A Smile in a Whisper, page 36
As much as Nick hated to admit it, she did seem perfectly happy there—at home—like he was on a soundstage in front of cameras and crew. He pulled back slightly. “I want what’s best for her, Sam.”
“I know you do. We all do. Especially now. She’s been through so much, and today was…grim.”
Nick stilled. “Why? What happened?”
“There were complications.”
Oh god, no. His heart dropped into his stomach.
“The tissue damage was worse than they’d thought, and Evie lost a lot of blood. She needed a transfusion.”
“Will she be okay?”
“Hopefully, but the surgeon said her recovery could be tough. University will have to wait. Evie needs to put all her energy into getting better.”
“Fuck.” Nick winced. “Poor Tigs. She’ll be gutted about uni.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not the only thing that has to take a back seat.” Sam rubbed his forehead. “Look Nick, with everything you’ve got going on, it’s…A LOT. I honestly think it’s too much for Evie. I know your heart’s in the right place, but maybe it’s time to…” Pressing his lips, Sam shrugged like he hoped Nick would fill in the blanks.
He narrowed his eyes. “To what?”
“Let Evie focus on Evie. She can’t be wrapped up in all your drama,” said Sam. “The next few weeks and months will determine whether she goes into remission. If she doesn’t, she could be in for years of pain and additional surgeries—life-changing surgeries. Is that what you want for her?”
A lump swelled in Nick’s throat. “Of course not.”
“Then fly to Japan, do your acting thing, and think hard about whether all this is really what’s best for her…and you, too.”
Wait—is he implying I should dump her?! Nausea rolled in Nick’s belly again. He tugged at his hair. “I-I can’t believe this. You want me to break up with her?!”
“I want what’s best for her.”
Nick shook his head. “Evie loves me…a-and she’d be fucking furious if she knew what you were suggesting.”
“I thought you said you’d do anything for her,” said Sam.
Nick glared, the sting of impending tears tormenting the back of his nose. “I would!” he snapped, his mind careening through memories of Evie laughing till she couldn’t breathe, playing with Ross at his gran’s, and singing loudly in the car.
Ultimately, he wanted good health and happiness for her—even if it meant they’d be apart. He swallowed, but the knot in his throat wouldn’t budge. I will do anything for her. He nodded sullenly. “I’ll leave tonight. I’ll give her more space, but only until she’s better.”
“You can’t tell her you were here,” said Sam. “Evie didn’t want you to know about today, and we should respect that. This drop-in will be our secret, okay?”
“What about Sunita?” Nick sniffed.
“Tell her”—Sam glanced into the empty cup in his hand—“I don’t know, you couldn’t get a last-minute flight up or something.”
“She’ll rip me a new one.”
“Better that than Evie thinking we betrayed her trust,” reasoned Sam.
Nick blinked back tears. “I guess…”
“So, we’re good?”
“Yeah, but on one condition.” Nick sniffed again. “Let me see her.”
“Nick—”
“Please, Sam,” he begged, his voice cracking. “I promise. I won’t wake her.”
As monitors beeped around the corner, punctuating the ward’s eerie calm, Evie’s nurse gave Nick and Sam a subtle nod. “Visiting hours end in less than five minutes.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Nick hesitated in the hall, preparing himself for what he was about to see…and say.
Sam held out his hand. “Flowers?”
“Oh right.” He passed Evie’s brother the verboten bouquet of daisies and hugged his middle.
“First bed on the left,” said Sam.
Legs suddenly weak, Nick slowly wandered around the doorjamb.
Eyes closed and skin pale, Evie looked so tiny, so vulnerable. Tubes and wires seemed to come from everywhere: her nose, wrists, chest, and under the blankets.
Oh, Evie baby… The ache in Nick’s chest stole his breath as he crumpled on the chair beside her bed. “I wish you’d told me,” he whispered through tears. “I love you, Tigs. For always.” He gently caressed her hair. “And I’m so sorry.”
