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Spain. Nick got pissed off, so instead of waiting one more minute, he went to Spain.
...to be fair, I should have seen it coming.
The first day he and I ever met—the day his father showed up unannounced at his penthouse with the news he now had a publicist—that day had been a little rocky to say the least.
After Mitchell left, he and I had stared at each other for a good five minutes. Neither one of us moving, neither one of us talking. Just looking. Appraising. Deciding.
Then, with a skill and a charm I hadn’t yet learned to fear, he smiled and told me that he was going to grab a water from the kitchen. When he got back, we’d set up in the living room, he promised, and start going over a game plan for the next few months.
He hadn’t gone to the kitchen. He’d gone to Rome.
It was kind of his thing.
Some people drank when they got upset. Some people called up their best friend in a fit of tears. Some people (like me) buried themselves in a tub of ice cream watching old Sex in the City reruns until four in the morning.
Nick bought the first random airplane ticket he could find.
His girlfriend dumped him for cheating—he went to Iceland. He got back together and then re-dumped that same girlfriend for cheating—Bulgaria. His father screams at him for frivolous spending—it’s off to Argentina. His soccer team loses the game—Minsk.
Worst by far was the day he found out his favorite bike messenger had fallen in love and married the woman of his dreams (inadvertently moving him away to California). That time, Nick had vanished to Lebanese sheep farm for a month and threatened to never return.
In other words...I guess I was lucky it was just Spain.
By the time I landed in Barcelona (according to the travel itinerary I hacked into, I at least knew where he was going to touch down), it was coming up on ten at night. My Spanish was broken, at best, but I got into a cab and managed to have him drop me at the closest of three locations from which I’d start my search. You see, as unpredictable as Nick could be, in some ways, he was actually quite traditional.
The first thing he always did in a new city, was get ice cream.
Because Nick was twelve.
While he wasn’t at the first location I tried, or the second, the gods threw me down a bit of luck—he was at the third. I paid the cabbie, got out, and started walking slowly towards him across the cobblestone streets.
I couldn’t help but smile as I approached. You had never seen a sadder sight, and yet, there was an air of whimsy about it that made the whole thing utterly adorable.
Nick was sitting by himself at an outdoor table. A look of childlike devastation on his face. A melting ice cream cone in his hand. Every now and then, he would glance down and consider eating it, before resting his cheek on his hand again with a small sigh.
I pursed my lips and shook my head. All the money and power in the world, but if only all those people could see him now. There wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.
He saw me coming and made a compulsive movement, like he was going to stand. Either to bolt back to the airport with his magical eight ball of destinations, or simply to greet me—I’d never know. Instead, all he did was kick out the chair across from him, and gesture for me to sit.
I did so with a fond smile, gazing at him sympathetically.
“So Nick...what are we into now?”
He stared down at the soggy cone, giving away nothing.
“Rocky Road.”
I nodded and sat there quietly, keeping my face as serious as his. He wasn’t the kind of man who would give in to something just because he was pressed. I had to let him get there on his own time.
And that time didn’t seem to be any time soon.
For the next hour or so, we simply sat there in comfortable silence. Eating our ice cream, drinking our espresso. Watching the sights and sounds of Barcelona as they hurried by.
It wasn’t until the nightclub across the street opened with a distant cheer, that he cast me a sideways glance. Fixing me in those sky-blue eyes.
“I went out for a run this morning. Got back to see Ella and Bradley fucking in my apartment. Things...escalated from there.”
I nodded quietly. My expression never changed.
From the bits of information I was able to gather between the screaming threats and shards of flying porcelain, I had assumed as much. The thing I didn’t quite understand, was why it had gotten so strong of a reaction. Nick didn’t care about Ella. I didn’t understand the ‘sad.’
“And...that’s when she threw your coffee stuff out the window?” I asked hesitantly. One wrong word, and I’d be chasing him off to Guam. I had to tread carefully. “She was lucky they were doing construction down below—the whole sidewalk was roped off.”
Nick shook his head, staring unblinkingly at the nightclub.
“Ella didn’t throw that stuff. That was me.” He picked up his espresso and took a sip. “I knew about the construction,” he added as an afterthought.
I didn’t give a damn about that. I couldn’t get past the coffee.
Nick’s baby. His one true love. He was the one who threw it out the window?
But before I could even ask, he added one final thing.
“They were in Sarah’s room.”
All at once, the whole thing made sense. The hole in the window. The screaming. The flight to Spain—all of it.
