Page 105 of Begin Again
“Take care of yourself, Sweetheart.”
When we part, I walk to the door, pausing at the threshold. “Beau?” He looks up. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Green eyes soften when Beau smiles. “I’ll see you around, Nin.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Nick
“MIND IF I JOIN you?” I hear from a few feet behind me, and I wave Pop over without looking. I knew one of them would find me eventually, I just wasn’t sure who would be first…him or Nina.
Leaning over the fence, I hold the neck of the beer bottle loosely between two of my fingers and stare out at the black void before me. The sun set about two hours ago, leaving the mountain shrouded in darkness and the starry sky glittering above its peak.
“How are ya feeling?” Pop asks.
I sigh, letting my head drop.
“That good, huh?”
“Honestly, Pop…This is all kind of a lot.”
“What did you expect?” He chuckles. “You’ve been gone a long while, Nick. There’s going to be an adjustment period. You can’t expect to come home and have everything go back to normal.Thatnormal went out the window when you stepped out of this house last April, along with the people you once knew. While you were gone, the rest of us spent the past year adjusting to a different normal—without you in it. Now we have to pivot tothisnormal—the one where you’re back.”
Is he right? Is that what I was expecting? To walk in and everything returns to the way it was before? To the way Nina and I were before? That’s been the hardest thing to accept since I got home…The way my wife and I seem to be strangers.
When I learned about her and Beau, I think it’s fair to say I subconsciously put up a barrier between us. When I saw them together…how close they were…how comfortable they were…it only reinforced the space between us. Just like today when she asked me to leave so they could talk. The request made my stomach drop and my heart ache. A few minutes later, when she left his office, she seemed sad but did her best to hide it. It made me wonder if we’d ever be able to move on…If I could move on.
“Everyone is different to some degree, including you. You’re not the same person you were before, either. Are you?”
I shrug, but he knows the answer: No, I’m not.
“No, you’re not. And that’s okay. Neither is your wife.”
At the mention of Nina, I look up at him.
Pop sighs, planting his hands on the top board of the fence. He looks out into the wilderness. “I have never seen a woman—or anyone for that matter—hold themselves together the way your wife does. It should be studied.”
I can’t contain my laugh, because Pop isn’t wrong. His words take me back to when Ric died and Nina was the only one holding things together. Kai broke. Her mom was playing the role of a grieving widow. Eileen was too busy taking care of Kai. Elizabeth was dealing with her own grief, losing yet another parent. But Nina…She held it all together when no one else could. It didn’t help that Ric put Nina in charge ofeverything—his estate, his personal effects, and his funeral. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me that she did the same this time around with my supposed “death.”
“While the rest of us were too busy thinking about ourselves—about you—she was worried about all of us. Taking care ofeveryone while still going out and searching every square inch of these mountains. I doubt she slept more than an hour each night. She is the only reason we’re still here. I don’t think we would’ve made it this far without her.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I whisper, swinging the bottle between my fingers. “You know when I saw her standing there”—I close my eyes and smile, thinking back to seeing her the first time at Blackwood Ranch—“I felt everything click into place. My world came back into view. I have been stuck in this fog for the past year, scratching and clawing, trying to remember something…anything…about myself. But I could never get more than a vague memory, a vague image. It was like I was trapped in this cloud of thick smoke behind a foot of glass and there was nothing I could do to reach them. I was at the mercy of this monster who enjoyed torturing me, giving me small crumbs here and there, but never enough to get the full picture.”
Looking up at the stars in the sky, I fight back the burning growing behind my eyes. “But when I saw her…it all just clicked. I don’t even know how to—There’s no way to explain it.”
“Then why are you avoiding her? Oh, don’t give me that look, you think I haven’t noticed?” Pop shakes his head. “Nick, I’m your father, and you may have been gone a while, but I can still tell when something is bothering you.”
Tugging at my beer, I avoid his stare. Changing the subject, I ask, “What’s going on with her and Alex?”
I would have never expected tension between Alex and Nina, but it was palpable from the moment I saw them together yesterday. They avoided each other, avoided being alone together, and kept their distance whenever being around each other couldn’t be avoided.
Pop sighs. “I think you’d be better asking them.”
“Something happened?”
It’s his turn to avoid my stare. He braces the fence and bites down on the inside of his cheek.
“Pop. What is going on?”
