forty-four
“I’m not sick.”
I try to hold in my laugh and fail. “Nick, you’ve been blowing your nose all morning. And it looks like you’re trying to compete in a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer competition.”
“Am not.” He harrumphs, running a hand over his shirtless chest.
“You need to take some cold medicine and get back in bed.” I try to steer him out of the kitchen, but he won’t budge.
“I am perfectly fine. It’s probably allergies.”
I narrowly escape the danger zone of his sudden sneeze attack.
“Okay, that’s it. I’m staying home today. With my luck, you’ll hit a counter while sneezing and I’ll have to explain to detectives that my stubborn husband accidentally killed himself and that I swear I didn’t do it for the life insurance policy.”
He’s shaking his head while blowing his nose. “Absolutely not. You have that call with Julian Vega and his agent. You’ve been preparing all week.” He tosses the napkin into the trash, then straightens, suddenly seeming more alert. “You wouldn’t callout of work if you were on death’s doorstep, so why would you call out for me?” His brows raise subtly when I don’t have an immediate answer.
This is how it’s been for the past few weeks.
Nick doesn’t outright say it, but I know what he’s aiming for.
He wants me to admit my real feelings about him, about us.
And while we’ve continued to fool around every night in bed, he’s kept true to his promise of not going any further until I’m ready to treat this marriage like the real deal. Not the arrangement we signed up for, but with boundaries so blurred, it’s laughable to believe they were ever even there.
He’s right, though. I wouldn’t take a sick day for myself, even on the worst days of my PCOS struggles, yet I was ready to stay home and tend to him because he has a simple cold.
Because I know him. I remember him slipping me the details of how much of a baby he turns into when he gets a “man cold.”
And I remember Daisy telling us a few months back, before Mateo and Isabella officially got together, that their mother died when Nick was eleven.
His late Dominican mother. The other fact that Daisy accidentally let slip on the night she had a little too much to drink. The night we now refer to as “strikeout,” since Mateo came barreling into that bar to whisk Isa away and finally have his wicked way with her.
Nick has slowly slipped in details about his mom here and there, but I know that it’s not an easy subject for him to broach, so I haven’t pushed for more.
But now, as he stares down at me, his gaze a swirl of suspicion and hope, I wonder if I could actually do it.
Let myself be truly loved by this man. Put my heart in his hands and hope that he doesn’t decide to toss it aside the second he gets his hands on his coveted asset, the same one he’s yet to fill me in on.
Because even though I trust Nick’s words and actions, I can’t shake the knowledge of how our marriage came to be. The reason he kept his role as owner of the Monarchs this long, when he had no prior interest in baseball.
Some weird tug-of-war between him and his estranged father for this unnamedthingthat is the reason for the ring on my finger.
How am I supposed to let myself fall when I don’t know what’s going to happen once the year is up and Nick has satisfied the terms of the will?
I’m no stranger to being loved by someone, only to have to question if they truly mean it. As a child, my mother would tell me she loved me but could barely make it out of bed most days to walk me to school.
There were times I believed that her depression was stronger than her love for me. Because, in my adolescent mind, I thought that maybe people loved you because they had to, not because they actually felt it.
The same distorted thoughts swirl in my mind now, making me worry that Nick thinks he’s developed feelings for me because I’m his wife and his brain has convinced him he has to.
But my heart fights against that idea. I know the feelings I have, the ones I’ve worked tirelessly to keep below the surface. And if Nick feels a fraction of that for me, then maybe this thing between us can be real.
I have more questions than answers.
So I turn and leave Nick without another word and do what any responsible adult would do in this position.
I call my mom.