THIRTY-TWO
EVIE
Now, Friday, August 11
“Oh my god.” Evie wiped her eyes and runny nose. “You were there?”
Nick nodded.
“I dreamt it. I dreamt you were holding my hand, stroking my hair.” His face blurred through a watery veil of tears. “It was real. You were real.” Evie scowled at her brother. “I can’t believe you sent him away and then lied about it all these years.”
Sam held up his palms. “Sprout, I only suggested he go—no one put a gun to his head. Frankly, I was surprised he actually left.”
Nick scoffed over his shoulder. “That’s bollocks, mate. You knew I would. I would’ve done anything to help Evie recover.” Turning back, his expression softened with tender sincerity. “Even walk away.”
Evie blew out her cheeks, her gaze hardening as she side-eyed Sam. “You said you wanted what was best for me, but…why didn’t you think that was Nick?”
“Because he was a bad influence! You were constantly twisting your life to fit his!”
Evie huffed. “That’s not true.”
“Dressing differently”—Sam counted on his fingers—“champagne on the beach, raving at his gran’s, moving to London permanently—”
“But I didn’t move permanently, did I? I realized London wasn’t for me—myself. And despite that, years later you still hate him for something that never happened.”
“I don’t hate him,” replied Sam. “I just think you’d be better off with someone local and responsible.”
Nick rolled his eyes. “Cheers, mate.”
“C’mon, Nick. You’ve said it yourself: your life is a circus.”
“Was a circus,” he corrected. “It isn’t now.”
Sam’s attention slid to Evie. “You didn’t need outside distractions. You needed to get better. I needed you to get better!” He leaned closer and she noticed tears glinting in his eyes. “The day of your surgery was the worst of my life. The complications and blood loss…we were so scared we might lose you.”
Stomach churning, Evie wiped her nose.
“I was furious at the world, thinking how could this happen to my baby sister? Then Nick showed up out of the blue and…I saw red. I needed someone to blame, and there he was: the cause, the reason you’d gotten so sick…”
Evie closed her watery eyes. “So, I’ve been living all these years thinking Nick didn’t love me the way I loved him. All because you hatched up a stupid plan—”
“Evie, you were only eighteen,” said Sam. “That’s far too young for a serious relationship, especially long distance. I figured time apart might help you see sense.”
“And break us up.”
“If I’m honest, yeah. But you have to see I did it out of love,” said Sam. “I thought it would be best for everyone.”
Evie pushed her lips out. “Not your call to make, Sam.”
“I know that now.” Scratching his scruff, he stared downward. “I’ve been dreading this day. You finding out…you hating me.”
“Yeah, well”—she swiped her cheeks—“it sucks getting caught out, doesn’t it? You know, I can’t even look at you, let alone talk to you right now, so—”
“Evie, I’m sorry—”
“Please Sam, just go.”
Glancing at Nick, he hoisted himself out of the chair and grabbed his windbreaker. He left the living room without further protest.
Evie waited for the front door to snap closed then spoke. “The day after my surgery, Sunita told me she’d texted you. She didn’t approve of me keeping you in the dark.”
“You didn’t want me to be there?” asked Nick.
“I did, but not at the expense of you playing Judas.”
“Can I ask…did you know you needed surgery when I first told you?”
Evie nodded.
“I would’ve delayed my flight, joined the tour later.”
“That’s why I didn’t say anything. I was worried you’d find out and quit. I even googled ‘actor breaking contract’ and read that it usually ruins their reputation. That sealed it for me: I’d tell you after the surgery, once you were in Japan.”
“You were protecting me and I was protecting you.” Nick looked down then met Evie’s eyes again. “Leaving you was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I knew I couldn’t live with myself if I delayed your recovery or made your Crohn’s worse.”
“I don’t think you would have. If anything, you would’ve helped. Do you remember our first phone call after my surgery?”
