Fight or Flight

Caleb bestowed on me a slow, wicked smile. “Did anyone ever tell you that you are a very good friend tae have, Miss Breevort?”

I smiled back. “When I’m done with you this morning, Mr. Scott, I’ll be the best friend you ever had.”

His answering chuckle was swallowed in my kiss, and the sadness of our past histories abated for a while.

Seventeen

I’m a little surprised you agreed to meet with me, but glad,” Nick said as soon as Paul led him into my office.

I nodded my thanks at Paul, who quickly dismissed himself. Then I got up out of my chair, gesturing for Nick to take the seat in front of my desk.

He did so, glancing around the office, curiously taking it all in. I hadn’t noticed it on Saturday night, but Nick had lost weight. Enough so that his cheekbones were sharp on his once boyish face. When we were growing up, all the girls wanted to date Nick because he had irresistible pretty-boy good looks with an edge. Dark hair, soulful dark eyes, long lashes, and olive skin. Tall—almost as tall as Caleb—Nick had a lanky, wiry build. When he’d walk toward me in the school corridor with that swagger of his, I’d thought with the shallowness of youth how lucky I was that Nick had chosen me to love.

But he hadn’t loved me.

He’d been in lust with me.

When I looked back on it, he never complimented me on anything but my face and body. He never told me I was smart or funny or kind. He’d always just whispered in my ear about how beautiful and sexy I was, how he loved my eyes, my smile, my legs, my ass.

You get the picture.

I’d just been so eager for the affection that I’d never noticed his preoccupation with my appearance.

It was another reminder that what me and Caleb had was just sex too. Caleb only ever complimented me on my body and how I made his body feel. But he was honest about it, which made him a hundred times more trustworthy than this shadow of my ex-fiancé sitting in front of me.

Gaunt, exhausted-looking, he turned back to me and opened his mouth to speak.

I put up a hand to stop him as I leaned against my desk looking down at him. “I agreed to meet with you, Nick, for one reason only. You mentioned on Saturday you wanted to apologize and I need to tell you that I don’t want your apology. When you first cheated on me with Gem, I temporarily allowed myself to believe all the terrible things you said about me being vain and generally not a very nice person. But I soon realized that you said all that because you needed to believe I was the bad guy so you didn’t have to feel guilty. And somehow you managed to convince everyone back in Arcadia of the same with that good-boy charm of yours. But I don’t believe it. I know the truth because I was there.” I wanted to rage against him about how I hated him for stealing Gem from me, but the genuine grief in his eyes for his wife stopped me.

“You cheated instead of coming to me and telling me the truth. Would it have hurt? Yes. But at least the two of you wouldn’t have betrayed me. And if you would just have apologized, accepted the fact that you were in the wrong, then I could have forgiven you. I’d have had the chance to forgive Gem. Because the truth is, Nick, I couldn’t give a shit about you now. All I care about is that I lost my friend and the chance to forgive her.” Tears brightened my eyes as he stared up at me, watching as his expression darkened. “As for you, I don’t feel anything. You’re just a blip on my radar. So go home and take an apology I don’t need or want with you.”

He got to his feet, staring at me incredulously. “I lost my wife and you can’t give me this? And you say you’re not self-absorbed.”

Indignation suffused me, pushing me to be ugly, but somehow I controlled the feeling. “Go home, Nick.”

“No.” He stepped into my space, his legs touching my knees, and I felt a moment of panic at his nearness. “You need to hear what I have to say. You have to give me that, Ava. I’ve lost too much already. I need to say this to someone who knew Gem better than anyone.”

Sympathy I didn’t want to feel for the bastard cut through my anger. “Then speak and leave.”

“You’re right.” He raised a shaky hand to push back his overlong hair. “I was a coward. Gem and I, we talked about it a lot once you were gone. We argued about it. I was the one who convinced her not to tell you right away, delaying it by saying I needed time. But she started to work out the truth the longer we were together.” Nick’s dark eyes blazed at me. “The truth was, I didn’t know how to choose between you. I loved you both.”

“I don’t believe that,” I snapped. “You don’t treat someone the way you treated me when you love them.”

“You always saw everything in black and white, Ava.” He shook his head sadly. “People are more complicated than that. You … you always felt like you were seconds from slipping through my hands. Like something better would come along and you’d be gone. I never really had you. I had your body and Gem had your trust.”

“You both had my trust.”

“But you let her in in a way you didn’t let me in.”

I couldn’t argue with that, because it was true, but she was my friend and he was my lover. I let them both in, in different ways. “Maybe deep down I always knew you would betray me and that’s why.”

“No. You just didn’t love me the way I loved you.”

Bullshit! I had been so in love with him, he blinded me. “Oh, so this is your new way of justifying your actions?” I asked calmly, crossing my arms over my chest like I was merely amused by the turn in the conversation rather than furious.

“Gem loved me, Ava. She loved me in a way I knew you could never love me. I just couldn’t admit it out loud so I twisted everything in my head and I said some awful things to you. When Gem accused me of still being in love with you, I told her all the things I said when you and I broke up, and she was so mad at me. She didn’t know I’d put the blame on you. We didn’t talk for weeks. She thought about getting in touch with you a lot,” he told me softly. “She just never felt brave enough to do it.”

“Nick.” I sighed, feeling a tightness in my chest, an uneasiness in my belly. “What is the purpose of this?”

His expression turned fierce. “I don’t have a second chance to tell Gem I was sorry for all the stupid things I did. But I can tell you. I never stopped loving you, Ava. I loved you too much. When we were kids, I felt like you needed me. I felt like your protector and it made me feel good. But as we got older, you stopped needing me. You became untouchable. Maybe that’s what I loved.” He laughed bitterly. “Maybe it was the mystery of you that kept me dangling on your hook for so long. I lost my shit at you at the funeral because I was grieving for Gem while at the same time feeling things I shouldn’t be feeling when I saw you.”

That uneasiness turned to a chill, and I slid out from where he was leaning into me to round my desk, wondering if I was crazy to even think that my grieving ex-fiancé might be coming on to me. “Nick,” I warned.

“I cheated on her,” he blurted out.

I froze, staring at him in outrage.

“I was always looking for something when you left. I did love my wife, Ava. She made mistakes with you but we both know that she was so good and kind and loving. She loved me like no one has ever loved me and it made her betray you. She never got over it.”

“So you rewarded her by cheating on her?”

“I loved her …” He shrugged, his features strained with guilt. “But there was no excitement like there was with you.”

“Wore off, huh, once you two became legit and weren’t sneaking off behind my back?”

He blanched and I felt a wave of revulsion toward him because I’d hit the nail on the head. “It just wasn’t the same. Even you have to admit, Ava, sex between you and me is off the charts.”

Was this seriously happening right now? Was my ex-fiancé actually standing in my office talking about missing sex with me weeks after his wife had died in childbirth? I gaped at him, wondering how on earth I had been so blind to what a weak, selfish man he was for so long. I wanted to hurt him and not because he hurt me but because he hurt Gem. He stole us from each other and he didn’t even love her the way she deserved to be loved.