Jolting upright, I snapped my eyes open as memories of my talk with Gran suddenly popped into my mind. It didn’t have to be all or nothing with us. We’d managed to make everything else work—managed to maintain a friendship that spanned not only decades but thousands of miles, the two of us rarely, if ever, in the same location more than a day or two at a time.
Why the hell did I think we wouldn’t be able to do this, too?
I grabbed my phone and typed out a quick text to Nash, hoping he hadn’t already dropped her at the airport.
Asher:
Is she gone?
Nash:
Not yet, but she’s getting pissed at me for stalling. Get your ass in gear.
A relieved breath left me in a whoosh. I’d let her get on that plane as long as she did it after she knew where we stood. After I laid everything on the line. After she knew I was in love with her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
NAT
Nash was killing time,and it was annoying the hell out of me. I had flown enough that I no longer got nervous, but there was no denying the fact that I was sick to my stomach. Which meant I sure as hell didn’t want anything to eat before my flight, but Nash still kept trying to ply me with food.
“How about some eggs?”
“Nash!” I snapped. Okay, so, I yelled. “I swear to fuck, if you don’t stop tryin’ to stuff me with food, I’m gonna kill you.”
“If you kill me, how’re you gonna get to the airport?”
“Steal your keys and drive over you on my way.”
“Harsh,” he said. “I’m gonna whip some up. Sure you don’t want any?”
I folded my arms on top of the table and rested my head on them. I wasn’t a crier—as Nash had so eloquently pointed out last night—so I didn’t know spending hours blubbering into my pillow meant I’d wake with a headache that rivaled any hangover I’d ever had. “I’m ignorin’ you now.”
“And I’m missin’ work for you, so show me some love.”
“Don’t pretend like that’s a big deal for you. You own the company.”
“Correction,” he said, stabbing a fork in my direction. “I co-own the company. With your sister, I might add. Take a minute to think about how much she loves that I’m skippin’ out when we’re already on a tight schedule.”
“So, what you’re sayin’ is she wears the hard hat in that relationship?”
Nash flashed me a grin and poured the eggs into a skillet. “How about instead of talkin’ about my relationship, we talk about yours?”
“You know all about my relationship with her because I’mcertainshe fills you in on every little detail.”
“Cute,” he said flatly, clearly not finding it cute at all. “You know damn well I’m talkin’ about yourmarriage.”
I sat upright and dropped my hands into my lap, twisting my ring around and around my finger. I hadn’t wanted to leave it for Asher when I’d gone. Hadn’t been able to bring myself to do so.
Actually, it went a little deeper than that. The thought of removing it, never to wear it again, filled me with so much dread, my stomach had churned because of it.
“The marriage was fake, Nash. Y’all talked about that, right?”
“Asher told me what it was supposed to be, but I can guarantee you that’s not what it turned out to be.” He picked up his phone for the hundredth time in the past ten minutes.
“Why do you keep checkin’ your phone?” I snapped. “If you were worried about me runnin’ late, we’d already be on the road.”
Never mind that I didn’t actually have to be at the airport for thirty-six hours, and he’d already called me on that. It just made me antsy to be in Havenbrook when I wasn’t with Asher, and that was a shocking thought. Maybe that had been the problem every other time I’d visited without him—that I hadn’t had him to ground me. To calm my storm and let me settle into my skin.
