Author: Kristan Higgins

He added another layer to his tiny building.

“Will you stop doing that?” I said, reaching over and grabbing the packets.

“You just wrecked Taipei 101,” he said. Then he sighed, sitting back in his chair. “Look, Harper, I don’t know what to say. I know you want to protect Willa, but she’s an adult. So is Chris.”

“Really, Nick? The inventor of the Thumbie and the girl who hasn’t held any job for more than two consecutive months?”

His mouth tightened. “Not your call, Harper.”

“And here’s the other thing, Nick.” I tried to keep my voice neutral. “We’re…together now. Sort of. You slept with me, but you didn’t tell me about this, and I just feel…blindsided.”

“There hasn’t been a lot of time, Harper,” he said.

There’d been time. That dinner in Aberdeen when he made me the house out of French fries. Last night, when we’d raided the kitchen around midnight. “Well,” I said, opting to let those go, “would you have told me eventually?”

He didn’t answer. Which was, of course, an answer. “So you have no problem sleeping with me, but I’m only privy to some things,” I said. “And you decide what those things are.”

He held up his hands. “Okay. Just…stop. Just for a minute, okay?” He looked up, smiled his thanks at the waitress. “We’re not quite ready to order,” he said.

“Fine,” she said. “You guys were, like, the ones beating down the door to get in here.”

“Back off, missy,” I snapped.

“Fine,” she repeated, rolling eyes and storming away yet again.

“You know she’s going to spit in our food,” Nick said.

“Nick, back to the subject at hand,” I ground out.

He sighed. “Look. Let’s not argue about Chris and Willa, because that gets us nowhere.”

“Does Willa even know?” I asked.

“You mean, did I sit her down and tell her about Christopher’s drinking? No. I didn’t. It wasn’t my place.”

“Are you aware that concealment of addiction can be grounds for annulment, Nick?”

His mouth tightened. “Harper, their marriage and issues and problems are theirs. Not ours. So please, let’s not ruin things by talking about another couple.”

I tried not to grind my teeth. “Nick, two things. First, given the fact that I constantly bail Willa out of disastrous situations, I think I should’ve known about this. And I’m feeling a little…hurt that you didn’t see fit to tell me. But I’ll let that go. Or I’ll try. Secondly, their issues do affect us! These are our siblings, Nick. Not some strangers. If they get a divorce, that matters to us.”

“You’re such a cynic.” He shook his head.

“Don’t start. I’m a realist, okay? Don’t forget what I do for a living.”

“As if you’d let me.”

We stared at each other across the table. The feeling of impasse was very familiar.

“Let’s change the subject, okay?” Nick suggested gently. He reached over and took my hand.

“Sure,” I said briskly. “What would you like to discuss? The weather? Baseball?”

Nick grinned. “The Yankees beat the Sox last night. Ten to three.”

“You’re hardly getting on my good side, Nick.” But I allowed a small smile.

His smile grew. “Okay, well, let’s talk about your law practice. You could pass the New York bar exam in a heartbeat, don’t you think? Or would you even have to, since you’re already practicing in another state?”

And sucker-punched again. I blinked. “The bar?”

Then Nick’s phone chimed gently. “This might be the nursing home,” he said, pulling his phone out. He glanced at it. “Nope. It’s just Pete.”

“Take it,” I replied without thinking.

“It can wait.”

“No. Go ahead. I could use a minute anyway.”

He hesitated, then stood up. “Okay. Be right back.” He went outside, and I watched through the window as he talked, then listened. He glanced at me, then spoke some more. Shook his head. Looked my way again, waved, kept talking.

The New York bar exam? That one came right out of left field. My knees were still buzzing with surprise. The electrical current that ran between Nick and me…it had always carried the danger of electrocution.

I took a shaky breath. The last time we were together, Nick had rushed ahead with a lot of plans. Get engaged, quick wedding. He’d found our apartment and signed the lease before I even saw the place, saying that to wait would’ve meant losing it. And of course, when we were married, it had been all about his plan, his schedule, his career.

This time…this time would have to be different. The last thing I wanted was to make the same mistake twice.

Nick came back to the table and sat back down. His knee started bouncing.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“Sure. Everything’s great.” He hesitated. “You know the Drachen project?” I nodded. “The company’s CEO is in New York. Peter managed to pin him down for a late lunch.”

“Great,” I said.

“I won’t go,” Nick said. His knee continued to bounce. “Do you want to order?”

“Um…no.” I took another deep breath. “Nick. You should…you should go. To the lunch.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I’m with you today.”

“No, you should go. You really wanted this one. This is your chance.”

He didn’t answer.

“I’ll be fine,” I added. “Does the CEO come to the States that often?”

“No,” he acknowledged.

“So you should go!”

Nick just looked at me, his dark eyes assessing, and as ever, time seemed to stop. Except it didn’t—the clock above us chimed softly.

