“Damn straight it wasn’t.”
She toyed with the edge of the drinks menu as laughter exploded from the bar. “But I wish things could be the way they used to be with us. He’s a good guy. I mean, he could’ve easily ignored me like his brothers did for the most part, but he didn’t. He was kind to me, always made time when I know I was being annoying.”
“You’ve got to understand that the past is the past. There is no going back to that,” she said. “You’ve got to accept that and let it go.”
Nikki knew that.
She also knew it was easier said than done.
“Seriously, Nikki. I’ve known you for how many years now? You’re a good woman, and it’s time for you to get some good in return.”
Nikki opened her mouth.
Rosie wasn’t done. “You don’t let any guy get close to you. And poor Calvin? He was a good guy, Nikki. He wasn’t a stray.”
She winced at the mention of her ex-boyfriend.
“He was patient and understanding, but you didn’t love him. You could’ve fallen in love with him, but you didn’t let yourself love him.”
Her gaze lifted to her friend and her dumb throat started to thicken. Rosie was dropping truth bombs like it was D-Day.
“You’re not going to be able to move on, have fun, and maybe find someone until you let all that bullshit go.” Rosie sounded surprisingly sober in that moment. “You were eighteen and blinded by your first love. You made dumb choices because of it. You didn’t murder someone. You didn’t set out to trick him. It happened. It’s over. Stop punishing yourself.”
Her lips lifted in a weak smile. “You’re gonna make me cry.”
“Don’t do that. You’ll ruin your mascara, and then you won’t have any hopes of being a ho tonight.”
Nikki broke out into a loud laugh. “I’m not ho-ing tonight.”
A guy walking past their table glanced over with interest. He stopped.
“You couldn’t afford her,” Rosie said, dismissing him. “Move along.”
“Oh, geez.” Nikki swallowed a giggle. “Thank you. I think I . . . I think I needed to hear all of that.”
“You did.” Leaning over, Rosie kissed her cheek. “You’re too young to live like you’re my age, because I don’t even live like that. Now let’s order a shot.”
Thankfully their night stopped at one shot and didn’t turn into the kind of night where you ended up in the French Quarter, stumbling through what was most definitely not puddles of just water.
The night had been good, though. Nikki truly realized it as she said goodbye to Rosie, who was heading to a friend’s place instead of her apartment on Chartres. She had punished herself long enough for being young, dumb, and in love once upon a time. Not anymore. Starting right now, she was letting it go. All of it.
Hopefully her new motto in life wasn’t fueled by liquid courage.
She’d called for an Uber as she’d walked out of the bar, but as she scanned the street, she didn’t see the green Prius that was supposed to be coming for her. Checking her app, she sighed when she saw the car was still over on Canal, stuck in traffic.
That was going to take fifteen minutes or more for the driver to get to Uptown. Sighing, she curled her arm around her waist as she eyed the benches along the building. Most of them were full of people chatting and smoking.
At least it was a nice night, not raining or too ridiculously hot. She moved to stand by the curb and looked down Freret, spying a huge crowd near where the comedy theater used to be. What were they doing? Probably a street performer or an overdose. One never knew in New Orleans. Tucking her hair back behind her ear, she looked away and tipped her head up. Stars were out, battling against the twinkling lights of the city. When she’d been at Tuscaloosa, she’d missed the sights and sounds of New Orleans.
She started to glance down at her phone, but stopped when a weird sensation skated along the nape of her neck. Turning to the side, she almost expected to find someone walking up behind her, but there was no one there. No one really paying attention to her, but she couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes drilling holes through her back. Not until the green Prius finally showed up. Not until she was back home, safe in bed.
It felt like Nikki had only slept for a few hours when there was a knock on her bedroom door, followed by her father calling her name.
Pushing the covers off her head, she sat up, wincing as the harsh morning sun did a number on her poor eyes and head. “Yeah?” she croaked out, and then groaned. She sounded terrible. “What, Dad?”
