Chapter 31

ChapterThirty-One

Sadie

Patricia gives me her full attention, her cat like green eyes slicing into me like daggers.

I’m suddenly breathless.

This woman looked super sweet and super nice two seconds ago. Now she looks like she’s ready to harm me. The couple at the table over both have big juicy steaks, half eaten. They don’t seem to sense the animosity pulsing from our table right now, because the man isn’t guarding his steak knife where it rests against the rim of his plate. The way she is looking at me right now, I’m seriously worried she might make a grab for that knife and plunge it into my hopeful heart.

The knife doesn’t plunge into my heart, thankfully. But her words do. “You’re staying with Nick?”

Why does she make that sound so unbelievable? I swear, beneath the sugary sweet of her voice there’s a scorn.

“Um, yes. That’s what he said,” I answer, feeling my belly flip and flop with nerves.

I am so uncomfortable right now. I want to run away.

I don’t do confrontation. I don’t like to fight, and right now I feel like she’s getting herself ready to scratch me. Her Holiday red talons are nothing to sneeze at. I would not win in a fight against those.

Instead of scratching me to shreds like I expect, or pulling every strand of hair from my head, she shocks me speechless as her face splits into a blinding smile. When she shoves her hand toward me, I flinch. I don’t take her hand, and that doesn’t seem to bother her as she announces, “I’m Nick’s ex-fiancée.”

My body tenses, and I was already tense, so now I feel like I’ve been carved from granite and dropped here in this stunning mountain steakhouse with its timber beams and scuffed wood floors and low amber light to endure this twisted hell.

This woman is Nick’s ex-fiancée?

What. The. Fuck?

My gaze stutters as it moves from her to Nick. He doesn’t look happy. In fact, he looks the opposite of happy. But he’s not denying her claim.

He was engaged to her. To this beautiful mountain Barbie with her Holiday done nails, brightly painted red lips that are way too pouty to be real and hair a man could literally get lost in.

What the fuck?

I push out words from my throat that feels as though it’s been rubbed raw with sandpaper. “It’s nice to meet you.”

An uncomfortable heat is beginning to bloom from the core of me, radiating outward. My flesh—every inch of it—is prickling uncomfortably. My senses, my freaking intuition is telling me to run. To escape. To flee this terrible misery.

I’m embarrassed. No, no. Embarrassed is too light a word for the way I feel.

I’m humiliated.

I’m stung to the core of me, and I can feel the telltale tickle in my nose that means I might just cry.

I get the man having had a life before me. Normal people have baggage—they have exes. I’m excused from that class of normal, but we’ve already established I’m crazy.

So, I expect Nick to have had a life before me. But a fiancée? And one as beautiful as this woman? I mean, the man has to have expectations, and I’m clearly not the woman to meet them.

What the hell is he even playing at with me?

I can’t give him what he clearly wants. I bet this bitch can bend like a freaking rubber band in bed too.

Shoot, shoot, shoot. What am I still doing here?

Chancing another glance at Barbie, I find she’s studying me. Not only is she beautiful, she’s mean girl beautiful. The kind of woman who knows without a shadow of a doubt that she’s beautiful and she uses it like a blade to cut other women down. Right now, as her green eyes pin me to the chair across from Nick, she looks like the cat that caught the canary—accept I’m the canary and she’s going to shred me between her claws.

She knows exactly how I feel right now. I’m an open book, and I’m beginning to think she’s been watching our table for a while, because she knows just how much hope I had for myself and the man on the other side of the table.

“Leave, Patricia.” Nick sighs as though bored, but I can feel his dark eyes on me now. Studying me.

I just want to hide.

“Oh.” Patricia slaps a hand against her chest, her pouty mouth opening in shock. “Nick, baby,”

“Fucking hell, woman,” Nick growls, and my eyes jump to his. Because this is not the Nick I know. “What are you playing at?”

Her eyes cut to Nick, and she whispers a soft, “Nothing.”

“You broke shit between us,” he clips. “Now you’re here causing a scene when I finally take a woman I’m interested in out.”

“She’s not a woman,” Patricia hisses. “She’s a girl.”

“She’s mine.”

“Oh.” Patricia laughs like he’s cute. “You’re just rubbing her in my face because I’ve been trying to get you back.”

I watch as Nick’s body jolts in his seat, an angry scowl twisting his mouth. “Come again?”

