He shook his head. “There’s no walking away from us. You’re not getting rid of me even if you decide this isn’t what you want. I’m not going anywhere. But I can’t rest until you know for certain whether you feel strongly enough about me…about us…to take a leap with me. To spend every day of our lives side by side as partners, lovers, friends and all that that entails.”
When he started to back away, her hand tightened around his. “Where are you going?” she asked, a tear slipping free.
He could no longer look at her and consider the possibility that she might decide against him. His fingers loosened from hers and he stepped back to the door. “To give you the space you need to consider.” Riot trotted up the porch steps. Nick reached down to feel the familiar comfort of the dog’s fur against his palm. “I’ll call your cousins, see if I can’t get one of them over to help with the carpet.”
“You don’t have to go,” she said, her voice laden with emotions.
Nick lowered his head, telling himself it wasn’t goodbye. There were no goodbyes between them. Nor would there ever be. Still, his heart splintered as he turned away from her. “I’ll be here if you need me,” he said in parting. Quickly, he and Riot left her on the porch before he could do something stupid like forget everything, all his good intentions, and sweep her off her feet.
Chapter 21
“Did you hear?” Ryan asked as he filed into the break room with a group of firefighters later that week.
Nick, who had received approval from his doctor to return to work the day before, looked up from the dirty nacho meal he’d ordered from the Mexican place down the street. It was the same one he and Sassy liked to indulge in with a pitcher of margaritas every Cinco de Mayo.
It wasn’t Cinco de Mayo, and Sassy wasn’t here. However, when Perez had offered to order something in for them from her family’s restaurant, he’d been unable to think of anything but dirty nachos, the taste of salt on the rim of a marg glass and Sassy’s cheeks pink with laughter as the pitcher got closer and closer to empty.
Nick set aside his fork. He’d been staring at his plate for so long the fresh-baked tortilla chips were going soggy underneath the weight of beef, beans, guacamole, pico de gallo, sour cream and tongue-kickin’ fire sauce piled deliciously on top of them. The meal wasn’t the same without Sassy. In fact, nothing was the same without at least communicating with her every day. He’d promised to give her time to think, but the radio silence on her end was nothing short of torture on his.
“Nick?”
He blinked away from his nachos to stare at Ryan. The man had turned a chair around and straddled it. “I’m sorry. Hear what?”
“About the gallery,” Ryan said, reaching for a solo tortilla chip that had escaped its mushy fate.
Nick’s heart woke, walloping his sternum. “What about it?”
“Detective Finbar saw fit to clear Zephyr and Sassy of all suspicion today in connection with known felon Weston Childress, aka Fletcher Ryder,” Ryan replied.
Nick couldn’t stop the grin from forming on his mouth. “About damn time.”
“You’re right about that,” Ryan agreed heartily. “Word is a large group of business owners downtown were getting a petition together to file defamation charges against the Dark Canyon PD on behalf of Sassy and her gallery. They all vouch for her professionalism and clean business practices. The city council was going to throw its weight behind it, touting how much Zephyr’s done for cultural affairs in the community. But since Finbar could dig up nothing on either Sassy or the gallery in any case, he made a public statement this morning, saying he was backing off both.”
“I’m glad he came to his senses,” Nick said. He could be glad his setup at the auction had led to Childress’s eventual apprehension and also still feel guilty about drawing Finbar’s attention to Sassy and the gallery in the first place. “I never wanted any of this.”
Ryan snatched another tortilla chip and indulged. “Childress is out of the hospital and behind bars. That’s all that matters, right?”
No, what mattered was that again Sassy wasn’t speaking to him. Nick had put his heart on the line. Would this limbo he was in go on forever? If she was going to reject him, his dream of a future with her, he hoped she’d do so soon. He’d rather deal with a broken heart sooner than later and reconstruct whatever was left of their friendship in the wake of everything that had taken place over the last month.
“What’s going on with you two, anyway?” Ryan asked, studying Nick’s face as he wiped his hands on a paper napkin.
Nick shook his head. “It’s nothing.”
“I know you better than that, Malone,” Ryan pointed out. “Don’t forget, it was me who used to race you both down that big hill on Rocusso Street.”
“If we know each other so well, why don’t you talk about whatever’s going on between you and Fern?” Nick tossed back.
Ryan buttoned up quickly, his expression shuttering. “There’s nothing going on. She’s in a fragile state. She doesn’t have friends or family other than Sassy, Ava and me.”
“Is that the only thing keeping you running back and forth to the hospital?” Nick asked.
Ryan lifted a brow. “You know what I think? You’re trying to take the heat off you and my cousin by turning this around on me. Look, I care deeply about Sassy. I care about you, too. If something’s going on between you, why hide it? You make sense together. You always have.”
“Sassy thought you might be playing matchmaker,” Nick recalled with a shake of his head.
“Tell me you don’t love her.”
“I do,” Nick blurted. He took a deep breath to modulate his tone. “I do love her, all right? But she has to decide what to do with that before either of us can move on with our lives.”
