Page 89 of Gorgeous Misery

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.

She’s not happy to see me.

She’s not relieved that I’m alive.

There will be no hug, no kiss, no tears.

Because even a decade later, I can still read this girl like nobody’s business and she is pissed.

I want to look back at the house to see if Wendy is watching, but I don’t dare. Hopefully, she’s still in the shower.

Hopefully, Nick? I almost laugh out loud.

Merc didn’t get me once, he got me twice. Because the last thing I need fucking up what I’m doing with Wendy is Sasha. The one girl on this entire planet who makes Wendy feel like second best.

“Fuck,” I mutter.