“I’ll draft a contract with your compensation,” Nick interjects. “We’ll include the mansion, but I will need you to work with my team to manage the finances. If this sounds acceptable to you?”
“It does,” he says, looking at me. “This place was never your place.”
“No,” I say. “But it has always been your place.”
“Yes,” he says. “It has been. And yes. I want the mansion quarters.”
“Great,” I say. “I ah…I haven’t cleared out my mother’s things.”
“I wondered about that,” he says. “I can do it.”
“Thank you,” I say. “Donate what you don’t want. And my mother’s car. It’s yours. Sell it. Keep it. Whatever you want. I’ll sign the title over to you.”
“We’ll authorize additional staff as well,” Nick says. “Someone to report to you, but do what Faith would have done to support you.” Nick grabs a paper napkin. “Can I borrow your pen?”
Kasey removes it from his pocket and Nick sets it on his knee, writes down a number and a percentage, showing it to me for confirmation. I nod at the numbers that equal a substantial, and deserved, pay increase for Kasey. Nick slides it in front of him. Kasey looks at it and then between us. “Very generous. Thank you. And on that note, I’m going to go check on the work crew.”
Nick quickly adds, “Coordinate with Rita to get a new team out here to start the repair process.”
He gives an incline of his chin, stands up, and leaves. “Could a historical marker be a reason to want this place?” I ask when he disappears around the corner, while Nick sends a text message.
“I don’t know enough about that topic to say, but we’ll find out. I just told Rita and Beck to investigate in different ways, but I’m doubtful. Otherwise your father would have done it on his own and pushed up the value of the winery.”
“Unless it costs a lot of money to do it, and my mother was gambling then, too,” I say.
He glances over at me. “Good point.”
A thought hits me. “And I’m officially brilliant,” I murmur. “I just gave him the only working car I have.”
Nick turns to face me. “Don’t get angry, but—”
“You had it fixed.”
“Weeks ago and that old car is beneath my woman. We’ll buy you something you want that I know is safe.”
“You can’t just—”
He leans in and kisses me. “Give him both cars, Faith. And if you don’t want something new, there’s two cars to choose from.”
“You’d let me drive your Audi instead of your BMW?”
“Fuck. I must be in love because, yes. I’ll not only let you drive it. I’ll let you call the damn thing your own if you—”
I lean in and kiss him. He cups my head and slants his mouth over mine, his tongue licking into my mouth before he glances at his watch and says, “It’s half past, you should be naked and riding my cock right now.”
“That’s crass and horrible.”
“And it turns you on, right?”
I sigh. “Yes.”
He laughs. “Let’s get out of here.”
***
Leaving the winery behind in the many ways that currently apply, comes with relief, but arriving to the house I’d bought as an escape from it doesn’t feel like an escape anymore. It feels like a part of that excuse this entire town had, unknowingly, become to me. Once we’re on the porch, we find packaging left by FedEx to package up my art. Nick and I pull them inside and start carrying the supplies upstairs. Once we set the first lot down, he heads for the stairs. “I’ll get the rest, sweetheart.”
Scanning the work I’ll soon ship off to L.A., my attention lingers on the painting of Nick—his eyes, and the secrets in their depths, my focus. I don’t have any secrets left. He knows who I am. He knows what I am and yet, still he holds back. I grapple with an array of varied thoughts, and where they lead me, but Nick’s footsteps sound before I reach a conclusion.
I walk to the floor-to-ceiling window and stare out at the night sky, the canvas of a full moon and the twinkle of at least a dozen stars. Nick steps to my side, his hand at my waist, a possessive quality to his touch. “You need a studio like this in San Francisco. We’ll hire someone to build it or we’ll just buy another house.”
I face him. “You want to buy a new house because of me?”
“I want a place that you feel is yours, not mine.”
“Because I didn’t pack this one up to take with me?”
“I want you to feel like you’re home. Like you did here.”
Like I did here, I think, those thoughts I’d started to have when he’d been downstairs charging at me again. “The day I moved into this house with all my renovations done, I stood right here and watched the sun set, and told myself: Now I could be happy in this town. But once the sun set, do you know what I did? Nothing. I didn’t paint. I built this beautiful studio and told myself it would inspire me, but I didn’t paint. And when I was packing today, your words kept coming to me.”
“My words?”
“You said you don’t like who I am here. And I don’t like who I am here. So, no. I don’t want to take a lot of my stuff with me. This place was a placeholder. It’s time to move on. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home, to San Francisco, with you, Nick. Tonight. Or tomorrow when FedEx picks up my art.”
“Then we’ll leave tomorrow.”
“Good. But I do think that, if I’m honest with you, I’m not without hesitation. I keep thinking that you will break me or me you.”
“We’ve already determined that we’re both broken. But we’re better together than we are apart.”
“Anything too good to be true, is too good to be true.”
“Sometimes it’s just good, sweetheart.”
“But you’re not a good guy, Nick, remember?”
“I’m not good,” he says, “but I’m a hell-of-a lot better with you than without you.”
“Then you need to confess your sins, Nick.”
He goes completely, utterly still. “What sins, Faith?”
“The ones you haven’t told me. The ones you don’t want to tell me. Trust me that much. Because it’s not about what you haven’t told me that feeds distrust. It’s about your unwillingness to tell me.”
He snags my hips and pulls me to him. “When I’m ready, remember?”
“Yes. Agreed. But I’m already exposed and on the line with you, more so than ever by moving to the city with you. So, when do you think you’ll be ready?”
“When I’ve made it impossible for you to live without me.”
“Because you think I’ll want to leave when you expose yourself?”
“Yes,” he says, solemnly. “I do. But you need to know that I’ll fight for you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Nick
Tonight, I tell Faith about the club.
After a hell of a good weekend with Faith, I arrive to work early Monday with that vow in my mind, and a sense of relief. Not only will she know that I owned the club, she’ll know that I sold it, and that she was far more important to me than it ever was.
By eight, I’ve already drafted Kasey’s documents, contacted Faith, and sent them to her to review. Rita shows up about the time I’ve hit send, dressed in a red dress, with the red headed attitude. “Oh look,” she says, waving her hands over her voluptuous figure. “We match. Your tie and my dress. Aren’t we adorable?”