Nick grinned faintly. “Two days after—the longest forty-eight hours of my life. You apologized for keeping it secret like ten times before rattling off a list of questions: how was my hotel room? Did it have a view? What was sushi like?”
The memory warmed her heart. “Just hearing your voice, I swear my smile could’ve powered the whole hospital. I even managed two slow laps of the ward with my nurse after. She was amazed. I wasn’t. I knew you would spur me on. You did for weeks.”
“I hated being separated from you.” Nick blinked away. “Hated the tour…”
Evie tilted her head. “You never said.”
“Because you’d worry.”
True. “What went wrong?”
“What didn’t,” said Nick. “It was a disaster from start to finish. I was homesick and missing you. Didn’t want to socialize with my castmates, who mistook my reticence for snobbishness. Then the one time I did go out with them, I caught mononucleosis from a shared glass and ended up out of the show more than I was in it.”
She blinked rapidly. “You told me it was laryngitis.”
“Yeah. Another wee fib so you wouldn’t stress. The mono coincided with panic attacks and a bout of depression. I could barely get out of bed let alone message you about it. I felt like such a twat, feeling sorry for myself when you’d had major surgery and barely said a peep about it. I asked you, but you wouldn’t—”
“I know.” Evie tugged at the hem of her hoodie. “I didn’t want to be a bummer.”
“You told me only good things. How bad was it—really?”
“It was hard,” her voice softened. “The surgery cut through my stomach muscles. I lost all my core strength. I had trouble lying flat, walking and standing. And coughing and sneezing hurt like hell.”
His eyes widened.
“I had to slowly reintroduce food, do breathing exercises, physio. And I went through this weird mourning period, grieving everything I’d lost, things like my place at uni, my social life—talking regularly to you.” Sniffing, she paused. “You didn’t always answer my texts. I thought I’d done something wrong.”
“No, never. It was me—all me.”
“But I didn’t know that. I’d message anyway, not knowing where to begin, if I was saying the right things. And when you did reply, you seemed…distant.”
“So much was happening, but it felt like I had nothing to share,” said Nick.
Evie nodded. “Except ‘I miss you, I love you’ over and over, but sometimes even that felt strained. I started to think my Crohn’s was spooking you.”
He leaned forward. “No, honestly, it didn’t. Hearing how you were doing was inspiring—even if I didn’t know the whole story.”
Guilt panged in her chest.
“You were so strong and resilient, Evie. The opposite of me, really.”
“Nick…”
“No, it was.” He slouched. “I fell completely apart on tour. I had to drop out for health reasons six months in.”
Evie’s heart plummeted. “Really?”
He ducked his chin. “So, you see, Sam wasn’t too far off about me. I failed. I fucked up my dream job.”
“You didn’t fail, Nick. You weren’t well. That’s hardly your fault.”
“But it felt like it. I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head—‘Grow up, get over it, get back to work.’”
Hateful woman. Evie curled her lip. “Well, she was wrong.”
“Two months later, I parted ways with my agent and…waited for you to dump me, too. I was such a shit boyfriend, not responding, hiding the truth, so when you didn’t…”
“You ghosted me.”
He looked up with tears in his eyes. “I didn’t end us because I fell out of love with you. I did it because you didn’t need a loser like me dragging you down or making you sick again. I knew if I broke up with you properly over the phone you’d cry and fight me on it. I couldn’t handle that.” He fidgeted with his watch. “I took the fucking coward’s way out…”
So it wasn’t about me or my Crohn’s…well, at least not how I thought it was.
Evie stared across the room. “I held on. I thought you might call or appear at my door, apologize. If you had, we could’ve worked things through, could’ve gone back to the way things were. But I waited and you didn’t call, you didn’t come back…”
“So you texted me.” Nick pulled his phone from his jacket. He tapped and scrolled and held up the screen.
Swallowing hard, she read the message:
Evie:
I thought you were my forever. I was wrong.
