“Why? What do you mean?”
“How much do you know about the accident?”
Nico rubbed his hands over his face before looking over at me. “I didn’t ask for any details when Honovi told me she died in a car accident. I was already overwhelmed with Adriana and Pippa and everything.”
I took one of his hands and kissed the back of it before holding it between both of mine.
“She was driving under the influence, Nico.”
His entire face fell, and my heart went out to him. I couldn’t imagine being in his position hearing all this shit.
“Are they sure she was drunk?”
“They’d both been drinking. People remember them leaving the party after drinking, and everyone assumes maybe she’d had less to drink than he had. That’s probably why she drove.”
“Oh god. Why was she even drinking? She didn’t drink. Not after my father…” He trailed off and seemed to stop to think it through. He took a deep breath. “My father drank himself to death. She hated the stuff. Did she start drinking after I left?”
I tried to catch Nico’s gaze, but he seemed to look anywhere but at me.
“Don’t do whatever it is you’re doing right now, Nico,” I ordered.
His jaw tightened, but he still looked away.
I moved swiftly to straddle his lap, grabbing hold of his face in both my hands. “Don’t you dare take on the responsibility of her choices. Don’t you dare.”
Everything that had ever broken him in his entire life was in his eyes, and I wanted to scream from the intensity of it.
“She started drinking when I left?” he asked in a small voice.
“Nico,” I breathed. “No. It wasn’t your fault. Your mother chose to drink at a party. That’s all it was.”
“But you think Adriana’s abandonment was my fault, so why won’t you let me think my mom’s death was my fault? Curt clearly does.”
“Why did you leave?” I asked softly, stroking his cheeks. “Why did you leave Adriana and your mom?”
The tears in his eyes overflowed, and had I thought my heart felt broken before, I was so very wrong.
Chapter 21
Nico
West Wilde was a mirage—a phantom empath hovering nearby during my epic journey home. I’d decided he was too good to be true. But god, how I wanted him to be.
“I don’t think you want to know,” I told him. “It’s so fucking pathetic, West.”
His thumbs brushed away the tears that had leaked out, and I couldn’t help but lean in and lay my face against the softness of his T-shirt.
“I want to know. Of course I want to know. And even if it is pathetic, I promise to remember it was a teenage kid making that decision,” he assured me.
I let out a shaky breath. “The movie theater thing happened first. Curt’s comment about the sheriff not marrying my mom as long as I was in the picture. Then on the boat that day, Adriana made a comment about wanting them to get married so she’d have a chance at being able to go to college. It all started coming together to make me feel like I was the one thing preventing my mom and my sister from getting what they’d always wanted.”
“But Nico, can’t you see—”
I reached up to put fingers over his lips. “I know that now. Remember when you said you’d try to remember it was a stupid kid making the decision?”
“I don’t think those were my exact words,” West teased against my fingers with a soft smile.
“Well, two more things happened after that. The first was just a random fluke. Mom sent me to a neighbor’s house to pick up some hydrangea clippings the woman had saved for her. When I approached the screen door, I overheard the neighbor talking to another woman at their kitchen table. The conversation was about my mom and the sheriff. One woman told the other that the sheriff sure was sweet on my mom. But then they both agreed that he’d never pop the question and take it to the next level as long as I was in the picture.”
West stiffened and looked down at me. “You’re kidding? It wasn’t just Curt spouting that bullshit?”
I shrugged. “No. I mean, I know I wasn’t the best kid. I didn’t make good grades, I hung out with all the weirdos who always seemed to attract trouble, and everyone knew I was queer at that point. It wasn’t like I hid it.”
“Even if those things were true, Nico, that’s no reason not to accept you as part of your mom’s family. God, how awful.”
It warmed something inside me to hear him say those things. To finally, after all these years, have someone besides Adriana know what happened and say it wasn’t okay.
“Yeah, well, I made the mistake of telling Adriana, and she went fucking ape shit.” I couldn’t help but smirk at the memory of unleashing the hellcat.