Instead, I give her a smirk and move to the other side of the truck. I yank open the passenger’s door and set her bag down on the seat before moving to slip behind the wheel.
She’s stuffed the key into the ignition but kept the engine off so the cabin is an icebox.
“Jesus, sweetheart, it’s freezing in here. Why didn’t you put the heat on?”
I turn the engine over and crank up the knobs. It’s going to take a few minutes to actually warm anything up, but…
“I didn’t want to waste gas.” She murmurs quietly. “Should I go back?”
I scoff. “You’re not going anywhere.” I yank the belt across my chest, snap it into place before twisting at the waist to peer back at her fully with a forearm on the middle console. “Unless you want to?”
Her soft, warm gold eyes shift from me to the house with the white paint and picket fence. Her bottom lip curls up between her teeth with contemplation and she gives a slight shake of her head.
I give a firm nod and face forward. “Good.”
Nick takes that moment to stalk out from around the side of the house. I watch his big hand reach over the side of the gate and flip the latch. The wooden door swings and he’s moving in the direction of the driveway with two duffle bags bumping against the side of his leg and my coat bunched under his arm.
I watch in the rearview mirror as he circles the back to add our bags to the bench next to Isla. The entire frame rattles with the slamming of the door before he’s in the passenger’s seat.
He says nothing when shoving my coat at me and yanking his belt over his lap. The hook latches into place with a loud snap that sounds oddly final in the silence.
With everyone where they should be, I turn the key and pull us away from that shit hole. I stare at the round face glowering after us from the living room window. Resist the urge to flip her off.
Chapter Twelve
?Nicolas?
The entire cabin smells like cinnamon and jasmine.
It circulates through the vents, thickens in my lungs. Every breath is her and I don’t know how I’m supposed to ignore that.
Her.
Fucking Isla.
I pick at the tiny switch built into the car door to control the windows and locks with my nail. Piper Falls blurs past the window, a familiar landscape of faces and shops I grew up seeing. Most visits, it truly feels like nothing has changed and never will. There’s a comfort in that, I tell myself. During the last few holidays, I’d been so distracted by the prospect of seeing Isla that I don’t think I took the time to appreciate the charm and allure of my hometown.
That hasn’t changed, it seems. It’s all such a blur of chaos I almost forget where we’re going until we hit the outskirts of town where the neatly paved streets become dirt roads and uneven gravel. The air thickens with snow and the sweet scent of sap that makes me homesick for Mom’s sugar cookies. Part of me wishes we could just keep driving. Leave Texas and return to New York. Drive straight to Mom’s house and not look back.
I don’t think Mom has ever met Isla. After the wedding, Macie insisted she and Dad had no business speaking anymore. True, I suppose. I was fully grown. But even if Mom and Dad spoke, it was over text and calls. And Mom had no reason todrive the twenty-seven hours to visit a woman who didn’t want her there… even though it was Mom’s house initially.
Mom picked it.
Mom painted it. Put in the garden. Made it a home.
I know Macie is trying, but that house is foreign to me, despite it being the house my parents brought me home in thirty-one years ago.
I’m not nostalgic. I don’t cling to things. I moved away to be closer to my job and Mom moved closer to be with me. Piper Falls became something we talk about in past tense.
But she’s never met Isla.
We’ve spoken about her. I’ve told her the things Macie has told me and Mom only purses her lips and frowns the way she does when I was a teenager and she thought I was doing something that might hurt me. Not once has she said a mean thing about Macie or Isla, though I know she has every reason to be upset with the former.
The latter…
Mom would like Isla. It’s not even a thought. A worry. I know it to the very core of my soul that Mom would take one look at her and pull her inside for tea. She’d spoil her. Treat her the way she would her daughter. She wouldn’t even bat an eye if we told her Isla belonged to both of us.
Granted, we’d definitely get an eyebrow lift, but Mom doesn’t cling to social norms. She believes that life is short. We only get one shot. That would be the end of it. We’d take Isla back to New York. She’d stay in our bed. No spare bullshit. I’ll buy a bigger mattress if I need to. Build a bigger closet. I’ll buy a house, if that’s what it takes. But she’d be in our bed. Tangled between us. I’d wake up and she’d be there, head tucked close to Dom’s, smooth skin painted that soft blue of early dawn. Her belly would be full, stretched taut beneath the sheets.
