For him.
He loved the way she looked at him, though he’d managed to ruin that pretty well tonight. Disgusted with himself, he set the paper aside, turned off the lights, and got into bed where he proceeded to stare up at the ceiling, counting the ways in which he’d screwed up.
There were too many to count.
He could argue that his life was in crazy flux, but that was an excuse, and he hated excuses. His reaction to Mia’s invitation had been knee-jerk, and he’d hurt her.
He felt like shit about that, but he knew in the end, it was for the best. He had no business going to meet her family. One, he had no family experience. None. Two, he had even less relationship experience. Three, he’d applied for a job that was going to take him places, the first of which was around the entire country for the next two years.
It was what he’d wanted, to defend the kids who were falling through the cracks of the system—as he had. Mia, more than anyone else, understood this need. She’d been given up at birth, too.
But she’d been adopted. Nick had been shuffled from home to home his entire childhood, never quite belonging anywhere. Mia knew all this about him. It was what drew them together.
But what she didn’t know was that he’d gotten the job.
He’d been planning on telling her at dinner, and then they’d have celebrated. Except that being with her, as always, took him out of time and place. She made him forget everything but her and how he felt when he was with her.
And then there’d been the real problem.
Sitting with her at that candlelit table, watching her smile at him, for him…suddenly he hadn’t wanted to go anywhere.
He’d been wrestling with that when she’d dropped her wedding invite like a bombshell. She wanted him to go spend Christmas—a holiday he’d never believed in—with her family. Her family, something else he didn’t quite believe in.
When he finally fell into an exhausted, restless sleep, he dreamed about the first time they’d met, in a Human Behavior class that he’d needed in order to counsel teens on a volunteer basis.
She turned her head and gave him a long look when he slid into the class ten minutes late on the first day, thanks to a monster hangover. She was in glasses, her eyes nondescript, her brown hair piled up on top of her head. She had a laptop perched carefully on her lap and the required reading opened in one hand.
A nerd, he’d immediately decided, and knew he’d sat by the right girl. He always tried to sit by the smart ones because they were great study partners. He smiled at her.
She frowned and went back to concentrating on the lecture.
He realized he must have missed something important, as she had a full screen of notes. He leaned in to try to read over her shoulder at the same moment she turned back to him.
Their lips nearly brushed.
Her eyes widened and her lips opened in a little oh! of surprise. His reaction wasn’t all that different. Had he thought her nondescript? She was the furthest thing from nondescript, starting with her eyes. They were deep green and brimming with intelligence. She stared at him for a long beat, and then turned her laptop his way to share her notes.
“Oh, whoops,” she said, quickly closing a screen. “That was my research project for a different class.” She bit her lower lip. “You’re probably wondering about it now.”
Actually, he wasn’t. He wasn’t even looking at her screen. He was wondering how it was that she smelled so amazing, how her eyes could be so…green. He was wondering if she was wearing a bra beneath that thin sweater, or if she was just chilly…
“I’m writing about human sexuality,” she said.
Okay, now she had his attention. “You’re researching sex?” he asked. “As in how to have it?”
“Hey, I know how to have it,” she said, and then blushed gorgeously when she caught the teasing in his gaze.
Later he found out she’d been adopted, too. Drawn by this thing they had in common, he bought her a burger that night, and they ended up in Central Park beneath the stars watching an unexpected meteor shower. Mia made wishes on every falling star, big wishes, little wishes, wishes for everyone in her life…and he found himself entranced big-time.
Normally he never talked about himself, but she pulled him out of his shell, and they talked until dawn. Talked. Never in his life had he just sat and talked with a girl he hadn’t yet even gotten to second base. But she was different, and he shared things with her that he’d not shared with anyone.
The next night, she brought him homemade brownies. And unlike the brownies his roommates always made, hers weren’t illegal.
They’d been together ever since. Nick flopped over in his bed. They’d had fun exploring the city together. Exploring each other. Getting closer than he’d ever let someone get before.
And that’s about when her ex had shown up.
With a ring.
Yeah, that had been fun.
Carlos knocked on Mia’s door late one night. Mia was shocked at the visit. Nick was shocked when she asked him to go home so she could talk to Carlos alone.
Nick went downstairs and stood on the sidewalk, wondering if he was about to lose the best thing that had ever happened to him.
The longest hour of his life later, Carlos came out of the building, hood up and hands in his pockets as he headed down the sidewalk, never looking back.
Nick took the stairs at a jog, his gut in knots.
Mia’s shower was running, and he waited until she came out of the bathroom. In just a towel, steam surrounding her, she stared at him, and slowly shook her head.
And then her eyes filled with tears.
His heart squeezed as he strode to her and pulled her in close.
“He wanted me to marry him,” she said against his chest.
Nick went still. “And you said…?”
“I loved him when I was seventeen,” she said soggily, “with everything I had. I wanted to make it work, but he didn’t. He told me to move on. So that’s what I did. He broke my heart, and I just broke his.”
Nick let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and pressed his jaw to the top of her head.
“I think you should go,” she whispered.
Nick had made it a lifelong policy to never stay a moment longer than he was wanted. Ever. So he headed out of the building much the way Carlos had only a little while before and walked home. The last thing he remembered before falling asleep that night was the feel of Mia’s tears on his neck.
Rolling over again, he punched his pillow. He’d made a choice back then, and he’d been wrong. He shouldn’t have left her.
And he’d made the same mistake tonight.
At the crack of dawn, he gave up trying to sleep. He dressed and went to Mia’s apartment. He needed to see her, talk to her. Touch her. He had a key, but it didn’t feel right to just let himself in this time. But she didn’t answer, which is what happened when one acted like a complete ass. A complete, stupid ass. “Mia,” he said, “let me in.”
