Page 201 of Smooth Sailing

No, it was all out there between Hugger and me.

“It’s something, Nic.”

“I love that for you, honey.”

That was Nicole, supportive all the way.

“Anyway, he was there, and he knows all that’s going down. I’m fine. Not fine fine, but I’ll live. In the end, I think it’ll be better. There isn’t a lie festering between us anymore. And I have Dad back.”

“Gotta say, I’m really glad you worked it out with your father.”

“Me too. So it’s all good, and Hugger and me are about to watch a movie.”

“Oh. Okay then. I’ll let you go.”

There was something in her voice I couldn’t place.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

There was a long hesitation.

I waited silently.

“I knew all about this, Di, and I didn’t tell you,” she eventually admitted.

My sweet Nicole.

“Dad made you promise,” I guessed.

“Yeah,” she confirmed.

“It wasn’t yours to tell, Nic,” I assured her.

“No,” she replied.

“Please don’t feel badly about it,” I begged. “It really wasn’t yours to tell. I mean, what were you supposed to do?”

“I guess…what I did.”

“Yes. What you did.”

“You should know how far your dad is going with all of this,” she began.

Oh boy.

I’d taken a lot that day, so I braced, because I sensed I was about to get more.

“He apologized to me,” she shared. “He told me he was very much in love with me, but so broken by what Maggie did, he didn’t trust it.”

I dropped my head in my hand, ravaged for the both of them, and moaned, “Oh, Nic.”

“I know,” she whispered. “It was devastating hearing it. How heartbroken he was.”

Gah!

“Yeah,” I forced out.

“It also felt nice, knowing what I felt was real, when I thought I’d read it so wrong.”

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