The first thing he always did in a new city, was get ice cream.
Because Nick was twelve.
While he wasn’t at the first location I tried, or the second, the gods threw me down a bit of luck—he was at the third. I paid the cabbie, got out, and started walking slowly towards him across the cobblestone streets.
I couldn’t help but smile as I approached. You had never seen a sadder sight, and yet, there was an air of whimsy about it that made the whole thing utterly adorable.
Nick was sitting by himself at an outdoor table. A look of childlike devastation on his face. A melting ice cream cone in his hand. Every now and then, he would glance down and consider eating it, before resting his cheek on his hand again with a small sigh.
I pursed my lips and shook my head. All the money and power in the world, but if only all those people could see him now. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.
He saw me coming and made a compulsive movement, like he was going to stand. Either to bolt back to the airport with his magical eight ball of destinations, or simply to greet me—I’d never know. Instead, all he did was kick out the chair across from him, and gesture for me to sit.
I did so with a fond smile, gazing at him sympathetically.
“So Nick...what are we into now?”
He stared down at the soggy cone, giving away nothing.
“Rocky Road.”
I nodded and sat there quietly, keeping my face as serious as his. He wasn’t the kind of man who would give in to something just because he was pressed. I had to let him get there on his own time.
And that time didn’t seem to be any time soon.
For the next hour or so, we simply sat there in comfortable silence. Eating our ice cream, drinking our espresso. Watching the sights and sounds of Barcelona as they hurried by.
It wasn’t until the nightclub across the street opened with a distant cheer, that he cast me a sideways glance. Fixing me in those sky-blue eyes.
“I went out for a run this morning. Got back to see Ella and Bradley fucking in my apartment. Things...escalated from there.”
I nodded quietly. My expression never changed.
From the bits of information I was able to gather between the screaming threats and shards of flying porcelain, I had assumed as much. The thing I didn’t quite understand, was why it had gotten so strong of a reaction. Nick didn’t care about Ella. I didn’t understand the ‘sad.’
“And...that’s when she threw your coffee stuff out the window?” I asked hesitantly. One wrong word, and I’d be chasing him off to Guam. I had to tread carefully. “She was lucky they were doing construction down below—the whole sidewalk was roped off.”
Nick shook his head, staring unblinkingly at the nightclub.
“Ella didn’t throw that stuff. That was me.” He picked up his espresso and took a sip. “I knew about the construction,” he added as an afterthought.
I didn’t give a damn about that. I couldn’t get past the coffee.
Nick’s baby. His one true love. He was the one who threw it out the window?
But before I could even ask, he added one final thing.
“They were in Sarah’s room.”
All at once, the whole thing made sense. The hole in the window. The screaming. The flight to Spain—all of it.
You see, there was one room in Nick’s house that was never opened. One room that had remained shut for almost five years now, when its occupant was wheeled out forever, and taken to the hospital to die.
Sarah Terrell. Nick’s mother.
“Oh, Nick...” I hung my head, setting down my cup with a sudden chill. “I’m so sorry.”
To come home and see Ella Campbell and the bellboy fucking on your dead mother’s bed? To be honest, I was surprised screaming and Spain were the worst of it.