“You awake?” he called out.
Uh, now she was. Sitting up, she pushed the rat’s nest of hair out of her face. “Yeah. You can come in.”
The door cracked open and her father stuck his head in. “You have a visitor.”
“What?” She squinted at him and then looked at the clock on her nightstand. It was nine in the morning. No one she knew would be at her house at nine in the morning on a Sunday.
Her dad’s face was strangely blank. “It’s a very odd visitor . . .” He looked over his shoulder. “Come downstairs.”
She watched her dad close the door. “What the hell?”
The air around her didn’t answer, so after a moment of sitting there trying to clear the cobwebs of sleep from her mind, she threw the covers off and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. She started toward her bathroom, but decided against it. Whoever was downstairs wouldn’t require brushed hair or a fresh face. And since she was wearing loose flannel bottoms and a cami with a built-in bra, all she grabbed was a lightweight cardigan.
Smothering a yawn, she headed down the narrow hall and staircase. She shuffled into the kitchen, relieved when she smelled coffee.
She was going to need a gallon of that stuff and a handful of aspirins.
Trailing a hand over the worn wallpaper in the cozy dining room, she hung a right and then the kitchen came into view.
Nikki came to a sudden stop.
Was she still drunk from last night? Had she drunk more than she realized? Because that had to be the case.
That was the only option, because there was no way Gabriel de Vincent was sitting in her parents’ kitchen with a smoothie in front of him.
Chapter 11
Gabe could barely keep the smile off his face. It was a struggle, and he ended up pressing his fingers over his mouth, because Nic looked thoroughly confused. He couldn’t blame her for that. And she also looked . . . adorably rumpled. Like she’d just rolled out of a bed and come down here.
Her wide eyes lost the unfocused quality to them. “What’s going on?” Her gaze bounced around the kitchen, landing on where her father stood, pouring himself a cup of coffee. “Is Mom okay?”
“Your mom is in bed,” her father answered, turning from the counter. “She’s feeling a little run down, but she’s okay.”
“Okay.” She glanced at Gabe, worry creeping into her face. “Is everything all right on your end?”
That surprised him. After the way he’d been treating her, he couldn’t believe that she would even care if things weren’t okay. “Yeah, they are.”
Her mouth opened, but she didn’t speak, and Gabe found himself staring at her mouth. He didn’t notice how full her lips were. Plump, actually. Or maybe he did notice and just never acknowledged it before.
Probably the latter.
“He says he was in the neighborhood and thought he’d swing by and say hi,” her father answered, tone deadpanned. “Though I can’t imagine why he’d be in our neighborhood at nine on a Sunday morning.”
It wasn’t the greatest reasoning he’d ever come up with. “I was out driving around. Couldn’t sleep and found myself near here.” That part wasn’t exactly a lie, but him being here wasn’t by accident. “I picked up a smoothie. Strawberry.”
Nic stared at him.
Her father cleared his throat as he shuffled over the tile floors in his slippers. “I’ll be upstairs,” he announced, patting Nic on the shoulder. “If y
ou guys need anything.”
Gabe smiled at her father and waited until he disappeared around the corner before he spoke. “You still like smoothies, right?”
She was still gaping at him. “Are you . . . high?”
“What?” he laughed. “No.”
Nic glanced over her shoulder and a moment passed. “Are you sure about that?”
Fighting a grin, he nodded.
“So, you were out driving around and decided to pick up a smoothie and bring it to me?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t stop the grin now. Not with that completely blown-away look on her face. “Is it that hard to believe?”
“Yes.” Then she nodded for extra emphasis. “Yes, it is.”
His gut clenched at her honest response and his grin faded. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Nic stood extremely still and after a long moment he half expected her to ask him to leave. If she did, it was about to get awkward, because he wasn’t leaving until they talked.
