by Lucy Lennox
My heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest. After a few moments, I realized his breathing had calmed and he was toying with the buttons of my shirt with his fingers. He looked up at me, and our eyes met. The intensity of the connection between us was like a lightning bolt to the solar plexus, and it was too much. Too much for both of us, probably, but sure as hell too much for me considering my mixed-up feelings about the man.
When I’d seen him through the door, I’d wanted to kiss him, touch him. But now? Now what I wanted seemed like so much more than that.
Things went from natural to awkward in the span of time it took for me to take my next shaky breath. I quickly reached for the towel from where it lay in a damp heap next to us and handed it to him, trying not to look at his groin. There was no way in hell I’d be able to keep my cock in my pants if I caught sight of his, and regardless of what was happening between us, I wasn’t about to make a move on the guy while he was clearly grieving.
“I’m… I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come here. I should, ah… go,” I stammered, shifting a bit so he wasn’t held so tightly to me in case he wanted to stand up.
After covering himself with the towel, he lifted his head and locked eyes with me again. His were bright, and I noticed the varied shades of green and blue flecked together to make the most exquisite irises. Wet tears were caught up in his dark lashes, and I saw a tiny jagged scar along the edge of his chin next to a freckle. Even in his grief, he was more beautiful than any human being I’d ever seen close up.
I leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead, sliding a hand into the hair on the side of his head to hold him still long enough to move my lips from his forehead to his cheek. He smelled clean and felt soft and warm against my skin. Not a single fiber of my being was okay with leaving him there alone.
Nico let out a tiny sound with his breath, and I felt it in the deepest part of my belly.
“Stay,” he breathed.
God, how I wanted to.
“I can’t. I shouldn’t,” I whispered. “Not like this. I have to go.”
We stayed motionless for a few more moments before I spoke again. “I have to go.” As if saying it the second time would force me to actually follow through with it.
“Then go,” he said quietly, glancing down to where my arm had tightened back around him like a steel band.
I quickly pulled away from him. After tucking his head down and standing up, Nico quickly wrapped the towel back around his waist and secured the ends together.
I stood and turned to face the door, but before I could pull it open, Nico’s arms came around my front and he pressed his body against my back. I felt his nose brush against the nape of my neck, and I closed my eyes with a sigh. I grabbed his hand from my chest and brought it up to my mouth.
I kissed his open palm before resting my cheek against it for the briefest of moments. And then I peeled his arms off me and strode out into the night.
Chapter 11
Nico
West stayed on my mind long after he drove away. The feel of his arms around me, the scent of him as my nose lay buried in his neck, the way he’d cared for me in that moment and admitted to understanding how I felt about losing Adriana without ever really having a chance to get to know her.
For just that second, I’d felt understood and loved. For just that moment, I’d had a tiny break from the loneliness I’d felt for the past fifteen years. But the moment came and went, and for some reason I felt even more alone now after having had it and lost it.
I’d asked him to stay, and he’d gone. Story of my fucking life.
I turned back toward Adriana’s room in search of some clothes to put on. With my luck, Pippa wouldn’t stay asleep much longer. Surely the only reason she’d stayed asleep through West’s and my fight to begin with was the fact that she’d so recently fallen asleep. I’d learned quickly that those first minutes of her sleep after a bottle were like a coma. Nothing could bring her out of a milk-drug-induced stupor.
As I crossed the threshold into Adriana’s room, I looked around and realized being in her personal space no longer upset me. Ever since I’d woken up in there several nights before, I’d felt at peace with being in her room. Of course, I’d never admit to West that he’d helped me cross that hurdle, but nonetheless, I was grateful to sleep in a real bed and not on the couch any longer.
I knew there would come a time I’d have to go through all her belongings and get rid of them—either by packing some away for Pippa or donating them to charity. Just the thought of it made me shudder.
The following day, I was scheduled to meet Pippa’s prospective adoptive parents at Honovi’s office, and I was feeling anxious about it. I started a load of laundry so I’d have some decent clean clothes to wear and then popped leftovers into the microwave for dinner. Once I’d settled in to finish my evening with a movie on television, my cell phone rang.
It was Griff, but before I even had a chance to say hello, he was giving me hell through the phone.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” he railed. “I show up at the shop to find out where the hell you’ve disappeared to, and Mike tells me you have a sister who died?”
“Griff—” I tried.
“No! You listen to me, you selfish asshole. You’ve been my best friend for almost fifteen years, and you never once told me you had a sister. How could you? How could you go through losing your fucking sister and not tell me?”
I could hear him on the verge of losing his shit completely when I tried again.
“Griff, I’m sorry. Is Sam there? Can I talk to him please?”
A sob came through the line, just like I knew it would. I could kick myself for hurting him like that, and it was sure as hell going to take a while to earn back his trust.
“How could you, Nico? Where are you? I’m coming. Where the hell are you right now?”
I heard him break down fully and finally hand the phone over to his husband. When Sam came on, I could hear Griff’s muffled cries and assumed he had his face tucked into Sam’s neck or chest.
“Hey, Nico,” Sam said in a kind, calm voice. “He’s okay. Just give him a minute. For some reason he thinks your losing your sister is all about him.”
