I sigh. “She’s your sister. Our families are close. I convinced myself that Gracie would move on from Thanksgiving.” I pause. “Paisley turned up at the station,upset, claiming she just wanted to be friends, and I believed her.”
Nick’s scoff tells me exactly what he thinks about that. “Paisley has always been single-minded. She can be kind—generous even—but she has tunnel-vision when it comes to herself. She starts seeing people as obstacles to her goals, their feelings irrelevant if they interfere with what she wants.”
“I see that now,” I murmur, thinking of the way she turned up at my place after Christmas, her expression full of disbelief when I told her to kick rocks.
I drop the peas onto the floor beside me with a wet splat, picking my coffee up from the side table and swallowing the hot liquid. Across from me in an armchair, Nick is nursing his own cup, his expression contemplative.
“There’s some stuff I never told you about Paisley,” he says after a long moment. “I told you she didn’t want to come home from college because she was too busy partying, and that was probably part of it. For her first year, it definitely was. But?—”
“Spit it out,” I grunt.
“She ended up in a relationship,” he blurts. “I didn’t think you’d want to hear about it, especially with the way she iced you out?—”
I roll my eyes, ignoring the way it makes my eyeballs throb in the sockets. “I don’t even fuckinglikePaisley right now, and I definitely don’t have any kind of feelings for her except being pissed off. I haven’t had feelings for her in years.”
“You didn’t date,” he points out. “Not seriously.”
“I was focused on my job and living off caffeine. There wasn’t time to date.” I pause before admitting, “And no one even tempted me like that. Not until?—”
“Gracie,” he supplies. “Right.”
“Look, I’m not saying there wasn’t a part of me thatwas gutted about what happened with Paisley. It was the first time my feelings felt real, you know? I thought I loved her, Nick. And she…” I blow out a breath, and my lip stings. I test it with my tongue, finding a split in my lip where my teeth must’ve caught it.
“Paisley cut me out of her life”—I slice a hand through the air to demonstrate—“and it fucking hurt, but not because of her turning me down.” At Nick’s dubious look, my lips tip up. “Okay, there was a small element of a bruised ego. But we werefriends, Nick. She was family to me, man, and she ghosted me like I was nothing. Ran across the country and never fucking spoke to me again.”
“She’s an asshole,” Nick mutters. “Okay, fine. No feelings for her. But I was caught in the middle, and I didn’t know how to protect both of you at the same time. Because as much as Paisleyisan asshole, she’s my sister, you know?”
I throw my arms out wide. “If anyone needs goddamn protecting, it’sme.”
He groans. “I know, okay? Theo read me the riot act after you hit the deck, along with several other people coming to your defense.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “Paisley’s relationship crashed and burned around the time she graduated.”
I’m staring down at the peas on the floor, a watery puddle surrounding the packet. “Most people binge crap TV and eat junk food when they split up with someone,” I say.
“They were together for about three years, but the relationship was apparently pretty toxic.” I hear his swallow from here. “She was dating one of her professors.”
I look up at that, eyes wide with shock. “Seriously?”
The muscles in Nick’s jaw bunch. “Paisley told me last year, but that’s not all.” He scrapes a hand through his hair, and I swear I can hear him grinding his teeth. “The guy isabout twenty years older than her, and…Fuck. Braxton, he’s married.”
I gape at him. “So, what? He dumped her for his wife, so she went after the next safest bet?” I shake my head, ignoring the pain that shoots through it. “That’s crazy.”
“I don’t know,” he murmurs. “She won’t talk much about it, but I’ve never seen her so lost before.”
Anger surges so hard and fast that it steals my breath. “You’re not gonna make me feel sorry for her, man.”
“That’s not—” Nick slumps back in his seat with a sigh. “I know.”
A quick glance at the clock shows that half the morning is gone, and urgency starts creeping down my spine. “I need to go talk to Gracie,” I say, standing. “I should have tried harder to find her last night. There was no way she was going to come to Benson’s. It was too public, too many people.”
Nick watches me cautiously. “Your phone is in the kitchen on charge. I turned it on earlier, and you had a few missed calls.” At the look on my face, he shakes his head. “Not Gracie. Mostly your mom.”
I pause. “Shit. That’s not good.” He grimaces in agreement. “I’ll call her after I see Gracie. I need to talk to her before anyone else does.”
“You look like shit,” he observes, and I glower at him.
“Can I borrow your truck?”
He heaves himself upright with a sigh, stomping into the kitchen. He’s back seconds later, dropping the keys and my phone into my hands. I watch him for a beat. “I’m sorry you’re in the middle. Paisley is your sister, and I know if this kind of shit was going down with Analise…” I trail off before adding, “If you feel like you need to take a step back, I understand.”
