“Honey,” my mom says, “I’m going to check on your dad. Nice to meet you, Nick.”
Traitor.
“Nice to meet you too, ma’am.” His deep voice is so soothing, I almost forget all the terrible things that happened between us.
Wait. No. I won’t just flop like a wobbly deck of cards.
I push him away and adjust my glasses. “You can’t just sweep back into my life and pretend everything is okay.”
He holds his hands up. “I’m not here to pretend. I promise. I came here to get all of our baggage on the table and see if we could work things out.” His giant palms cradle my face, and he gently dries my tears with his thumbs. “I said some horrible things to you that day at the hospital, words I’ll always regret. I’m so sorry. You’ve been nothing but supportive and wonderful, and you didn’t deserve my suspicion. Clearly I have issues I need to work through.”
I lower my face and rest my forehead against his chest. I’m almost too tired to stand. “You really hurt me, Nick.”
His arms tighten around me. “I’m so sorry, buttercup. I handled everything wrong, but I’ll do anything to prove to you how much I love you.”
I stop breathing, and my head pops up. The honesty in his expression is so open and bare. I want to believe him, but I’m afraid to believe in us anymore. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“I’m not lying. I love you so much, it hurts. Not having you at home is killing me. I left you, like, fifty-two messages. I finally stopped because I didn’t want you to think I was stalking you.”
Pushing out of his arms, I take a step back. “How can you say you love me when you’re still in love with Gemma?”
His brows furrow. “Why would you think that?”
“You introduced me to her family as the nanny. Then I did a deep dive on her Instagram. You were always smiling so wide in those photos. You were so happy with her. You never smile like that with me.”
He swallows and nods slowly. “Can we sit down?” When I don’t immediately agree, he whispers, “Please?”
Ugh, fine.
I curl up in the corner of the couch, and he takes a seat in the middle, close but not suffocatingly so. I grab a throw pillow and hold it against my stomach. There’s something I need to ask before we wade into our baggage. “Is Hazel okay? You texted me she was, and Paige did some reconnaissance for me and said she was fine, but I want to hear it from you.”
He nods. “She’s great. She was only sore for two days. She didn’t even need a cervical collar. I think she was mostly afraid of all the attention she got from the police and paramedics and then the doctors at the hospital.”
“I feel terrible she was hurt.” I can barely say the words, I’m so choked up.
“Baby, she’s fine, I swear.” He tries to grab my hand, but I pull it back to wipe my eyes. I’m not ready for him to touch me.
“Explain what happened with Gemma’s parents, and please don’t gloss over the details. I need to know what I’m dealing with.” I tighten my arms around the pillow. “I want to be someone’s number one pick, not your plan B.”
Looking down at his lap, he shakes his head. “I’m sorry I made you feel like a fallback option. You’ve never been that for me, I swear it.” He blows out a breath. “Was I happy with Gemma? Yes, but we also fought a lot. We’d both dated around before we got together, but we were the other’s first serious relationship. At first, it was fun, but a baby changes everything. We went from being carefree, stupid kids who were focused on our goals to being parents and college students trying to take care of a small human. It was intense.”
I don’t say anything, and he continues. “Gemma was an extrovert. She loved partying and going out, and she wanted everyone to think we were the perfect couple. She would take fifty photos to find the perfect image to post. Even today, I don’t have any social media. After talking to the press and fans at a game, the last thing I want to do is interact with more people. Gemma never understood that. It drove her up a wall that I just wanted to stay home on the weekends.”
“You do like hanging out at home.”
He gives me a cautious smile. “My relationship with you is easy in ways it never was with Gemma. You get my need to focus on football and try to solidify a future for my family. You get that I genuinely enjoy being a hermit sometimes. And you understand Hazel in a way no one else does. It kills me that she asks about you every day and I don’t know what to tell her.”
At the thought of sweet Hazelnut asking about me, my throat closes up again. I have to take a few deep breaths before I can continue. “What about Gemma’s parents? Why call me the nanny? You could’ve called me a friend or roommate.”
“I’ll admit I panicked. That wasn’t how I wanted to broach the subject of me dating with Hazel, so I went with something safe. But after you left, I leveled with them. Hazel had gone to the kitchen, and I told them that you and I were seeing each other. I was afraid how Cynthia, Gemma’s mom, would react because she’s a crier. Every time we video-chat, she cries, and that’s one of the reasons I distanced myself. I couldn’t handle the guilt.”
“The guilt?”
“The guilt of having feelings for you.” He levels me with a stare. “Feelings that I’ve never experienced before. The guilt of moving on. I never thought I was capable of falling in love again, and when I did, I felt guilty as fuck that I never had that same intensity with Gemma.”
“Do you just mean the sex or actual feelings? Because if you just mean sex—”
“Is the sex amazing between you and me? Out of this fucking world. But no, I don’t just mean the sex, Abby. I swear.”
