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He grabs my mother’s arm and pulls her to him. “I also understand you want me,” he says, and then he is kissing her, and I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. I turn away and start running, and just when I reach the door to the mansion, it opens and my father steps outside. And he’s big and tall and like a teddy bear that loves and loves, and I want to protect him like he protects me.
“Daddy!” I shout and fling myself at him, hugging him.
“Hey, honey. Did you find your mother?”
“She’s inside,” I say. “We have to find her. I need cake.”
He laughs and takes my hand, leading me to the mansion. “Let’s find her and have cake.”
My lashes lift, my eyes pierced by sunlight, and I blink away slumber with the sudden realization that Nick is gone. I jolt to a sitting position, pulling the blanket over my nudity, a ball of emotion I refuse to name in my chest. Of course he’s gone. Why wouldn’t he be gone? That ball in my chest expands, and I reject it, refusing to name it. Glancing at the clock, I’m appalled to discover it’s after nine. I have the rest of today here before I go back to the mansion, and I’m wasting it in bed, which admittedly was more appealing when Nick was in it, but I’m damn sure not letting today suck because of him leaving without saying a word.
Throwing off the covers, I walk into the bathroom and pull on my pink robe and shove my feet in my pink fluffy slippers. By habit, I brush my teeth and hair, and I note the smudges of mascara under my eyes. “No wonder he left,” I murmur. I look like the scary chick from that horror movie—The Grudge, or something like that. Only she had dark hair, meant to be goth and scary. At this moment, I’m a close second to her, though, for sure. I decide I don’t care, either. There is no one to care but me, and I just want coffee. And I think I might make me some gourmet pancakes my way. I need to stick to doing things my way. And bill collectors or not, I need to stop staying at the mansion. I need my space. I guess that is the gift Nick Rogers left me with.
Me again.
Or maybe that will turn out to be a curse, and I will in turncurse himfor months to follow.
I walk back into the bedroom and note that he is, indeed, polite. He took our plates to the kitchen when he left. For some reason, that really irritates me. I walk into the living room, and my mind goes back to the dream, to my tenth birthday, and without a conscious decision to do so, I cross the living room and enter the library. Once I’m there, I walk to the bookshelf and pull out a worn brown journal and sit down on the chair beside it, opening it to pull out a piece of old, worn paper that was once balled up like one of the pieces of paper Nick used for paper basketball in my office yesterday.
“Faith.”
I jolt at Nick’s voice, looking up to find him standing in the doorway.
“You scared the heck out of me, Nick,” I say, my hand at my chest, while his chest is hugged by a snug black T-shirt he’s paired with black jeans and biker-style boots, the many sides of this man dauntingly sexy.
He starts laughing in reaction, his jaw sporting a heavy stubble, while his hair is loose and damp, because apparently he took a shower and I didn’t know.
“It’s not funny,” I scold.
“No,” he says, crossing the room to sit on the footstool in front of me. “It’s not funny, but I hate to tell you, Faith, as beautiful as you are, right now you look like the girl from—”
“The Grudge,” I supply, remembering my makeup. “I noticed that, but I thought… I noticed.”
He narrows those too blue, too intelligent eyes on me. “You thought I was gone?”
I could deny the truth, but he already knows, and games are better when naked or trying to get naked. “Yes,” I say. “I did.”
His eyes fill with mischief. “And miss a chance to see how you look this morning?”
I scowl, and he leans in to kiss me before saying, “Minty fresh. I find it interesting that you brushed your teeth and left your mascara like that.”
“Maybe I wanted to scare you away,” I say. “And fair warning. I’m cranky without coffee.”
“We can fix that in about two minutes.” His gaze goes to the drawing. “What’s this?”
It’s a testament to how this man distracts and consumes me that I’ve forgotten what I’m holding in my hand. “The past,” I say, and when I would fold it, Nick catches my hand.
“Was this your work as a child?”
“Yes,” I say. “It was.”
“You saw things in color then. When did that change?”
That day, I think, but instead I focus on the next time I created anything. “Sixteen.”
“What made you change?”
“Life,” I say, and because I have no intent of explaining, I add, “I really need that coffee. Actually, I really need a shower.”