But then she gathered the edges of the thin gray sweater and tugged it around her waist. “We can go out back. It’s probably still cool outside.”
“It is.” Rising from the chair, he picked up the smoothie and walked around the table. “Not much has changed here.”
She looked at him warily. “No, it hasn’t.” She stepped out into a hall lined with photos of her, all through the ages.
“I like it.”
“Really?” she said dryly.
“Yeah, it’s cozy. It’s . . . real.” He checked out the photos as she made her way toward the back door. One caught his attention. It was a senior portrait by the looks of it. The wide, proud smile on her pixieish face wasn’t one he’d seen in a while. “You can tell a family actually lives here.”
Nic looked over her shoulder at him, but didn’t respond. He was speaking the truth, though. He’d only been once before, and that had been a brief trip, but it smelled the same to him. Like apple pie. His family home, on the other hand, smelled like disinfectant and fresh linen. Always. And there were no pictures. No smiling faces. Not out where anyone could see them.
When Gabe was younger and with Emma, he always thought this was what he’d have eventually with her. A house smaller than the de Vincent compound, one that was warmer and full of photos of them on vacations and eventually framed pictures of their children, chronicling every important moment.
He didn’t get that.
He wasn’t ever going to get that.
Nic opened the door and stepped out onto a small patio that fed into a narrow courtyard. Overhead, an ivy-covered awning cast a thick shadow over the old iron chairs and the wooden swing, blocking out the morning sun.
The smoothie was starting to make his fingers wet. “Do you want this?”
She glanced down at it and then snatched it out of his hands like he was going to take it back from her. “Thank you,” she muttered, clutching the plastic container and backing up to the swing. She sat down. “Pretty sure my father doesn’t believe you were out there, just driving around aimlessly.”
He watched her for a moment and then sat in one of the old chairs across from her. “Do you remember the last time I was here?”
Not answering him, she took a sip of the smoothie from the straw.
“You were sixteen and you got drunk at your friend’s house.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” she grumbled after a moment. “I was buzzing.”
He struggled to keep his lips from kicking up into a smile. “You were drunk, Nic. If I remember correctly, it was the first time you ever really drank. You called me because you and your friend got into a fight and you wanted to go home, but you didn’t want to wake up your parents.” He paused. “You called me, and I came.”
Several strands of hair had fallen forward, shielding her face as she continued to drink the smoothie. Damn. Her hair had gotten a lot longer.
“You puked in my car,” he added.
Nic stopped slurping.
“And then you cried, because you were afraid I’d be mad at you.” And he had been mad. Not that she’d vomited in his Porsche, but because she’d been drinking that much in the first place.
She lifted her head. “Is there any reason why you’re talking about this?”
He wasn’t sure himself, so he lifted a shoulder. “I brought you home. Your dad was up. Thought he was going to lock you up for life after that.”
Nic went back to attacking her smoothie.
“There were a lot of times like that. You called. I came. I didn’t even think about how that would look to outsiders. Fully grown man answering the beck and call of a teenage girl who wasn’t related to him. Looking back, that should’ve raised some red flags.”
“You thought of me as a sister,” she muttered around the straw. “You weren’t being a pervert.”
“True.” He watched the slight breeze play with her hair.
“Why are you here? It can’t be for this—this walk down memory lane. You came to talk about something else.”
There was a lot they needed to talk about.
This conversation could’ve waited, but Gabe didn’t wait on things he knew he needed to do. He’d wanted to search her down last night, but it had been late, and by the looks of it, Nikki wouldn’t have been in any condition to have a serious conversation.
Which made him very, very curious about what the hell she’d been doing last night. “You look a little hungover.”
She peeked up through lashes he didn’t remember being quite as thick before. “A little.”
His eyes narrowed and he found himself liking the idea of her drinking now just as much as he did when she was younger. “What were you doing?”
She lowered the smoothie, which seemed like a great feat considering half of it was already gone. “I met up with some friends at Cure.”
