Fix It Up: Torus Intercession Book Three, page 11
I was quiet, letting him work through what he was thinking.
“And now he’s just as famous for the stuff that tears him down as he is for the album.”
I so wanted to say something, to direct his attention to the parallel between himself and what he was telling me. I was passing up a clearly teachable moment, but maybe, hopefully, Nick could see himself in Conner and comprehend the life lesson he was being given.
His eyes misted as he looked at me. “My phone was dead, so I found someone to bum a charger from and was going to call you, but then Conner kept throwing up, and I can’t find his phone, and—can we just take him home?”
“Of course,” I told him. “Are there people there to take care of him?”
“Yeah, he lives with his parents and his sister. He’s got the pool house or something. I don’t remember.”
I smiled at him. “Well, as long as he has people who love him and will watch over him, I’m good to drop him off.”
“And if he didn’t?”
“Then we’d have to take him home with us, right?”
“Home?”
I squinted at him. “Yeah. Home.”
He caught his breath.
“Nick?”
“God, it is, isn’t it?”
“What?” He was a little out of it, but I still needed to understand what he meant.
“The house is…home.”
“It is your home, yes.”
His gaze, all that warm, golden, cognac brown, was focused on me. “Not just mine,” he whispered.
“No,” I agreed, “you share it with some wonderful people.”
“You,” he said under his breath.
“For a little while longer, yes,” I agreed. I stepped around him and over to the tub and, as carefully as possible, lifted Conner into my arms.
“Put the towel over his face, cover yours with your jacket, and we’ll go out the back, through the neighbor’s yard, and hopefully not bump into anybody.”
“We will, but if we’re covered up, it should be all right.”
We escaped the bathroom and headed toward the back door. Once outside, we cut across the patio, around the pool, and then skirted the side of the house. There was a narrow pathway between the fences, so we took it and ended up on the next street over, which, miraculously, was empty.
“How did you know where to put the car?” he asked me, amazed.
“Two words—Owen Moss.” I couldn’t help but grin at the thought of how much Nick and I owed him tonight.
It was a long walk to the car, especially carrying what amounted to deadweight, but once there, Conner woke up enough to squeeze into the back seat with Nick. The Shelby wasn’t the best choice for transport, but my main objective earlier had been to reach Nick as quickly as possible, and for that it had been perfect. Besides, once they were both buckled in, they sat close enough to each other that Conner could rest his head on Nick’s shoulder, so it wasn’t all bad. Based on the soft snoring, he’d already crashed again.
“Tell me where I’m going,” I told Nick.
Before we got far, Conner woke up and warned us that he was going to be sick again. It was nice that he did it before I’d hit the freeway and opened up the throttle.
“You guys don’t have to drive me all the way home,” Conner said once he could speak again. “You can just dump me at––”
“No,” Nick was emphatic as his eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “We’re either taking you to your house or ours. You pick.”
It was selfish, but I hoped he chose his own house. Nick and I were just starting to see eye to eye, so I didn’t want someone else there dividing his attention. I wanted it to be just the two of us.
“I wanna go home,” Conner almost cried, and I was thrilled, even though it would eat up the rest of the night.
“Then we’ll take you,” Nick told him, stroking his hair before meeting my gaze again. “It’s not that far,” he told me. “La Jolla is a little more than two hours away.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling off to check Google Maps on my phone. “Gimme the address.”
We didn’t say much to each other on the way there, Nick and Conner talking instead, but Conner directed me once I was heading south on La Jolla Scenic Drive. Even in the dark I could tell I was in a high-end neighborhood. I’d never been to so many multimillion-dollar homes in my life, from Santa Barbara to Malibu, and now La Jolla.
The gate at the end of Conner’s driveway was much older than Nick’s, wrought iron with a giant scrolled W at the center.
“I thought his last name was Fox?” I asked Nick as he stood at the call box, waiting for someone to answer.
“Fox is his stage name,” he explained. “His real name is Wallingford.”
“Hello?” a tired voice answered.
“Jenna?”
“Yes, who—ohmygod, Nicky?”
He waved into the security camera. “Sweetie, I’ve got your brother in my car. Can you let me in?”
She gasped.
“No, no, no,” he said quickly. “He’s okay, just a little drunkish.”
The gate started to open before he’d finished the explanation.
“You swear?” she asked him, her voice small and steeped in worry.
“I promise,” he vowed, crossing his heart for emphasis.
He hopped into the passenger seat, and I drove down the long tree-lined drive. “I bet this is beautiful in the daytime. These trees look ancient.”
“Yeah, it’s close to four acres,” Nick told me, “and the house itself is gorgeous. I wish you could see it, but I don’t want to stay over. I just want to go home.”
“Me too,” I said, smiling at the thought.
When I pulled up in front of the house, Nick got out and greeted the three people who came running from inside. There were two women in robes and Conner’s dad, who looked exactly like an older, more distinguished version of his son, even in pajama bottoms and a long-sleeved T-shirt. He was the only one who didn’t stop to hug Nick. Instead, he came straight to the car to check on his son.
