by Lucy Lennox
When he finished coming all over his chest and stomach, I gave him a few final strokes and licks until he caught his breath and yanked the pillow away.
Twin beams of annoyance glared at me from his flushed face. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Um. Sorry about that,” I said with a wince. “I didn’t want to wake Pippa.”
“Yeah, I get that, but a nice gentle hand would have done the trick. Or even a goddamned ball gag would have been kinder. You almost suffocated me.”
I climbed up to kiss him on his mouth and spent the next several minutes trying to make him forget about the damned pillow.
After the kissing, we lay there entwined together, his fingers moving in lazy shapes under my shirt along the skin of my back, when he spoke.
“It wasn’t just the thing that happened at the movie theater,” he said into the quiet room. “It was something that happened a few weeks later, at the lake.”
I tried to lift my head up to look at him, but he moved his hand into my hair to stop me. After I settled back on his chest, I asked him something I’d always wondered.
“When Reeve dumped you overboard?”
“When I fell off the boat,” he corrected. “Like an asshole.”
“You didn’t fall. You were knocked into the water by that jackass on purpose.”
I felt Nico’s hand stop its movement on my back. “How did you know that?”
“Because you wouldn’t have fallen otherwise. I hardly think you would have stood up unless you thought he was slowing down or stopping.”
“Maybe I was the idiot everyone claimed me to be,” he said. His voice was so defiant I laughed.
“You weren’t. You grew up in Hobie. No way did you stand up to move around a boat without knowing exactly what you were doing. Plus I knew Reeve Billingham and he was an ass. Still is, if rumors are to be believed.”
Nico let out a deep sigh. “Yeah, they were both assholes. I have no idea why Curt still has a problem with me after all these years.”
I had an idea, but I chose to keep my thoughts to myself. Nothing good would come of telling Nico any of it.
“He’s a jerk. Stay away from him, Nico, okay?”
He shifted out from under me and sat up, moving to sit against the headboard so he could look at me.
“What are you not telling me?”
“I’m just saying—”
“Yeah, West. I hear what you’re saying. What I don’t hear is what you’re not saying. Tell me.”
I sat up too, sliding back until I was sitting against the headboard next to him. “He has a shit ton of attitude toward your mother for what happened to his dad,” I told him. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was true nonetheless.
“Why? What do you mean?”
“How much do you know about the accident?”
Nico rubbed his hands over his face before looking over at me. “I didn’t ask for any details when Honovi told me she died in a car accident. I was already overwhelmed with Adriana and Pippa and everything.”
I took one of his hands and kissed the back of it before holding it between both of mine.
“She was driving under the influence, Nico.”
His entire face fell, and my heart went out to him. I couldn’t imagine being in his position hearing all this shit.
“Are they sure she was drunk?”
“They’d both been drinking. People remember them leaving the party after drinking, and everyone assumes maybe she’d had less to drink than he had. That’s probably why she drove.”
“Oh god. Why was she even drinking? She didn’t drink. Not after my father…” He trailed off and seemed to stop to think it through. He took a deep breath. “My father drank himself to death. She hated the stuff. Did she start drinking after I left?”
I tried to catch Nico’s gaze, but he seemed to look anywhere but at me.
“Don’t do whatever it is you’re doing right now, Nico,” I ordered.
His jaw tightened, but he still looked away.
I moved swiftly to straddle his lap, grabbing hold of his face in both my hands. “Don’t you dare take on the responsibility of her choices. Don’t you dare.”
Everything that had ever broken him in his entire life was in his eyes, and I wanted to scream from the intensity of it.
“She started drinking when I left?” he asked in a small voice.
“Nico,” I breathed. “No. It wasn’t your fault. Your mother chose to drink at a party. That’s all it was.”
“But you think Adriana’s abandonment was my fault, so why won’t you let me think my mom’s death was my fault? Curt clearly does.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked softly, stroking his cheeks. “Why did you leave Adriana and your mom?”
The tears in his eyes overflowed, and had I thought my heart felt broken before, I was so very wrong.
Chapter 21
Nico
West Wilde was a mirage—a phantom empath hovering nearby during my epic journey home. I’d decided he was too good to be true. But god, how I wanted him to be.
“I don’t think you want to know,” I told him. “It’s so fucking pathetic, West.”
His thumbs brushed away the tears that had leaked out, and I couldn’t help but lean in and lay my face against the softness of his T-shirt.
“I want to know. Of course I want to know. And even if it is pathetic, I promise to remember it was a teenage kid making that decision,” he assured me.
I let out a shaky breath. “The movie theater thing happened first. Curt’s comment about the sheriff not marrying my mom as long as I was in the picture. Then on the boat that day, Adriana made a comment about wanting them to get married so she’d have a chance at being able to go to college. It all started coming together to make me feel like I was the one thing preventing my mom and my sister from getting what they’d always wanted.”
“But Nico, can’t you see—”
I reached up to put fingers over his lips. “I know that now. Remember when you said you’d try to remember it was a stupid kid making the decision?”
“I don’t think those were my exact words,” West teased against my fingers with a soft smile.
