“What if I can’t?”
“I don’t know the answer to that because it’s not going to happen. You can. And you will.”
“I wish I had your faith in me.”
“Surround yourself with people who do. Kick those plastic people you called ‘friends’ to the curb and find yourself some real friends. Good ones.”
I think of Jensen. He’s definitely not the kind of person I would normally have spent my time with. His type of law is frowned on in my circles. Maybe that’s a good thing. “You’re right. And I’m taking the first step today. I’m having lunch at Petite Auberge with someone who isn’t my normal kind of friend.”
“Good for you!”
I’m glad she doesn’t ask any more questions. Although I’m sure she’d wish me luck, for some reason I don’t want her to know I’ll be meeting Jensen.
We chat a little more, but I have to get off the phone to freshen up for lunch. Even though my heart’s not really in it, I try to strike a good balance between friendly lunch and professionalism. I don’t want to give Jensen the wrong impression about where I see “us.” I figure a pencil-slim skirt that nearly touches the floor, a thin peasant shirt with cap sleeves, and some strappy sandals will keep things in perspective.
I arrive at the restaurant a few minutes early. Jensen is already at the table, wearing his work clothes, of course. Surreptitiously, he looks me over and his pale eyes sparkle with appreciation. That feels nice. Nice in a complimentary way, not nice in an exciting way. Not like when Nash would look at me.
Damn you! Stay out of my head.
Even as I think it, I smile pleasantly at Jensen as he pulls out my chair.
“You look amazing, as always.”
“Thank you.”
Jensen immediately launches into an effort to entertain me. Surprisingly, he does a good job. He’s witty and smart, and he has a great sense of humor. I find myself laughing quite often, enjoying a lighthearted, casual lunch.
Until I look up and see Nash standing just inside the door of the restaurant, watching me.
My heart skips a beat and then picks up to a much faster pace. I feel warm and flustered. And I’m certain I’ve never seen a more handsome, more welcome sight than him.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t smile or nod or wave me to the door. He doesn’t approach the table. He just stares at me with his black, fathomless eyes.
“Nash’s brother, right? The one you’re helping?” Jensen says, drawing my eye and my mind back to him.
“Uh, yeah. Sorry. Would you excuse me for a minute, please?”
“Of course,” he says, standing when I do. Like a gentleman. Like someone I should be with. Like someone I don’t want.
On shaky legs, I make my way across the room to Nash. The closer I get, the more flushed and flustered I feel. There’s something about him today, something that makes me feel hotter than usual. Stimulated. Ravenous.
Something is niggling at the back of my mind. Like trying to dig up bones from a deep, deep grave, I wrestle it to the surface until I’m able to put my finger on what’s bothering me.
“Your hair . . .” I say dazedly when I stop in front of him.
Nash reaches up to run his fingers through it. It’s loose, the long bangs framing either side of his face. I’ve only seen it pulled back or tucked behind his ears. Never hanging loose like this.
Yet it’s so familiar.
“It was wet when I left,” he says flatly, by way of explanation.
“What are you doing here?”
“I came looking for you. You weren’t at the condo and you weren’t answering your phone, so I called Olivia to see if she’d heard from you. She said you were here. Having lunch. She just didn’t say you weren’t alone.”
The muscle in his jaw twitches as he looks over my shoulder at Jensen. But I’m not paying much attention to that. I’m busy digging up bones. Old bones that have never really seen the light of day.
Until now.
Until today.
But today they’re out of the ground, battering me like a thousand tiny knives, penetrating me all the way to my heart, to my soul.
I can’t stop the gasp. Or the pounding of my pulse. Or the crumpling of my lungs.
“It was you. In New Orleans, it was you,” I whisper, feeling breathless and crushed.
Nash’s brow wrinkles, but he doesn’t ask any questions. Or make any denials. He’s quiet as he waits. Waits for me to finally put two and two together.
All at once, every detail comes rushing back. I’d written that night off as part of my excessive drinking, especially when Nash (who was really Cash) had said he wasn’t in New Orleans that weekend. I’d thought it was surely an erotic, drunken dream or hallucination.
Only it wasn’t.
Standing here staring at Nash, feeling the way I feel about him, feeling the undeniable connection to him that I felt even back then, I realize that it was this Nash at Mardi Gras that night so long ago. It was this Nash who came onto the balcony and turned my body and my world upside down. It was this Nash who made every day and every kiss with his brother seem like . . . less.
After that night, I always felt like there was something missing when I was with the Nash I knew. It seemed that I was always searching for more with him. Yet I never found it. We never quite clicked.
Not like this.
And now I know why.
It was never him that I was supposed to click with. It wasn’t him I was searching for. It was never him that stirred me to the point of complete abandon.
It was his brother.
And from the moment I saw the real Nash, from the moment he took my blindfold off in the car when he rescued me, I was drawn to him. I didn’t really know why, other than that he saved me, but I was. Inexplicably, undeniably drawn to him. And now I know why. Now, with his hair hanging loose to frame his pained face, I see what my memory has kept hidden from me.
I remember.
I fell in love that night. Almost two years ago. In New Orleans. On a balcony. Overlooking a crowd. With a complete stranger. I fell in love with a ghost.
As the details fall into place in my mind, clicking together like so many puzzle pieces, the inevitable question follows.
Why?
“But why? Why would you do that?” Nash has the decency to look ashamed. Deeply ashamed. But I don’t care. I want to twist the knife. I want to hurt him. Like he wanted to hurt me. Like he did hurt me. Like he is hurting me. “Did you hate me that much?”
Much to my dismay, I feel tears well in my eyes. I’d thought my heart was breaking before, but nothing compares to the pain I feel now. He used me just like my father used me. I was nothing more to him than a pawn, just like I was never anything more to my father than just a pawn. Maybe I just moved on from one bastard to another.
