“Two pods,” he called to my back as I headed for the pantry.
“One,” I said, just to rile him before grabbing two decaf coffee pods from the shelf above the espresso machine and a single fully caffeinated one for me. Never said I wasn’t complex.
“You think I don’t know what you just did?” Nick snapped, and I almost looked over my shoulder. Then he laughed. “Gotcha.”
“Arsehole. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I plugged the first pod into the machine and set it running.
“Liar,” he quipped. “Stop trying to decaffeinate me and clean out my arteries. It’s not rocket science. Two months of living with you and my morning brain doesn’t function unlessI’min charge of the coffee. Not to mention, there’s barely a plaque left in my veins for a hard-working clot to grab onto. At this rate, my body will die of boredom. Besides, you’re the one who pollutes your latte with froth and sugar,notme.”
I chuckled because he was right. Milky sweet coffee was my kryptonite, but I limited the caffeine hit to a couple of times a day. Nick, on the other hand, would swallow a whole plantation of coffee beans in twenty-four hours if he had the opportunity.
I carried our mugs back to the table and slid Nick’s in front of him. He gave it a dubious side-eye. “I can tell by the smell, you know.”
I rolled my eyes. “Swap then.” As I reached across the table, Nick swatted my hand away.
“Get thee away, Satan,” he growled. “I can’t be doing with any of your dessert coffee crap. This’ll do just fine.”
I shook my head at his ridiculousness. “Then stop griping. And by the way—” I twirled my hand dramatically in the air before reaching into my pocket for the envelope I’d retrieved from under the fruit bowl where it had been languishing for two months. He groaned as I folded it into an airplane and fired it his way.
Nick plucked it out of the air, his cheeks flushing pink above that thick morning scruff. He looked to me with a single raised brow. “What do you expect me to do with this?”
I shrugged. “Figure you may as well stick it under your mug as a coaster since it’s not being used for anything else. Then again, you could simply throw it out.Anythingexcept leave it sitting under that damned bowl for another two months, dragging you down every time you walk past it. Dragging usbothdown.”
Nick glared at the envelope as if by force of will alone, he could disappear its contents. A letter from his estranged mother. A woman abused by her husband. A woman who’d run off and left her eight-year-old boy to cope with his obnoxious father alone. A boy who then struggled to love. Struggled to let his guard down. To not have to be in control of everything. A boy who’d grown into the man I was desperately in love with, so help me God.
The letter held an invitation for the two of them to reconnect and had become a growing source of tension in Nick for far too long. It was the black hole that we circled around. The no-go zone. And the reason I couldn’t seem to get enough weight on the man’s bones no matter how much I fed him.
Nick looked from the envelope to me, his head shaking. “I know I’m procrastinating, but I can’t seem—” He drew a shaky breath and blew it out slowly. “—I was trying to ignore it.”
I reached across the table and took his hand. “Someone great once said, ‘Do or do not. There is no try.’”
He grinned despite himself and lifted the back of my hand to his lips. “Idiot.”
I returned the gesture, clarifying, “Respond to the letter or don’t. Whatever you choose is fine. But this limbo state you’re living in, thatwe’reliving in, is like death by a thousand paper cuts. It’s making you sick and depressed, and it’s driving me up the wall, especially since you won’t even talk about it.”
A haunted look passed behind his eyes and he stared at the envelope in his hand. “That bad, huh?”
I gave a one-shoulder shrug. “We’ve lived through worse.”
He looked up and squeezed my hand, a smile tugging at his lips. “Yeah, we have, haven’t we?” His attention returned to the envelope.
I plucked it from his hands and held it between us. “There’s a book sale slash collector’s auction next month in Nelson that I could be convinced to attend. Blenheim is only a short drive from there.”
Nick narrowed his eyes. “Is that the sweet scent of manipulation I detect in the air?”
I cocked my head. “Do you want it to be?”
I saw nothing but turmoil in those grey eyes I’d come to love so much. Fear. Wary hope. Anger. Betrayal. Disgust. Even love. They were all there vying for ranking.
I held the envelope out for him to take. “Just think about it. For the first time in your life, you have a key to all those gnarly questions circling your brain and fucking with your head. For good or for bad. Your mother isn’t exactly a spring chicken, and I’d hate for you to lose this opportunity simply because you left it too long.”
“I know. I know.” Nick’s eyes filled with pain. The agony of a young boy abandoned by his mother to find his way in a world that taught him the strong win and the ‘weak’ get hurt. I wasn’t sure what I would do in his shoes so I’d respect whatever decision he made.
“If you’re not sure of your answer, then take a chance and wait,” I suggested. “If you don’t want anything to do with her, then walk away. But if you’re delaying something you already know you want to do, then time is ticking, sweetheart, and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Nick swallowed hard and gently plucked the envelope from my hand. “IfI decide to go, you’ll come with me,right?”
The weight of the moon and stars lifted from my shoulders and I leaned across the table to cup his cheek. “Every step of the way, my love. Every step.”
