Harsh laughter pushes its way up and out of me. “We’re back to that again, huh?” I jump up to my feet, unable to just sit here. I need to move, I need to— I whirl around, anger sharpening my tone like a serrated blade as I loom over Mina. She drops her head back, unwilling to stand down, even though she’s almost a foot shorter than me.
“So, I’m good enough to fuck but not good enough for more?” I’ve been there. I’ve stood at the altar, humiliated to my core when the woman I thought I loved turned out to love someone else. I’d rather take a punch to the gonads then go through the misery of that again. “And all because you’re trying to stick it to your parents by not giving in?”
“I’m trying to tell you that I want you!”
My chin jerks back from the force of her shout.
With a hand pressed to her heart, Mina goes on, passion ripping through every word. “I want you, Nick, not because of your Greekness or how nice you are but because of how you make me feel. For once, I feel special. For once, I feel like I’m exactly where I belong. For once”—her features splinter right in front of me, and my heart shouts go to her! even as I force myself to stand completely still—“I feel as though I’m not seen as less than or the girl with the problems or Bad Girl Mina.” She swipes angrily at her eyes, thumbs stroking along the damp tears at the crests of her cheeks, and my heart takes another heavy beating. Fuck. As much as I want to comfort her and kiss away her tears, I want to hear what she has to say even more.
“You enter a room and my body comes alive, my soul comes alive.” Her shoulders square off like she’s going into battle—against me? Or against herself. The thought comes out of left field but won’t loosen its claws. “My entire life has been one great temporary longing. Get out of my parents’ house. Open a hair salon. Be my own boss and create my own rules. And then shit hit the fan, and you threw all those temporary longings—all those dreams I’d harbored so close to my heart for so many years—straight into chaos until knowing what I want out of life isn’t so clear-cut anymore.”
“It’s not an either-or situation,” I grind out, feeling sick to my stomach. This conversation—this anger that’s festering beneath her words—isn’t even about us. It’s about her and about the damage that existing in her parents’ orbit wreaked on her. I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. For not predicting that this fallout would be inevitable.
You can’t accept love from someone else when you don’t even love yourself, and Mina . . . God, listening to her now it’s a wonder she doesn’t hear the self-loathing in her own voice. I could bandage up her insecurities and self-doubt real nice, kiss them better, but at the end of the day, there’d be no hiding from the truth.
And the truth is that Mina is so caught up in proving her parents wrong that she can’t even see that by loving me doesn’t mean her own dreams need to take a backseat to the relationship.
I’m not her father. She isn’t her mother. Can’t she see that?
Chest hurting like I’ve taken a mallet to the heart, I step back, needing space. “I’m not the kind of guy—Greek or otherwise—who swoops in and strips you of everything that makes you you, Ermione. I wouldn’t do that to a random stranger I just met, and I certainly wouldn’t do it to the woman I love.”
Mina blanches.
And the L-word hangs out in the open like a white, tattered flag of surrender. It hangs there, even when I don’t take it back. And it sure as hell doesn’t go anywhere while she tangles her fingers in the shirt I lent her and stumbles over her words.
“Nick, I—” She rubs her lips together, her gaze darting every which way but to me. “I-I don’t know what to say.”
Say that you love me.
I stare at her, waiting, hoping, and then she’s staring back—and the divide between us grows.
I let my lids fall shut and tip my head back and do nothing to mask my expression. This right here, this moment of truth, is by far the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Worse than even standing at the altar as my bride sprinted from the church with her douchebag lover clutching the train of her lace dress.
Because what I feel for Mina eclipses anything I ever felt for Brynn or Savannah Rose or any of those blind dates I went on over the years.
I love her and she doesn’t know what to say back.
Are you really that surprised? I shouldn’t be. I’m the guy who does relationships and she’s the girl who prefers no-strings-attached flings. In theory, there was no other path for us but this one.
My heart calls bullshit on that score.
I take a single step back, arms down by my sides. “I’m gonna sleep upstairs in Dom’s room.”
