Niko stared at her, as if he was trying to suss out exactly what she was asking.
“He’s not a…” Tiana took a breath, trying to figure out how she could say it without sounding like a jealous ex. “He’s just not a very nice person, and I don’t want her to…I just—I would warn her, but I don’t think she’d listen if it was coming from me since I’m his ex and?—”
“Did he hurt you?” Niko’s voice was so low, only Tiana could hear it as he stepped forward, closing the space between them entirely. His entire demeanor changed in the blink of an eye. He appeared four inches taller, and somehow his body shielded her from the entire wedding party. She wasn’t even sure how he’d managed to do that considering he was one man, but he’d done it.
She’d never felt more…protected. It was overwhelming for someone who’d spent the majority of her life feeling very,very…vulnerable.
“No!” Tears began to fill her eyes as she corrected him. “No, he didn’t, not physically, it wasn’t like that. He’s just very… I don’t know how to explain it, but he’s just not a good person.”
Niko was still staring down at her. She could see that he didn’t believe her, probably because her eyes were leaking. Which was frustrating, and that only made her eyes leak more.She wasn’t crying because of Brock or anything he’d done to her. He’d never laid a hand on her. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, but he’d never hit her.
“Sorry, this was a bad idea.”
She sniffed back her emotion as she started to walk away, and Niko wrapped his hand around her wrist. It wasn’t tight at all, just the lightest of pressure. That was all it took for her entire body to sing with tingles. He must have felt her shiver because he instantly dropped his hold as if he’d touched a hot stove.
“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, thinking the shiver was the bad kind and not the good. She had no plans to correct him.
Tiana inhaled a ragged breath and tucked a stray piece of hair behind her head. “It’s okay. I’m just… I’ve gotta go.”
With that not-so-graceful exit, she left the wedding wishing she could have a do-over of the past five minutes. She knew she’d made a fool of herself. Brock had just arrived in town, and he was already messing with her life.
6
Niko strolledtoward Brewed Awakenings along Main Street, relishing the familiar rhythm of Hope Falls waking up around him. The heart of downtown pulsed with the steady thrum of local life, shopkeepers sweeping the wooden sidewalks, and the smell of cinnamon buns wafting from the window of Sweet Tooth Bakery where Mrs. Callahan’s well-fed tabby curled in the square real estate of mid-morning sunlight coming through the window display. The bakery sat beside his brother-in-law Liam’s medical practice, which was across the street from Read Between the Lines bookstore, and Two Scoops Ice Cream parlor, with the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada mountain range which were dusted in a covering of powder snow. He couldn’t help but feel a bittersweet pang of belonging. He hadn’t grown up there, but he’d spent every summer and every holiday at his Yaya and Papou’s house. It was his one constant in his childhood, even after his dad, his grandparents’ eldest son, died. He’d always felt like Hope Falls was his home, just as much as San Francisco.
“Congrats on the engagement!” Mr. Reed of Reed Between the Lines Bookstore waved his arm in the air as he swept the wooden sidewalk in front of his shop.
“I’ll pass that along to AJ!” Niko waved.
Mr. Reed smiled. “Oh, okay, Niko. Nice to see you, son!”
“You too, Mr. Reed.”
Niko loved being in a town where people were mistaking him for AJ, who was going to be a married man. He thought he’d be living the next five weeks with him, but that was not going to happen. His brother, now engaged, was going to be living with his fiancée at her home, so he would be staying at the Airbnb alone. It wasn’t going to be the family bonding time he’d anticipated, but he couldn’t be happier for his brother, who was going to be a dad. And he was going to be an uncle. Uncle Niko… he couldn’t wait. Honestly, when he told his brother to tell Poppy how he felt, he didn’t expect him to propose, but that was the thing about AJ, he took things very literally. He could not be prouder of him.
