He puts his hands on either side of my hips, bracing himself against the laminate as he leans in, his expression hardened with suppressed anger. “Is that how you remember me? How you think of me now? A cold-hearted bastard?”
“You’ve—changed. I don’t know you anymore.” Hating myself for stuttering under his shadow, I inject steel into my voice to continue. “But what does a small-town nurse like me know? California keeps you busy.”
Deep frown lines replace his dimples, a contradiction if I’ve ever seen one. Only nice people should have dimples. Ones that smile and use them all the time.
He doesn’t.
Stone says, “Just as you’ve asked me not to judge your choices in life, I’d ask you to extend the same courtesy to me.”
He’s right, but I refuse to acknowledge his point. “She tells me you talk to her every week. Even if she didn’t outright admit it, didn’t you hear it in her voice? Couldn’t you catch her in any lies?”
Stone bares his teeth at the same time he blinks hard. “I fuckingwishI did.”
I search his face, taking the time to unearth the truth, since I don’t plan on being this close to him again.
It hurts too damned much.
Stone doesn’t break our stare.Nor does he blink again.
“I thought I’d given her the life she wanted,” he says. “I bought her this house, hired a designer to come out and decorate it with her, made sure she didn’t have to work another day in her life even though she refused to stop teaching. When we talked a few months ago and she told me she was leaving her job, I thought she was retiring. I was happy for her. I believed the lies—the ones meant to protect me, to keep me away, to prevent me from seeing her slow decay.”
He slams his palms against the countertop on either side of me. I wince, but keep his gaze.
“I believed my mother when she told me she was doing all right. And believe me, Noa, I’ll be carrying that guilt with me for the rest of mine.”
My lips part. I resist the urge to run a finger down the sharp angle of his jawline. “You’re here now. You’re not too late.”
He angles his head, his expression reforming into his new name. “Is that why you think I’m here?”
I have the sudden, confusing urge to rub the tension from between his brows. “You must’ve sensed something to have come home after all these years. That’s not for nothing.”
Stone’s hardened expression doesn’t change until it splits into a too-wide, maniacal smile. Then he laughs. Long and hard, rumbling and harsh, like it hurts him.
“Stone?” I ask.
He pushes off the counter, freeing me. Stone shakes his head. “Your instincts were right about me. I’m a cold-hearted bastard. I didn’t come back for her.”
My brows tighten as I watch him finish his whiskey in one gulp, then pluck his mother’s mug out of my hand.
“Have a good night, Noa. You’re dismissed,” he says, then turns into the hall.
CHAPTER SIX
Stone
When I’m standing in the living room, forced to watch Noa walk to the front door, I realize my genuine mistake in returning to Falcon Haven.
Her.
Her, and how badly I want her again.
I could’ve been honest about why I was here and the temper that had gotten the best of me—a temper she is well familiar with, but I’d laughed and made her believe I don’t care. My mother’s terminal cancer almost,almost, brought tears to my eyes. It’s the first time I’ve felt wetness on my face in a decade and my chest aches like I’ve been stabbed.
My mother’s dying. Ma thinks I’ve returned because my vast resources discovered the truth she was trying to hide from me.Noa believed the same.
The last thing I want to do is confess that I’ve been too busy, made too much money, for me to keep track of the goings-on in Falcon Haven.
I picture the way Noa braced herself as I stepped into my mother’s home, like her little body wanted to tackle me for my absence and was doing me a favor by holding herself back.
