His eyebrows lifted slowly, his fingers still hovering over the phone. “Are you sure? Abby, I can have people here in two minutes if you—”
“I’m sure.” I gave him my most winning smile, patting the bed beside me. “I’m just not used to all this,” I said, weakly lifting my dress. “A lot has happened over the last few days. I’m just a little worn out.”
More like...I’m just a little pregnant with your baby, and I need to rest.
He eyed me warily but settled on the mattress, hugging an arm around me as I snuggled onto his chest. “Can I at least get you a water or something?”
“Nick,” I chuckled, laying my head on his shirt, “I’m fine.”
We lay there for a long time, calming down, decompressing, and relaxing in each other’s arms. The world slowly righted itself as he stroked his hand again and again through my hair, soothing me with a comforting rhythm. When we heard the last of the guests bidding their farewells from the ballroom, he kissed the top of my head with a quiet sigh.
“I’m sorry. I know this week isn’t shaping up to be everything you were hoping for.”
That was putting it lightly. I was so excited reading that brochure, so determined to make the most of our time in that gorgeous estate, even if we were forced to show up there. Of course, I also knew not everyone else shared my enthusiasm.
“You warned me,” I said quietly, staring down at the mattress. “You said this place is deceiving, not all sunshine and games. You never told me why though.”
His entire body tensed; I could feel it even through the many folds of my dress and the fabric of his tuxedo. There was a slight hitch in his breathing, and I could have sworn I felt his heart skip a beat.
“This is where my parents got married.”
Oh shit. Well, that would do it.
It was a good enough reason to avoid the place, a good enough reason to stay away, but I knew it couldn’t be the only reason Nick hated the Hamptons. I didn’t want to probe too much, to push too hard, so I just waited for him to tell me, which he soon did.
“It’s also where I lived with Dad after they divorced. In the summers, it was just the two of us...and Harold, of course.”
This time, it was me who stopped breathing. We were standing on the edge of a precipice, with no safety net to break our fall. The truth about Nick and Mitchell’s volatile relationship was one of the only subjects we had not yet discussed, one of the only secrets left between two people who had fallen in love and were supposed to tell each other everything.
The same realization seemed to hit Nick at the same time, and he twitched restlessly beneath me, shaken by the sudden inevitability.
“My father was abusive,” Nick said softly.
“Your dad used to hit you?” I asked, wishing with everything in me that I wasn’t lying on top of him, that I couldn’t feel the way his heart literally stopped beating for a moment before racing at triple its usual speed.
“A lot of people deal with that,” he deflected evasively. “My dad has a temper and used to take it out on me.”
Typical Nick. When he didn’t want to talk about something, he simply denied its importance or acted as if it never happened. As open as he was about most parts of his life, the man was a vault about others. No matter how hard anyone pressed, whether a journalist, a publicist, or even the damn captain of the police force, the man wouldn’t say a word.
Except...aren’t we supposed to be past that now? Do people in love need walls?
I nodded slowly, giving him a second of reprieve before trying again. “So your dad did hit you then?”
For a long time, Nick didn’t say anything. He simply lay beside me, as still as a statue, remembering but not wanting to. He just lay there, reliving a thousand hurts and br
uises in just a momentary flicker of his eyes. When he finally did speak, it was in a soft monotone, a strange, inflectionless, flat voice I’d never heard from him before. “Yes,” he said. “And one time it got really bad. He was wearing a ring, something gifted to him by a college or some foundation, or maybe it was his latest wedding band. I don’t know, but it must have nicked a vein, because they couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
One hand drifted almost absentmindedly to his face, to a spot by his left temple. It was a movement so reflexive and casual that he didn’t realize he was doing it himself. My eyes followed his every move, searching for a scar, but I saw nothing but smooth skin.
“I don’t really remember what happened.” He shrugged briskly. “I woke up on a coffee table with Harold yelling at my father that we needed to get to a hospital.”
“Wait a minute. Harold actually yelled at Mitchell?”
“I know,” Nick said dryly, guessing my thoughts. “I couldn’t believe it either. The last thing I remember is him ripping off his tie and pressing it against my face. Then I blacked out.” As horrible as the story was, a faint smile ghosted his face as he continued, “The next day, Harold took me out for ice cream. We ate it in Central Park, walked around until I calmed down. I’ve been addicted to it ever since.”
My heart shattered, then warmed at the image of Nick as a child, wandering aimlessly around in the sunshine, with a mess of melted ice cream dripping down his hands. I knew he was addicted to ice cream, because over the years, I’d seen him slip away to get a cone hundreds of times. The day when Mitchell told the two of us to get married, when Nick ran out of the apartment and I was afraid he’d fled the city, he’d really only run as far as the nearest ice cream stand for a little frozen self-soothing. Soft serve, for Nick, softened the blows life and his father gave him, and something about that was so sad that it melted my heart like a cone in the sun.
I had no idea why that part of our conversation was some kind of a trigger, but a wave of breathless anticipation washed over me, and I propped myself up to stare into his eyes. “Nick, have you ever thought about having kids?”