The restaurant Nick had chosen was a small Italian one called Due, which was Italian for Two. It was a newer edition to our small college town, and was so far out of my price range that I’d never even entertained a thought about going there.
It was also unquestionably romantic, making me wonder at Nick’s motives all over again. Man, I was giving myself whiplash today, my mood all over the place.
Regardless, as the hostess showed us to our table, which was tucked into a cozy corner, it was pretty clear to see that this was a date… of sorts. The cute little redheaded waitress seemed to think so too, and she clearly didn’t approve.
I’d noticed her checking out Nick’s ass when we’d first come in. I was used to this—girls always looked at him. He was hot.
I could have lived without the snooty look she gave me, though—I already felt ridiculously uncomfortable. I’d never been as well put together as Nick, but I’d always tried. Since Kevin the Asshat had dumped my clothes on the lawn, however, I hadn’t had a chance to change, and so I was wearing the old, faded sweater and jeans that were worn from age, not fashion that I’d pulled on at six that morning.
I felt like a hobo from the bayou, not the girl who had once been on Nick’s arm. And I was pissed at myself for feeling that way.
My mother was the kind of woman who needed to have a man around or she felt lost. Since it was hard finding one willing to take on as many kids as she had, Jo Ellen Connor brought home whoever looked at her twice.
I’d never wanted to be like her. Someone had to set an example for my sisters. This was why I’d picked up and walked away from Nick, no matter how much it had killed me. I wouldn’t be with someone who didn’t treat me right.
Never mind how hard it was not to grab hold of his hand again, just because it had felt so damn good.
This, I thought grumpily as I sat in the chair that Nick pulled out for me. This was what my family did to me. They were like a slow burning acid, eating away at everything I’d built since I’d left Louisiana—since I’d left them.
If I let them continue, I would be nothing but a skeleton, a pile of bones for the more voracious of them to nibble on.
“When you asked me to grab a bite tonight, this isn’t quite what I expected,” I commented warily as the hostess filled our water glasses. She sniffed as the clear liquid streamed into my glass, and with the vibes she was throwing off, I was surprised that she didn’t ‘accidentally’ spill the drink right in my lap.
The barest hint of a flush spread over Nick’s sharp cheekbones. I lifted my glass to hide my own uncertainty.
Holy shit, surely he wasn’t doing all this to ask me what I thought he was going to ask me.
“No reason we have to eat at Applebee’s while we talk,” he deflected, his fingers toying with the edge of the wine list. “Unless you want to.”
He smirked at me then. I loved Applebee’s. Nick couldn’t stand it.
“No, after the day I’ve had, I don’t mind being pampered a little bit.” I smiled back cautiously, the familiarity of being around someone I knew well breaking through the thin sheet of icy agitation that had been covering me since I’d found my underpants in Kevin’s slimy fingers.
If anyone else had tried to take me to a place so obviously out of my price range I would have squirmed uncomfortably the entire time. But I knew that Nick probably wouldn’t even look at the total on the bill.
We ordered after perusing the menus. Since they were in Italian, I latched onto one of the few words I recognized and ordered ravioli, though I wasn’t sure what kind. As I stumbled over the pronunciation I saw Nick trying to supress a smile and raised an eyebrow at him, but had to give him points for keeping his mouth shut.
He hadn’t tried to order for me, which he’d done on occasion in the past and which I hated. He’d held his tongue, so I could forgive him the smirk.
When my foot nudged Nick’s under the table I felt an unexpected flash of heat, even through the thick canvas of my sneaker.
I tried to ignore it, and we settled into small talk instead.
“Are you all ready for the winter semester?” Nick had the waiter bring us a bottle of some red wine that I couldn’t pronounce, and as I rolled the flavor over my tongue, the alcohol absorbing into my skin, I realized that if he was trying to impress me, it was working.
“Did you seriously just ask me that?” I cast him a withering stare, and he grimaced good- naturedly.
