She didn’t know how he responded. Her last thought was,no, there was no way he’d spent five nights in an armchair. That’s not love bombing…that’s love.
27
Niko sipped his Negroni,looking out over a sea of black ties and evening dresses. The fundraiser overflowed with light, laughter, and several A-list celebrities that would hopefully get them nationwide coverage. It was already a record-breaker, they’d obliterated their one million dollar goal, and they hadn’t even reached the end of the welcome cocktail hour.
Jessie came through on her promise that she would figure out a way to beat Brock at his own game, and she had. Instead of Brock Bartlett being the sole co-chair, she’d called in some favors, her hubby, Zac Courtland, who was a world champion boxer, the hottest up-and-coming, undefeated MMA fighter, Arturo Cruz, and quarterback Cole Carson, who had led his team, the Los Angeles Legends, to the Super Bowl two out of the past four years, also signed on to be co-chairs.
She described it as douche-weight distribution. If it was just myself and Bartlett, the sheer velocity of douche would take over and drown out all the other noise, but with Courtland, Cruz, and Carson on board, Bartlett couldn’t sink the ship. Not to mention the other sponsors that they brought with them had increased not only the exposure but also the bottom line.
Jessie had also done the heavy lifting to keep Niko’s interactions with people to a minimum this evening, for which he would be forever indebted to her. Poised and radiant in an ice-blue gown, she greeted donors with the practiced precision of a diplomat and maneuvered them like chess pieces, keeping egos in check and conversation flowing.
On paper, the night was perfect. In reality, Niko felt as if he were standing inside a glass box, watching the gala, his gala, happening on a TV screen around him. No one in the room actually existed to him except one person. Every time his gaze drifted, it landed on Tiana Matthews, not by accident, never by accident, but by gravitational necessity.
She glided through the crowd with that sultry classiness she wore so effortlessly. Niko tracked her as she moved from table to table, her white dress a beacon against the jewel tones and matte black of the other guests. The dress was criminal in its engineering, simple on the surface but perfectly contoured to her body, with a high slit up the thigh that nearly reached her hip, a scoop neck that revealed just a tease of cleavage, and a back so low it seemed designed solely to test his self-control. Her hair fell in retro waves, and the only pop of color was the siren-red lipstick that perfectly matched her heels. She was old Hollywood with a very modern, very sexy twist.
Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, but to Niko, watching her and not touching her, speaking to her, or being near her was torture. She floated around the room like a beautiful fairy. He couldn’t stop staring.
Pops approached him, walking with his cane. His coloring looked so much better than the last time he’d seen the man. He couldn’t believe his surgery had only been two weeks earlier. He was wearing a fedora and could have been Billy Dee Williams’ stand-in.
“You scrub up nice.”
Pops dipped his chin. “That’s the general consensus.”
“How are you doing?” Niko asked, wondering if he should even be out. It seemed too soon.
“What’s with all the questions?” Pops lifted his cane and pointed it towards him. “Are you a cop?”
Niko chuckled. It was a much needed comedic break from the evening. He felt tense. He told himself over and over again it was because of Brock Bartlett, but the truth was it was because of Tiana Marie Matthews.
He missed her. Not in the way he’d missed other people, like his family during the season or G when they were together and had to go long periods of time without seeing one another. He missed her like he’d heard people describe having a phantom limb. Like a part of himself had been amputated. He ached for her. He’d spent the last ten days, for lack of a better word, pining, but not from a distance. She was still staying in his home, but things had changed. She was polite, sweet even, but that was it. There was no romance. He would say no chemistry, but that was bullshit. Every time they were in a room together, it was like a fireworks display.
But she’d put her walls up, and there was no scaling them. He’d tried to joke his way over or around. He’d attempted to dig under by having a serious conversation about what he was feeling and what she was feeling, she shut it down before he got out the wordtalkin the phrase, “Can we talk?” He’d gone the friend route, which was sincere, he did want to be her friend. He missed her. He missed watching bad reality TV with her and playing cards in the glassed-in sunporch after her night classes and having a glass of wine after dinner around the firepit in the backyard. The past week and a half she’d just gone to bed after she got home, she didn’t even have dinner with him. She claimed she wasn’t hungry, but Niko knew the truth: she was eating atwork before she came home. That was the other thing, she was getting rides home from work.
He’d really fucked up. He’d crossed a line. He wasn’t sure if it was a single line or if he’d crossed an entire train track.
Pops leaned against the bar beside Niko. “Heard what you did, young man.”
Niko’s entire being deflated, not only his physical self, his shoulders, but his spirit as well. He wanted to at least try and defend his actions. “I was just trying to take care of her, I wasn’t trying to upset her, I swear.”
“If spending two point five million dollars on a building is your idea of tryin’ not to upset her, I’d love to see what makin’ her happy looks like.”
“Oh.” Niko sighed, realizing he was totally off base as to what Pops was referring to. “Sorry, I thought… I thought you were talking about something else.”
“Clearly.”
“So what is this here about? You tryin’ to take care of her?”
Niko took a deep breath. He didn’t exactly feel right about speaking behind Tiana’s back, but she wasn’t exactly speaking to his front, so there was that. After days of reflection, he was fairly certain that him coming in and taking over her life was probably not the move…
“When she was ill, I took her phone, covered her classes, and also had my brother AJ set up cameras in her studio so she could live stream, and I, um…took care of some things… financially. I overstepped. I know that. She wasreallysick. Liam said she needed sleep, and her phone alarm kept going off, I was just trying to take care of her.”
“Take care of her,” Pops chorused along with Niko.
Pops put his hand on Niko’s shoulder. “You didn’t do anything wrong, son. Our girl just has a hard time letting people in.”
Niko thought that was the understatement of the world.
“You know she’s never touched any of that money she got from the divorce for herself, don’t you?”
