Page 16 of Saint Nick
She didn’t rush in with an answer. That’s what he liked about her. She let the words breathe, even when they were ugly. “You don’t have to know what you’re going to say to her right now,” she said. “You just have to decide if showing up matters to you, Nick.”
He barked out something between a laugh and a curse, shaking his head. “Part of me wants to get in my truck and drive straight there. I want to bombard her with questions and demand answers. But the other part of me wants to pretend this never happened. I want to go on believing that she’s been dead these past twenty-five years, and go on with my life as it has been.”
She stepped closer. Her hand found his chest, warm and steady, right over the frantic beat of his heart. “You’re allowed to feel both ways,” she whispered. He stared down at her, his pulse hammering beneath her touch. How the hell did she always manage to feel like his calm center when everything inside him was tearing itself apart?
“How are you always so calm when I’m falling apart?” he asked, his voice rougher than he intended.
“Because I’ve been there too,” she said quietly. “Different story. Same ache. Losing a mother sticks with you. It’s a pain that you can’t outrun, no matter how hard you try. You thought that you lost your mother, but now, you’re being given a second chance with her. I’d give anything to be able to talk to my mother again—just once.”
His throat burned as he swallowed. “I don’t know if I can face her. I don’t know if I want to.”
“Then let me go with you,” she offered. “You don’t have todo this alone, Nick. You don’t have to do anything alone anymore.” Her words hung there in the air between them, simple but solid. Like an anchor—his anchor through all the storms that he had roiling inside of him.
His eyes widened. “Sandy?—”
“You don’t have to do this alone,” she repeated, as if trying to convince him that her words were true. For a heartbeat, maybe two, he just stared at her. People didn’t offer him things like that. Not real things. Not the kind that meant sticking around even when it got ugly. But she did. And for reasons he didn’t want to name yet, that mattered more than he could say.
“Okay,” he said finally, the word thick in his throat. She squeezed his hand, and that tiny tremor in his fingers gave him away. She didn’t call him on it — just held on a little tighter, and he was thankful for that.
“We’ll leave in the morning,” she said. He nodded, standing there in her living room with the weight of the past pressing down hard on his chest. Somewhere between the Christmas lights, the warmth of her hand, and the ghost of his mother’s name echoing through the phone line, something inside him shifted. The soft edges of what they had built — the laughter, the stolen kisses, the quiet nights had become something real. And for the first time in a long time, Nick didn’t push it away, believing that he didn’t deserve it. He was ready for something real in his life, and he wanted it to be with Sandy.
He didn’t sleep at all that night. He sat at the edge of his bed, staring at nothing, trying to remember what his mother looked like. He couldn’t remember much about her—other than the fact that she had dark hair. It was the only trait that theyshared—well, as far as he knew. He’d spent years hating her for dying and leaving him all alone. But he’d also spent just as many years missing the way she’d whispered, “It’ll get better, Nicky,” when it never did.
Seeing her again would mean looking at the boy he used to be. The one he buried deep down inside of himself—the one that he tried so hard to forget. That boy was afraid of everything. He was alone and hated the way that his life had turned out. As a man, Nick tried to leave that boy behind—except for at Christmas time, because for some reason, there was no getting over the fact that he hated Christmas. Except for this year. This year, Sandy helped him remember how wonderful the holiday season could be. He didn’t know if he could face her knowing that boy might be back. It would be like walking into the eye of a storm, but for the first time in his life, he wasn’t walking into a storm alone.
Sandy had called them a we, and that word might’ve been the only thing keeping him from running from all of this. That word had gotten him through the sleepless night while she lay next to him and softly snored.
The sun hadn’t even made it over the tree line when they pulled onto the highway. The world was still quiet — that in-between hour where the sky hadn’t decided if it wanted to be night or morning. Snow streaked past in thin lines, and the heater hummed softly in the cab of Nick’s truck. He drove like he lived — steady, jaw set, hands tight on the wheel like the world might try to take it from him if he loosened his grip. Mace and the guys down at the Road Reapers like to tease him about white-knuckling the steering wheel as though he were trying to strangle it. He never thought it was funny because it was true.
Sandy sat in the passenger seat, knees pulled up, blanketdraped over her legs. She’d thrown her hair into a messy bun before they left and tugged on his hoodie without asking. And there was something about seeing her in his jacket that made him hot—but that would have to wait.
He could feel her eyes on him, and he knew that his face was a storm, but he couldn’t do anything about that. “You don’t have to talk,” she said softly, breaking the quiet. “But you also don’t have to carry this alone.”
He couldn’t look at her, but his fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “I don’t even know what I’m carrying,” he muttered. “Anger. Guilt. A kid who wanted something better and never got it.”
Sandy shifted, turning to face him more fully. “And maybe hope,” she said. That made him glance her way, for just a second. He was sure that she had lost her mind. “She asked for you, Nick. After all this time. That has to mean something.”
“Or it means she’s out of options,” he grumbled, “I thought that she was dead, so why reach out to me now? Either she needs something, or she wants my forgiveness, and I’m not sure that I’m ready to give that to her.”
“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t erase the part of you that still wants to know why she let you believe that she was dead for all those years.” Damnit, he wanted her to be wrong, but she wasn’t. He did want to know his mother’s reasons for letting him believe that she was dead and for leaving him in the foster care system to grow up.
Nick let out a breath, fogging the window. “You don’t let people hide, do you?”
“Not when I care about them,” she whispered, covering his hand with her own. He didn’t know what else to say—there was nothing more to say, so they sat there like that in silence. Her hand on his as they drove up the highway, inching closerand closer to his past and to him finally knowing the truth about what had happened.
After two hours of being on the road, he still hadn’t figured out why this road trip had felt different with her. Normally, he hated long drives with anyone. Too much silence. Too many chances for someone to chip away at the walls he’d spent years building up around himself. But with Sandy, the silence didn’t feel like a trap. It felt like a hand on his back, steady, but not pushing.
He glanced at her again—the way she curled into the seat like she belonged there, hair loose now from the bun, eyes still sleepy. He shouldn’t have let her say yes to this road trip. She should’ve let him face his ghosts alone. But she didn’t.
“I used to think about her all the time,” he said suddenly, surprising even himself. Sandy’s head turned toward him, but she didn’t speak. She just listened. “After they put me into foster care and told me that she was dead, I used to imagine she’d show up at whatever house they stuck me in. I’d hear a car pull in and think, “This is it—she’s found me.” He gave a quiet, bitter laugh. “She never did. I guess that was why it was so easy to believe that she was really gone.
Sandy reached over, slowly, like giving him time to tell her no. When he didn’t pull away, her hand found his on the console. He didn’t look at her. But he didn’t let go either. “She must’ve had her own hell, Nick,” she said gently. “That doesn’t make it okay. But it might mean she didn’t stop loving you.”
He exhaled, shaking his head. “You always gotta find the good in everything?”
“Not everything,” she said. “Just in people who deserve asecond chance.” Something tight in his chest loosened at that. Sandy didn’t know it yet, but she was slowly chipping away at his walls, and there was very little left for him to hide behind. Nick just couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad problem to have.
SANDY