You see, there was one room in Nick’s house that was never opened. One room that had remained shut for almost five years now, when its occupant was wheeled out forever, and taken to the hospital to die.
Sarah Terrell. Nick’s mother.
“Oh, Nick...” I hung my head, setting down my cup with a sudden chill. “I’m so sorry.”
To come home and see Ella Campbell and the bellboy fucking on your dead mother’s bed? To be honest, I was surprised screaming and Spain were the worst of it.
His face tightened for a moment, before he shook his head dismissively. Taking a lick of his ice cream like it couldn’t have bothered him less.
But I knew the truth.
Nick had been just nineteen when his mother was diagnosed with cancer. It was fast-moving and aggressive, and no matter what they tried, it wasn’t enough.
She passed away just three months later.
Before she did, Nick had moved her from the suburbs into his own penthouse. The home she’d gotten in the divorce from his father was more than adequate, but he wanted her close so he could care for her himself. A room was made up across the hall from his, and for the next three months—day and night—he never left her bedside.
I hadn’t known him then, but knowing him now—I’m sure he thought that he could somehow save her. That if he tried hard enough, was somehow good enough, she wouldn’t die and leave him all alone.
When Mitchell failed to attend the funeral, the two of them stopped talking. For the first time. It was then that the first true seeds of hate were planted.
Of course, this was one of the best kept secrets on the Upper East Side. People might have guessed it, of course. The general neglect Manhattan’s elite showed for their offspring tended to breed resentment. But no one had any idea how deep it went. Of the sheer animosity between father and son.
Mitchell saw Nick exactly like his mother. Beautiful, carefree, distractible, with a streak of whimsical adventure. Absolutely uninterested in anything to do with his precious company.
And Nick saw Mitchell for what he really was. A snake. A cold, heartless suit who had abandoned his son the only time in his life that Nick had ever actually needed him.
Why Nick called her Sarah, not mother, I never knew. He’d never told me. And as far as I knew, the door to her room had never been opened since that final day. I myself had never seen inside. It was strictly forbidden. Locked at all times.
I had no idea how Ella and Bradley had managed to get inside.
“I can’t do it, Abby,” he murmured, his eyes still locked on the club. “I can’t go back there and see her again. I can’t pretend to...I won’t.”
My heart seized up again with that fiercely protective instinct. The one that had taken over the second I saw he was no longer willing to fight for himself. Only to flee.
“You don’t have to,” I said with a bit more passion than was necessary. He glanced over at me, and without thinking, I placed my hand on his. “You will never see her again, I promise.”
He looked down at our hands for a moment, before offering me a weak smile.
“That’s going to be difficult. Manhattan’s a small island. She lives five minutes away.”
A faint blush rose up in my cheeks, and I turned my eyes quickly to the club.
“...not anymore.”
He looked up in surprise.
“What?”
“What?” I echoed, hoping to divert the conversation.
For the first time since landing in Spain, a genuine smile brightened his face.
“You know that’s like, a fifth-grade defense, right?”
I shrugged stiffly.
“They say children are our future.”
He snorted and turned towards me, angling his body in the chair.
“I’m serious, Abby—what did you do to her?”
I simply studied my nails.
He raised his eyebrows and tried again.
“Abigail—I went to Barcelona for the ice cream. Did you, by chance, flee here? Hoping to escape one of those pesky little murder charges?”
“Oh, Nicholas,” I laughed, patting him indulgently on the hand. Then I sobered suddenly and leveled him with my eyes. “You think there’s even a chance that I would get caught?”
He held my gaze for a moment, before a sudden chill rippled down his arms. Followed by a twinkling smile as he slowly shook his head.
“Remind me never to fire you.”
“Done.”
“So what really happened to her?” he asked.
“She’s moving to California for her new modeling contract, that’s all.”
“You used your contacts to get her out of here, didn’t you?”
I smiled. “Maybe.”
We continued people watching for a while longer—ordering another hot espresso when the air began to get cold. The nightclub across the street was starting to hit its stride. Flashing lights and a pulsing bass vibrated through the cobblestones—flickering in our eyes and shaking up through our shoes. Before long, we were both nodding our heads to the beat.
After a few more minutes, Nick caught my eye with a sideways smile.
“You wanna check it out?”
I glanced in surprise from him to the club, my eyes glowing with the neon fluorescence. I did want to go. Very much. But professionally speaking, it wasn’t the best idea.
“Hey,” he leaned over, guessing my thoughts, “this is Spain. What happens here...”
He offered out a hand, hovering it in the air in front of me. After a moment’s consideration, I took it with a mischievous grin.
“...stays here.”