“Well, two more things happened after that. The first was just a random fluke. Mom sent me to a neighbor’s house to pick up some hydrangea clippings the woman had saved for her. When I approached the screen door, I overheard the neighbor talking to another woman at their kitchen table. The conversation was about my mom and the sheriff. One woman told the other that the sheriff sure was sweet on my mom. But then they both agreed that he’d never pop the question and take it to the next level as long as I was in the picture.”
West stiffened and looked down at me. “You’re kidding? It wasn’t just Curt spouting that bullshit?”
I shrugged. “No. I mean, I know I wasn’t the best kid. I didn’t make good grades, I hung out with all the weirdos who always seemed to attract trouble, and everyone knew I was queer at that point. It wasn’t like I hid it.”
“Even if those things were true, Nico, that’s no reason not to accept you as part of your mom’s family. God, how awful.”
It warmed something inside me to hear him say those things. To finally, after all these years, have someone besides Adriana know what happened and say it wasn’t okay.
“Yeah, well, I made the mistake of telling Adriana, and she went fucking ape shit.” I couldn’t help but smirk at the memory of unleashing the hellcat.
West laughed, and the deep rumble felt amazing against my chest. “She was a feisty little shit when she wanted to be. Sweet as honeysuckle most of the time, but stung like a hornet when she got riled up. Was she that way when you were little?”
I loved it when his voice lulled into his soft Texas burr. It was a sign of relaxation, and it washed through me like a sweet buzz.
I nodded. My fingers found the hem of his T-shirt and snuck under it to run along his skin. “When she was little, you’re right. Sweet as honeys
uckle. As a teen, though, she was a moody bitch. Mean as a snake. But when the anger was in defense of me… well, it felt fucking amazing.”
“What was the other thing that happened?” he asked gently.
“The sheriff threatened to arrest me,” I said.
West’s silence lasted for a beat. “What for?”
“Stealing the sign from Ritches’ Hardware Store,” I said and couldn’t help but start laughing.
West smiled at me. “That was you? What’s so funny?”
“Oh my god. I just realized the bakery… oh my god.” I was laughing so hard I could barely stop. “Sugar Britches. She named it after me.”
“She told me it was an inside joke, but she never explained it. Tell me.”
“Do you remember the sign on the hardware store used to look like it started with a B because of the font Mr. Ritches used?”
West nodded. “Everyone knew that’s why it was stolen so many times. So some kid could have a dirty word sign on his wall. It took like ten signs before the guy wised up and changed the font.”
“Right. Well, Adriana and I got into a huge fight and I called her the b-word. She went batshit fucking crazy. One of my friends came up with the idea to steal the sign and hang it on Adriana’s bedroom door so when she woke up one morning, it would just be there. The whole thing started off as a joke.”
“You’re kidding,” West said. “You really stole it? How?”
“I didn’t even mean to, but I was walking by the store one day after school and there was a flash rainstorm. Everyone dashed into the closest storefront in town, and I headed for Ritches. Just as I approached the door, it banged closed from whoever had gone in before me. I swear to god, the sign fell right off the door and splashed into a huge puddle.”
“Liar,” West accused with a laugh.
I shrugged and grinned back at him. “Not kidding. I had to decide in that moment—take it for the gift it obviously was, or turn it in and hope I didn’t get accused of ripping it off the door. Obviously I took it.”
West tilted his head at me as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to believe me. “Then what happened?”
“Curt saw me with it. I didn’t find that out until it was too late, but apparently he did. Meanwhile, I took it home and hung it in my sister’s room. When she woke up and saw it, she screeched so loud I realized it was worth any punishment I could get. She was griping at me about it at breakfast when Mom heard her say bitches. Mom yelled, so Adriana said, ‘Mom, I was calling Nico my little Sugar Britches.’ She called me Sugar Britches after that. I can’t believe I’d forgotten that.”
My voice trailed off as I felt the true gesture hit me. My sister had named her business after me. Even after all those years.
“Didn’t the sheriff find out? Did Mr. Ritches press charges?”
“Oh, they never charged me. Sheriff Billingham gave me a long lecture about being a disappointment to my mother and how that one action proved I was well on my way to being a petty criminal if I didn’t change my tune. Then he shook his head and muttered a bunch of shit under his breath about how he could never marry a woman with a criminal for a son even though he probably should since I clearly needed a father’s firm hand.”
“What a jackass.” West hissed.
“Yeah, well, he was the jackass my mom was in love with. And I was suffocating in this small town. I knew I was gay, I knew I was different, and I knew I’d leave town the first chance I got anyway. So I realized I might as well do it sooner than later and save everyone the trouble. It was the last straw.”
West’s eyes narrowed at me. “You’re kidding? You let that fucker intimidate you into leaving your family? You gave up your mother and sister for that guy?”
I felt my hackles rise and my anger kick up. “No. You don’t fucking understand. I gave up my mother and my sister for them to have a better life, you idiot.”
I got up and began searching for my clothes. Whether Pippa was awake yet or not, I was going to go get her and busy myself with giving her a bath or something. As if I needed the stress of a slippery baby on top of the stress of dealing with West. Whatever.