“I have a million emails to return,” I said, “and Nick, you know you want this deal. So go. Okay? I’ll see you back at your place.” I stood up, kissed his cheek and left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BACK AT NICK’S APARTMENT, I took Coco for a walk. She hated the noise, jumping back from the curb when a car passed, quivering at the sound of air brakes or the clatter of a jackhammer. I ended up carrying her most of the way. She could probably adjust, but it seemed rather cruel to ask that of her. She was used to the wind and sand and salt air. Not this.

When we got back, I checked my email, answered a few, then wandered around the apartment, feeling a little stir-crazy. Opened a cabinet here, a drawer there. There were a couple of framed pictures of Isabel. One of Nick, Christopher, Jason and Mr. Lowery. Another of him and Peter in front of a temple. Japan, maybe.

On his desk was a leather-bound day calendar. I flipped it open. Funny, that in this age of phones with every conceivable app from foot massages to ghost whispering, Nick kept a handwritten record of his appointments. There was last week…in his blocky architect’s handwriting, Nick had written C&W’s wedding. Later that week, Whalen U., School of Engineering.

This coming week, it appeared he’d be going to Dubai. Later in the month, Seattle. In October, Nick was scheduled to be in Houston, London and Seattle again.

Business was good.

I sat in his chair for a little while. Coco, sensing my melancholy, jumped into my lap and put her head on my shoulder. She seemed blue, too. The subway screeched from down the block, and my dog shivered in fear. “You’d think they’d have fixed those brakes by now, huh, Coco?” I asked, petting her sleek little back. From the floor below, I could hear the strains of bouncy music and some muffled voices—Ivan, watching the soaps.

Some things never changed, and I wasn’t just talking about Ivan’s taste in daytime television. Nick’s business was thriving; God knows, he worked hard enough and deserved every success. I wouldn’t want it any other way…and yet…and yet, things were feeling awfully familiar. He wanted me to move to New York, to fit my life in around his. Again. And the way he’d mentioned it, so flip and assured—You could pass the New York bar in a heartbeat. We didn’t even know what next week would look like, but he was already assuming I’d uproot everything and move back to his city.

And that whole thing with Chris…that didn’t bode well, either. Nick deliberately withheld something critically important from me. Not without reason—I could see his point about it being Christopher’s to share or not share—but still. It didn’t feel good. The way he’d had that meeting scheduled in Bismarck but hadn’t mentioned it, had made our trip feel completely spur-of-the-moment, while all the time, he’d had a plan and a schedule.

Ivan’s soap cut to commercial, and the merits of Huggies diapers were extolled at an excruciating decibel. It was so odd to be back here, so disconcerting. Different, but still the same. Gone was the small kitchen where Nick and I had shared so few meals, where the steam radiators had ticked and hissed as I’d waited for him to come home. Gone was the tiny alcove in the living room where Nick had ensconced himself in front of the computer on the rare nights he made it home before nine or ten. Gone was our old bedroom where we’d fought so often. And yet, here we were, same building, same structure, same foundation. It was glossier and more sophisticated, but it was still the same.

And so were Nick and I.

God, that thought was petrifying. I realized I was gripping the leather arms of Nick’s chair in a stranglehold. But sitting here alone in this apartment, it was far too easy to remember the bitter solitude of my early days here. The helplessness I’d felt as I became invisible to the man I’d loved more than air. The utter terror that paralyzed my heart as I watched him pack. I could still hear the clink of my ring hitting the storm drain, could still see the accusing glare of the cab’s taillights as Nick left me.

My inbox chimed with a new message. Exhaling abruptly—apparently I’d stopped breathing—I heaved myself out of the chair and took a look. BeverLee. I clicked on it, then squinted to make out the curly pink typeface she always used.

Hey there, Sweetheart how are you doing? I’ve been just the tiniest bit worried about you, it being you’ve been gone such a while. Let me know where you’re at, okay? Miss you bunches. xoxox BeverLee. By the way give me a call if you can.

My heart squeezed. I’d never thought of BeverLee and me as being particularly close, but in her eyes, we were tighter than Joan and Melissa Rivers. If she deemed you her BFF, that’s how she’d act, and it would take a SWAT team and a junkyard dog to keep her away. And now she was having to deal with her recalcitrant-to-the-point-of-mute husband telling her their marriage was over. My family life, if odd, had been pretty stable these past twenty years…and now it would be broken once more.

I needed to go home. At the thought, my eyes filled with completely unexpected tears. I didn’t want to leave Nick…but I really had to take a step back. Nick wouldn’t be happy about it. He might even be furious, and my heart died a little at the thought of disappointing him again, of being away from him. I loved Nick, had always loved him, that was undeniable. But maybe…maybe we both needed to step back a little and think. If we were going to work out, we had to be smarter than we were last time. Not to mention the fact that I had a family, a career, people who were waiting for me to come home. I had a cactus, damn it.

I wiped my eyes—holy testicle Tuesday, look at me, crying twice in the same decade, would wonders never cease? Coco cocked her cunning little head and looked at me as if affirming my thoughts. “Time to go home, Coco?” I whispered. She licked my elbow. The hammering of my heart told me I was running away…but sometimes flight was the best course of action. I’d never been able to win a fight with Nick, after all. He could sell a swimming pool to a dolphin.