by Lara Adrian
“I don’t know.” I try not to sound as dejected as I feel, but I can’t escape Tasha’s narrowed stare. “Last night when he dropped me off, he said he had business to handle this morning. I haven’t seen him. I’m not sure we’re speaking at the moment.”
“Oh, Ave.” Her brow creases with a worried frown. “What happened? Do you want to talk about it?”
I do, but at the same moment, I see a very attractive black man in a white dress shirt and tie and light gray slacks come out of Joel’s former office with a tablet in hand. High cheekbones and close-trimmed hair and beard set off pale eyes and a lush mouth. Even though my heart and all the rest of me belongs to Nick, it’s hard not to stare.
Tasha glances back at him, following my arrested gaze. “That’s Andrew Beckham.”
“Nick’s attorney?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.”
She wiggles her brows at me. “Yeah. Oh is right. You haven’t met? Come on, let me introduce you.”
I start to protest, but it’s too late. The young lawyer approaches us, his mouth curved in a polite smile.
“Mr. Beckham, this is my friend, Avery Ross.”
His chin lifts slightly in acknowledgment as he extends his hand to me. “Ms. Ross. Nice to meet you. And please, both of you, call me Andrew. Or Beck. I hear Mr. Beckham and I get a little twitchy, expecting to see my dad in the room with me.”
I smile and shake his hand, feeling awkward and relaxed at the same time. It’s obvious Nick has already mentioned me to him in some capacity. Good or bad, at this moment I don’t know. Thankfully, Beck is too professional to point it out.
The three of us chat for a few minutes about the restaurant and trivial things, then Beck’s phone chimes and he excuses himself to take the call. I don’t have to guess if it’s Nick he’s speaking to. Andrew Beckham may be an outstanding lawyer, but he’s no match for my intuition.
Just knowing Nick is on the other line now puts a knot of misery in my breast.
“I should go,” I murmur.
“So soon?” Tasha looks crestfallen. “You just got here.”
I shrug lamely. “I have some errands to run. And you need to get back to work, boss lady.”
She stares at me for a long moment, then pulls me into a quick hug. “I don’t believe you, but I’m gonna let you slide for now. You call me later. But first, you go tell that man you love him and that whatever is wrong, you want to work it out.”
“Tasha, you don’t understand—”
“I don’t understand what? That you’re falling head over heels and are miserable without him, or that you’re too chicken-shit to admit it?”
I glare at her, but, dammit, she’s right. On all counts.
“Look,” she says. “We’ve been friends for a while now. I know it’s not easy for you to take advice, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Don’t let this one get away. I’m not saying that because he’s crazy rich and hot as sin besides. I’m saying it because last night I saw the way you two look at each other.”
“Tasha—”
“He needs you, Avery. Maybe he won’t say the words to you either, but they’re right there in his eyes. And you need him too.”
I purse my lips as she finishes. “May I speak now?”
She gestures for me to go ahead.
“You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, you know that? Thank you for caring about me. Not just now, but ever since I walked into this place looking for work and you made sure I got interviewed ahead of anyone else.” I pull her into a hug. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, girl.” She draws back, holding my upper arms and giving me a stern maternal look. “Now go tell him how you feel.”
One of the other employees calls for her from behind the bar, and I take the opportunity to edge toward the door.
“Call me afterward,” she says. “I mean it. I’m working until eleven tonight. I want to hear from you before I go home.”
I nod as I step out onto Madison Avenue. As I head toward Grand Central under a cloudless blue sky, it seems as if years have passed since the last time I made this trek, not a handful of weeks.
It’s been almost three and a half months since I first laid eyes on Dominic Baine in that lobby elevator.
It’s strange how different everything seems to me now.
I used to feel as though this city and I were at constant odds with each other. I used to think New York sensed me as an interloper in its domain and wanted me gone—that each obstacle I met with since I moved here had been thrown into my path by some cosmic force conspiring to defeat me at every turn.
But it isn’t the city or anything else blocking my way.
It’s me.
Tasha is right. And isn’t that what Nick has been trying to tell me too?
Isn’t that what he’s been teaching me every time he touches me . . . each time he shows me what I truly crave but am too afraid to admit, let alone ask for?
Last night, he knew how badly I wanted to let him in. He promised I could trust him. He is giving me the chance to reach for what I want most of all—him.
Us.
My breath leaks out of me raggedly. My feet slow to a halt in the middle of the busy sidewalk.
“I can’t do this. I can’t shut him out. I can walk away.”
I hardly feel the bumps and jostles of the other pedestrians pushing past me as I dig in my purse for my cell phone. As I pull it out, I see the light is blinking with a new voice message.
Maybe Nick heard I was in Vendange and tried to call me?
I tap the icon, my heart throbbing in my chest.
A man’s recorded voice comes on, but it’s not Nick.
“Ms. Ross, this is Walter Stadler.”
What would my mother’s public defender want with me? Unless it’s about my mother’s parole board review. God, no. I brace myself to hear there’s been another delay or some other wrench thrown into the already slow-moving cogs of justice.
