Page 34 of Dissension

It takes strength to look up from the menu that Kara’s been staring at blankly. She can practically taste her pulse on her tongue, all bloody and hot. She meets his gaze and she knows he’s upset, his ego is slighted, but he wants to see her, despite all of that.

She can’t forgive him for not telling her about Claire, but there’s no denying that he still feels attached to Kara.

What they had those few months…it was raw.Depraved. Something not easily found in other people. Perhapsshouldn’tbe found-

“I’m sorry about what you saw. Last night.” Kara blurts out awkwardly. She knows it wasn’t something he would have wanted to see. Her, with his longtime frenemy. “I didn’t know he was going to do what he did. It was a mistake.”

He grimaces. “It’s not like you told him no,” Nick says with an unfriendly glimmer in his eye.

She senses that’s not really what he wants to say. He wants to talk about her absence from his life. He wants to talk about what theyhad.

“It’s different with Dieter.” She laughs a short, bitter sound. “You and I don’t have a good record with the word ‘no’, do we? You like when I tell you no. Or, at least you used to.”

“I still do,” Nick replies quietly. “I’d prove it to you. If you’d stop pushing me away.”

His words pull at her heartstrings, plucking away at their sorrowful expanse. To hear him honestly admit that he stillwants to be with her is…intoxicating on so many levels. The feeling is so intense that Kara doesn’t know how to respond. Does she tell him that she feels the same, that she still wants him, too?

The waitress stops by with their drinks and takes their orders, looking between them with a curious gaze, likely feeling the tension.

When the waitress leaves them once again, Kara gives Nick a seeking look. “Are you aware that Claire reached out to me?”

He coughs into his hand, as if trying to hide his reaction. He looks away from her briefly. “Yes. I gave her your number so she could call you.”

What planet does he live on?

“You didwhat?Nick! Nobody gives their side chick’s number to their fiancée!” It’s so absurd that it’s laughable.

A scowl takes over his features as he tries to keep his tone in check. He leans back in his seat, his shirt pulling at his broad shoulders enticingly. “You wouldn’t talk to me. She wanted to give you a go, so I figured, why not? It’s not like Clairedoesn’t knowabout us.”

Disbelief is at war with the old wound in her chest. Shaking her head, feeling a hurt ache, Kara says flatly, “There is no us.”

“Therewas,” he snaps, eyes blazing with that certain hostility that causes sparks to burn between them. “There still can be.”

Pointing at him with one finger, Kara has to grit her teeth together to keep from raising her voice inappropriately in public. There are other couples and families seated in the vicinity. “You told me we weren’tanything. That it meantnothing. That what we had would never bea thing. No strings attached.”

As always, he kept her at a distance, the same as she kept him at bay, until feelings caught her unaware.

He damn near rolls his eyes out of his skull. “Well, I fucking lied.” A hint of that sharp sneer shapes his lips. It’s a stinging pain within her, this want to press her lips to his and draw blood.

How dare he? After all the emotional shit he dragged her through? From the first night they met -which she barely recalls- to their consensual non-consent fantasies, played out in various ways. To making her want him,like him, all the way to him slime-balling his way to victory in court and then having a damn fiancée on top of it all-

Butoh. He wants them to besomethingafter all?

Kara’s face hardens and she bares her teeth. “You lied? That’s what you’re going with? You fucking knob. You’reunbelievable. You played with me, like a stupid toy. You made me feel like a fool, Nick.”

“I didn’t think…” he works his jaw roughly, looking like his words are cutting his tongue on the way out. “…that it was going to go where it did. I thought it was going to be a thing we did a few times and then moved on. You would have never found out, never gotten hurt. Only, we never moved on. And you got hurt.”

At least he acknowledges that fact; that he cut her deep.

It’s a small comfort to know he felt something for her, that he was incapable of giving her up even though he initially intended to. “I’m sure you would have hurt me one way or another,” Kara replies with a sad grin. “That’s how you are.”That’s why I’m drawn to you. A familiar pain.

Making a frustrated noise, Nick runs a hand through his hair, those rich brown locks shifting with his touch. “What do you want me to say, Kara?” There’s something almost vulnerable in his gaze. “Something stupid and sappy? That you understand a part of me that no one else ever can? That I felt like I could be myself with you, instead of keeping it all locked away?”

The conversation feels futile. He can tell her all he wants about how he still wants her, how he feels with her, but it willnever change one big problem. She sags miserably in her seat. “I wish I could go back to you, but Ican’t. I am not going to destroy my morals on the matter of marital fidelity and-”

“A non-issue. Claire is alright with it,” Nick tells her bluntly, as if that fixes the problem. “She wants you to stay with me. All she cares about is discretion.”

Oh, that just about fixes it then, does it? Ha.

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