Page 20 of Love Around the Corner
“You couldn’t pay me to stay, Poppy.”
Livie cringed, making herself as small as possible as the front door abruptly jerked open. But she forgot all her own discomfort the second she saw the look on Nick’s face. He looked utterly wrecked.
“Livie,” he muttered roughly. He didn’t even seem surprised or shocked to see her there.
“I didn’t mean to intrude. I was just leaving.”
At that moment, the elevator—finally—opened behind her.
Nick let out a huff of humorless laughter. “Me, too.”
Somehow Nick found himself down on the street with Livie. He couldn’t be bothered to wonder at her presence. Not when his life had just been ripped in two.
Poppy broke up with him.
She gave back the ring.
Well, technically, she still had it, since he’d flung it across the room when she handed it over. Right now, it was lying forgotten in some corner of their apartment. How fitting.
“Are you okay?” Livie asked tentatively. Then she shook her head. “Sorry. Of course you’re not. You must be devastated.”
Was he? Right now, all he felt was numb. Hollowed out. Lost. Still simmering with leftover anger and adrenaline from the...what was that? Was it a fight? It felt more like a lightning-fast shiv attack. He hadn’t even seen it coming, and now here he was, on the ground and bleeding out. He was still too much in shock to feel the hurt. The pain would come, though, he was sure of it.
He dragged in an unsteady breath. “Fuck.” Then one overriding need made itself known. “I need to get out of here.”
What he needed, right now in this moment, was to put as much physical distance between himself and Poppy as possible. Otherwise, he might go back upstairs and start fighting with her again. Or he’d start begging her to change her mind, and that was not going to happen.
“Um, okay. Hang on.” Livie hurried to the curb and managed to flag down a passing green borough cab. Nick didn’t stop to think anything through. There was a car here, waiting to take him away from the scene of the crime and he was going to go.
He climbed in behind Livie and fell back heavily on the seat, his unfocused eyes fixed on the ceiling. The cab pulled away from the curb, then stopped at a red light on the corner.
Livie was silent beside him. So quiet he almost forgot she was there.
The cab driver was the one to break the silence. “Where to?”
“Nick? Where do you want to go?”
Now there was a question. Where did he want to go? What did he want to do? A man could spend his whole fucking life working on that answer and never find it. He’d thought he had. Success, money, Poppy. It had seemed like he’d found all the answers he’d ever been looking for. But she’d slipped through his fingers, as insubstantial as sand.
It turned out he didn’t know the answers to any of those questions. Okay, forget the big questions. All he had to do was answer a little one. Who cared what happened tomorrow, or next week, or next year? He only cared what happened in the next ten minutes.
“I need a drink,” he muttered.
At his side, Livie took a deep breath. “Well, that’s something I can fix.”
Chapter Nine
Nick was utterly silent for the ride to Romano’s, but he sat forward and looked around as the cab pulled up to the curb and Livie paid the fare.
“Are we in Carroll Gardens?”
“Yeah. We’re at our bar. You said you wanted a drink.”
Nick sighed heavily, but he didn’t protest as he followed her out of the cab.
It was a typical quiet Wednesday night at Romano’s. A few regulars nursed beers and watched ESPN on the flat screen while Clyde, their one part-time employee, dried and stacked a rack of glasses.
“Where’s Gemma?”