“Sorry. I meant… before this afternoon, were you ready?” He sipped at his wine, and I watched, fascinated, at the way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.
“As ready as we can ever be for hell.” I tucked a stray lock of air behind my ear. Nick was in his final year of law school, and I was in my second. Apart from the course load, the cost of law school was absolutely insane, even with a healthy loan or scholarship.
People had preconceived notions about lawyers being wealthy, and I’d found that this trickled down and applied even to law students. This was probably why my brother, or whoever it was in my family, felt that they could steal a few thousand dollars from me.
They probably thought that wealthy little me, living the high life in California, wouldn’t even miss it.
Misconceptions. Pretenses.
I was heartily sick of both.
“Why did you ask me out for dinner, Nick?” A few more sips of wine and I blurted out the question that had been dancing around my mind all day. I’d thought I’d known, but he kept evading.
Nick looked startled at the way I blurted the question out of nowhere, though he shouldn’t have been—I’d always been blunt. Setting my wine glass down carefully on the snowy cloth that covered our table, I crossed my arms over my chest and waited for him to answer.
I needed to know. I had no idea what I would say if he asked me to come back… but I found that I really wanted him to ask.
My stomach fluttered at the thought that he might. Jax’s face flashed through my head, and guilt and confusion were a knife blade in my cut, cutting cleanly, but I wiped away the metaphorical blood.
No matter what kind of magical polyamorous relationship I might or might not have dreamt up over the last half of a year, I had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t have two men, nor could they have a man and a woman each. The world just didn’t work that way.
And even if it did, I didn’t know if Nick could come to terms with that part of himself enough to even attempt such a thing. In my opinion, having feelings for one man in his lifetime didn’t make him gay, any more than wanting me suddenly made Jax straight.
Nick didn’t see it that way. More to the point, I’m not sure how his parents would see it.
“Nick,” I prompted when he hesitated, but the waiter took that moment to arrive with our first course. Nick, who liked to torture himself with things like wheatgrass and alfalfa sprouts, had ordered salad to start, dressing on the side, but my bowl was full of Italian wedding soup. The aroma drifting up from the broth loaded with meatballs and noodles was enough to make my mouth water, and I had to bite my lower lip to resist the urge to pick up the bowl and slurp, I was so hungry.
Nick watched silently as I tried to use my manners and instead spooned some soup into my mouth. A moan escaped my lips as the savoury broth warmed a path down my throat and to my stomach.
He was still staring when I opened my eyes, my food related almost orgasm over.
“What?” I asked self-consciously, reaching for my napkin to wipe my lips.
“You’re so sexy,” he said finally, and I heard the desire in his words. It brought heat to my cheeks, and an uncomfortable surge of wetness between my legs.
“That’s why you asked me to dinner, right? So you could ogle my spectacular table manners?” My voice was wry; I was avoiding the issue.
I had no idea what to do when an ex who I still had deep feelings for told me I was turning him on. I’d missed getting the rulebook for that one.
“Well, I’ve always like watching you eat.” His smirk as I ran my tongue over my lower lip told me why that was. I drew my tongue back between my lips, disconcerted.
He’d never told me that before.
“But I asked you to dinner for another reason.” Though the sexy smile still played over the corners of his lips, I could see his focus narrowing, that laser sharp way he had of blocking out everything else at hand that I knew would make him one hell of a lawyer someday.
“You wanted to watch Douche Bag and Baguette get it on in public?” I was deflecting the seriousness in the air and I knew it, but I didn’t know what else to say or do.
My pulse picked up its pace, and I could feel the blood throbbing in the veins at the base of my earlobes, in the hollow of my throat.
Nick inhaled deeply, then reached across the table and caught my hand in his.
“I want to try again.”
There it was. There, out in the open. I think deep down I’d known, ever since he’d called that morning—I hadn’t been able to think of a single other reason that he would have contacted me after so many months.
