The bed dipped beside her. Nick put his arm around her shoulder, and though she meant to resist his touch, Bess turned and buried her face against him. She didn’t weep. This wasn’t grief rearing up inside her, stealing her breath and turning her guts. It was something else. Fear, maybe, that she was insane. Fear of the unknown. Fear he’d go away again without letting her know, and this time she’d have no secret hope harbored within her of ever seeing him again. If he went away this time, she’d never be able to convince herself he would come back.
“I’m sorry,” Nick said. She released her grip on him and looked up. “Don’t be sorry.”
He touched her softly under the chin. “Believe me, Bess, it freaks me out a little, too.”
“I’ll buy you some more clothes when I go out.” She got up, needing action to force away emotion. “You’re about Connor’s size.”
She turned, to see him looking stunned. She paused with one arm through the sleeve of her blouse. “Nick?”
“How old’s your kid?”
“Connor’s eighteen,” she said. “Robbie’s seventeen. They’re what my grandma called Irish twins. Eleven months apart.” Her old habit of babbling caught up with her, and the wider Nick’s eyes got the faster she spoke. “Nobody would ever mistake them for twins, though. They barely look like brothers. Connor’s dark and Robbie’s light, like me…”
She trailed off. Nick had stood and gone to the window to stare out. His shoulders hunched as he gripped the windowsill. Tension vibrated in every line of his body.
“Nick?”
“I didn’t think,” he said. “I know you said it, but I really didn’t think about it.”
Instinct told her to go to him, but old habits couldn’t completely change. She imagined, instead, the silk of his skin beneath her comforting touch. Nick bent his head, his voice a low rasp.
“Tell me how long it’s been,” he said.
How could he not know? She had counted every day since the last time she’d seen him, one by one like bricks in a wall. How could he not remember, unless the passage of time had meant nothing?
“Twenty years,” she told him without pause. There was no point in trying to soften it.
Nick’s body jerked before he got himself under control. He half turned toward her, a tight smile pulling at his reluctant mouth. “So he’s not mine, at least.”
“Not yours?” Bess’s breath skipped in her lungs. “Oh, Nick. No. He’s not. Did you think he might be?”
Nick shook his head. “No. I don’t know. When you said you had kids, I thought…I mean, I knew you might. I thought you must have gotten married and stuff. I just didn’t think…Twenty years…” He trailed off and his mouth twisted again. He blinked rapidly.
The sight of this breakdown, however valiantly he fought it, destroyed the old reserve. She went to him and took him into her embrace. He buried his face against her neck and clutched her so tightly she thought her ribs might crack. She held him while he fought the sobs.
“Shh,” she soothed, her hands rubbing his back comfortingly. “It’s all right.”
Nick shook his head against her. Heat pressed her skin, but though his shoulders heaved, apparently he could no more shed tears than he could sweat or ejaculate.
“I don’t know where I was,” Nick moaned, so low she could barely hear him. “Where the fuck was I, Bess? For twenty fucking years?”
“I don’t know, baby,” she whispered. “But you’re here now.”
He pushed away from her and stalked the room, stopping to grab up his boxers from the pile and shove his legs into them. He turned as she watched, and his face had gone dark. Storm dark.
“Didn’t anyone look for me?” he demanded, throwing out his hands. “Didn’t you care where the fuck I went?”
She blinked, trying not to be offended by his sudden wish to blame her. “I cared. But I didn’t know you were…gone. Not like that.”
“Why not?” He advanced on her to grab her by the shoulders and shake. His fingers dug into her skin. He’d leave more bruises.
She couldn’t explain to him how hard it had been to find out where’d he’d gone or how easy it had been for her to believe he didn’t really want her. “I asked about you, but nobody knew anything. I waited for you, but when you never came I thought you didn’t want to. I didn’t know you couldn’t. Nobody knew.”
He let go of her and paced as she watched. He turned to look at her, answering his own question before she had the chance. “You mean, nobody cared.”
She’d cared, but Bess said nothing.
“I was that much of an asshole, huh?”
“I never forgot you.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” He shook his head.
“No. It’s just the truth.”
“Did you want to forget me?” he asked her after a moment.
Bess sighed, but answered. “After a while. Yes. After a while I just put that summer behind me.”
Nick shook his head, turning. He sank onto the bed, his arms crossed low over his stomach as if it hurt. He rocked a little and groaned, then looked up, face bleak. His cheeks and the bridge of his nose bore the same faint sun-kissed blush of pink, and the rest of his skin was as tawny as it had always been, but dark circles had lodged beneath his eyes. Lines that had nothing to do with age bracketed his mouth.
“I wanted to come to you,” he whispered in a soul-sick voice. “I remember, now. I said I’d find you. I wanted to. But instead—”
She shook her head and went to him. Their knees touched when she sat next to him. She took his hands from their grip on his stomach and put them around her, and she pulled him close. His face nestled with perfect precision into the hollow of her neck and shoulder, and hers found the same place on him. She closed her eyes. She breathed him in. She touched him. Once upon a time the sun hadn’t risen without her thinking about Nick’s smile, and the wind hadn’t blown without it whispering his name.
“You’re here now,” she said. “And that’s all that matters.”
Chapter
08
Then
“What’s going on with you and Nick?” Missy wasn’t subtle enough to pretend she didn’t care.
Bess, on the other hand, was clever enough to pretend she didn’t know what Missy was talking about. “Nick?”
“You know who I mean.” Missy jerked a thumb toward the living room, which bounced with the usual party.
Bess let her gaze follow. Nick leaned against the wall near the hall, tipping a beer to his mouth and talking to Ryan. It was a near mirror of the pose in which Bess had first seen him. It affected her even more this time, but she kept her expression bland when she looked back at Missy.
“What about him?”
Missy scowled. “What’s going on with you two, that’s what.”
Bess shrugged and tipped the glass blender container—God knew where it had come from, or even if it was clean—toward her cup. Brian had made frozen margaritas. She sipped and her eyes watered instantly at the burn of tequila. “Holy shit.”
“Holy shit is right,” Missy said, her own eyes narrowed.
Bess