Her attention locks on me. When she realizes that no matter how many times she blinks I’m not disappearing, Nina lets out a tired sigh and resumes walking toward her house—toward me.
“Hi,Little Fae,” I call, my voice loud enough to reach her from where I sit.
She closes her eyes and presses her index and middle fingers to the bridge of her nose. I need to watch myself with the nickname.
“I’m exhausted, Nero. I just finished an eighteen-hour shift. I can’t deal with you right now,” she says, stepping into her yard.
“I told you—I can come back whenever it’s convenient. Just tell me when.”
“Or what?” she snaps as she reaches the steps and I stand. “You’ll keep cornering me at my own door every chance you get?”
“I just want to talk to you, Nina.”
She looks away, biting her lip, as tired as she said she was.
“It’s impressive how suddenly willing you are to do that,” she replies, acid in her tone.
I nod. “You’re right.”
“Forgive me,” I say—for the first time. It wasn’t until I lay down in the small hotel bed last night, wearing an idiotic smile, that I realized the most important word had never left my mouth. “Forgive me, Nina.”
I say it with all the honesty I have when she stops in front of me and stares as if the last few seconds are too absurd to be real.
“And now what?” she asks. “I should hug you, kiss you, tell you everything’s fine? That we can go back to being a happy family?”
Her restraint makes the violence in her tone sharper. “Like I told you yesterday—you’re too late.”
“I won’t lie and say that isn’t where I want to get to,” I answer. “I do want us to be a happy family. But I don’t expect forgiveness overnight.”
She laughs, bitter.
“I’m amazed you expect forgiveness at all, Nero. How noble—wanting your lost family back. I wonder what your current wife thinks of that. Does she know you’re here?”
“My what?” I blink, eyebrows lifting, my voice coming out too sharp.
“You didn’t marry her too? Don’t tell me she’s the next stop on this trip. Does Kael have a brother he needs to meet?”
She fires the questions aggressively, and even though I have no idea what she’s talking about, I rush to answer.
“I didn’t get married. You were the only woman in my life from the moment I laid eyes on you that Christmas night, Nina.”
MyLittle Faefreezes, as if she’s calculating the exact meaning of my words. I don’t expect her to believe me—not now, not when all she sees is someone she needs to get rid of as fast as possible.
But it doesn’t make what I said any less true.
Nina was the only one. Since she left, I haven’t been with anyone—emotionally or physically. There was nothing left of me to give. Everything I was, Nina took with her when she left.
“My mother heard it,” she says.
I resent Rosa a little for that. She conveniently left out the detail—Nina’s belief that I’m married—from our conversation this morning. I suppose broom hits and cries of pain count as communication, right?
“The day Kael was born, Atlas called. You were talking in the background. My mother heard the boys mention your fiancée.”
I frown.
“Can we have this conversation inside?”
“No.”