But with the words hanging heavily between us, I still found that I was stunned.
"Wow.” Succinct. Yep, that’s me. I had so many thoughts rushing through my brain, spiralling around and around, and not one of them many any clear sense.
“Nick, I…” I didn’t want to say no, but I wasn’t sure that I could say yes.
So much had happened between us. My gut reaction was to throw myself at him, because I missed him so much. Not just the skin on skin contact, though there was certainly that. But I missed having a partner from day to day, someone to celebrate the triumphs and share the shitty days with.
I had a family, but I had to use the word loosely. I had friends, but I didn’t have the same level of connection with them.
And I counted Jax amongst those friends, but I couldn’t allow him all the way in the way I once had with Nick… because of Nick.
Nick had been my pillar in the world. I survived without him, but I missed having him around.
But saying yes to him…
Where did that leave Jax?
“I—” The words stuck in my throat. Nick’s eyes flashed blue fire, telling me how much he wanted me. My pulse sped up as heat washed over my skin.
I wanted him too.
It just wasn’t that easy.
“I don’t know if we can go back to the way things were, Nick.” My voice was quiet, and as I spoke I felt the pain ripping through my chest all over again. It made me angry.
I’d been starting to get over him, to forget it all. Now the scab was off the wound and I was bleeding out onto the floor.
Silence met my words, silence so dense I could have eaten it with a spoon. I forced myself to lift my stare from my tightly clenched fingers.
The lean planes of Nick’s face were taut with tension and unhappiness, which in turn made me feel awful. I wanted, more than anything I wanted to give him the answer he was looking for. The answer I was looking for.
I just couldn’t.
“Why not?” He asked finally. I watched as he curled his hand into a fist and then, with a lot of apparent effort, he flattened his palm against the table.
Closing my eyes, I fought against the memories. The night that everything had changed was permanently branded on my memory, but I had to push it down so that I didn’t drown in the want and need.
Nick and I hadn’t broken up because we had both kissed Jax. We’d broken up because, after opening himself up to it for the briefest of moments, Nick refused to acknowledge what I had to think was a large part of his heart—his feelings for Jax. Since he wouldn’t, I was certain that it would come back to bite us if we forged on with our relationship.
I could have gotten over Jax if Nick had given me all of himself. Instead, my thoughts and my feelings had been divided between the two men for months now, and now I wasn’t sure I could so easily shove Jax aside.
And of course there were the logistics. Nick and I were a serious couple. Nick and Jax were childhood friends. Jax was in love with Nick, and Nick was attracted to Jax but had a hard time admitting it.
Jax wasn’t interested in girls, and yet he had feelings for me.
And me? I loved them both.
We were a royal clusterfuck.
Just thinking about Jax made nerves dance in my belly, and I had to press my thighs together to stop the flood of heat. I still wanted Jax, wanted him bad.
But when Nick reached out across the table and took my hand, I caught a whiff of his cologne, and it made my knees weak.
God, I was such a slut.
Before I could say anything else my cell phone buzzed, the alert that told me I had an incoming text. I had placed the phone in the middle of the table and I reached for it to silence it, though I was actually grateful for the distraction.
A richly colored photo appeared on my smart phone screen, an intricate play of light and shadow. To the casual observer, it would just look like a screen full of skin toned shapes.
I knew it wasn’t. It was a photograph, an erotic one, of a man with hands bound in hemp rope. The original hung in Jax’s apartment, and I’d been so entranced by it that I’d snapped a quick photo.
Knowing that Jax was the man behind the artwork had made it irresistible to me. No matter how much I tried to hide the kinky urge, knowing that the subject’s photo had been one of Jax’s lovers made me hot all over.
But Nick didn’t know that Jax and I had kept in contact. And I couldn’t stop the guilt from spreading over my face as Nick glanced quickly at the screen display, then did a double take as he took in the photo that I had assigned to Jax’s information in my contacts.
