Nikan Rebuilt

by Scarlett Cole

  Later on that evening, Nik drove over to the group home to collect Jenny. His body ached from the few hours he’d put in demolishing unnecessary walls on the second floor and from five hours of rehearsal for the band’s Canadian tour. The rehearsal had been somewhat productive as they’d attempted to implement some changes to the set to suit the Canadian audience and venues better than the European version of it would. Unfortunately, nobody had been overly focused. Dred had been late from a prenatal appointment with Pixie; Jordan was attached to his phone, struggling with the fact that Lexi was in New York on a tour of her own with the ballet company; and Elliott was in a rush to leave because Daniel had a guitar exam that evening and he wanted to make sure he was there to give the kid support. All of which Nik had been envious of, while Lennon had found it to be a constant source of ways to have a dig at the guys.

  A bauble wreath, newly added, decorated the front door, and he could hear screaming and laughter from inside the home as he walked up the steps to knock.

  The door burst open, and Jenny appeared, her jeans soaked to the knees, her arms covered in soapy bubbles. Wet splashes soaked through her T-shirt, and by the look on her face, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tell her that they made it transparent. The pretty white lace looked good on her.

  “Oh my God, Nik,” she said, as she reached for his arm and dragged him into the house. Leon and Albi stood in hysterics at the top of the stairs to the basement. Their pants were rolled up to their knees. “Quick. The washing machine is pumping water all over the floor, and I don’t know where the water shut-off is . . . and there are electrical sockets. So, don’t die. And the wood floor is going to—”

  “I got this,” he said, planting a quick kiss on her forehead. Jenny pushed him away, her eyes bright with laughter, and looked over at the boys, who had clearly seen what he’d done. He kicked his custom-collaboration Nike sneakers off because there was no way in hell he was ruining those bad boys, tugged off his socks, and turned up the hems of his jeans. The steps to the basement were dry as he hurried down them. Soapy water covered the floor, making it slippery, but worse, detergent bubbles were spewing into the air. Fortunately, he’d lived in the home long enough to know where the tap was. Carefully, he made his way to a small panel alongside the basement bathroom. He pulled it open and turned the tap off before switching the washing machine off at the power socket.

  “Did you find it?” Jenny asked, stepping down into the water.

  She slipped as she got close to him, and he reached for her hand to steady her as she stepped gingerly toward him in her bare feet.

  “I did,” he said.

  Her skin was soft beneath his fingers. The color in her cheeks was high, and she looked at him like he was a goddamn hero. Like she used to.

  “Oh my God. It’s one of the only things Ellen didn’t write down, and she’s at the hospital today so I couldn’t get hold of her. And the kids had no clue where it was.” She looked around the basement and giggled. One of the things he’d always loved about her was her ability to roll with the punches. He knew how much time it had taken her in therapy to get to a place where she could do that, and knew she’d woken enough in the night with nightmares from which he’d spent hours bringing her down. She’d done the same for him when, in sleep, he’d relived the way his mother’s breathing had begun to gurgle in the moments before she died.

  Jenny’s eyes looked more green than brown today, and she studied Nik with them, trying to bite her lip before bursting out laughing. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry, Nik.” She stepped onto her toes and grabbed a cluster of bubbles from his head. Her breast brushed against his chest, and it was all he could do to stop himself from grabbing hold of her and keeping her there, pressed to him. As quickly as she’d stepped up to him, she stepped away and looked down at the hem of his jeans. “I hope our plans didn’t include anything fancy.”

  Nik couldn’t help but grin too. “Nothing that can’t be changed,” he said.

  Jenny looked around the room. “I don’t know that tonight is going to work. These guys need dinner, we need a plumber, and I need to handle whatever clothing is in the machine. I guess we should get this all cleaned up,” she said, but he kept hold of her arms. “Including me,” she said, looking down at her own damp clothes.

  “I don’t know. I kinda like you all wet and soapy.” Knowing she was watching, he ran his eyes over her body, taking in the see-through patches on her T-shirt. “Wet is definitely a good look on you,” he said and ran the tip of his finger along the V-neck.

  She slapped her hand over his, stopping the path, but didn’t remove it. “Nik,” she gasped, the breathiness reminded him of the way she’d call out his name when she was close to coming. He noticed a tattoo on her arm. THIS TOO SHALL PASS. She’d gotten it after. After him. After bravely leaving and finding her own way. Without him. Without anyone. The thought that she needed reminding of that burned through him.

  She looked toward the stairs where he could hear the boys ripping on each other and laughing while her heart raced beneath his hand. And, goddamn, if her eyes weren’t heavy-lidded when she turned to face him. When she pulled her bottom lip between her teeth as she looked at his mouth, he knew he was a goner.

  “If you don’t want me to kiss you right now,” he said, “you’d better push me away with that hand of yours.”

  He waited for her answer. Eight years of searching, of wondering and worrying, had boiled down to this minute, and as much as he wanted to taste her lips again, feel her sigh against his mouth, it was . . . special. It was fucking everything, and he wanted to remember every single precious moment. But first he needed her consent.

  “Nik,” she whispered.

