Page 48 of Stuck with Me

Nico points at my hand. “No, fuckyou,” he emphasizes. “That’s my granddad’s. That compass has been in my family for generations.”

“Bullshit. Then why would Gigi have it?”

“I don’t fucking know. He must’ve given it to her. But. Shit. Why would he do that?” He throws the blanket off his lap and stands. “Why would he give her a family heirloom?”

As Nico paces in the snow, I’m grappling with the same thing. As a child, I loved digging through Gigi’s jewelry box and trying on the necklace. And when I got older, she finally put it around her neck. I never saw her take it off.

Squeezing it in my hand, the metal digs into my palm. “Where’d you get this?”

He stops his pacing and faces me. “I saw it on the nightstand in the bedroom.”

Acid burns in my throat and I narrow my eyes at him. “And you just…took it? What the hell, Nico?”

“I wasn’t going to keep it. I planned on asking you about it. But then my heart started racing and my vision tunneled, and I knew a panic attack was coming.”

“And so fucking convenient, I came in and gave you the best blowjob of your life and then it completely slipped your mind?” I ball the blanket up on my lap before rising to my feet a bit shakily. The alcohol has reached my legs making me wobbly.

“Woman, you’ve got your nose stuck so high in the air, you’d drown in a rainstorm.”

I grit my teeth together and I glare at him. “I’m pretty fucking sure your exact words were, you’d hit the jackpot.”

He throws his hands up. “Maybe I was jus’ being nice.”

“Fuck you.” I brush past him, swaddling the blanket under my arm.

“Yeah? Fuck you, too.”

I stomp up the porch steps and call over my shoulder before going into the cabin, “Don’t touch my shit.”

“Don’t touchmyshit,” he hollers back.

The door slams behind me and I go into the bathroom to take a hot shower. I deliberately stand underneath the water long after I’ve washed my body and hair. The water heater isn’t very big and as childish as it is, I hope I use up all the hot water in the tank. I hope Nico’s ass freezes without a hot shower.

He’s got some nerve. Not only taking Gigi’s necklace but accusing her of having it in the first place. But it makes no sense. Her having a possession that was Nico’s family heirloom.

The more Nico and I are learning about our grandparents’ relationship, the more confused we are. A summer fling is something I can understand, get behind and root for even, but it feels like it was more than that. And if it was, if it was meaningful, if it waslove, then what happened? Why didn’t they end up together?

My heart aches. I push my fingertips into my skin, massaging my chest. It makes me sad to know Gigi might’ve had a lover that she had to keep a secret. A lover she lost.

Loss is something I know all too well. It’s become more common than anything else in my life. It’s something I’ve come to expect.

My shoulders sag and curl in over my chest. My throat throbs as tears break free from my eyes without warning. As tiny sobs escape, my legs go weak, and I lower myself to the tiled floor of the shower. I pull my knees up and I hug them to my chest while I cry.

There’s nothing I hate more than being vulnerable. But Bbreaking down in the shower is my safe place. It’s the only time I can hide from the rest of the world.

I’ll give myself five minutes. Five minutes. And then I’ll be good. I’ll pull myself up, put on a bad bitch face, and brave the world again. Just like I always do.

But right now—right now it feels as if the shower walls are closing in on me. My chest tightens and I gulp in tiny breaths of air while I allow the tears to continue to burn my eyes. The built-up emotions of missing Gigi, hell, of missing my parents, bubbles to the surface and forces its way out.

It’s not often I cry over my parents. They’ve been gone a long time. But the deaths are stacking on top of each other and so is the grief. It’s why I keep my circle of loved ones small. I don’t know if I can handle losing anyone else.

I won’t let Nico into my circle. I can’t. After this week, he better be gone from Maple Ridge, and my life. Forever.

CHAPTER12

Nico

It’s only been a day since I arrived at the cabin and already, chopping wood is my favorite therapy. Literal chopping wood. Don’t get me wrong, the blowjob was a great alternative, fucking fantastic even, but something tells me that was my only one.

---