“The good news is, you’re kind of stuck with me for a little while, so it doesn’t really matter what you tell me. I won’t run the other way,” I said, smiling, trying to lighten the mood, but when she looked at me she wasn’t smiling at all. The look on her face was a mixture of forlorn and uncertainty. “Just tell me,” I said, my voice almost a whisper.
“I felt something when I looked at you. Something weird. Something . . . not normal. I don’t know how to explain it other than maybe my soul recognized something in you. And I know you didn’t feel the same. I knew what we were,” she said, giving me a pointed look. “Or what we weren’t, since you said yourself we were nothing. But I felt it every time we were together.”
Her words were claws that seeped into me and gripped the protective shell surrounding my heart. I couldn’t explain it any other way. That’s what it felt like when she said them. I swallowed past those unwanted feelings.
“Why didn’t you say anything? Why didn’t you tell me?”
She let out a single laugh. “What difference would it have made? If anything you would’ve ended things sooner.” She paused, getting serious again. “I’m not saying I was in love with you, Victor. I’m just saying that a part of me felt like something bigger than what we actually had was there. At least the possibility was there.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
“You got engaged and married a few weeks later,” I said, frowning.
Anger threatened to replace the feeling of confusion and wonderment I felt. I broke it off, but she got married. Who did that? A crazy person, obviously, but Nicole didn’t seem like she was legitimately crazy, aside from her spontaneity.
“That should tell you what kind of state I was in. I guess I was a needy twenty-two-year-old,” she said, shrugging. “I’m not saying I regret it, because I don’t.”
“Even now? With the divorce?”
She looked away, her words were low when she spoke again. “Even now. I loved him. In a sense, I still do. I don’t want to be with him. I can’t be with him, but I’m grateful for our time together.”
The way her words made me feel bothered me, though I didn’t let it show. Instead, I cut the conversation there and paddled to put a little distance between us. I wasn’t sure I could handle any more revelations from her, whatever it was I was feeling, from this moment. I slept like shit that night, tossing and turning as her words replayed in my head, tossing and turning thinking about her sleeping in the room beside me, wondering what she wore to bed, wondering what she looked like completely naked. I needed to get a handle on myself before shit hit the fan.
MAYBE I WAS being selfish, but I really didn’t want her living in that house with Gabriel Lane. Especially not after the day we had on the beach, with her confessions and my fucked-up emotions. The worst revelation I got was the sight of what life could be like with her, away from the press and the confinement of my office. I actually felt . . . something. Which meant trouble. Big fucking trouble. Nonetheless, as her attorney, I wanted her out of the house. As her friend, or whatever I was, I needed her out of the fucking house. Last night as I went to sleep, I caught myself thinking about her being in the house with that guy, and him sneaking into her room in the middle of the night, the way I wanted to do when I’d slept beside the room she’d been in. It drove me batshit crazy.
On top of that, my other client at the moment, Sam Weaver, had the same thing going, except in his case he was the Gabriel and his estranged wife was the Nicole. He’d been making living with him nothing short of hell for the woman.
We’d been to court once already, and she’d cried through the entire hearing, not because her children weren’t getting the attention they deserved, but because she was being treated like shit in front of them. It was moments like those that made it difficult for me to represent “the bad guy,” because Sam was most certainly the “bad guy.” His ex had made her share of mistakes, most of which we’d uncovered throughout the divorce proceedings.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk sense into Nicole. I could barely talk to her at all, which made my job insanely difficult to get through. Every time I saw her, though, I thought about the way her face looked at the peak of ecstasy and my concentration went to shit. I knocked on the door and waited. I needed to talk to Will before he left town.
“Come in,” Will shouted. I stepped into his office slowly, taking in the dim lights and candles lit on the corner. “Meire’s idea of relaxation hour. She says it’s either this or I quit smoking cold turkey, so here I am.” He sighed heavily and pressed a button to turn the lights back on. “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to talk to you about Nicole,” I said, undoing the button on my suit as I took a seat across from him. I put a hand up to keep him from jumping in. “I think she should move out of that house.”
Will frowned. “The minute she moves out, she loses it.”
“Not necessarily, Will, and she’s fucking losing herself by staying there,” I said.