I asked Mr. Wallingford if he needed any help with Conner, but he said he could handle it, and thanked me for offering. Conner was moving under his own steam by that time, for the most part, but when his knees buckled, I was out of the driver’s seat and at his side in seconds. Lifting Conner easily, I asked his father where he wanted me to take him.
“Thank you,” he said gruffly, clearly overwhelmed. “Let me show you.”
Once Conner was settled, cleaned up and in bed, his parents insisted we spend the night, but Nick was adamant that we needed to head home, so half an hour later, after lavish thanks and more hugging than I was comfortable with, Nick and I were outside, heading to the car.
“I’m really proud of you,” I told him, turning to speak to him over my shoulder. “And I hope you don’t take that as me being patronizing, but you were a hero for both of your––”
“Wait.”
Stopping, I pivoted to face him and was surprised that he was right there in front of me.
“I don’t want you to qualify what you––” He took a breath. “Can you just…stop?”
“I did. You can see I’m not moving.”
“No, that’s not—you’ve been walking on eggshells with me.”
I was quiet.
“Please, Loc, just, I want us to be honest.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “It’s not eggshells, it’s more like a minefield.”
“Yeah, I know,” he conceded, his voice rough and husky, like something was hurting. “But I don’t want it to be like that anymore.”
“Good, me neither,” I said, turning to walk to the car.
“Loc.”
I stopped again, and he came around in front of me.
“I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t mean—I have problems when I’m not in control, and it’s not—any power over me is just…”
“Just what?”
“Listen, I saw early on in this that you were trying to help me, not control me, but it’s been so hard to separate things in my mind from things that’ve happened in the past.”
“What things?”
He shook his head. “I can’t, not right now.”
I nodded. “Okay.”
“But I won’t be an asshole anymore. Not after last night and then this.”
It hit me then that he hadn’t been the only one fighting. Yes, he’d been a spoiled brat and an ass, but I wasn’t perfect, and I’d provoked him as well. It wasn’t fair not to give him his out. And it would suck, because we’d just gotten to a new, good place, and someone else would reap the reward of Nick Madison in thoughtful, self-reflective mode, but it was the right thing to do.
“You know,” I began resolutely, “maybe it would be better if we got somebody else from Torus for you.”
“What?” He choked on the word, sounding angry. “Why?”
I shrugged. “You’ve been a dick, but I’m not all Zen either, so maybe––”
“No,” he rasped, deflating, taking my hand in his. “Absolutely not.”
“You need to think about this,” I directed him. “It might be good to have a do-over, to start fresh with––”
“It won’t,” he assured me. “I wouldn’t be comfortable.”
“You might,” I said, thinking of Cooper. “One of my buddies is really––”
“Do you want to leave? Is that why you’re saying this?”
“This isn’t about what I want, it’s about what you need.”
“I need you, Locryn,” he murmured, lacing our fingers together, staring at our hands, before his eyes were back on mine.
“Listen, Nick, I’m not sure I’m even helping you anymore. It seems more like I antagonize you, and it’s not productive.”
“I’ll be better,” he promised adamantly, and I could hear the stress in his voice. He was frightened, and I was the cause. I was scaring him, and that wasn’t helping. “I promise I can be so much better.”
“No, you’re not hearing me,” I said, squeezing his hand as I held his gaze. “I’ve been a prick to you, and if you knew me better, you’d know it’s the default setting of my sparkling personality.”
He chuckled, and everything in him sort of settled as he nodded, grinning at me.
“I’m being serious,” I insisted. “You don’t understand. I have, like, zero patience, and it’s been said…” I smirked, because the guys at the office never let me forget it. “That I can be a bit of a grumpy bastard.”
“Are you kidding?” he scoffed, laughing. “You’ve been a fuckin’ saint.”
I shook my head. “You’re so deluded you don’t even know what––”
“Everyone says, all the time, ‘Jesus, Nick, you’re such a fuckin’ asshole to that guy, and he just keeps taking it.’”
“No, Nick, listen, you need––”
“I didn’t want to go.”
I went silent, staring at him.
He took a deep breath. “I wanted to stay home. I didn’t want to go to the stupid fundraiser and…I want to run.”
“Sorry?”
“I mean with you. In the mornings,” he told me, staring pointedly. “I want to run.”
“Okay,” I agreed hesitantly, unsure about what was going on in his head.
“I didn’t want to go with you at first, because I knew I couldn’t keep up. I didn’t have the stamina. But I’ve been running on the treadmill, and Felix said if I can run on it at an incline, then I could for sure keep up with you, and since I can now, we can run together,” he finished, sounding uncertain. “If that’d be okay.”
“Of course,” I replied, the urge to touch him, to hold him, nearly overwhelming. Instead, I took a step back.
Instantly he closed the space between us, his hand on my watch, smoothing his thumb across the crystal of the Rolex my mother gifted to me when she got her first book deal.
“Everything’s going to be so much better now, and…” His gaze lifted to mine, held for a second, and then returned to my watch. “Don’t leave me. Everybody leaves me.”
“Look at me.”
It took a moment, but our eyes locked.
“I was gonna go see my mom when this job was done, but I’m thinking now that maybe it would do us good to start over. Maybe we could do that next week and then come back refreshed and ready to hit the album thing. What do you think?”