I could hear Griff grumble something in the background followed by Sam shushing him.
“I understand Griff’s reaction, Sam. I knew he’d be hurt,” I admitted.
“Then why didn’t you tell us? We would have come with you—you know that.”
I blew out a breath. “That’s just it. I knew you guys would drop everything to come with me, but you have Benji now. I didn’t want you to have to leave him or, god forbid, bring a newborn on an airplane. I hadn’t seen my family in fifteen years. It’s not like we were close. The last time I saw Adriana, she was seventeen and mean as a snake. She fucking hated me.” I tried to explain it wasn’t quite the same as Griff or Sam losing their sister. They both had sisters they were extremely close to.
Sam’s voice stayed steady and calm, and I thought about how damned lucky my best friend was to have found someone so perfect for him.
“Nico, it doesn’t matter. Griff’s coming there whether you like it or not. I’ll stay here with Benji, okay? You know he’s not going to take no for an answer. If you fight us on this, all three of us are coming.”
“Yeah, okay. Fine. I’m in Texas. I’ll text you guys the address, and you can fly into Dallas and rent a car for the drive out to Hobie. But give me some time, will you? I have my hands full with some shit right now and can handle a visit better in a few days.”
“Good, here’s Griff.”
When I heard Griff’s familiar voice let out a great big sigh into the phone, I rolled my eyes and grinned to myself. Fucking drama queen. But god, I adored the guy. It was true—he’d always been there for me.
“I’m sorry, Griffin,” I said softly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. When I got the call, it really threw me, you know?”
“Y
eah, I’ll bet it did. I can’t even imagine what went through your head. Will you tell me about her? Please?”
So I did. We stayed on the phone for another hour while I told him I’d had a surly teenaged sister named Adriana and a single mother who’d worked her ass off cleaning houses and painting nails on the side at a local hair salon. I told him about my mom falling in love with the sheriff and me overhearing people say the sheriff would never marry her as long as that queer son was in the picture.
Griff cried some more, but that time I did too. We’d both left our biological families and wound up living on the streets of San Francisco. But thinking back on all that was a strange kind of bittersweet—because had it not happened that way, we never would have met each other. And I sure as hell could never wish for that.
“She had a baby, Griff,” I said with a wrecked voice. “Her name is Pippa.”
“Oh my god, Nico. That poor thing.”
“Yeah, so, I have her now, but don’t worry. There’s a nice couple who wants to adopt her.”
There was silence on the line for a long time. I wanted to ask him what he was thinking, but I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
“Adoption? Wow, Nico,” he said. “How are you handling all that? A baby. Wow.”
I snorted. “I know, right? Me with this four-month-old baby girl. But we’re managing okay. I can’t say I’m sleeping much at all.”
Griff laughed and turned away from the mouthpiece to relay that news to Sam. I could hear them both snicker on the other end and smiled to myself. I finally knew how they felt.
“Listen, Nico. I’m gonna call Mom and see if she wants to come with me. That way if you need help and I have to get back, she can stay.”
“No, Griff. There’s no need for that. I promise, I’m doing fine.”
“I’m not asking your permission. It’s happening. You know she’ll insist on coming anyway the minute I tell her.”
And I did know that. In addition to being a kind and generous woman, Rebecca Marian had six biological children and three adopted children. She was maternal, loving, and supportive of everyone she’d ever met. If there were any family I’d always wished I’d been a member of, it was the Marian family. And short of legally adopting me too, Thomas and Rebecca Marian had done everything in their power to be there for me over the years, including helping finance my tattoo shop.
I wasn’t used to needing others, and I sure as hell wasn’t used to admitting it. But maybe it was okay to do it just this once.
“Yeah, okay. I’d like that, Griff. Tell her thanks for me, okay?” I said.
The following day I showed up at Honovi’s office dressed in a clean button-down shirt and the nicest jeans I owned. I tried to look as put together as I could so the prospective parents didn’t think there was a lunatic in charge of the baby while they were waiting for the process to begin.
Luckily, Goldie had shown up at the house that morning to offer to stay with Pippa so I didn’t have to take her to the meeting. I was uneasy about letting the adoptive parents spend time with her before I had a chance to see what I thought of them. Even though everyone in town sang the praises of the vaunted Warners, I wasn’t about to let my niece go into the arms of a couple I hadn’t vetted myself.
When Hon brought the Warners into the conference room, their outward appearance indicated they probably were the golden couple everyone said they were. Jennifer and Daniel Warner were like catalog parents. Open up the catalog of perfect adoptive parents, and there you saw Jennifer and Daniel Warner.
Daniel was in software sales, and Jennifer was a middle school science teacher. They were so fucking perfect I wanted to slap them. I wondered what their secrets were. Did he hide a BDSM kink? Or was she secretly sleeping with a student? Were they secretly into prepping and hoarding weapons? Were they related to Hannibal Lecter? Fuck, why was this making me so twitchy? Didn’t I want Pippa to go to a loving family?