West stood up too and came over to clasp my arm. “Wait. Stop. I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t understand. But I’d like to. Will you sit back down and talk to me?”
His voice was kind, and his touch was gentle. After letting him guide me back onto the bed, I turned to him to try to make him understand.
“West. We didn’t grow up like you, with enough money and family support to be comfortable. After my dad died, my mom had to get any job she could. She cleaned houses in town and made shit for money. My dad had already been making shit for money as it was, and we lived in a run-down trailer for god’s sake. The only way they could even afford what little we did have was because this piece of land and the trailer had been my grandfather’s getaway spot when he wanted to take a break from his wife and kids in Galveston. He’d come up here with his buddies and fish and drink beer. It was just a scrubby lake property with a double-wide trailer on it, so it was a step up from camping, you know?”
West held one of my hands in his and toyed with my fingers. It felt good.
“So when Dad died, we had nothing. My mom cleaned houses. Adriana babysat, and I mowed lawns to help out where we could. Sometimes the church helped us out, which was nice but humiliating. It sucked. It was awful watching my mom and sister work their asses off and still live in a shitty, bug-infested trailer with one moody window air-conditioning unit and no money for anything other than thrift-store shit and ramen noodles. If you had a chance to sacrifice yourself so your mom and sister could live in a decent house and have new things, wouldn’t you at least consider it?”
“I guess I would, Nico. But why didn’t you tell them the truth?”
I knew the minute the words were out of his mouth he knew the answer to his question.
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I guess you worried they’d feel responsible.”
“Yes. And that my mom would break up with the sheriff before letting me go,” I admitted. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself, knowing she gave up her chance for happiness and comfort for me.”
“The sheriff put you in an impossible situation, didn’t he?” West’s words were so kind I wanted to tell him to stop. “But you told Adriana something?”
I laughed. “No, not really. Curt made sure to let it slip around town that I had stolen the sign. After Adriana found out, she was pissed. Anyway, when I decided to leave, I told her there were just too many crappy things about Hobie for me, everyone thought I was shit, and I wanted a fresh start. She knew the truth though. I had told her about overhearing the neighbor, remember? I’m sure she put two and two together even though I swore to her that wasn’t why.”
“Why didn’t you stay in touch at least?” he asked.
I took a breath and let it out slowly, trying to decide whether or not I could get into that part of it with him. Luckily, Pippa began her precry whimpering in time to spare me the decision. I jumped up to slip on my clothes and make my way into the nursery, hearing West’s teasing warning from behind me.
“We’re not done here, Nicolas Salerno.”
I smiled to myself as I reached for the baby in the crib. The unique way he emphasized the “Nico” in “Nicolas” made my heart flip-flop. It was incongruent with his preppy cowboy shtick, and I wondered what other words he pronounced that way—sultry, dirty, exotic…
Promising.
Chapter 22
West
I let him go. There was no doubt in my mind he wasn’t used to sharing his personal crap, so I dropped the subject as soon as he retrieved Pippa from her room. Part of me felt like I’d pushed him into a kind of intimacy that wasn’t my place. Why in the world would he want to open up to someone like me when I was the very epitome of the town and people he resented so much?
After I joined him in the kitchen, I began straightening the paperwork we’d left out from our earlier w
ork on the bakery bookkeeping. Whatever the reason for the discrepancy, it was clear Sugar Britches was in the red just as he’d suspected.
I’d noticed from the receipts that he’d made a deposit that week from his own personal accounts in order to make payroll. There was no way of knowing how much of a sacrifice that had been for him, but since he’d told me about being the main tattoo artist at his shop, I had to assume him being gone this long was going to seriously cut into his income back home. I wondered if he needed help—financial or otherwise.
“Nico, is there anything you need to do at the bakery or in town today? I could watch Pippa for you,” I offered.
He walked to the sofa and sat down with the baby in his arms, seeming to think through his response.
“Uh, yeah. Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to paint a cake today. Rox has a client who wants one of Adriana’s painted cakes, so she asked me to try one. I practiced on one the other day, but I’d love to get some more practice in before having to do the real thing.”
“No problem,” I said, walking over and taking the baby. “Why don’t you go now? I have a shift at the emergency room starting at six tonight, so I’ll need to leave here a little before then.”
He smiled up at me with gratitude, and I realized we’d somehow found a new middle ground. Less antagonistic back and forth and more attempts at understanding each other. It wasn’t really friendship, and it wasn’t really intimacy, but it was a start.
Once he was gone, I tried to tackle the bookkeeping again. I found some massive expenses the bakery had incurred shortly before Adriana’s death. When I looked at the notes, I discovered the payments were for the mortgage on the building. She was attempting to purchase the building the bakery was in.
I was stunned. Why the hell hadn’t she told me? And why hadn’t she just continued renting it from the man who owned it? John Gravely was a prominent businessman in town who owned several commercial properties on the square. He was known for being fair. Had he tried to list the property for sale?
After digging through bank statements, I saw that the mortgage payments were made out to WWR, LLC. My heart lurched. The only WWR, LLC I knew was Weston Wilde Ranch. Grandpa’s ranch holdings. Had she been running her bakery in the red because she owed Grandpa money?
