Comeback (37 page)

“If you could have a house custom built for you,” Nicky said after we’d been working for a while, “what would you want?”

I dipped my roller in the pan to get more paint, sitting back on my heels to think about it for a second before getting up again. “And I could have anything I want?”

“Anything at all.”

“I’d want it to be out away from the city. Somewhere with lots of trees and privacy but with a view of a lake or something like that in the back. And lots of windows. I’d want as much natural light as possible. Not as big as Keith Burns’s house, though. That thing is insane. I’d never find a use for all that space, even if I had a dozen kids.”

“Okay, but what else? That’s more about where it’s situated than what you’d put inside.”

“Open living spaces. Huge kitchen with lots of storage and work space.”

“You mean lots of counters for you to clean at night,” he accused, laughing.

“Maybe.” I grinned at him. My hair was starting to come loose, so I set the roller down for a minute so I could adjust it. “Maybe an office so that when I do work from home, I could have a good place to do it.”

“What about for the bathroom?” Nicky asked, holding out his roller so I’d load it for him.

“I’m not terribly picky about most things in the bathroom, but there is one thing I’ve always wanted and never had.”

“What’s that?”

“A huge, deep tub, not one of those standard-sized ones that are only really big enough for kids.”

“Maybe one that’s big enough for two?”

I shot a look up at him, and he waggled his eyebrows at me.

“You’ve got a one-track mind, don’t you?”

“Can you blame me?” He handed his roller down to me again with a pleading look.

“You have a shelf thingy on your ladder that would hold a tray, you know,” I said, laughing. “You could do this yourself.”

“Yeah, but I like the view of your ass when you bend over to do it for me.”

I shook my head and passed his roller back up to him. Then I filled a tray for him and settled it on the shelf on his ladder. He gave me a pathetic pout.

I moved to work on a section of the wall that would give him a view of my backside to compensate. “Black or white?” I asked.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Black or white? Pick one.”

“White,” he said.

“White what?”

“The White Stripes.”

“Hmm. Black, for me.”

“Black what?”

“A little black dress.”

He dropped his roller on the floor. I turned around, raising a brow in question. He shrugged, trying but failing to give me an innocent look. I went over to pick it up and handed it to him. He grabbed hold of my wrist instead of the roller, tugging me up to my tiptoes as he bent down to meet me. Then he planted a kiss on my lips, a big smacking wet one.

“You’re trouble, you know that?” I said when he released me.

“I know. Are you planning to wear a little black dress tonight?”

“I don’t know.” I moved back over to the section of wall I’d been working on. “Depends on what we’re going to do tonight. Do you think I should?”

“You should. You absolutely should.”

“Then I suppose I will.”

We both settled in to work some more. Nicky finished all he could reach without moving his ladder, then climbed down to reposition it. I noticed he paid particular attention to angling the ladder in such a way that he would have a nice view of my assets. Thank goodness no one else was in here with us. I didn’t embarrass easily but having someone listen in on this conversation would be more than enough to do it.

“Kids or no kids?” he asked after a few minutes of diligent work.

I froze before answering. I didn’t want to say something that he could misinterpret. “I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’m kind of happy with the way things are now. Kids-wise.”

“Meaning you like the ones we have but don’t feel the need to add to that?”

The ones
we
have
. Another reminder from him that he thought of us as a family, that I was included.

“Something like that,” I said, looking over my shoulder at him and smiling.

Truth be told, that was exactly what I’d meant, but it still felt odd to me to think of them as
ours
. They were
his
kids, definitely, and at some point, once the court finalized everything, I supposed they would be mine, too, at least as far as the law was concerned. But they weren’t really
my
kids, whether I was living with them or not.

He gave me a meaningful look. “Then I’ll say I agree.”

I wanted to move the conversation into safer territory because someone could walk in on us at any moment. If we were at home, it would be one thing to talk like this. We flirted often, especially when we played our This or That game. But this was going beyond flirting. This felt as if we were talking about something so much more important than our favorite movies or what we liked to eat for breakfast. It felt as if we were talking about the future, making important decisions.

I wasn’t afraid of making those decisions, but I didn’t want either of us to make them lightly. Everything about our game was typically blithe and off-the-cuff.

“All right,” I said. “Bagels. Peanut butter or cream cheese on them?”

“How about whipped cream on you after I take your little black dress off tonight?”

“Nicky,” I hissed, looking to confirm no one had slipped in on us without me realizing it.

“Jessica,” he said, mimicking my tone.

“Someone could walk in here at any moment.”

“They’re probably keeping their distance because they expect we’ll be talking like this.”

“There’s no guarantee they’ll stay away.”

“So? Are you worried they’ll hear me telling you I love you?”

“I…” What? I spun around so I could look at him. He seemed completely serious, even if he was grinning like a fool. I set my roller down on the tray because I didn’t trust myself not to drop it and send paint splattering everywhere.

“Because I do,” he said. He climbed down the ladder and crossed over to me, and I couldn’t breathe. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I had fought it for a long time—too long, probably—but there wasn’t any point trying to fight it anymore. I’d given up and accepted it awhile back. I wasn’t really sure when it had happened. It was just a gradual thing. But one day a few weeks ago, I’d been sitting across the dining room table from Nicky with the boys on one side of us and Elin and
É
tienne on the other side. We were eating dinner, and all three of the boys were teasing Elin and making her blush when Nicky had caught my eye over the table. He hadn’t smiled, exactly. He’d just looked at me, as though he could really see all the parts of me that so often I tried to hide.