I could almost hear the thunder as he realized where that photo had come from, and who had likely just texted me.
“You’ve been talking to Jax?” Utter betrayal. That was the only way to describe what I saw in Nick’s eyes as I palmed my phone and shoved it into the pocket of my jeans. The denim was snug, and so I was red faced by the time I’d gotten it squared away.
The flush probably only added to my look of guilt, and it was far too late anyway. The damage had been done.
“What the fuck, Kayla?”
Accusation dripped from Nick’s words. I fought back the guilt that threatened to conquer the righteous anger that I felt like I deserved.
“You’re the one who freaked out.” I tried to keep my voice calm, but my words sounded more like a hiss, six months’ worth of hurt and upset slowly starting to escape, a puncture in a balloon. “You’re the one who wanted to pretend that nothing had happened.”
“Because it was a bad idea!” Nick’s voice rose almost to a shout, and from the corners of my eyes I saw the diners at the next table turn to stare.
“It was your bad idea!”
Nick had half risen from his chair; now he sat back down, a mean glint in his eyes.
“We haven’t spoken in six months, and we were thinking about getting married. But some guy you kissed once, you’ve kept in contact with him?”
I didn’t like feeling the need to respond to his accusations, but the words poured out of my mouth regardless.
“We text. We talk on Facebook. Not that it’s any of your business.” My voice sounded stiff even to my own ears. “And he’s not just some guy. He’s your friend. My friend. And for all I knew, the two of you have been kissing every night! How would I know?”
The look on Nick’s face would have been comical, if it hadn’t made me so sad.
“Is that why you won’t try again, you and me?” The expression on his face transformed him, turned him into someone I didn’t know. “You’re with him?”
It hurt my heart, the emphasis that Nick put on the word him.
“You two used to be best friends.” I said sadly. I saw what Nick tried so hard to bury.
He wasn’t homophobic, not by a long shot. One of his good friends here at school was gay, and of course, he and Jax had once been so close.
But Nick had no idea what to do with his feelings for Jax. They didn’t fit into a neat little box, and Nick was fond of tidiness.
“Well?” He persisted. I stared at him, this man who still owned such a big piece of my heart, bile rising in my throat.
If nothing else, I regretted that kiss because it had turned my loving, kind boyfriend into the angry, emotional wreck that currently sat in front of me.
“No, we are not together.” I wished my words were a paddle, the better to hit him in the head with. “And again, what business is it of yours? You’re the one who freaked out afterwards. You’re the one who pushed me until I had no choice but to move out.”
My rage thawed some of Nick’s own, but rather than calming down, a trickle of sadness worked its way into the lines around his lips.
“Kayla, he’s gay.” Nick’s lips pressed so tightly together that I could barely see them anymore. “This won’t end well for you.”
I was stupefied. Of all the things that had occurred between the three of us, this was what Nick chose to focus on? Yes, Jax was gay, but clearly that line had blurred when he’d met me, and Nick knew that.
He was trying to make me doubt myself, and I wouldn’t stand for that. Nick knew enough about my family to know how much I did that myself on a daily basis.
It was a low blow.
“I won’t let you cast me as the villain here, Nick.” Sick with the anger, I rose and worked my hand into the pocket of my tight jeans. “And there’s nothing to end, except apparently all hopes of you and I.”
I pulled one of the crisp twenties I’d gotten from the bank machine out of my pocket and tossed it onto the table.
“Sorry I can’t contribute more to dinner.” I knew that, even angry, Nick wouldn’t expect me to chip in, and it hurt to part with even a penny of my remaining cash, but it was important to me to make a point.
I didn’t need him. I didn’t need any man, so if I wanted to be with one, it would be on my own damn terms.
“Kayla!” Nick shouted as I turned away from the table.
I didn’t look back, though frustration had my lower lip quivering with suppressed tears.
He didn’t follow.