Elastic Hearts (Hearts #3)(21)

“Thank you, Nic. So much. I know I have no right—”

I put my hand up. “Shut up. If I’m doing this, you need to just shut up. I’ll play along because for whatever stupid f*cked-up reason I still care about you, but I can’t promise anything more, and if during our mediation in a couple of weeks you say one negative thing, I’ll do something crazy. Don’t tempt me.”

My dad was outraged. I knew he would be.

“What does Victor say about this?” he asked.

“I’m not telling him about this. I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking of telling him. I just need a simple paper stating my demands.”

“These are things you need to discuss with your lawyer, Nicole. Why do you think I appointed you one?”

I could tell he was at his wit’s end, and even though I was on the phone with him and I wasn’t a six-year-old climbing kitchen cabinets, I felt the crack of the belt.

“Papi,” I whispered. “Por favor.”

He sighed loudly on the other end of the line, and I closed my eyes, letting out a breath.

“Fine, but you’ll have to come to the Newport house to get it.”

My mouth popped open. “Why? Just email it to me.”

“No. We haven’t seen you, you’ve been here a handful of times in the past year, and I’m having a barbeque. Tomorrow. Come early. Bring clothes,” he said, his voice leaving no room for discussion. Leave it up to my dad to make a day at the beach house sound like punishment.

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”





WHEN WILL CALLED me last night and invited me to his beach house, I’d been tempted to come up with an excuse as to why I wouldn’t make it, but then I remembered the isolated private beach and the silence, and I agreed. I’d stayed in the seven-bedroom house in the past and had a good time, so why not now? I hadn’t expected his first words over brunch to be, “We need to talk about Nicole.” And I hadn’t expected the way my heart launched into my throat at the sound of those words. Immediately, I thought of Friday night when I’d seen her at the nightclub. The kiss we shared, the way I asked to speak to her in private and spent the entire time trying not to lock the door, push her against the door and hike up her dress. I made an effort to keep my features as blank as I could.

“What about Nicole?” I asked, smiling as Meire, Will’s wife, walked in with a tray and set cups of coffee on the table for us.

“Where’s Maya?” Will asked her.

“I sent her to buy some groceries. We didn’t have anything in the fridge, but I think I’ll tell her to go home early if it’s only going to be us,” she replied as she walked off with the tray again.

“You’re not going to join us?” Will called out.

“I want to make sure Maya prepared the room for Victor,” she called out from the kitchen.

Will shook his head as he took a sip of coffee, and as much as I didn’t mind delaying the Nicole conversation about whatever it was he wanted to discuss, I was on edge.

“So, Nicole?” I prompted.

“Right,” he said, putting the cup down. “Let’s start from the beginning,” he said, and I groaned inwardly.

Will loved to make lengthy stories out of things he could have said in under two minutes. At least we weren’t at the office and I didn’t have a million files to get through. As long as my ass was sitting in his swanky twelve-seat dining room in his huge beach house, I had to suck up the story.

“When she told me she was getting married I was shocked,” he said. You and me both, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. “Not because I didn’t think she wanted to get married. I think between her and her mother her wedding had been planned since she was six. They love that stuff.” Definitely a surprise to me. “An aunt of hers gave her a Bride Barbie when she was small and two days later Nicole wanted a Barbie Dream House to go with it. Anyway, I was shocked because she’d known the guy for two seconds before she agreed to marriage.”

I nodded, lifting the cup of coffee to my mouth and taking a sip.

“I tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen, and now she’s getting a divorce and I can’t help but feel responsible,” he sighed. “My little girl deserves better.”

“I agree,” I said.

“She deserves somebody who gives her more than she gives,” he added. I nodded in agreement again, not that I knew shit about what that meant. “She passed up jobs for Gabriel just so she could travel to where he was on set. Can you believe he turned her away one day when she showed up?”

I felt my mouth drop. Will nodded, eyebrows raised. “She flew to Canada to see him and he never made an effort to see her. His manager told her to leave.”

“What an *,” I said, feeling my blood start to boil. How could anybody do that to her? To his own wife?

“Complete *. And now he’s trying to get her to—” Will stopped talking when the doorbell rang loudly, his eyes widened. “We’ll talk about this later.”

I wanted to press the matter, but then I heard Meire say hi to somebody and footsteps coming up behind me and saw the grin on Will’s face. Before I saw her, I smelled her, the sweet floral scent I knew covered her entirely. When I looked over and she smiled at me, I felt the air squeeze out of me. She was wearing a long orange dress that fit her loosely, her dark hair was down and wet from a recent shower, her blue eyes vibrant as she looked at me. I smiled back and my eyes made their way down her body and zoned in on the overnight bag in her hand.