I’d realized then that I didn’t want to hide anything from him, that I wanted him to see all there was to see of me, to touch all the parts of me there were to touch. I didn’t want to be separate from him in any way. That was when I’d accepted the fact that I loved him and there was no going back. I supposed I’d known it a lot longer than that, but there was still some part of me denying it. Maybe it was because I wasn’t sure he was there with me.

He smiled even more brightly than he already had been, at once a little bit cocky and a whole lot sweet. “I know you do. I’ve known it for a long time. You’ve loved me since before I was ready to let you.”

I shook my head, still trying to come to grips with all of this. “Why wouldn’t you want me to love you?”

“Because it’s not easy to love someone like me. Because it meant you were opening yourself up to get hurt again, and the last thing in the world I would ever want to do is hurt you. And that was a lot of responsibility for me to take on with everything else going on.”

“But it’s okay now?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

He grinned. “Because it hurts even more to not love. You told me that once before, and now I get it. I don’t want to hurt you, so I figure I’d better let you love me.” He laughed. Then, in an instant, he lifted his paint roller and smeared it down my right cheek, getting blue paint on my skin, my hair, even the collar of my shirt.

I squealed and tried to run for safety, but he put his other arm around my waist and put more paint on my other cheek.

I gasped and huffed, and I squirmed to free myself. No use. His arm was a tight band around me and I wasn’t going anywhere until he was ready to let me go.

“You are
so
going to get it,” I said.

“Promise? Because we can leave right now if you mean it.”

“You are incorrigible.”

“That’s all right. Because you love me.” He leaned in to kiss me, and I turned my face at the last second so that he ended up with his own face full of blue paint.

He finally let me go after that. I backed away enough that I could get a good look at him. It was all over his nose and lips. I burst out laughing, and he gave me a big smile. That was when I saw the paint on his teeth and laughed even harder.

Carter poked his head in the dining room. “I thought I’d check to see if you two need anything, but it looks like you’ve got things pretty well in order.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to get my snickering under control. That was fighting a losing battle, though, the same as trying not to fall in love with Nicky had been. “We’re goofing off a little. We’ll get back to work.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Carter said, backing out of the room. “Just make sure whatever gets on the walls looks good. I don’t care how much you get on each other. I’ll just add an extra can of paint or two to Nicky’s bill.” He winked, and then he left.

“So…” Nicky said. “What do you say? Black dress? Whipped cream?”

“I say, let’s finish what we’ve started here.” I stopped there for a long moment—long enough that I could sense his disappointment. After the paint-to-the-face move, he had earned me torturing him at least that much, but I couldn’t keep him in suspense for too long. “And then once we’re done, we can figure out what to do about the black dress and whipped cream.”

“Yeah?” His blue-toothed grin looked so ridiculous that I was tempted to go over and kiss him, if not for the fact that I would probably end up with blue teeth, too.

“Yeah,” I said instead.

We went back to work, with Nicky picking up his pace a little.

“Jennifer Lawrence movies,” I said after a bit. We might as well continue our game while we worked. “
Hunger Games
or
X-Men
?” I was sure he would say
X-Men
. What man wouldn’t, particularly when the man in question liked staring at my butt as much as this one did? It seemed particularly fitting at the moment, considering pretty much all she wore while starring in that movie was what looked like a bunch of blue paint.

He stopped painting for a moment, waiting to answer until I looked him square in the eye. “Neither.
Silver Linings Playbook
.”

“Really?”

“Really. Probably because I relate to those characters. Maybe a little too much.”

I started painting again, smiling to myself because I was sure Nicky didn’t mean he related to them because he was kind of crazy. It was because he was trying to be okay, the same as Tim, and the same as me. And just like the characters in that movie, his efforts were paying off.

“What about you?” he asked.

“I’m going to cheat and steal your answer.” I related to them, too, more than I would have liked to admit at a few points in my life.

“Breakfast cereal,” he said, continuing the game. “Wheaties or Lucky Charms?”

“Lucky Charms,” I said without hesitation. “Can’t beat something with marshmallows.”

“I don’t know. Whipped cream might top marshmallows.”

“But whipped cream doesn’t come with a leprechaun.”

“Thank God for that. Leprechauns are creepy little elves.”

I turned my head to look at him over my shoulder and rolled my eyes at him. “Just because you’re freakishly tall…”

“I’m only freakishly tall if you’re freakishly old.”

“Watch it, young’un.” I held my freshly loaded paint roller out toward him like a weapon, a bit of blue paint dripping onto the tarp. That reminded me what Carter had said on his way out of the room.
I’ll just add a can of paint or two to Nicky’s bill
.

I narrowed my eyes at Nicky. They’d already settled everything related to Hugo’s accident. “What bill was Carter talking about?” I demanded, instantly suspicious. It wasn’t like Nicky to keep things like that from me. We’d made a point to be incredibly open with each other about everything since the Vicodin incident. No more secrets.

He raised a brow at me and grinned. “Well…you know all those questions I’ve been asking you about your dream house?”

“No.” He couldn’t be serious. Could he?

“Once he’s done here, he’s going to help us pick out a plot of land somewhere and design a house. So we can really be a family. So it can be
our
house, not
my
house. I want to put in touches for the kids, too. Something that can make it belong to all of us.”

I set my roller down on the tray, crossed over to him, and I kissed him, blue teeth be damned. A bit more paint wouldn’t matter with all that he’d already gotten on me. Besides, I was crying buckets and therefore was an utter wreck.

“So,” he said when we broke apart, “any chance we can skip out of here yet? I need to stop by the store to pick up some whipped cream.”

I smiled and tipped the tray of paint up so it spilled all the way down the front of his body. Then I ran. I didn’t make it very far. He was faster and his legs were longer, and I didn’t want to get away anyway. He caught me and rubbed the paint all over me.

And we laughed. Nicky could always make me laugh.