“It’s nice to meet you Nicolas,” Jennifer Warner said to me with a friendly smile as I was introduced. I could tell she was nervous, and she’d obviously put as much if not more care into her appearance than I had. She was wearing a slim skirt to her knees and a cardigan set with a simple gold chain necklace. Her shoulder-length blond hair was tucked neatly behind her ears, and her makeup was simple and understated.
Daniel stood next to her with an arm around her waist and one hand outstretched for a handshake. “Daniel Warner. It’s very nice to meet you.”
“Please call me Nico,” I said before shaking their hands and taking my seat at the table.
The meeting was just a preliminary opportunity to meet, but it felt more monumental than that. It made the adoption seem real in a way it hadn’t before. I began to imagine Pippa in their arms and tucked away in a tidy, color-coordinated nursery somewhere in their home at night. The Warners already had a son, so Pippa would have a big brother to grow up with.
What if the brother ended up ditching her down the line? What if he was a punk who let her down? Whose selfish actions left her in the lurch?
Nausea began to swirl in my gut the longer I sat with them. It was almost like every nice thing I learned about them made me even sicker. The only negative I’d heard so far was Daniel’s comment about being friends with “the baby’s uncle Curt.” But everyone knew Curt, and you could hardly blame a guy for trying to reassure me he had some kind of connection to the family already. Everything else had been perfect. They were the ideal family for little Pippa.
And it made me want to scream.
This meeting had started the timer on the adoption process, and my remaining moments with Pippa suddenly became limited. On the one hand, I would soon be free to return to my real life in California. On the other, I’d be saying goodbye to the little girl forever. It was a noxious mix of anticipation, fear, and excitement. But most of all, guilt.
By the time Hon had handed me a packet of paperwork to look over and walked me to the door, I wasn’t quite sure whether I was going to make it home without vomiting or breaking down in tears like a child.
“Nico, as of right now, we’re just waiting for the birth certificate to be sent from the registrar’s office. If Adriana had received a copy of it already, we weren’t able to find it in her things. I would expect it to be here in a day or two at the latest. So that means everything will be ready to move forward legally, and then we’ll just be waiting on your consent. Take some time to think this through, okay? It’s a big decision. The Warners understand this is a lot to take in all at once. I’m sure they can be patient if you need more time.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said in reply. “It’s not like I’m going to take a newborn back to California and raise her over a tattoo shop.” I’d been trying to lighten the mood, but my attempt fell flat.
The attorney shot me a sympathetic smile and wished me well.
After the short drive home, I walked in the door to the house, fully intending on grabbing Pippa up from wherever she was and just holding her, but before I had a chance to even close the front door, Goldie took one look at my face and pulled me into a strong hug.
“The baby,” I said in a rough voice against her shoulder. I wasn’t quite sure if it was a statement or a question, but it didn’t really matter.
“Pippa’s fine, but you aren’t, honey. And that’s okay,” she said. “Just let it out, sweetie.”
I didn’t cry, but I did let myself indulge in her loving embrace for several long beats.
“Why is this so hard?” I muttered.
Goldie chuckled softly as we pulled apart. Her eyes were kind as she patted one of my cheeks. “Love always is, Nico. Love always is.”
That word was enough to get my attention. Love. I didn’t love her. I barely knew her. There was no love involved in this for me. Sure, I’d loved my mom and my sister Adriana, but I’d left them so long ago. And the one time I thought a man loved me the way I’d wanted… no, needed… to be loved at the time, I’d been dead wrong.
Did I love Pippa? It wasn’t possible. She was just a tiny nothing of a thing. Fifteen pounds of milk and poop, who had the ability to make my ears bleed at the drop of a hat. Love? Surely not. And after watching goddamned Weston Wilde walk away from me the night before after the tempting promises of his touch, I knew there wasn’t even the hope of love for me in Hobie fucking Texas.
And I couldn’t wait to get out of there the first chance I got.
Chapter 12
West
The next day at work seemed to last ten days. All I could think about between patients was the feeling of having Nico Salerno in my arms. Holding him had made everything in my life fall into place—as if my body had been waiting for his before it could finally relax. It was a shock to me. After all, people weren’t supposed to have those feelings for someone like Nico.
Wanting to sleep with him? Yes.
Wanting to hold him and care about him? No thanks.
Nico was a proven flight risk. An angry, surly man who had a history of choosing himself over others. The kind of person who could pawn off his own niece onto a pair of strangers so he could go back to his own self-centered life. He wasn’t a kind, sweet man but an instigator with a chip on his shoulder against all things Hobie. And Hobie was my life, my home. I was born and raised in Hobie, Texas, and my entire family went back years in that small town. How could I want to be with someone who hated something so integral to who I was?
I couldn’t want him.
Which was all well and good except for one fact.
I wanted him.
When work was finally done for the day, I made my way upstairs to my kitchen and saw my brother Hudson sitting at the table working on his laptop.
“Hey, I didn’t know you were here. Why didn’t you come find me downstairs?” I asked.
He looked up and smiled. “Didn’t want to bother you and I had some work I needed to finish before the weekend.” Hudson’s eyes narrowed at me briefly. “West, is something wrong? You look tired or something.”
