Page 23 of Fierce Love
“Have you decided on a destination yet?” the cab driver asks, eyeing me in the rearview mirror. The meter ticks over at the front of the vehicle. I’m wasting money I don’t have to spare.
The last place I want to go is to Shannon’s to pick up Kinsley and have her either give me the silent treatment or try to attack me for not doing what she wants.
“Yeah,” I say, and I give him the name of the last place I ever thought I’d want to return to.
When I open the door, stale beer and spilled tequila greet me like an old friend. It’s strange to hate a place and love it at the same time. The months I spent working here when I was eighteen were some of the best of my life, but the job had very little to do with my intense happiness.
I avoid making eye contact with the few people in the bar, and I head for a table near the window. It’s too dark to see the ocean view, but knowing it’s out there brings me a familiar comfort.
It’s only after I’ve set my purse on the table that something inside me pricks to attention, as though an invisible tuning fork has been hit, sending out pitch-perfect vibrations meant just for me. Years have passed since the last time I felt this sensation, but I’d recognize it anywhere.
Nate Tucker isheresomewhere.
My skin tingles with awareness, and I stare at the scarred tabletop, afraid to look anywhere but down. What are the chances I came here on a whim and he is here, too, hating me with enough force that I can feel it?
With a shake of my head, I grab my purse, and I’m just about to leave this table, exit the bar—god help me, exit the island—when a thick glass slides onto the table’s surface. Cold strawberry-mint tea, a favorite when I worked here, sloshes over the side, creating a little puddle on the wood.
Startled, I glance up, and my gaze connects with Nate’s.
“Hi,” I breathe out before I can catch myself, realizing how silly I sound.
For a long beat, he searches my face, and I can’t help categorizing his, wishing he’d somehow gotten ugly with the years instead of more handsome. The boyish fullness of his face has been replaced with rugged angles that only seem to highlight the pretty color of his eyes. Eyes that no longer have the teasing, playful glint I once loved.
He yanks out the chair across from me and sits in it, as though I asked him to and he resents it. “Painfully long day for you, I imagine,” he says, his speech thick with alcohol.
Tears spring to my eyes. Despite his body posture, those words are the Nate I remember. The one who’d been able to read me so much better than anyone else, who seemed to understand me in ways no one else did. The reminder that I walked away from that, from him, makes my chest feel like it’s on the verge of caving in.
“Yeah,” I whisper, barely able to get the single word past my lips. I take the glass he set on the table, and I hold it between my palms. “Thanks for this.”
“Probably not as good anymore,” he says. “Apparently, Elmore sold this place a few years ago.”
I take a sip, and I try not to think about why Nate decided to sit with me, why he’s acting like him being at this table isn’t weird and uncomfortable despite how comforted I actually feel. My subconscious that took over at the funeral is doing it again.Nate is safety.
“It’s not the same,” I admit. “A bit more minty than before. But it’s just as good.”
He lifts his glass to his lips and takes a long draught of his gold rush. Some things don’t change. At seventeen, that was his drink of choice, but I’m surprised he’s still drinking it at thirty-one, that he didn’t outgrow the taste.
“You live in New York now? Work for Reyes and Cruz?”
“Yes.”
“You’re raising Kinsley there by yourself?” he asks.
I let out a shaky laugh. “Raising? I’m pretty sure she’d tell you I’m ‘ruining’ at this point.”
“Why’s that?” Nate takes another long drink, and then he lifts his hand, and a waitress materializes out of nowhere, another glass of gold rush at the ready. Another indication of the man he’s become, the attention he draws to himself without even trying too hard.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, running my fingers through the condensation on my glass. We’re not old friends, and it’s weird that we both seem to be trying to act as though we are.
“Looking after a sibling. Not a job you ever wanted,” he says.
“And yet one I would not change.” I struggle to hide my frown. “Not enough hours in the day, that’s all.”
“Posey tells me your sister was really set on you getting the network job, on staying here for a while.”
I tear my gaze off my glass to meet his. This version of Nate, the one who’d throw himself on the sword to make my life easier, is still recognizable, familiar. Tears threaten again.What did I do?I don’t understand how I ever found the strength to not just walk away but to stay away.
“You don’t want to work with me, Nate, and I don’t blame you.”
