She swallowed.“Answers?”
“I came here after I left my mother’s,” he said.“I didn’t know you would be here.”
Nicole folded her arms.“So what?This is fate?Us ending up in the same place on the same night?”
“Not fate.”His eyes were fierce.“Truth.Finally.”
The word cracked open something inside her.She sank back on the couch, gesturing stiffly.“Fine.Sit.Let’s get it out.”
He sat across from her, leaning forward, forearms braced on his knees.For a long moment, neither spoke, twenty years of silence pressing down like a weight.
Finally, Nicole broke.“I thought you left me.”Her voice wavered.“I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”
His jaw clenched.“And I thought you walked away.Chose college.Chose anything but me.”
She drew in a shaky breath.“I never walked away.I was crushed that summer.All our plans, and yet you weren’t speaking to me.Suddenly, you wanted to party in college.You wanted anyone but me.”
Tripp turned to face her, his eyes darkened, and his mouth turned down.
“No, I thought you didn’t want me,” he said, his voice cracking.“I was in Europe.I couldn’t reach you by phone.Not even email.”
“As I said before, I never got your calls,” Nicole said, her throat raw, her voice shaking with old hurt.“All I got was that email, the one that said you wanted to party your way through college, that you wanted to date other women.Even today, your mother cornered me and told me you were seeing someoneappropriate.”
Tripp froze, disbelief flashing across his face.“What?”His voice was sharp, incredulous, as though the word itself was dragged from his gut.
She told him.Every last detail.The ambush in the parking lot, the way Mrs.Masterson had looked her in the eye and warned her away, and worst of all, the revelation about her parents.Nicole’s chest tightened with every word, but she pushed them out anyway, because he deserved to hear it, even if it shattered them both.
There would be no more secrets.
By the time she finished, Tripp’s face was scarlet with fury.His jaw clenched so hard, a muscle ticked in his cheek, and his fists balled at his sides.He looked like he could put his fist through a wall.
“Damn,” he ground out, dragging both hands down his face.He paced once, then stopped in front of her, his voice breaking.“Nicole, I never wrote that email.Not one damn word of it.I was in Europe, trying to call you every chance I got.Then my phone disappeared.I lost every number, and when I came back—” His voice cracked, and he swallowed hard.“When I came back, you were gone.And I thought…” He shook his head, anguish twisting his features.“I thought you didn’t want me anymore.”
Her heart pounded, the ground tilting beneath her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice thick.He reached for her hand, then stopped himself, his fingers curling into a fist instead.“God, Nicole, I am so damn sorry.For all of it.For not finding a way to break through.For letting them come between us.I would have burned the world down to keep you if I’d known.”
Nicole’s breath caught, the weight of his confession pressing down on her chest until she thought she might shatter under it.For a heartbeat, she wanted to believe him, God, every cell in her body ached to believe him.His voice, his eyes, the raw truth etched in his face…it all rang with sincerity.
But then the memories crashed back.The sleepless nights.The hollow ache of waiting for calls that never came.The email that had sliced her open.The twenty years of wondering why she wasn’t enough.
Her hands trembled as she clasped them tighter.“Do you have any idea what it did to me?”she whispered, her voice breaking.“I thought you’d chosen every party, every girl, over me.I thought I was disposable.And you weren’t there to tell me otherwise.”
A sob clawed its way up her throat, and she pressed a fist against her mouth, trying to hold it back.“You say you didn’t write that email, but I lived with it.Ibelievedit.For two decades, I believed you didn’t want me, Tripp.”
Her eyes burned as she met his, hot tears spilling freely now.“So you’ll have to forgive me if it’s not so easy to just…believe.Because if I let myself believe you now, it means I wasted twenty years hating you when I should have hatedthem.”
Her voice broke on the last word, her shoulders shaking under the weight of all she’d carried alone.
“I never stopped loving you.”His voice cracked, raw.He scrubbed a hand down his face.“My mother admitted it all tonight.She knew we had eloped.She wanted it ended.That’s why they were waiting for me to come home.My bags were packed and the plane was waiting for us to arrive at the airport.”
Nicole’s breath hitched.“My parents too.They didn’t say how, but they said they were protecting me.”
He let out a jagged laugh.“That’s the same word my mother used.”
They stared at each other, anger and grief thick between them.Finally, Nicole whispered, “We were kids.We trusted them.And they lied.”
His gaze softened, pained.“They stole twenty years from us.Twenty years that I longed for you.”