But it’s not about my mom’s parole.
It’s something much worse.
“I’m afraid there was an incident at the prison today. Your mother’s been injured. She’s in the infirmary, about to go in for surgery. Please call me as soon as possible.”
Chapter 39
I startle awake for what must be the fifth time, the beeping of medical monitors piercing my light doze. At first, I think I’m dreaming. I pray that I am—even as I open my dry eyes and see the green walls of the Muncy State Prison infirmary.
But it’s not a bad dream. After a dangerous fall down a flight of stairs during her morning work shift in the prison laundry, my mother is now only an hour out of surgery for multiple broken bones and a pierced lung. I am seated on a hard plastic chair, my arms folded under my head like a pillow on the lowered side rail of her hospital bed while she rests on an oxygen tube and medically sedated. I try not to notice the handcuff that shackles her left arm—her only limb without any fractures—to the bed. The prisoner recovering from surgery across the room from my mom is also restrained to her bed.
The door to the room is open. As I lift my head and blink away my exhaustion, the public defender quietly steps inside.
“Is there any word from the doctor?” I ask, sitting up to speak to him.
Stadler nods. “I’ve just come from meeting with him now. Surgery and a couple of titanium pins took care of her femur fracture, which was the worst of the breaks. The others should heal up in time. They’ll be starting her on a physical therapy program as soon as her lung is recovered.”
A tear rolls down my face as I glance at her in the bed. I swipe my cheek, hating that she’s here, knowing that she doesn’t deserve this. None of it.
“What does this mean for the parole board review?”
Stadler runs a hand over his balding head. “The doctor wants her under observation until her lung is healed, which he said could be up to a week.”
“The parole meeting is in a few days,” I remind him. “She’s
counting on it. She’ll be devastated if that appointment doesn’t happen.”
“I know she’s going to be disappointed. We’d all like to see her plead her case for the board, Avery. And she will. Let’s focus on getting your mother strong and back on her feet first. We can reapply with the parole review board once Brenda is ready.”
I want to scream at him that she’s ready now. My mother would wheel herself to the meeting in this hospital bed if she were given the chance. Hell, I would roll her in there, too—assuming she’d permit me anywhere near the judicial system to try to help win her freedom.
She likely won’t be happy to know I’m here now either.
She’s been protective of me all my life, but even more so after she realized what her second husband had done to me. She’s sacrificed everything to keep me safe, to keep me shielded from any pain. It breaks my heart that there is so little I can do for her now.
Stadler checks his watch and awkwardly clears his throat. “Unfortunately, visiting time is ending in about ten minutes, Avery. I’ve got to get going, but if you need a ride somewhere—”
“No, thanks. I drove down from the city. My rental car is in the visitor lot.”
“Well, you have my number if there’s anything you’d like to discuss. I’ve got another client meeting across town, so I really should be going.”
I stand up and shake his offered hand. “Thank you for letting me know about this.”
“I’ll keep you informed,” he tells me as he heads out the door. “Your mom’s a tough lady. And she loves you more than anything.”
I nod, knowing it’s true. And I love her more than anything too. There was a time when I’d have said I love her more than anyone else in my life . . . but that was before I met Nick.
Just thinking about him puts a cold ache of longing in my breast. And regret.
I haven’t spoken to him since we parted last night. After Stadler’s call this morning, my primary concern had been my mom. I left Vendange and raced to the nearest rental car agency, then drove more than three hours to Pennsylvania.
I haven’t spoken to anyone since I arrived at Muncy. The prison policy prohibits visitors from bringing in all manner of things when visiting an inmate, so for the past several hours, my purse and cell phone have been secured at the registration desk.
I know I need to call Nick and tell him where I am. I need to tell him what happened.
I need to ask him to forgive me for all of the things I’ve kept from him, fearing he wouldn’t want me once he knew my truths.
Now I’m terrified that I’ve lost him because of everything I haven’t said.
Especially that I love him.
I can only pray he’ll still be willing to listen.
One of the prison guards stops by the room to inform me that it’s time for me to leave. Reluctantly, I kiss my mother’s forehead and head out, collecting my belongings at the desk. My phone light is blinking with several missed calls. Nick’s number, I see as I quickly scroll through the log. He didn’t leave any messages. And his last attempt to call me was several hours ago.
He’s given up on me. Of course, he has. I’ve all but ensured he would, haven’t I?
I rub my sternum as the ache that took up residence there earlier now feels like an icy abyss.
It’s raining when I exit the infirmary building. I hardly even notice the cold, wet drops as I walk out to the visitor lot. My rental is near the back and I walk to it feeling adrift, uncertain where I’m going or where I belong anymore.
As I reach the white compact car, my gaze snags on the vehicle parked in the space beside it. The sleek black BMW’s engine is running, thin gray exhaust steaming in the drizzle.
My feet stop moving. At the same time, Nick emerges from the driver’s side.
At first, I can’t find my voice. Torn between elation and dread, I can only stare at this beautiful man who means everything to me, shocked to see him. Horrified that he’s come here, to the very place I never wanted him to see.
