Beck being Andrew Beckham, Nick’s personal lawyer and good friend. I’ve met the handsome African-American a few times, enough to have recognized there is probably no one Nick trusts more as a colleague or a confidant.
“There may have been some conversations on the golf course between the AG and the Governor about the need for fresh eyes on the parole board,” Nick says. “Fortunately, it didn’t take too much convincing that your mother is no danger to society any more now than she was ten years ago.”
I know I’m gaping, but I can hardly help it. Even though Nick once told me he’d be willing to leverage his connections and assets to assist my mom with her legal problems, I can’t believe he actually followed through with it. Not only because I forbade him to interfere in my life or hers in order to protect the awful secret that she and I shared.
I hadn’t wanted Nick to know what lies I’d buried in my past. I wanted the abuse I’d suffered to stay behind me, along with the truth about my stepfather’s murder and the fact that my mother had sacrificed so much—including her freedom—in order to protect me.
But Nick did find out. And when those secrets threatened to explode in my face with the reappearance of my stepbrother, Rodney Coyle, and his threats against my mother and me, Nick was the one who stopped him. He saved my life, I have no doubt.
And now I realize he’s given me something even more precious: my mother’s freedom.
I shake my head, virtually at a loss for words. “Thank you, Nick. This is a gift I can never repay.”
“I’ll never ask you to. Besides, money has its advantages. Why not make full use of them?”
“Is that how you justified what you did to me?” The question blurts off my tongue before I can stop it. I want to be grateful for the risks and the expense he’s no doubt taken to help my mom, but the wounded part of me is still bitter and confused about the way Nick manipulated my life when we first met. Now that I’ve said it, there’s little point in talking about anything else until we get past it.
If we can get past it.
He slows beside me on the sidewalk. I pause, too, feeling as if we’ve reached the end of our path here today. His face is so hard to read, sober and contemplative, yet filled with a torment that takes me aback.
“I owe you an apology, Avery. For everything.”
I shake my head. “No, Nick. You owe me answers. I don’t need an apology unless you can make me understand how you could do what you did. I need you to make me understand why.”
People jostle past us on both sides, more than one turning an askance look on us as my voice rises with the hurt and confusion I’ve been holding inside for the better part of a year. I don’t care if I’m creating a bit of a scene right here in the middle of Fifth Avenue. All of the emotion that’s been trapped inside me percolates to the surface as if the wounds are still fresh.
In so many ways, they are.
So is the depth of what I still feel for this man.
“Dammit, Nick, I need to know what the hell I meant to you—if I meant a damn thing at all.”
He doesn’t say anything for what seems like an eternity. His handsome face is grim, uncertain. It’s only in that moment that I realize where we are. Where we’ve stopped.
I glance at the large window behind him, then up at the sign above the door.
“Dominion,” I murmur.
Nick’s gallery. The one where some of my art used to hang before he and I ever met. Before we knew anything about each other.
Or so I believed.
“You brought me here deliberately?”
“If you want answers, Avery, then we need to start at the beginning.”
Chapter 8
I wait, confused and apprehensive, as Nick unlocks the gallery door and gestures for me to step inside with him. Dominion is closed today. The invitingly contemporary space is dim and unlit except for the sunlight coming in from the street, the only sounds the continuous drone of rushing traffic punctuated by the occasional blast of vehicle horn or wail of a siren.
I’ve been to Nick’s gallery more than a few times, yet as I cross the threshold with him now I feel as though I’m stepping into foreign territory. I can’t imagine what he means by bringing me here, and something inside me is afraid to guess. The grave look he gives me as we enter does nothing to reassure me.
“What’s going on, Nick?”
He doesn’t answer. The anxiety I felt at the door deepens into dread as he leads me soberly through the main exhibit room of the gallery, past the dozens of remarkable paintings displayed on the walls. My gaze catches on one particular piece—a haunting, startlingly intimate work titled Beauty. It seems like forever since I’ve seen this portrait of Kathryn Tremont. Not since the beginning of my time with Nick.
A memory of that night flashes through my mind. He and I standing in front of Beauty, speaking to each other for the first time. That piercing cerulean gaze enthralling me, seeing through to the most naked corners of my soul while in a single conversation he wickedly, expertly, peeled away my secrets, my desires, and my self-control.