Page 140 of Bleeding Hearts Duet

“Really?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Okay, I’m sorry Brighton. You’re right, we still have plenty of time. Let’s go home, and you can take a nap.”

***

I spent the entire weekend sewing while Nicole moped around the apartment and scrubbed every surface she could find. She was full of anxious energy again, and I didn’t know what had been going on with her.

I thought maybe she was nervous about looking for a new job, but it could also be because she and Matt still weren’t speaking. It was a subject I wanted to revisit, and tonight, I had every intention of doing just that.

I’d gone to her favorite bakery and bought her a dozen cupcakes, fully intending to do nothing but binge on sugar and make her pour her heart out. But when she breezed into the apartment looking relaxed and happy, I was a little surprised. She set to work, laying out a truck load of takeout food on the counter.

“I ordered just about everything on the menu,” she stated. “So help yourself to whatever you want.”

She wasn’t making eye contact with me, and I knew something was up.

“Nicole?”

“Yeah?” she asked absently, bending down to look through the cupboard as though she had lost something.

I walked around the counter and shut the cupboard, forcing her to look up at me as I crossed my arms.

“What’s going on?”

“What do you mean?” she blinked.

Now that I was closer, I could see that her eyes were swollen and puffy, but she had a smile on her face that was the polar opposite.

“Nicole… I can see you’ve been crying,” I said carefully. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Sheesh, I can’t get anything past you,” she muttered as she stood up and leaned against the counter.

“Blame it on the men in my life,” I retorted.

“I planned to tell you all of this after dinner,” she said. “But I met Ryland for coffee today.”

“You did?”

That familiar space in my chest hollowed a little more at the thought of him. I’d been doing so good at keeping him off my mind, but the simple mention of his name was enough to almost topple my resolve again.

“He’s been messaging me for a while about it,” she said. “And I decided to go see what he wanted. Despite everything that’s happened, he’s still like a brother to me…”

“You don’t have to justify why you went,” I assured her. “I know you care about him, Nicole. I want you two to be friends, nothing would make me happier.”

“Well honestly, I was pretty much expecting the entire conversation to be about you,” she said. “I thought he was going to try to get me to talk to you or something. But it wasn’t about that at all.”

“What was it about?” I asked curiously.

“It was about Jackson.” She leaned against the counter and stared off into the distance for a moment. “Ryland told me that it was time for me to live my life. To be happy.”

Warmth filled my heart when I realized what she was saying. Ryland had finally absolved her of her guilt over moving on.

“That’s really amazing, Nicole.” I smiled for her. “You deserve it.”

“That isn’t all.” She rifled through her purse and pulled out a check. “He gave me this too.”

I stared at the check addressed to Nicole with more zeros than I could count, trying to understand what it meant.

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