“Nice place.” A lot of the younger locals went there. “Get in late?”
“Not really.” Her brows were furrowed together, like she was trying to figure out the purpose behind what he was saying. “Why are you here, Gabe?”
Her attitude didn’t bother him. Just like it hadn’t bothered him when she told him to clean his own rooms. It had done something else entirely. It was doing something else now.
He leaned forward in the chair. “You had a crush on me.”
“Gabe—”
“Just hear me out, okay? I’m not here to make you feel like shit, and I get that you probably think I am. I’ve given you no reason to believe otherwise, but I’m not. I just want to . . . talk.”
The look of suspicion eased only slightly from her face. “Then talk.”
He bit back a grin. “You had a crush on me, and I knew you did. I thought it was harmless.”
Nic visibly stiffened.
“And that night, when you came to me?” His voice dropped low. “When I let you inside, it wasn’t like I forgot that you had those feelings. I shouldn’t have let you in. I’m going to take responsibility for that. I wasn’t so drunk that I forgot who you were.”
She lowered the smoothie to her lap.
“I know we’ve both said things about that night, but I haven’t said what really needed to be said,” he continued, trying not to notice how a pink flush was creeping across her cheeks. “I was drunk, but I wasn’t so drunk that I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Her lips parted in a sharp inhale that was lost in the breeze.
He drew in a deep breath. “I was drunk enough to not care.”
Nic blinked slowly. “Then why . . . why did you . . . ?”
“Not tell you that before? I don’t know. I was a dick about it. No excuse.”
Her brow snapped again and she looked like she was about to say something, but changed her mind.
“We both made mistakes that night. It wasn’t just you. I want you to know that,” he said, meaning it. “I need you to know that. It’s important . . . to me.”
Nic’s throat worked on a swallow as she looked away. Her voice was barel
y above a whisper. “I . . . I hated myself for that night.”
There was a twisting motion in his chest and he was moving before he even knew what he was doing. He crossed the distance between them and sat down on the swing beside her, relieved that the old thing didn’t come crashing down when her wide-eyed gaze collided with his again.
“Stop,” he said as quietly as she spoke. “Stop hating yourself. We both did wrong. It’s over. It’s in the past.”
“But . . . you hate me—”
“No, I don’t.” As fucked-up as it was, part of him wished he did, because then all of this mess would be easier to deal with. “I don’t hate you, Nic. And I hope you don’t hate me. Not that I’d blame you if you did. I’ve been a fucking dick to you and I’m sorry for that.”
“I couldn’t hate you,” she replied quickly, and the pink in her cheeks increased. “I mean, I don’t hate you.”
“Good.” Relief settled into his muscles, easing the tension around his neck. Maybe he’d be able to sleep past four a.m. now.
“But yeah, you’ve been a dick,” she added.
Gabe arched a brow as he looked away. His gaze was snagged by the nail polish on her toes. It was a teal-blue color. “I know. But I’m not going to be a dick anymore. Not when I want us to be friends.”
“Friends?” she squeaked like a little toy. Cute.
“Friends,” he repeated.
There was a good chance all of this was some kind of hallucination and maybe, just maybe, she and Rosie hadn’t stopped at one shot last night and now she was having imaginary conversations with Gabe.
That made more sense than him actually being at her house, with a smoothie, asking to be friends with her.
Gabe glanced over at her, sucking his lower lip between his teeth. “Do you want to be friends? If not, this convo is probably going to get really awkward.”
Her stupid-ass heart took over and she opened her mouth to scream yes, they could be friends, but she stopped herself.
Could they be friends?
Better yet, could she be friends with him, after everything? Did she want to be? After deciding last night that she had this new motto in life? Wait. What was that motto? She couldn’t remember, but she was sure it didn’t include being friends with Gabe.
Moonlight Seduction: A de Vincent Novel (de Vincent series) Page 11