“I’ve been trying, Nick. I told Will I miss you—I thought—I thought he would tell you.” She looks genuinely hurt that Will never relayed her message, and I wonder why he wouldn’t. This woman clearly meant something big to Nick once. And Will being Nick’s friend, I’d think he would want him to have what made him happy.

When Nick doesn’t reply, her pitch rises. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. Is that what you want to hear.” She steps closer to Nick and her voice drops to a husky tone that makes the soup in my belly curdle. “Do you want me to beg? I’ll beg—I know how much you like me on my knees for you.”

“Enough.” His hand claps the table, and the glasses rattle.

Her eyes sharpen. “I told Lucy I want you back.”

At this, Nick actually laughs. I don’t know why he’s laughing. I, for one, do not think this is funny. At all.

“I asked her to help me get you back—she knows you better than anyone—and I thought—she said she would.”

Suddenly, I’m relieved. I’m relieved that I haven’t given this man all of me, even though I know I may never fully recover from the pieces I’ve already given him. I’ve been a fool, thinking I could have the fairy-tale romance Mom and Dad had. I’ve been such a little fool. A girl with stars in her eyes, seduced by the Christmas magic in a small town.

Mom and Dad were once in a lifetime.

My muscles twitch with the need to flee this place, this man, and this drama—when another woman comes into view. I recognize this woman, I realize, as a cold panic settles into the core of me. The woman I thought I’d spend my Christmas with, the woman I spent weeks developing a relationship with over email, phone conversation, and FaceTime—the woman I had genuine feelings of friendship for—appears. Her cheeks are flushed, and her eyes are wild. I realize now, they are the same dark eyes as Nick has, and I curse myself for even noting it.

And right now, as the pain in my heart and soul slices through the wreckage of all the hope I’d set on this man—this quaint little town—the possibility of a love written in the stars—I blame her. I blame her for every jagged ounce of the pain I feel tearing me apart inside.

“I came as soon as Sal called,” Lucy explains, her body coming close and to my shock, she doesn’t stop moving until she hip-checks Patricia away from me.

“Geez,” Nick rubs finger and thumb into his brow like he can’t believe this is happening right now. He’s not the only one. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

“Rescuing Sadie from the Wicked Witch.”

Patricia gasps. “You know her?”

Lucy shoots Patricia a conniving smile. “Sweetie, I brought Sadie here for Nick.”

Patricia looks like she’s about to erupt. “You said you supported me with him.”

“After what you did?” Lucy scoffs. “You thought you’d have my support with my son?”

“So, you found him a little whore to replace me?”

“Enough!” Nick bellows, and the entire restaurant goes silent.

It’s at this moment that I’ve reached my limit. I’m done. I’m so done. Screw the sexy as hell outfit I bought for Nick, and screw Christmas. I’m getting Claus and I’m out of this glittery, magical, hellish place.

My knees shake and my legs feel like Jell-O as I push back from the table. Nick’s eyes take me in, and I know he can read me just as easily as everyone else in this place. I’m an open book, my heartache and humiliation written all over me.

“I’m—I’m going to—go.” I’m still wrapping my mind around the fact that Lucy didn’t just manipulate me into spending Christmas with her lonely son. She used me to distract him from his ex-fiancée, a woman she clearly doesn’t approve of him being with. I feel like such a fool. A used, silly, pathetic fool.

As I move to flee, Nick catches my hand in his. I try to tug loose from his hold, but he’s bigger and stronger than me and I don’t want to make more of a scene than we’ve caused. He tugs his wallet from his pocket, slides too many bills onto the table before saying to a very confused waiter who still holds our cheesecake, “We’re leaving.” And then he tugs my jacket from the back of my chair before he pulls me to the door.

I’m shaken, rattled, and hurting. I don’t fight him as he helps me into my jacket.

We’re about to leave when a voice makes me stop. “Sadie, wait. Please.”

I turn to see Lucy as Nick curses under his breath. “Not now, Mom.”

“I’m sorry. I never meant for you to be hurt, but I can see now that you are. Please, please forgive me and know that I just—I love Nick.”

I could understand her loving her son. What I can’t understand is the insanity she perpetuated to protect him from a woman he once loved, and maybe still loves. When I say nothing, Nick’s hand tightens around mine and he drags me from the restaurant and into the night.