  “Is that a yes, Jenny? Because I don’t want to fuck this up.” He moved his hand to cup her cheek, his heart flipping over as she leaned into it.

  “I don’t know . . .” she whispered, and he could see the two parts of her warring.

  He didn’t move, didn’t say a word, just held her gaze. He’d stand there on a wet floor in a dark basement for as long as she needed him to.

  Her eyes glistened with unshed tears, and just when he thought his heart was going to crack wide open in front of her, she whispered, “Yes.”

  “I missed you,” he said. “I missed every fucking thing about you.” Nik took a deep breath, nerves filling every part of him, and his hand shook before he lowered his lips to hers.

  In that moment, he was sixteen, kissing her after sharing a Tim Hortons sour cream glazed doughnut. . . . Seventeen, wishing she was old enough to show just how much her body pressed to his meant to him. . . . Eighteen, on the rug in the old apartment, about to make love with her for the first time. . . . Nineteen, kissing her goodbye to go on the band’s first road trip. . . . God, he could keep going.

  Her eyes fluttered closed, her hands tightening their grip on his waist. Nik ran his hand up her spine until he could hold the back of her neck tenderly. She was familiar, yet new. And his chest was about to burst open from the potential of everything they could become.

  Her hands threaded into his hair and tugged gently, just how he loved it. Her mouth opened to his, and his tongue found hers, savoring her, tasting.

  Standing on the wet floor, he found the one thing he’d been searching for.

  Home.

  * * *

  Even though what she was doing wasn’t rooted in self-preservation, Jenny couldn’t pull away.

  It was foolish not to resist the pull between the two of them more firmly, but even if she could have figured out how to, she wouldn’t have wanted to.

  Suddenly everything in her world was righted.

  She gasped as his hand gripped her hip, pulling her tight against him. His erection pressed intimately against her, and it took every bit of control not to rub against it.

  Nik deepened the kiss, his tongue dipped inside her mouth, and her chest squeezed with the familiarity of it, recognizing the longing she’d had for him all those years.
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  Nik’s hand slipped under her T-shirt, skimming the inch of skin by the hem, and she desperately wanted him to undo her bra and take her nipples into his mouth and—

  “I thought you’d need the mop and bucket.” Leon.

  Quickly, Jenny pushed Nik away and straightened her top just before Leon reached the bottom step and turned the corner. “Great idea,” she said breathlessly.

  Nik leaned back against the dryer and rubbed the index and middle finger of his right hand over his lips, a sexy-as-all-hell smirk on his face. The same look he used to give her when they’d gotten busted by Ellen for kissing in the old garage.

  “Why don’t you start at this end and work it back toward the machine? I’ll go see if I can find some old towels.” Jenny hurried up the stairs and to the cupboard where all the cloths were kept. She pressed her forehead against it and took a couple of breaths. It hadn’t occurred to her that being intimate with him again would be even more . . . everything . . . than it had been before. She needed to get herself under control before she headed back downstairs. How could the two pieces of herself be so disconnected? A part of her could still remember the way she’d dropped to her knees struggling for breath when she’d found out what he’d done, and another part desperately wanted Nik to press her up against the wall and take her until she fell apart in his arms. It made no sense.

  Jenny yanked open the cupboard door just as Simon arrived. “What the heck happened to you?”

  The kiss had made her forget she was actually wearing wet jeans. At least she hoped he was referring to the jeans, and not the flush she could feel heating her cheeks that she was certain had turned them a deep pink. “I think the washing machine just gave up the ghost. Leon is down there mopping up. Thankfully Nik arrived because I had no idea where the water cut-off was.”

  “I’ll deal with that first then take care of dinner,” he said, shucking his coat and hanging it in the staff closet.

  “No, no. I’ll stay and help. You cook, I’ll deal with the machine,” Jenny replied, grabbing the phone off the wall. Fortunately, Ellen had a list of emergency contacts tacked to a notice board on the wall. She called the number for emergency repairs, made sure someone was coming out, and headed back downstairs, taking a moment before she rounded the corner to see Nik again to collect herself. To reestablish the walls she’d built around her heart.

  Leon had made quick work of mopping up the worst of the water, but the towels would help dry out the rest. “Thanks so much for helping out, Leon. I really appreciate your help today.”

  The boy shrugged like it was no big deal and jogged back up the stairs. She listened to the footsteps until he reached the main floor, wondering if they were approaching some kind of breakthrough with him. From sullen to helping with homework and chores without being asked. God, she could only hope so.

  “You want to give me a couple of those?” Nik said, offering his hand toward the towels she still carried.

  There was so much to be read into the smile on his face. The smile told her that he was happy, but it was the optimism in his dark eyes that threatened to undo her. She didn’t know, though, how to begin to explain that loving him and trusting him were two completely different things. Maybe things would be clearer if she could sort it out without him being there. “I can take care of it, and someone should be here within the hour to look at the washing machine. I’m sorry it ruined our plans, but maybe we can take a rain check.”

  “That’s okay,” Nik replied. “Like I said, the plans were flexible, and I don’t mind helping out and waiting until things are taken care of. And if that means a new washing machine, I’m more than happy to change plans and take you out to buy a new one.”

