a blaring sunset, and then she comes down the stairs and the sun moves behind a cloud.
She stops short when she sees him.
And Nick Tate drops his beer bottle onto the gravel driveway like he’s the one who just saw a ghost and not her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - NICK
When Sasha Cherlin appears in the jet hatch my first thought is… Fuckin’ Merc. He got me. Because I have been so busy trying to keep things straight with Wendy, I really didn’t see this one coming.
But then I snap back to the moment and reality catches up. So the next thing I think is… Welp. It’s over now, I guess. Which is just as inappropriate as my first thought. But twenty full seconds later, when Sasha still hasn’t moved from the bottom of the stairs, I’m really not feeling so bad about this.