“There it is,” Jackson sneered. “You’re nothing but a fucking robot in a suit. You never cared about Livvy more than you cared about the fucking business. I was the one who had to hold her after you broke her heart. I was the one who had to tell her she would be okay when she sobbed so much she threw up. I was the one who had to hide every pill in the goddamn house because she kept saying she wanted to die because you didn’t love her anymore. Don’t youdaretell me it was mutual.”
Nicholas jerked. “What?” he rasped.
He’d misheard Jackson. Surely that couldn’t be right.
Jackson’s mouth tightened until it disappeared, and he took another step. This time Nicholas backed up against the counter and let the other man shove him in the center of his chest, accepting the pain of his index finger. “Stay away from my sister,” Jackson enunciated. “Or I swear to God, you’ll wish I was only an alleged arsonist.”
She’d wanted to die? His vibrant, sweet, rebellious Livvy? Because they’d broken up? No, Jackson was lying.
Except Nicholas was good at separating lies from truth, and that had sounded pretty damn true.
His vision blurred. He wasn’t in his kitchen anymore, but back in that clearing in the woods, standing a foot away from her. He’d refused to touch her as he spoke the final words in his carefully rehearsed speech.It’s impossible for us to be together now.
And then, because he was human, he’d slipped, speaking the truth for a few seconds.They won’t let us.
To cover, he’d blurted out the rest.I think we shouldend this.
She’d nodded, pale and composed. They hadn’t hugged or touched, merely retreated to their respective homes. She had surely hurt, just like he hurt, but she’d agreed with him. She hadn’t even put up a token resistance.
You made sure she couldn’t.
Jackson grabbed his shirt in his fist and hauled him close, until they were nose-to-nose, bringing Nicholas back to the present. “Are you listening to me? Fuck with her and—” Jackson looked down and frowned.
Nicholas glanced down as well. He hadn’t buttoned his shirt all the way. Jackson’s grip had revealed a smidgen of the mermaid Livvy had drawn on him yesterday, the green marker vivid against his skin.
That was his, a souvenir of his time with Livvy,not to be shared. He shoved Jackson away, stepping back. This was all too much. One feeling. He’d been right to be wary of indulging that one feeling, because now he was being flooded with every emotion under the sun.
There was no way he could bury them all and get back in the box.
He needed time and space. And Livvy, but that wasn’t new. What was new was that he’d actually get to see her soon. Before they got together, he had to think, and he couldn’t do that with her brother lurking in his home. “Get out.”
Jackson watched him for a second, then stalked to the back door. The alarm beeped, but didn’t go off. Disarmed. “Fuck with her, and I’ll fuck you up.”
Nicholas’s jaw clenched, but he couldn’t speak, his mind still in a tailspin.
“By the way, your security is shit, but it might help if you changed the code.” Jackson smiled. It wasn’t a comforting smile. “I guessed it on the first try.”
Chapter 12
LIVVY WASearly for her meeting with Nicholas, which was a pretty good indication of how nervous she was for it. Tardiness was more her speed.
She came to a stop in the parking lot of Kane’s Café. She had vague memories of her dad’s parents, who had owned this small but popular establishment. Her grandfather had been as big as her dad with a similarly booming voice, her grandmother as sturdy as Maile with a soft lap.
Once Livvy had asked her dad why he’d kept the café after they were gone. It hadn’t made sense, especially since their family didn’t need any income from the place. He’d ruffled her hair.Sometimes it’s okay to make irrational decisions because of sentiment. The café reminds me of your grandparents.He’d winked.Plus, it was the first place I saw your mother.
It was here that her brother and Nicholas had taught her how to shoot milk out of her nose when she was nine, where she’d consoled Sadia when she’d broken up with that asshole Tim in ninth grade, where she’d had her first tea, her first coffee, and her first job.
Livvy was in no hurry to get out of the car and face those memories, even if they were, generally, good. She rubbed her hands together to warm them. Winter would be here before she could blink and Ruthie’s heating system wasn’t the best anymore. One day, she’d have to lay her precious car to rest, and the thought had her preemptively choked up. She had a lot of good memories attached to this baby. Bad ones too, but the good outweighed the bad.
Livvy took a deep breath and forced herself to look at the grocery store across the street. When she’d lived in any of the four states where Chandler’s had stores, she’d carefully avoided them, averting her eyes when she caught sight of that telltale font. Oh, but this store. This one was the most painful. The original, or at least, the store that had taken the place of the original.
It looked the same, though they’d rebuilt it bigger. The Chandler name looked too large for the building, in the space where C&O had once perched.
A flash of empathy for Paul ran through her. How hard must it have been for him to stay here and see this sign every day? She hadn’t expected to run C&O, and it still hurt to see the reminder that it wasn’t hers.
She got out of her car and slammed the door shut, ignoring the way the thing rattled a bit. Livvy wondered whether it similarly hurt Nicholas to see the Kane name every time he came to Chandler’s. As CEO, he spent most of his time in the office, nodoubt, but he was expected to frequent the first store.
Like now.
