Page 222 of The Storm

There’s a slight pause before he nods.

I press my lips together.

In our own way we’ve both been running for years. Running away from the truth and coming to terms with what happened. And maybe I’m not done running yet. I don’t know. I may never be done. What I do know is it’s unfair. Nick might be willing to forgive. He might want to get to know them. After all, my parents were his parents first. He might want to let them back into his life. If not right away, then someday. But he can’t make that decision when I’m standing in his way. He won’t figure out what he wants by running away after me.

I refuse to be the one who takes that choice away from him.

I refuse.

SIXTY-SIX

INDY

I stand nextto Nick’s car, taking in the house in front of me. A lot has stayed the same. The house is still white. There’s still the gray roof and the blue shutters. The lawn has been recently mowed, and the flowerbeds and trees haven’t disappeared anywhere.

But the car parked in the driveway is not the same one, and the pots of flowers on the front steps are different from the ones I remember.

I’ve spent the last week trying to figure out what I’m going to say once we get here, and now that I’m standing in front of the house, I suddenly have nothing. My head is empty, and I don’t know what to expect. I don’t even know what I’m hoping to get out of this visit, to be honest.

Nick rounds the car and stands next to me, shoulder against my shoulder.

“Okay?” he asks.

“I honestly don’t know.”

He takes my hand, links our fingers, and squeezes reassuringly. He doesn’t say anything else. Instead, he seems content to wait until I get my shit together.

In the end, I shake my head and start to walk. It’s not like I can stand in the driveway forever. Once we’re in front of the door, I inhale and straighten my back. Nick squeezes my fingers once more, and I squeeze his back, and despite the nerves rattling around inside my chest, I feel calmer.

Whatever happens here today, I still have Nick.

I knock on the door, and we wait. It doesn’t take long until I hear footsteps on the other side, and the door is pulled open.

Mom seems frozen in the doorway as her eyes flit between me and Nick. Her brown eyes. It hits me right here and now how similar the color is. And now I’m wondering how I never saw it before.

I clear my throat awkwardly. “Hi.”

It seems such an inadequate thing to say after all these years, but it’s all I’ve got.

“Go,” she says. She covers her mouth with her fingers. I can see the pain in her gaze. The confusion. The hope. It’s all there. “Nick.”

I slowly let out the breath I’ve been holding trapped inside me the whole time and lick my lips, throat impossibly dry.

“I was wondering if we could maybe talk for a bit,” I manage to get out.

She immediately opens the door wider and waits silently as we step inside. My hand is still in Nick’s, and I’m sure she sees it, but she doesn’t say anything or ask about it, and I don’t offer an explanation.

The moment I step inside it all hits me right in the face. The house still smells like the home I used to know, and wherever I look, it’s all the same. The same staircase I ran up and down for half my life. The same living room where we used to have movie nights. The same kitchen and the same long dining table with eight chairs around it. The same view of the bay from the windows.

It’s nostalgia and memories and an ache inside my chest.

“We can sit in the kitchen,” Mom says, wringing her hands.

“Is Dad home?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “At a gallery opening in Vegas.”

We sit down at the kitchen table, Nick next to me, and for the next little while we watch my mother move around, filling glasses with water and putting out snacks until she runs out of things to do and is forced to sit down.