And he knew he couldn’t go anywhere, not now that a piece of him had taken root inside her.
No, he’d made his bed. Now he would have to lie in it.
31.
Seventeen years ago
Aubrey was fresh out of firsts. Losing her virginity had been one thing, but everything that had come with it had only piled more bitterness into the empty chasm now gaping inside her. She’d also lied to her dad for the first time. Gotten cheated on.Andhad her heart broken—if that’s what this even was, because it felt more like having the thing ripped from her chest, then standing there stunned while it convulsed at her feet.
And now, for the first time, she was screaming in her dad’s face.
He faced her from across the living room, legs braced, arms folded over his chest.
“How could you?” she shouted, even though he would only give the same answer he had the last five times. Still, she needed to ask, because if she didn’t give voice to the agony stabbing at her ribs, she might crumple to the floor and never get up.
“I did it for you. For your own good.” His answer held no compassion. Just solid, bone-deep self-assurance. “Him getting some girl pregnant inside of two weeks was all him. Just be glad you know, now. At least you understand what kind of person he is.”
Aubrey bit back a scream. She wanted to throw her keys, except she’d done that already. Her dad hadn’t even flinched when they’d hit him in the shoulder and gone clattering to the floor. “I hate you.”
“For now, yes. But once you’ve had time to think, you’ll realize this was necessary.”
Bile gushed up her throat, burning her sinuses. “No. You ruined my life. I’ll never forgive you. Ever.”
“You will,” he said. “I give it a year. Then you’ll see I’ve done you a favor.”
A hiss erupted from her. “A year? Fuck off, try a lifetime.”
Pity flashed in his eyes.
Aubrey jerked back as if struck. She could handle misguided resolve. Bullheaded confidence, even. Those, she could rail against, meet force with force. But pity?
“Fuck you,” she bit out, then turned on her heel and staggered toward the haven of her room, slamming the door so hard one of her math trophies rattled off its shelf and rolled underneath the dresser.
Her father didn’t follow, thankfully, and Aubrey threw herself onto her bed and sobbed. She wanted to be anywhere but inside her own skin. Anyone but this person who’d had their innards crushed by betrayal. Right now, she wanted to be... who knew? Tansy Burroughs, probably, which was so pathetic she could barely acknowledge the thought, or maybe she wanted to be someone who’d never met Nick Thacker at all, some naïve person who’d never entrusted her heart to hands that would smash it so unceremoniously to pieces.
She measured the minutes in pain. Agony piled atop misery, followed by woe.
She almost missed the scratch at the window, consumed as she was by the sound of her own breaking. But when she uncurled her aching body and went to the pane, there he stood,the architect of her anguish and yet somehow the only person she wanted to see.
She raised the window. Nick stared up from the yard, his beauty so brutal that she wondered how she’d ever existed without him. Whether she ever could again.
“Fuck you,” she said.
He flinched.
“Fuck my dad, yes, but fuck you, too. Two weeks, Nick. I was gone fortwo weeks.”
“I know.” Where his voice had once been so smoky, now dead ash collected in the spaces between words. “But your dad told me—”
“I know. But how could you not have realized I’d never do that? You didn’t trust me that much? You didn’t trustus?”
He blanched.
“Were you even going to fight for it, Nick? Or were you so ready to let me go that you just hopped into bed with Tansy the moment you thought you were free of me?”
His eyes flashed, a black lightning crack. “Are you kidding? Are you fucking kidding me? I thought I’d lost you. And I was so fucking wrecked about it that when Tansy asked me—”
“Don’t.” A white-hot arrow raced down her throat. “Don’t you dare describe it. I’d rather drown in my own blood than hear the details.”