  He took a step closer to her to reach for a towel, but she stepped to the side. “There’s no point both of us killing time here. You should go home and get some more work done on your house or something.”

  Nik took the towels out of her hands and placed them on the dryer. “Hey, come here,” he said as he reached for her hands. “Talk to me.”

  She wasn’t ready to, not least because she didn’t understand the swirl of feelings sweeping through her. To put into words for Nik exactly how that felt was impossible. “I’m fine, I’m good. I just have a lot to do here now.”

  Nik placed his finger under her chin and raised her eyes so she was forced to look at him. “I think we can safely say that lies have no place between us. So, I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, and then you can tell me what you’re thinking. Okay?”

  Jenny sighed and nodded. “Okay.”

  “I didn’t come here tonight expecting to kiss you like this. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about it, but I know I have a lot of work to do to prove myself to you. But seeing you laugh, and seeing you look at me, just for a moment, without the pain I caused you in your eyes . . . Well, I don’t even know how to begin to explain what that felt like to me—except that I didn’t want to be away from you for another moment, and that it felt like a new beginning of sorts. If there’s any doubt in your mind about what that kiss did to me, I’d encourage you to touch me and check, but I think that might be a step too far, given where we are. Now it’s your turn.”

  His words made her stomach flip, and despite her best efforts she was filled with a warm and fuzzy feeling. She looked over to the staircase again to check that nobody was within earshot. “We’re coming at this new friendship . . . relationship . . . from two completely different places. I’m mad at myself for letting you get this close to me again. It’s reckless to fall for you all over again and I know it. But when you stand so close to me, I can . . .” Crap. How could she explain that the way the smell of him, and the heat of him, and the proximity of him, and the touch of him took her straight back to that time and place where she wholeheartedly loved him?

  “You can what?” Nik asked, moving his hands to her hips.

  “I can remember us. Before.”

  Nik took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

  “What happens now, Nik?” she asked quietly.

  “We get the washing machine fixed, and I drive you home so we can both sleep on what happened.”

  Two hours later, with the machine emptied and new parts on order, Jenny officially said goodbye to Simon and the boys who were still out of bed while Nik waited by the front door, one foot resting against the wall.

  “Are you sure about dropping me home?” she asked. “I’m dry now, and I can—”

  “Just get your things, Jenny,” he said gruffly, reaching out to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “Okay.” She slipped away from him and walked to the office in an attempt to appear calmer than she was. Quickly, she shoved everything she needed into her purse and returned to the hall.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Ready.”

  She let him take her hand as he led her to the car. As much as she knew it was make believe, what had happened in the basement had felt like a whisper of hope. “I meant to say this the other night, but your car has certainly changed over the years,” she said.

  Nik laughed. “I think everything has, babe. I can’t wait to show you just how much.”

  They drove the short distance to her place in silence, and Nik parked alongside the curb. Jenny reached for the door, but Nik stopped her. “Let me get that.” He jumped out of the car and hurried to her side. “I hadn’t realized how much I missed the honor of walking you home.”

  She stepped out of the vehicle and felt a rush of nervous butterflies in her stomach. He’d always kissed as though he was never going to see her again, and she wondered if he remembered, if he was thinking about the same thing. They walked together to the door on the side of the building. The darkness and high hedges that surrounded the entry were the only things she hated about her new home.

  When they got to the door, she fumbled in her purse for her key.

  “Remember how we used to say goodbye?” he asked, way too
close to the sweet spot just behind her ear. The spot he knew drove her crazy. “Do you have any clue how hard it was to walk back to the home with the hard-on you’d give me, how hard it was to take care of myself when I got into bed without you?”

  He pressed his lips to her cool skin, and she shivered at the contact. She tried to speak, but her throat was dry. Nik’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her back against him. Even through her jacket, she could feel the warmth of his chest against her back.

  Her purse slid off her shoulder, and she allowed it to drop to the floor before placing her hand on top of Nik’s as his lips skimmed her jaw.

  “Nik,” she gasped.

  “Fuck, you feel so good pressed up against me, Jenny. Every part of you feels so familiar and yet so freaking new. I don’t want to push you. I just want you to know just how badly I want you.”

  She tilted her head to one side to give him better access as he ground his erection firmly against her lower back. Memories of how good it had felt to be taken by him, to allow him to slide in and out of her until he had them both crying out in ecstasy, filled her.

  “I get that you don’t trust me, but let me take care of you, of us, anyway I can until I prove to you I’m worth trusting. Even if it takes another eight years.” His hands slipped lower until he cupped her gently and Jenny was unable to hold back the moan.

  Unable to stop herself, she turned slightly in his arms to find his mouth, and when she did she kissed him exactly how she wanted to with no inhibitions.

  “Fuck,” Nik murmured against her lips. “If this isn’t going all the way, we gotta stop,” he said, loosening his hold on her but not stepping away. “Because if we don’t, I’m going to make love to you right here, and that’s definitely not the way I imagined our first time back together going.”

  Jenny’s heart slammed against her chest, and she was barely able to breathe. “This is all so . . . confusing. I don’t know how I can want you like this and still . . .”