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He laughs again, that deep, sexy laugh that seems to slide up and down my spine before landing in my belly. “No. I would have, or so I tell myself to this day, but the judge let out a burp so loud that the entire courtroom went silent and then burst into laughter that went on eternally.”
“Oh my God. Did you— What did you do?”
“I had to finish, but no one was listening. Thankfully, no one listened to the opposing counsel, either.”
“Did you win?”
“I won,” he says, setting our empty plates on the nightstand behind him before adding, “and I was proud of that win then, but looking back, the case was a slam dunk anyone could have won.”
I study him, charmed by this man who gave me humor over the grandeur I’ve expected. “Humble pie from Nick Rogers? Really?”
That warmth is back in his eyes. “There’s much about me that might surprise you, Faith.”
“So it seems,” I say, but I do not tempt fate, or his questions, by once again telling him the same is true of me—nor do I have a chance to be lured into that misstep. He reaches for me and pulls me to the mattress, his big body framing mine, his powerful thigh pressed between mine. “There is much about you that has surprised me, Faith Winter, and I should tell you that I am so far from fucking you out of my system that I haven’t even begun.”
He doesn’t give me time to react, let alone speak, before his lips are on mine, and he’s kissing me, a drugging, slow kiss. And it seems now that I feel every new kiss he claims deeper in every possible way. He is the escape I’d hoped for, but he is so much more. And eventually we are once again naked, but it’s not kinky spankings and naughty talk. It’s notjust sexat all. It’s passionate and intense, yes, but it’s softer and gentler than before, in ways I don’t understand but feel.
Until we are here and now, in this exact moment when the lights are out, the TV playing a movie with barely audible sound. His heart thunders beneath my ear, telling me that he is still awake as well. I inhale, breathing in that woodsy scent of him, wondering how one person can feel so right and so wrong at the same time. Macom had felt right and then wrong, though the wrong took me longer than it should have to admit, but he was never both at once. Ironically, too, when I look into Nick’s eyes, I believe he feels the same of me.
I’d told Nick that it’s easy to feel alone here in this house, but I didn’t tell him just how good that usually is to me. I didn’t tell him that alone is safe. I didn’t tell him that alone allows me to be me without fearing what someone will see or judge. Alone is a place where I take shelter and can breathe again. But as necessary as being alone feels right now, Nick has awakened something in me, and not just the woman. I am painting again, and suddenly I realize that painting is how I learn, grow, and cope.
My mind starts to travel back to the past, to how solitude became my sanctuary, and I meld myself closer to Nick and somehow find myself asking, “Did you speak to your father often?”
“No,” he says simply.
“Do you feel guilty about that?”
“No,” he says, no hesitation. Just straight up. This is how it is. This is what it is.
“Have you cried for him?”
“No,” he says again. “I have not.”
“Me either,” I say, and I don’t mean to say more, but in the safety of darkness, my eyes hidden, my expression with them, I do. “And it feels bad,” I add. “Like I’m supposed to be crying for her.”
“If the person didn’t deserve your love in life,” he replies, “they don’t deserve your tears in death.”
I know he’s right. My mother doesn’t deserve my tears, but death is her friend and my enemy. Death is the gaping hole in your soul that just keeps spiraling into blackness. “Do you have siblings, Nick?”
“No.”
“Other family?”
“No.”
“Then you’re alone now, too.”
“Sweetheart, I was alone when that man was in the room.”
As was I with my mother, I think, memories trying to invade my mind that I do not want to revisit. I shut my eyes, inhaling Nick’s woodsy sent, losing myself in him. In sleep, I hope. And the shadows start to form. The darkness, too, but then suddenly, I don’t smell Nick any longer. That woodsy scent is replaced by flowers. So many flowers. Daisies. Roses. Lilacs. The scent of the Reid Winter Gardens. The scent of my mother that clings to my hair and clothes almost daily. I will my mind away from the place I sense it’s taking me. I fight a mental war I lose. I am back in time, living my tenth birthday.
My father has just picked me up from school, and we’ve returned to the mansion, and I cannot wait to find my mother, a drawing in my hand, a present for her, while my father has promised mine will come soon. I push through the doors leading to the garden. I drop my drawing and gasp when it starts to blow. I run and catch it, picking it up and staring down at the colors. So many colors. So many flowers. I’ve drawn my mother’s garden, and I know she will be proud.
With my prize back in hand, I rush to the gazebo where I always find her but stop short when I spy a tall, dark-haired man with her. “I told you not to come here,” my mother says.
“Return my phone calls, Meredith, and I won’t.”
“You do understand I’m married?”
