“Are you okay?”
Niko rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, running his fingers through his hair before sitting upright again with a sigh. “Remember when you asked me before if I was seeing someone? Well, I was. Up until I left. And I, uh…I think she might be…” He trailed off, torn between wanting to confide in his mother and respecting Merritt’s privacy.
His mother’s face went pale; she clearly didn’t need him to finish. “Was that her?”
He shook his head. “No. I haven’t spoken to her since I left.”
“That bad?” she asked with a sympathetic frown.
I think you should leave before I wake up.The memory of her flat, emotionless voice sent a ripple of nausea through him. “It was kind of…nothing.”
“It was nothing?” Her expression shifted to confusion.
“No, I mean, it was everything. I don’t think I’m explaining this right.” He dropped his head back into his hands in frustration. “I knew I was leaving, so we said it would just be for the summer. But…” He trailed off again.
“But…you fell in love with her?” Niko felt his face flush, and he nodded mutely. “Why didn’t you stay, then?” she continued. “If you had something that big keeping you there?”
Niko opened his mouth, ready to offer one of the dozen reasons he’d been giving over the last few months. The lack of stability, the search for a more conventional direction, the needsof his family. Every excuse he’d come up with to convince himself the life he’d built there wasn’t good enough. Thathewasn’t good enough, just as he was.
But instead, what he said was: “Because I don’t know if she feels the same way.”
“Well, are you going to call her?” his mother pressed.
“I don’t know. I don’t know if she wants to hear from me. I mean, I don’t even know if sheispregnant. And if she is, I don’t know if she’ll want to keep it.”
His mother’s brow creased, and she glanced away before meeting his eyes again. “Would that change things for you?”
“No,” he said, surprised at the speed of his response, barely needing to think about it. “But if she is, I want to be there for her. Fuck, I want to be there for her even if she isn’t. I just…I just want to be with her.”
His voice cracked as he said it, and it wasn’t the only thing that was cracking—it felt like he was fully coming apart at the seams, desperately trying to hold himself together as his entire world nonchalantly flipped upside down.
His mother raised her eyebrows. “So, what are you waiting for?”
He met her gaze, his heart thundering rapidly in his chest. “What do you mean? We’re boarding in fifteen minutes.”
Shetsked.“You think I want to spend the next twenty-two hours sitting next to you moping like that? The last week has been bad enough.”
He blinked at her, uncomprehending, and an indulgent smile spread across her face. Before he knew what he was doing, he was half out of his seat, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. He hesitated. “Wait. Will you be all right? Seeing them on your own?”
She waved her hand. “You got me this far, I can handle therest. Catch up with us in a few days. I bet you can transfer your ticket. If it goes badly, at least you’ll be surrounded by your family, and if it goes well—hell, you can bring her along.”
Suddenly, Niko couldn’t move fast enough. He hugged his mother briefly, frantically, mumbling how much he loved her, before grabbing his carry-on and exiting the airport as quickly as he could. He hailed a cab back to the house and got directly into his truck, grateful he didn’t have to waste time packing.
The drive to Crested Peak was almost thirteen hours, and he considered doing it straight through, but it was already late afternoon when he got on the road, and it probably wasn’t the move to show up on Merritt’s doorstep at threea.m. So when he felt his eyelids drooping, he pulled over at the first motel he could find, and the next morning, he was back on the road within ten minutes of opening them again.
Merritt’s car was in the driveway when he pulled up to her house, and he half expected her to come out to meet him at the door. He had no idea how she’d react to seeing him. Annoyance? Relief? Anger?
Nerves began to overtake him as he sat there. Maybe it had been a mistake to drive all the way here without calling her first. But the time to make that call had been about eight hundred miles ago, so he got out of his truck and walked to her doorstep on shaking legs.
He knocked firmly, then waited.
And waited.
He knocked again.
After a few minutes, he took out his phone and called her, pushing aside the voice telling him that she was probably ignoring him after seeing his truck. She picked up right away, though.
“Hi,” she said, and just hearing her voice made Niko’s stomach do a fullAmerican Ninja Warriorobstacle course.