“I had to know if you were okay,” he says. “When you wouldn’t answer my calls, I had your GPS tracked. And it led me here.” I can’t read his expression. Standing with me in the rain, he looks as uncertain and wary as I know I must to him.
“Nick.” The impulse to run to him—to bury myself in his arms—is nearly overwhelming. But I don’t know if he’ll reject me. I wouldn’t blame him if he did. I stand frozen in place, unsure what to say to him now that he’s standing in front of me. “I wanted to call you. I would have. I planned to . . .”
He doesn’t seem interested in my excuses now. He gestures at the women’s prison behind me. “So, I’m guessing this is where your mother’s been since you were sixteen.”
Not a question he needs me to confirm, but I nod. “Nick, I don’t want to do this here—”
“We didn’t have to, Avery. You could’ve told me long before it came to this.”
He’s right, and I won’t even try to argue. I start to shiver, though it’s not the rain that’s making me so miserable.
“Get in out of the cold,” Nick says, his tone level, devoid of emotion. “We’ll talk in the car.”
Woodenly, I open the passenger side and climb in. He slides into the driver’s seat, the soft thump of his door making me flinch. For a long while, there is only silence in the car.
Finally, the words just start tumbling out of me. And once they start, I can’t stop them.
“My daddy, Daniel Ross, died when I was very young. He was a good man, and we were happy—me, my mom and him. When I was seven years old, he had a massive heart attack. He was gone, just like that. And everything changed. My mom eventually met someone else—a man named Martin Coyle. He worked at a school the next town over. He seemed nice. He was nice, but then he married my mom and things started to change. He would say mean things to her sometimes—then, once, he hit her. He promised he never would again, but that promise didn’t last. None of his promises or apologies were worth a damn. And then, after I started getting a little older, he began looking at me in ways that made me uncomfortable. He started trying touching me when my mom wasn’t there. I learned to avoid him, to leave the house if I knew he was home alone. Finally, when I was sixteen, he did more than touch me. And, that time, I wasn’t able to stop him.”
Memories of that day crash down on me as I speak. All my life, I’ve shut them out, banished them to a dark corner of my mind if only so I could survive. So as not to let them own me. But, now, I let them flood in. The dam is breaking and I need Nick to understand.
“I couldn’t get away that day. He . . . he raped me.”
Nick stares at me. “And then your mother killed him.”
“Yes. She shot him.” I swallow the regret—and the guilt—that’s lodged in my throat. “She killed him to protect me.”
Although it’s my personal horror, Nick looks stricken by what he’s heard. “I didn’t know, Avery. I’m sorry.” He slowly shakes his head, and when he speaks, his voice is softer than I’ve ever heard it. “I told you that you could trust me. I told you that the only way this would work—the only way we could work—was without barriers or inhibitions. But if I’d known about this—”
“That’s right,” I say softly. “If you’d known about this, you would’ve looked at me differently. You would’ve been different with me. Or worse, you would’ve stayed away.”
He doesn’t deny it, and strangely, that gives me strength.
“There’s more I haven’t told you, Nick. I’ve been lying to you about a lot of things these past three and a half months.”
I tell him how Claire Prentice isn’t a friend of mine at all, that she hired me to housesit. I tell him how my ‘public relations’ job was actually bartending with Tasha at Vendange, and how I’d been two weeks away from being homeless because my apartment had been sold out from under me and I couldn’t afford to move somewhere else.
He listens, stoic, silent. Giving me no indication whether he forgives me or de
spises me.
“Nick, please say something.”
He blinks, then glances away from me, staring at the rain-sluiced windshield. “Has anything you’ve told me the past hundred days been true?”
“Yes.” The word cracks in my throat, thick with emotion. I’m desperate to make him understand, to make him believe me now. “Everything I’ve said about us, about the way you make me feel . . . about what I feel for you . . . Nick, it’s all been true. Every word. Except I didn’t tell you everything.”
His gaze locks on me, hard with suspicion. It twists my heart to see the edge of rawness in his eyes when he’s looking at me now.
I lick my lips. “I should have told you something else before now. Nick, I’m falling in love with you.”
I’ve caught him off guard completely. I see the telling flicker of surprise in his expression. But then it’s gone, replaced with something steely, something stronger than denial.
I smile nervously. “Is this the part where you cut me loose because I’ve been fool enough to get too close to you?”
“Is that what you think I’ll do?”
“I don’t know. Other women—”
“Never compare yourself to other women.” His reply is clipped, firm. “I’ve never compared you to anyone. This is about us. There’s no room for anyone else.”
I nod, swallowing thickly. “Then where do we go from here? Tell me what I can do to make this right between us again.”
I watch him contemplate, a tendon pulsing in the side of his cheek. When he looks at me, his blue gaze is steady, unyielding. “One hundred nights.”
“What?”
“One hundred nights in my bed.” He leans toward me, those arresting eyes refusing to let me go. “You’ve had a hundred days on your terms, Ms. Ross, now I want the same on mine.”
