Nothing else there 23

The drive home is quiet where the silence has a texture and both people can feel it.

Nick glances at me periodically while I keep looking out the window.

At the apartment I go straight to the kitchen to prepare the dinner. Cutting board, onion, knife. I start chopping in even strokes, focusing on the sound.

Nick puts his keys on the shelf and takes off his jacket, standing in the kitchen doorway and watching me. “Aria. You haven’t said a word since we left the office.”

I chop and the onion splits clean. “I’m making dinner.”

“You’re punishing an onion.” He steps into the kitchen. “Something happened after I went into my office. What did Camille say?”

The knife stops and I set it down and turn around and lean against the counter with my arms crossed. “She told me about the will.”

His face changes — not a lot, just the eyes, just enough.

“She told me about Benjamin’s condition. The inheritance. Whoever produces a grandson first gets the company.” I watch his face and I don’t look away. “And then she looked at my stomach, Nick. She looked at my stomach and asked if I’d put on weight.”

He opens his mouth but I don’t let him fill it.

“And you know what’s funny? The math.” I’m smiling the wrong kind of smile. “I told you about the twins, two boys. And then you propose. So convenient…”

“That’s not what happened.” His voice has dropped.

“No? Because the timeline is really clean, Nick.” My hands are gripping my own arms and my nails are digging into the sleeves. “I say twins, you say marry me. His ex-wife, pregnant with two grandsons, and you just swooped in.”

“I didn’t know about the inheritance back then.” He takes a step toward me and his hands are open at his sides. “I found out at his wedding, in that room with Benjamin. I came out and said business because I hadn’t even processed it—”

“You said business. Right.” I can hear how my voice sounds and I can’t stop it. “Business.”

“I was going to tell you.”

“When?” The word comes out sharp and he doesn’t answer fast enough. “Before or after you set up Lily’s bedroom? Before or after you put your hand on my knee at the doctor’s office?”

My voice is climbing and it’s not anger, it’s worse — it’s every wall I built coming down in the wrong direction.

“I have twin boys inside me and they are worth an entire company and you didn’t think I needed to know that?”

“I was protecting you,” he says, and his jaw is tight and his eyes are bright.

“That’s what Dominic said.”

The words come out and I see them land. He flinches, actually flinches. His whole body pulling back half an inch. But I couldn’t care less, not now.

“That’s exactly what he said every time he kept something from me. I’m protecting you. You don’t need to worry about this. You don’t need your own money, you don’t need to work, you don’t need your old friends…”

“I am nothing like my brother.”

“Then stop acting like him!” My voice breaks on the last word and I grip the counter behind me.

The kitchen goes quiet in a way that makes the buzzing of the stove light sound loud. The onion sitting half-chopped on the cutting board between us like evidence of a meal neither of us is going to finish.

“I didn’t know about the inheritance,” he says, and his voice is lower now, rougher. “But I knew something else. Something I should have told you a long time before any of this. I didn’t propose because of the company or leverage or restructuring.”

I wait, my jaw clenched so hard I can feel it in my temples. He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen and his hands are at his sides and they’re shaking, and I’ve never seen his hands shake.

“I proposed because it was you, Aria. Because it has always been you. Because I sat in Sydney for years and couldn’t be with anyone else because none of them were you.”

He takes a step closer and I don’t step back.

“I watched my brother marry you and I left the country because I couldn’t watch you smile at him.” His voice breaks and it does something to my ribs. “And I stayed gone while he took everything you were and ground it down to nothing. And I will never forgive myself for that. The inheritance means nothing. The company means nothing.”

“Then why didn’t you say that?” My voice cracks open and I can feel tears on my face and I’m not wiping them because my hands are shaking too. “Thirteen years, Nick. I was miserable and I was right there and you left—”

“Because I was terrified.” He’s close now, close enough that I can see the vein in his neck, the pulse fast under his skin. “Terrified that I wasn’t enough for you. That my brother was better for you. That he could give you everything you need.”

“You couldn’t be sure about that. Because this is what he actually gave me,” I said breathlessly, spreading my arms as if pointing at the world around me.

“I know. And I’m more than sorry about that.”

“Then why does it feel like everyone who gets close to me has an angle—”

“I don’t have an angle.” His eyes are dark and wet and completely open. “I have you.”

My back is against the counter while he’s right in front of me now. The space between us has collapsed into something the size of a breath as his hand comes up slowly. His fingers brushing my jaw, my cheekbone.

I close my eyes, unconsciously leaning into his palm and I can feel his hand trembling against my skin. “Aria, please…”

My name in his mouth sounds different than it has ever sounded in anyone’s mouth.

I open my eyes and he’s right there. His thumb is on my cheekbone and when his eyes drop to my mouth, I see the yearning and guilt and reverence in his blue eyes. Something in me lets go. Not breaks, just… lets go.

I can’t take this anymore and get on my tippy toes to reach his mouth, to kiss him.

I put my hands on his face and pull him down to me and the first second of it is soft — just his mouth on mine, just the warmth of it — and then something in both of us gives way at the same time.

He kisses me like a man starving and the sound that comes out of me is not elegant — it’s relief, raw and unguarded. The sound of a woman who forgot she was allowed to want something and just remembered.

His hands find my waist and pull me against him and I go, completely, no hesitation. My fingers in his hair and his mouth moving against mine and the counter at my back and him at my front and nothing between us except the years it took to get here.

I can feel his heart through his shirt. It’s going as fast as mine.

When we pull apart we’re both breathing like we’ve been running. His forehead drops to mine and his hands are still on my back, holding me there. My fingers are curled into the front of his shirt like I’m not ready to let the distance back in.

His eyes open and find mine from two inches away, dark and completely unguarded, and for once he isn’t careful. For once there is nothing managed or measured or held back in his face.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he says against my mouth.

“I know.” I hold his face.

“I’m sorry I left.”

“I know.” My thumbs trace his jaw and his eyes close.

Then he kisses me again as his hands slide to my hips, lifting me onto the edge of the kitchen table like I weigh nothing. My legs part when he steps between them and his mouth is on my neck, my jaw, the place below my ear where my pulse is hammering.

I tilt my head back as his hands gets under my shirt, warm against my ribs.

“Don’t leave me again…” I say, and my voice doesn’t sound like mine.

“Never,” he says against my skin, and his mouth comes back to mine and I pull him closer.