Her breathing slowed as she ached for her younger self. Mere days before her nineteenth birthday, riding out the side effects of her new, post-operative treatment, Evie had hit send on that final message while sobbing inconsolably into her stuffed otters, her once hopeful heart torn at the seams. “I changed my number after that.” She sniffed as Nick lowered his phone. “And deleted yours.”
“I know saying sorry doesn’t feel like enough, but I am Evie, I’m so sorry,” he pleaded. “For leaving you, for hurting you so badly. For everything.”
“You made me feel seen and beautiful, and not like some freak with a nasty disease.” She picked at her nails. “I thought you were the one person who would never hurt me. And then you did.”
He nodded dolefully. “It’s my biggest regret.”
Evie glanced away.
Nick rubbed the back of his neck. “I cried for weeks. Couldn’t eat. Didn’t know what to do with myself. The only thing that helped was getting wasted. I’d be that prat at parties running about with no shoes on, urging everyone onward to the next boozy stop. Then I’d greet the morning with a banging headache and a Bloody Mary for breakfast. Calling it a night was a struggle. I couldn’t let the party end because if it did, my mind would snap back to you. In a weird way, my sales exec job actually helped with that. They paid me to schmooze clients in London and abroad. That’s when I met Olympia.”
Pia with her honey blonde highlights and skinny nose.
Evie sniffed, the all-too-familiar sting of tears burning the back of her throat, of spotting Nick and his new girlfriend at Rupert and Fiona’s wedding. Eight months after that, around the time of Ava’s baptism, she’d heard they’d broken up.
Her glare sprang back. “Do you know how I found out about you eloping?”
Nick wouldn’t hold her gaze.
“In the cathedral. Holding baby Ava in front of everyone. Can you even imagine how heartbreaking that was? Hearing it from your mother in front of my parents and friends that the boy I still loved four years on had married someone else? And on a whim, too!”
His throat bobbed.
“I was excited to see you, hoping to smooth things between us. Fuck, I even naively thought maybe we could find a way to get back together. But it was like Fi and Rupert’s wedding all over again except Pia the surprise girlfriend was now Pia the surprise wife. I was so humiliated.” Evie shook her head. “Everywhere I turned, every street, every corner of Orkney held painful memories—our memories. Mum suggested I visit Sunita in London for a bit, use the money I never spent on uni to make a fresh start. But I knew you lived there—somewhere—so I just had to hope our paths wouldn’t cross. All I wanted was to forget you.”
“I couldn’t forget you.” Nick touched her bent knee. “I missed you. I loved you.”
“Yeah, so much that you married someone else,” she snarled.
“I didn’t think you’d take me back. I was trying to heal my heart—”
“Oh, spare me.”
He pulled his hand away. “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I was so messed up, trying to numb the pain of losing you. I don’t even remember my wedding. And I kept on making the worst decisions. If I could go back, I would do everything differently.”
Crossing her arms, she looked away with a disgusted huff.
“I would’ve,” he repeated. “I wouldn’t have listened to Sam. I would’ve stayed at your bedside, holding your hand, and when they sent you home, I would’ve brought marshmallow Snowballs and Ross and made sure you didn’t want for anything. And obviously, I would never have met Pia, let alone married her.”
Evie always wondered: when did he realize he’d made a mistake? The morning after? A week, two months? Or was it Pia who pulled the plug?
“But you did marry her.”
“We lasted seven months,” said Nick. “I mean, shit, if that doesn’t tell you everything you need to know.”
Well, there was one other thing.
“Did you love her?” she asked.
“No. I loved you.”
Evie wiped tears from her cheeks. “Well, I hated you.”
Nick closed his eyes for a beat then slowly opened them. “The split with Pia was mutual. I planned to tell you at Gran’s funeral, but…”
I stayed in London and didn’t fly home. Shame softened Evie’s anger. “Lily was always wonderful to me.” An ache thickened in her throat. “I can’t believe she’s been gone eight years now.”