“It had nothing to do with you,” Nash says simply, quietly.
“But it did. You . . . you touched me. And kissed me. And you . . .” I trail off, embarrassment stinging my cheeks as I think back to what I let him do to me. What I enjoyed him doing to me. “Oh God. You . . . you . . .”
I look around for somewhere to run, for a place to hide. I’ve never been more hurt and humiliated.
Perceptive as he is, Nash takes my arm before I can bolt and leads me back through the front doors to the sidewalk outside. He pushes me toward the end of the building, but I jerk free of him. “Don’t touch me.”
He looks wounded and I feel the tiniest bit of gratification that he can be reached, that he’s not completely impervious to pain. But the small amount of guilt I might be able to inflict upon him is a raindrop in the ocean compared to what he’s done to me.
My stomach twists and I bend slightly at the waist, fighting the urge to double over completely, to somehow protect my vital organs from the unbearable pain of it all. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. I let you do those things to me.”
I feel nauseated.
“Let me explain.”
“What is there to say? I get it. You hated your brother so much. You wanted to hurt him and you thought abusing his girlfriend would be a nice way to do that. You don’t care about anyone but yourself and your stupid revenge. What else is there to know? To understand?”
“For the most part, you’re right. All I could think of when I saw you on the balcony that night was that you were my brother’s girlfriend, that you were the beautiful woman who should’ve been mine. Only you weren’t. You were his.
“I went up there with the intent of getting back at him, with humiliating him. Humiliating both of you. I won’t deny that. But from the moment you kissed me, I wasn’t thinking about my brother. Or revenge. Or anything. Except you. I’m a bastard for wanting to use you, yes. For going through with it. But I’m the one who paid the price for it.”
“Oh, and just how, pray tell, do you think you’ve paid the price for it?”
“For all the fury and bitterness I feel, there’s one thing that’s always been at the back of my mind. One thing I’ve never been able to forget, no matter how much I tried. That night. With you. I’ve never been able to forget you.”
The pain is too fresh, the wound too deep to listen to one more word. The sincerity in his eyes isn’t enough to penetrate the cloud of shrapnel surrounding my heart.
I shake my head and close my eyes against him—against his face, against his words, against the love that just won’t die, not even under the sword of such betrayal. “I’m done. This is too much for me. You warned me and I didn’t listen. That’s my own fault. The only thing I can do now is keep from making the same mistake again.”
“Marissa, please.”
That one word is another excruciating slice to my heart. It nearly takes my breath, this star-crossed love I feel. In many ways it feels so right, but, in reality, it is so terribly, terribly wrong.
Without turning to look at him, I speak the hardest words I think I’ve ever spoken. “Leave me alone, Nash. Just go away and leave me alone.”
Squaring my shoulders and raising my chin, I swallow the devastation and make my way back into the restaurant, pretending to be the partly whole person I was five minutes ago before I was torn apart by Nash.
But it’s all a façade.
I know, deep down, I’ll never be the same again.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Nash
For the first time in seven years, I have to dig deep to find the anger I’ve lived with every day for so long. It’s buried beneath whatever this is I’m feeling for Marissa and that horrible guilt and pain I feel for what happened in New Orleans.
I know I hurt her. Badly. I feel it in my chest, in my gut, in my bones. It’s a deep, aching, nagging pain. Like a boxer took to me with nothing on his fists but fury. With nothing more than a few words and the devastation emanating from her, she beat the shit out of me. And, somehow, in the process, she stole the only thing that’s mattered to me for all this time, the only thing that’s kept me alive—rage. She took it the night she stood in front of a mirror and watched me ram my body into hers from behind. She stole it from me and I just didn’t know it.
Until now.
I can find enough of the anger and determination to see this through, but I know the driving force of my life is gone. And what the hell I’ll replace it with, I have no idea. I guess I’ll have plenty of miserable time to figure that out.
But first there are some things I have to take care of. First, there are loose ends to tie up.
Speeding toward the interstate, away from Atlanta, I dial Cash’s number. He picks up after one ring.
“Where are you?”
“We’re stopped getting gas. On our way back to the club. Why?”
“I’ll meet you there. I’ve got a few things to tell you. I’m bringing an end to all this, once and for all.”
He doesn’t ask questions, although I’m sure he wants to. But on the phone, a cell phone no less, it’s just not smart to talk in too much detail.
“Okay. We’ll be there in probably half an hour.”
“I’ll be a while longer. There’s somewhere else I have to go first.”
“I’ll wait,” he replies.
For the first time since seeing him again, I have the urge to hug my brother. To look him in the eye so he can see that I really have missed him and I really don’t hate him.
Maybe there’ll be time for that before I go.
We hang up and I take the familiar path to the prison. To see my father one last time. And then I’ll be gone.
* * *
The setup is a little different this time. It’s like the kind of prison visitation you see in the movies—two long rows of cubicles with a glass panel between them and dirty, black phones on the wall. If my first trip to the pen hadn’t made the consequences of a life of crime seem very real to me, this one certainly does.
They bring Dad out shackled and cuffed, like the violent criminal they think he is. He looks older than he did a few days ago. I know that’s not possible, but that’s how it seems. I wonder if asking us to give up on getting some justice and freeing him from prison is taking its toll.
Obviously he doesn’t know me very well, I think. Or else he’d have known that I’d never give up. Not until my dying breath. He’d know that I’ll see the bastards responsible for wrecking our lives pay. If it’s the last thing I do.
Even as I think about my lifelong mission, the fire is a little more muted than it has been in the past. I guess something other than hatred and revenge has finally taken up some of the space in the vacuum Mom’s death left inside me.
Dad sits down in front of me and picks up the phone. I do the same.