At the deafening silence, he blew out a sigh and pulled out his phone. But either she’d turned hers off or she’d hit Ignore because his call went right to voice mail. “Come to the door, Mia.”
Three doors down, an older lady peeked out and frowned at him. “So you’re all stupid then,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“‘Let me in.’ ‘Come to the door.’ You always demand like that? No wonder she isn’t answering. Try asking sometime. Not all women will stand for that 50 Shades crap, you know.” She gave a disgusted headshake and slammed her door shut.
Nick had no idea what “50 Shades crap” was, but he looked at Mia’s door. Had he been demanding? He knocked again. “Mia? Can we talk?”
When the door still didn’t open, he gave up and tried a text: I’m at your place, come to the door. He paused, and then added please.
Hoping that covered all the bases, he waited a minute. Mia always responded to his texts right away, even when she was busy at school or work. She wanted to be a high school counselor when she finished grad school, and was working on getting an internship. But swamped as she was, she always made time for him no matter what—which never failed to make him feel special. Wanted.
Needed.
She was the first person to ever make him feel those things, and it meant a lot to him. She meant a lot to him.
But his phone remained ominously silent and her door remained shut, neither of which boded well.
He knew his own issues—he’d always been reluctant to let anyone too close. But if he knew his own, he knew hers even better. She was the opposite. She needed to let people close, to be surrounded by those who cared.
And he also knew something else, something she’d never verbalized to him: for as well adjusted as she was, she needed her people to make a stand for her.
Nick had failed her in that, big-time, and both his heart and gut were churning over it. She’d never asked for a thing from him, but he’d known that need of hers was there and he hadn’t fulfilled it.
He could fix that. He would fix that, and then she’d never doubt him again.
The door behind him opened, and he turned to face Mia’s other neighbor. Cindy was twenty-something, rumpled but pretty, with an infant in her arms and a toddler in a Santa hat wrapped around one leg.
“Hey, Nick,” she said in surprise. “Mia left already.”
“Left?”
“Yeah, she caught a cab a few hours ago.”
Chapter 3
Mia landed in Seattle and took a shuttle to Lucky Harbor. It was a long drive, and she hadn’t wanted to inconvenience anyone to come get her.
Okay, that was a lie. Her heart hurt and felt too big for her rib cage, and her emotions were all over the place. She needed time to get herself together.
Tara and Ford Walker—her birth parents—might not have formally met her until she sought them out at age seventeen, but there was no doubt that having them in her life had completed her. She belonged to them. She loved them. But…
But she’d found them. She’d picked them. She’d picked Nick, too, though, and look how that had turned out.
Shoving away the unproductive thought, she inhaled deeply, taking in the thick, lush forestland of the Olympic Mountains as the van cut through them. On the other side, as they came down to the coast and into the little bowl where Lucky Harbor was nestled, she found herself relaxing a little. The ocean churned wildly beneath a gunmetal-gray sky, and the air was scented with sea salt and pine—unique to Lucky Harbor. The town smelled perennially of Christmas, which never failed to make her smile.
Being back here made it hard to hold on to a bad mood, but she intended to give it a try. Except it wasn’t a bad mood. It was a broken heart.
Nick never promised you anything.
That thought came with another—maybe he’d only liked her because she understood being abandoned. Maybe she’d been nothing more than a mental crutch for him. This thought tumbled in her brain for a few minutes, giving her a headache. But she couldn’t blame him for this. He’d never given her false hopes. He’d never said that they were going anywhere with this relationship.
Hell, he’d never even said they had a relationship.
She’d just assumed, and everyone knew what assuming anything got you. Good and hurt.
Realizing she’d never turned her phone back on after her flight, she pushed the power button and watched as a few texts loaded from Nick.
I’m at your place, come to the door.
And then the shocking please.
She called him, but it went straight to voice mail. Since she had no idea what to say, she hung up.
He’d gone to her place. There was a terrible beat of hope, but realistically she knew it’d been to make sure she was okay. He’d made it clear how he felt; that wasn’t going to change. It didn’t mean he was a bad guy.
He wasn’t. He was one of the good guys. One of the best…
And wasn’t that just the problem.
The van entered Lucky Harbor and made its way along the quaint Victorian main street, past the pier and the Ferris wheel, and finally down the narrow road to the Lucky Harbor B&B. The B&B was run by her mom Tara and her two sisters, Maddie and Chloe. They’d turned away all reservations for the next two weeks to concentrate on the wedding. But Mia knew the place would be abuzz with craziness, and in spite of her heartache, her spirits lifted slightly at what lay ahead.
A wedding.
The B&B had been decorated for the holidays, with a fresh garland lining the wraparound porch. At night, the two-story Victorian would be lit up with strings of white twinkling lights. In the light of day, the flower beds were filled with festive red poinsettias.
Mia tipped her driver and got out. The sun peeked through the clouds, piercing the sky with long, shimmery beams that shifted into a rainbow over the water. It was all so amazing and gorgeous, it could have been a painting, and a very small part of her happiness returned.
A gardener was hard at work on the yard, his back to her. He was digging holes for planting, the shovel moving steadily in and out of the dirt, the muscles of his shoulders, arms, and back flexing and bunching effortlessly, and Mia went still as stone, as recognition hit hard.
Carlos.
The past five years fell away, and just like that memories of a far simpler time washed over her, back to when a teenage crush had been the most important thing in her life.
It’d been four months since he’d come to New York to ask her to give him another shot, and she hadn’t seen or heard from him since. Before Mia could say a word, a young woman came around the corner of the house and threw herself into his arms.
Carlos easily caught her up and with a megawatt smile, lowered his head and kissed her.