He’d woken a few hours earlier to run his typical five miles, then taken a shower and had some coffee. Chilled mornings like these were usually his favorite, but this morning, his mind kept tripping over itself, unable to settle into the comfort of routine. Instead, it continually circled back, restless and hungry, to the memory of Tiana at the wedding yesterday.
Niko had been aware of Tiana Matthews for ten years. Ever since the ESPY’s award show his rookie year. He walked into the bar area, and there she stood in a red dress, her long, brunette hair, a tumble of curls, wild and free down around her shoulders. The moment his eyes landed on her, his entire world closed in on him, and his senses became heightened. All he could hear was the whooshing of his breathing and the beating of his heart. All he could see was her… her large, almond eyes, her hair, and her lips. It was as if the world around him dimmed and there was a spotlight shining on her. He lost all sense of time. He lost all sense of spatial awareness. He lost all sense of everything that wasn’t this perfect being in front of him.
It wasn’t until he heard Brock Fucking Bartlett call him “Nicky C.” and felt Brock slap him on the shoulder that he was snapped out of the spell she’d cast on him. He barely remembered his and Bartlett’s exchange, whatever it was, it was shit talking. He’d been too distracted by the beauty in red. What he did remember was after Bartlett said what he said, he walked away from Niko straight up to the girl in red, who smiled widely and took his arm. Then they went to their seats.Theirseats. Six months later he saw that they were married.
Niko’s attraction to her hadn’t gone away, but he’d made sure to keep a safe distance. She was Brock Bartlett’s wife, a goddess-like beauty who haunted the periphery of his world and who was one hundred percent off limits. Even after they’d split, and Tiana moved to Hope Falls, which he thought what were the odds, he’d intentionally kept his distance from her. Despite the rumors, he didn’t go around fucking players’ ex-wives. Even when they were his enemies.
Then, when he was walking down the aisle, he caught her eye and there was a moment. A moment where, once again, the rest of the world had disappeared. She knocked the wind out of him. He was breathless as he presented Yaya to Arthur. He spent the entire reception resisting the urge to stalk over to the corner she was hiding away in and pull her onto the dance floor.
He thought he was in the clear, the reception was winding down, and he got on the dance floor with Princess Ninja Flower. When he’d spun around after dancing with Tabitha, he’d been blindsided, a literal punch to the solar plexus. She was there, up close and personal and even more beautiful, but that was too small a word for what he’d seen. Tiana was incandescent, her skin glowing as if she’d swallowed a piece of the sun. He could still see the tilt of her mouth, the sphinxlike intelligence of her smile.
But it was her eyes that destroyed him. They were a coppery brown, but not flat. They were alive with little sparks of gold, as if she had starlights floating inside them. His stare locked with hers, and he was powerless to look away. He’d tried, but the longer he stared, the more dangerous she seemed. He remembered how, just like in the bar, the world narrowed to just the two of them, wedding guests blurring into watercolor shapes, music receding, and just her eyes anchored him to the earth.
And then there was her scent. Niko was not a guy who paid much attention to perfume, but something about Tiana’s aroma had tripped every wire in his brain. She smelled the way summer did after a thunderstorm, sun-warmed, alive, with an undercurrent of flowers. There was something wild in it, like she’d run through a meadow before arriving at the reception.
Then when he’d danced with her, it had only been for a few seconds, not nearly long enough, but it had nearly undone him. The moment he had her in his arms, it was like they were transported to another dimension or some alternate universe where only they existed. It was a different plane. He’d heard of people talking about the rest of the world disappearing, and he thought they were talking shit, but that’s what had happened…until she pulled away.
The rest of the conversation was odd. Brock being in town. Not just Brock, but his entire family. Him posting a photo with G. Her wanting to warn G about her ex. Her reaction when he asked if Brock hurt her.
Niko didn’t know what the story was there, but he knew there was one. It wasn’t good, and he was going to find out exactly what it was.
The bell dinged over his head as he entered the quaint coffee shop on the corner of Main Street. It had a rustic industrial feel that he would expect to see in a city, not in a tiny mountain setting.
