“Yes, Nick. That’s all there istosay.” Lifting her chin, she muscled her cart away and prayed this would be the last time they ever spoke.
But in a town like this, she probably wouldn’t get so lucky.
3.
By the time Aubrey slid back into Gallant’s Tesla, she was trembling.
He took one look at her and frowned. “Are you okay? What happened?”
She hunkered into the seat, hoping it would do her the favor of swallowing her up. “Nothing, it’s fine. I’m fine. I just... ran into Nick in there.”
Gallant’s lips compressed. He started to reach out, then dropped his hand onto the gearshift without making contact. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
She scrubbed her palms against her tailored pants, which did nothing to relieve the clamminess there. “Yeah, well. I hadn’t seen him since we were kids. I honestly didn’t think he lived here anymore.”
Gallant nodded.
Her fingers curled, seemingly by themselves. God, how could this possibly feel soreal, still? So fresh? She and Nick had broken up nearly twenty years ago. Maybe she’d thought about him on occasion—okay,manyoccasions—but she was over it. She’dbeenover it. “Sorry. I think I just need a second.”
Gallant’s neon-blue gaze held hers, steady and unblinking. In the silence, she forced her hands to relax and her serrated breathing to even.
Whatever he saw in her face must have reassured him, because he eased into a smile. “Take all the time you need. I’m just going to load up your things, okay? Then we’ll go.”
She blinked, then glanced out the window to her still-packed cart, which stood ten feet away. In her haste, she’d simply left it. She’d beenthatdesperate to put a layer of steel between herself and Nick. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.”
Gallant slid out and loaded her things into the trunk. Aubrey narrowed her focus to the clatter of firewood, to Gallant’s labored breaths.
Nick probably wouldn’t have broken a sweat.
She groaned, her head falling back against the seat. Nope. She wouldn’t think about him. It was over and done with and had been for years.
By the time Gallant pulled out of the parking lot, Aubrey had mostly regained her composure. He drove in silence, his expression contemplative, though there wasn’t much to concentrate on. The road was arrow-straight. There was no traffic to dodge. She searched for a way to break the silence and came up empty-handed.
“I always wondered what you saw in him,” he finally said.
Her breath hitched. Of course she wouldn’t escape that easily. “In Nick?”
“Yeah. I mean, to be fair, I didn’t know him that well. But you were always so outgoing, and he was so quiet. Or angry. Or... something. I never really figured it out.”
She studied his profile, searching for some veiled meaning. Had Gallant forgotten the way he’d instigated Nick in high school? The two black eyes he’d earned for his trouble?
It seemed so. His expression was neutral, as if age truly had mellowed him. Meanwhile, the years had honed Nick into something beautiful and cutting, something that sliced beneath her skin and dredged up hurts long since buried.
Gallant glanced over. “I think the whole school wondered, actually. How the two of you ended up together.”
She cleared her throat. The encounter in the store had clearly stripped her of her defenses, because she didn’t even try to deflect. “That’s easy. Because he wrote me love letters. Every day. I’d never read anything like them. Still haven’t, actually.”
“Really?” Gallant seemed taken aback. “Nick Thacker wooed a cheerleader with... poetry?”
In any other circumstances, she would’ve laughed. Trust cheerleading to be what he remembered about her. “Not poetry. Just these raw, heartfelt letters that convinced me we’d be together forever.”
“Huh.”
She spun one of her bangle bracelets around her wrist. Honesty welled up, bitter on her tongue. “The truth is, I always thought I’d find another guy who’d write me letters like that, someday. But it never happened. I just ended up dating coworkers. Friends of coworkers. Math people. None of them had the kind of... depth Nick did.” Mist slicked her eyes, and she angled her face away. Gallant would probably think she was about to cry.
She wasn’t. It had just been a long day, and she was tired, and her ankle throbbed, and she’d lost the job she’d loved so dearly and... All she wanted was to curl up with some hot tea and an even hotter fire and figure out how to fix it.
Gallant seemed to sense her mental retreat, because he didn’t press. Two minutes later, he pulled into her cul-de-sac, then her driveway. Her old house loomed, dark and imposing, butthe Victorian didn’t look nearly as run-down as she’d expected. Scarlet leaves littered the yard, but there were no cobwebs, no climbing vines, no peeling paint or broken shutters.