“No, please.” Mina darts in front of me, blocking my exit. Her expression is nothing short of panic—but it’s that ever-present restlessness that solidifies my decision, however much it kills me. She needs to figure her own shit out without me hovering over her shoulder. And if she can’t do that, then I . . . Well, I’ll figure it out. Because if there’s one thing I know, it’s that pushing her into accepting me—a nice, Greek boy—when doing so makes her feel like she’s caving to her parent’s demands, is only going to be the start of our troubles.
We can’t move forward when she’s stuck in the tangled web of her past.
When I move to the right, she mimics my step, her hands up and facing me as though she can stop me from leaving. “Nick, I like you so, so much. I don’t know why I can’t say the words back when I feel so damn much for you that it terrifies me.”
“It’s not the word that matters.”
“Then why—”
“It’s that you have that look on your face, the same one from the night I showed up at your parent’s house and you were practically jumping out of your skin.”
When we stepped into this room yesterday, I’d envisioned telling Mina I loved her a million different ways. All of them had a single thing in common: she threw her arms around me as soon as I said the words.
Stupid. Maláka. Fucking fanciful, romantic bullshit.
Voice gritty like gravel, I grunt, “You look like you want to run, Mina.” Changing trajectories, I grab my duffel from the floor and stuff yesterday’s clothes inside the top flap. “I can handle being the only one saying I love you, but I’ve been down this path before and I’m not gonna ignore the signs again that are telling me we’re on a ticking clock.”
“I’m not Brynn.”
I meet her gaze and let it all out. “No, you’re not.” I hook the duffel bag’s strap over my shoulder. “But I can’t . . . I’m going to be blunt here, Mina. You think I looked broken when you found me after the wedding? How I felt in that moment would be unicorns and rainbows to how I’d be if you were the one to leave me at the altar. I’m not looking for a repeat situation. You need time to really think about what you want from me, from us, and I’m not gonna sit here and make you feel guilty for not sayin’ the words back.”
Her brows furrow together. “So you’re doing the walking first this time? Is that how this is going to play out? You scurry off because you’re worried that I’ll do what Brynn did to you?”
“You already ran, Ermione. You might be standing right here in front of me but, mentally, you’ve checked out because you’re scared.” I stare down into her honey eyes. “You know I’m right.”
She sucks in a harsh, reedy breath. “Please don’t give up on me. I need to—I need to . . .”
Against my better judgment, I lean down and brush a soft kiss to her forehead. I soak up her scent, wishing that I could rewind tonight and hit PLAY with her shirtless in front of me and stars in her eyes. I feel her fingers grip the fabric of my shirt.
Give her space. Let her think.
This doesn’t have to be the end—even if it sure as hell feels that way.
I skirt past her on my way to the door, where I glance over my shoulder to look back at her. “S’agapo, Ermione.” I love you. “But I can’t be the one to tell you why loving me back scares you; only you can figure that out. When you do . . . come find me. I’ll wait. I’ll always wait.”
Fisting the knob, I pull open the door.
“I wish it didn’t terrify me,” she whispers raggedly from behind me.
My shoulders pull up. “Kai ego, agape mou, kai ego.” Me too, my love, me too.
Dom says nothing when I knock on his door two minutes later. He only looks from my bag hooked over my shoulder to my face, then backs up wordlessly to let me inside the room. His is smaller than the one I shared with Mina, and while he climbs back into bed, I sprawl out on the floor with a spare duvet and a pillow.
There’s no fireplace to keep the space warm, and soon the chill of Mina’s emotional mountains seep into my bones. The icy night keeps me company into the early morning while sleep proves completely elusive.
I never break hearts—but tonight I broke two.
36
Nick
“Where is he?”
Balancing the sledgehammer’s wooden handle on my palm, I lean back from where I’ve been going to town on age-old drywall, and eye Vince, who’s standing closest to the museum’s front door. “Don’t let her in.”
He gives me a side-eye to rival all side-eyes, his hand already reaching out to the doorknob. “I don’t have a death wish.”
I chuckle, low. “Effie’s not gonna kill you, Miceli.”
“I’m going to kill you all if you don’t open this door right now!”
Mark doesn’t even bother to disguise his snicker. “She sounds pissed, boss man.”
That’s because Effie is pissed. After an awkwardly silent three-hour car ride back to Boston from Bethel, Mina asked for me to drop her off at my sister’s house instead of at her parents’.