He started to shake.
“Nick?”
His eyes narrowed and his face tightened up. “Yeah,” he whispered roughly, nodding quickly. “That sounds good, but instead of next week, let’s go now. Let’s go home and pack and just go, okay?”
“Are you sure?”
Quick nodding, and that was it, tears were rolling down his cheeks.
He’d been so angry with me, he’d fought with me every day, wrestled with his sobriety, was trying to find a spark of creativity in himself even as he worked to strengthen his body and mind, and suddenly it all came to a head and he was utterly overwhelmed, overwrought, and in desperate need of warmth and tenderness. I honestly didn’t know anyone more capable of delivering that than my mother. At the beginning of the night I would never have considered opening myself up to him, granting him access to the most important person in my life. I shared her with so few people, but now, for whatever reason, it felt like it was necessary for him, and for me too.
“Okay,” I soothed him, sliding my hand around the back of his neck and tucking him in against me. “Let’s go home, and I’ll get us some plane tickets.”
“No,” he countered, slipping away from me, headed for the car. “I’ll take care of making those arrangements while you drive. I’d rather not fly some economy bullshit to wherever we’re going.”
It was such a turnaround, and I was surprised, because for the first time, out of the blue, I was seeing Nick Madison in take-charge mode, and it was kind of hot. He was talking to someone on the phone, being charming even as he stood there at his car door, glaring at me. Why, I had no idea.
“You can get in,” I called over to him. “It’s not locked.”
But he only stepped back, waiting.
“Are you kidding? You can’t open it yourself?”
The haughty look I got in return had me choking on a laugh as I reached his door, opened it like I was serving the Queen of England, and stood there waiting for him to get in. At my own door seconds later, I got in and slid behind the wheel.
He turned to look at me. “Eduardo needs to know where we’re going and when we need to be there so he can file a flight plan.”
Of course he had his own pilot. Why wouldn’t he? “You know, when I fired everyone, how did I miss that you have a pilot on your payroll?”
“He’s a contractor,” Nick informed me, “so he’s only on my payroll when he’s needed.”
That made sense.
“And Rosalie would never let you do anything with my plane service, she considers it a necessary expense like paying the mortgage.”
“I see,” I said, smiling at him. Nick Madison and I definitely had different ideas about what constituted a necessity.
“Now, where are we going?”
After I told him we were going to Sedona, he explained to Eduardo that yes, we’d need a rental car while we were there as well.
“I know,” he said, laughing along with Eduardo on the other end. “He said he was going to get plane tickets. Can you imagine?”
I rolled my eyes and headed back to Santa Barbara. I was counting on him being more tired than he looked and hoping that he’d fall asleep on the way, but it hardly mattered. I was thinking about the guy who decided taking a jab at Nick Madison was a good idea, let alone something I would allow to go unpunished. One way or another, I would make it clear to him that it was not.
Seven
I called my mother and told her I was coming for my visit earlier than planned, and bringing a friend.
“Yes, I know, dear. Why do you think I’m getting your room ready?”
It was useless to ever try and surprise her.
It was early in the morning when we made it home. I made sandwiches while he packed, and then he cleaned up after me while I packed. Afterwards, we both took a nap for a couple hours and were back up by seven. I emailed everyone I was supposed to see on Monday, gave Marisol the week off, gave the bodyguards the week off, and told Callie what I needed done at the house while Nick and I were in Arizona. Brent, the little fucker, was given the week off too; he was going to have it much harder when he came back. If I let him come back. Him not vouching for Isai at Frost Warren’s after-party, and Nick getting hurt because of that decision, was a critical error I couldn’t address right now. Bodily harm to him was not off the table. We drove to the Santa Barbara Airport, left the Toyota in long-term parking, and took the chartered flight to the Flagstaff Pulliam Airport just north of Sedona. I would confess to liking the whole private jet piece of being rich, avoiding the traffic and crowds at the major airports being a huge part of that.
Taking a seat beside Nick, I was promptly offered something to drink by the flight attendant.
“Just a bottle of water, please.”
She brought it back for me, and a glass of orange juice for Nick.
I took my water and then turned to him. “You had quite the night last night,” I assured him. “I’m proud of you for not ordering that with a shot of vodka.”
“I think, eventually, I could handle it,” he told me, “but I want to put a little more time and space between me and my old habits.”
“Okay,” I said, smiling at him, so much more than simply proud now.
He placed his hand on my wrist, his fingers sliding over the bezel and crystal of my watch.
“Maybe you should get you one, huh?”
“What?”
“The Rolex,” I said, my voice catching, because again, I had those gorgeous eyes of his focused on me. I wasn’t immune to his charms. When he was smaller, more delicate, nowhere near a suitable playmate, I had dismissed him, put him squarely into the kid zone, too young for me, but now, suddenly, it was different. He was different, and the way he touched me, grabbed hold of my bicep when he’d led me from long-term parking to the terminal, placed his hand on the small of my back as he steered me to the plane, and now gripped my wrist in a hold that was gentle and firm at the same time, all of it, the care and control at the same time, was a big turn-on.
