The Offer

The old me would have challenged that but having a pissing contest with my cousin doesn’t seem right.

Not right now, anyway.

I’ll come back to this one later.

“And,” he adds, “with all the pussy comes all the problems. Go sort your shit out soon or I’m going to start using your head as a rugby ball. I need the bloody practice.”

I frown at him. “So uncouth.” But I don’t push it. We may be the same height, and I may almost have the same amount of muscle as he has, but he doesn’t seem to give a rat’s arse about messing up his face, whereas I do.

The only thing holding me back from what he suggests, from what Taylor suggested, is the same old story. My goddamn pride. My goddamn fear.

What if I go after Nicola and she turns away? She may not want to see me again. She may never trust me again. Even though right now I have nothing left but this dull, hollow ache inside, like some vital part of me has been removed. I also have the unknown on my side and that dangerous side of hope. In the here and now, I can bitch and moan like a little girl as long as I never do anything about it. I can just imagine that maybe one day, in due time, it will all work out.

But I don’t want to listen to my motto. Not this time. I’m not leaving this to sort itself out in due time, to take that chance that things will work out.

Nicola is worth so much more than chance.

I need to have no regrets.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Nicola

You know that part of the movie when the hero gets dragged through the mud, or kicked off the team, or captured by the crime syndicate, and all hope is lost and yet you know, no matter what, somehow it’s all going to come together and the hero is going to get his big fat happy ending. And while he’s being tortured or the town turns against him or his wife walks out on him, you feel for him but you’re kind of spurred forward by the knowledge that everything will work out in the end. It just has to.

Well, I wish I could say the same could be applied to my own life. Because I feel like I’ve fallen off a cliff, been kicked through the mud and been tortured and there’s no sense of hope or a happy ending in sight.

Of course, all these blows I’m taking, well, they’re right in my heart. But that’s where they count, that’s where they hurt the most. And it’s kind of ridiculous, here I am, nearly two months later and I’m still this raw, gaping open wound when it comes to Bram. The rest of my life has some ups and downs. I live with Kayla still while I’m constantly searching for an affordable apartment. It’s actually not so bad, and while I know Kayla really appreciates the rent I pay, I know I’m also cramping her style. I mean, Kayla likes to have her fun and more and more she stays out at whatever dude she’s seeing’s place.

So I know that having me and a five-year-old girl in her place isn’t exactly ideal but she knows I’m working on it. My job at the Lion has been going well enough. I mean, it’s a lot of work that I’m usually not interested in, and James can be a real bitch of a boss sometimes. But it gives me money and my savings account has grown and grown. Even if everything inside me still feels like it’s constantly collapsing and rebuilding itself, I’ve got some form of security for the both of us.

I’ve also been concentrating on my designing more and more. I’ll spend hours at the sewing machine in the mornings and at night. Being creative is great fuel and I have to admit, it feels good to be pleasantly distracted. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep my mind from thinking about Bram.

Which it does. All the time. And I’m ashamed to admit it, even to myself. I don’t talk about him with Steph or Kayla and when I do see Linden, I notice he’s careful not to bring him up either. There have been a few close calls though. Once I heard he was coming to the Lion with Linden, so I went and hid in James’s office for an hour, pretending to work on something. All very mature, I know, but at the moment I care so much about keeping my heart alive that I’m shielding it from everything in sight.

I just want to stop feeling this deep, cold hole inside me when I wake up and realize I’m alone. I want to stop imagining what it’s like to have Bram hold me in his arms when I’m sad or run his hands over my body when I’m not. I want to pretend I never had that co

And so, I trudge onward, that hero in the story, even though I haven’t done anything brave. I’m just another broken-souled person on this planet, waiting for time to pass. I don’t feel that undercurrent of “everything will be all right.” I don’t see how I can possibly have a Happily Ever After, that would mean things have to go back to the way they were and how can I ever forget the pain that follows me everywhere?

“Cheer up, buttercup,” Steph says to me. I can’t help but wince at the word. It reminds me too much of that damn yellow couch.

We’re sitting in a booth at the Lion. Ava is across from us and coloring away in a coloring book. Lisa called in sick and I had to work, so I had no choice but to bring Ava in. Luckily James is pretty good about that and she usually just hangs out in the back office with me. Steph is on her lunch break and wanted to have a drink. Lately I’d been leaning on my friend a lot, so I figured I owed her one.

“Sorry,” I apologize to her.

“Don’t be sorry,” she says, peeling the label off her beer. “I just hate seeing you look so sad. You know, now. And all the time.”

“I’m fine,” I tell her, and watch as she takes the label all the way off then starts picking at the sticky bits that remain. “You and Linden having problems?”

She stops and looks up at me. “Huh?”

“Sexual frustration,” I say, nodding at the bottle. “It’s why you’re peeling off the label.”

“Oh,” she says. She pushes her beer away, looking at it in surprise. “No. No, Linden is Linden, you know? If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s – ”

I raise my hand. “Please. Just stop.”

She shrugs and then picks up her coaster, starts twirling it around. And around. And around.

“Are you okay?” I ask her, noticing her foot is tapping on the floor as well.

“Hmmm?” She looks at me. She says it rather absently but it’s a little too absently.

“You’re acting like a nervous wreck.”

“Mommy,” Ava says in a lilting voice. “I drew you a bugosaur.”

She proudly displays her coloring book. She hasn’t even colored in the pictures that she’s supposed to, she’s just drawn green and brown blobs in all the white space. Blobs with legs. Bugosaurs, I guess.

“Thank you, sweetie,” I tell her and she goes back at it, tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth.

“Nicola,” Steph says uneasily.

I give her a look. “What is it?”

“Are you still in love with Bram?”

Where the hell did that come from? I can feel my face go white as I wonder if I was speaking all my thoughts out loud earlier. “What?” I can’t help but gasp. I look over at Ava and she’s watching me, frowning and pouting a little at the mere mention of his name.

“Do you love him?”

I blink at her. My heart thuds against my ribs, as if to remind me that it’s still beating.

“Oh, Steph,” I start to say, searching for words, for a way to deflect. “It’s not that simple.”

“It is that simple,” she says, her eyes boring holes into mine. “It’s the simplest of questions. You either love him. Or you don’t. There are no maybes in love.”

Whoa. Steph is being deep. I don’t even know what that means. I don’t want to get deep. I don’t want to dive down there and pull out what remains of him from far inside me.

“I…”

She’s staring at me. Ava is staring at me.