Choices, Loyalty, & Love (Men of NatEx #3): A Package Handlers Novel Read online

  It doesn’t matter if I was supposed to know or not. That’s the situation we’re in. So I have to somehow make the best of it. I’ve gotten good at that over the years; I shouldn’t have a problem now. Yet I am. Everything is harder with Aidan.

  Okay, not everything. Loving him was easy as hell. So easy that I just never stopped. But the effects of loving him are capable of destroying me. Which means I have to stuff it down and somehow forget about it all. If he felt that way about me, it’s gone now. Or else he would have at least responded to that message I sent. He didn’t though, and now, I have to face the consequences of my actions.

  “Look,” Aidan says, breaking the thick silence. “You can stay as long as you want”—he rises from his chair—“but I need to shower and get ready for work in the morning. I can’t exactly sit and chat.” The tips of his fingers press against the table, turning white with the effort.

  Though he gave his exit speech, he isn’t leaving. We’re just staring at each other, my heart pounding harder with every second that passes. It might beat right out of my chest soon. And my clothes suddenly feel like a prison, far too tight for my liking. When I start sweating, that’s my cue to get up too. I’ll just wait outside for Mason. This was a giant mistake.

  But, like we’re magnets for each other still, as soon as I stand up and start to walk toward the door, he makes a break for it too. We run right into each other, chest to chest, and his arms go around me to catch me. I too throw my arms around him—to steady myself is the excuse I come up with. But that’s a huge lie.

  Unable to help myself, I desperately try to memorize the hardness of his muscles against my palms and my cheek, the warmth of his skin against my arms, how he feels this close to me again. It’s been way too long since the smell of him has washed over me and filled my lungs. So I take a deep breath—my souvenir for when this trip ends and I have to go back to reality.

  With no warning, he hurriedly steps away from me. “Just, uh… Make yourself at home while you wait for your boyfriend. My brother.” The emphasis he placed on those two identifiers isn’t lost on me.

  I don’t have a moment to rethink the action before I’m reaching out for him. “Aidan, I—”

  “Nope. We’re not doing this, Nic.” He crosses his arms over his chest, a smug look on his face. “I mean Veronica.” Then he heads for the stairs, back toward the foyer. “You said it yourself that Mason will be here soon, and clearly”—he faces me again and waves a hand from my head to my feet—“you’re doing just fine with him. Looks like you got everything you wanted.” On the first step, he says, “Well, almost everything.”

  If he only knew how right he is.

  “So I’m going to go upstairs, take a shower, and wait for my brother to call. Feel free to give him my number, since you have a better excuse as to why you have it now.”

  Then he walks away from me. Yet again.

  I get it. It’s self-preservation at its finest. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt though. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t leave me a mess of hate, anger, and love.

  It means, much to my dismay, that nothing’s changed.

  For me, anyway.

  Chapter 2

  Aidan

  God, I was an asshole to her. That is not the way to win the woman of your dreams back. It really isn’t. But holy shit, she came out of nowhere, looking like everything I’ve ever wanted wrapped up in a life she never wanted. I wasn’t prepared at all for that, and I reacted poorly.

  But fuck, man.

  Under the spray of the shower the next morning, I brace myself with a hand against the wall and take a deep breath in. She didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. Not even six years ago when she chose my brother and broke my heart. I just couldn’t deal with having her in my home, seeing the life I’ve built in the wake of heartbreak. Not while she’s still with him. It can’t happen that way.

  While I get ready for work, I try to take my mind off her, but I’m insanely unsuccessful. I thought about her all night, tossing and turning as my dreams even brought her up. The sleek way her hair was pulled back into a bun on the top of her head. The way the sunlight caught her cheekbones before we went inside. I tried not to look, but I’ve never been able to resist her for too long. So I saw it all, from the soft curves around her midsection to the way her skirt brushed the middle of her thighs. I took in everything I could in sneaky glimpses and quick peeks.

  And, now, I wish I wouldn’t have.

  The drive to Nat Ex is uninteresting. But, because I know she’s in town, I can’t help myself from looking at all the faces I pass to see if they’re her. I even make a stop at The Steam Room to see if she’s getting coffee this early in the morning. Sure, Amelia serves coffee and pastries, but The Steam Room wouldn’t have Amelia, who might ask questions if Jeremy talked to her about what he saw yesterday.

  Even though I don’t see Nic, I pick up some pastries because I’m early enough and I already know I’m going to be hell on Matt. And Jeremy if I see him too.

  Matt isn’t stupid though. As soon as he sees me at work with the box of pastries in my hand, he knows what’s up.

  “I assume those are for me for the lack of answers and the plethora of grumpy shit you’re going to give me this morning, so I’ll just take those.” He takes the whole box and starts to head for his truck.

  I thank my lucky stars that he didn’t even try to pull the information out of me. Maybe I haven’t been friends with the wrong Kent brother for years after all.

  “On second thought,” Matt says, standing with one foot up on the steps to his truck.

  And I thought that too early. Indeed, Jeremy is the better friend. He’s leaving me alone, not trying to find the answers to questions I can’t even consider right now.

  “Don’t even fucking start,” I tell him as I split away from him to head toward my own truck.

  But there’s Jeremy, loading box after box into the back. “Hey. What’s he got?” he asks, pointing to his brother. “Are those from The Steam Room?” Then he looks at me and lifts a single eyebrow. “Dude.”

  I flip him off and walk around the other side of my truck. He’s not the better friend. They both can go fuck themselves. I’m not in the mood for this.

  After the back door is shut, Jeremy comes around to me just as Matt reaches me too. Jeremy steals a pastry from Matt’s box and takes a bite, but it’s clear by his reaction that he doesn’t think they’re as good as what his girlfriend makes. But I didn’t get them for him to compare. I got them so they’d eat and not talk.

  “So, that was Nic,” Matt says around a mouthful of apple Danish. “Damn, dude. I can see why you’ve been so fucked up for years.”

  “Years?” Jeremy asks before reaching into the box for a second.

  I give him a look that says I thought you thought these weren’t that good, but he shrugs it off.

  “I haven’t really heard that much about this Nic,” he continues. Then he takes a bite. “You’ve talked about girl problems in a general sense, but it must be bad.”

  I put a hand on the side of my truck and lean against it. Then I pinch the bridge of my nose and sigh. This isn’t how I wanted to start this day. But did I really expect anything else?

  “She’s my brother’s girlfriend,” I spit out through gritted teeth. It was quiet, and if they didn’t hear me, too fucking bad. That’s the only time I’m saying that ever again.

  “Oh, shit.” Jeremy nearly drops his pastry and fumbles to keep it in his hands. “Wait,” he says when he gains his stability. “You have a brother? Why didn’t we know this?”

  Matt raises an eyebrow but otherwise stays quiet. And this is why I don’t talk about my personal shit. I can’t deal with waiting for other people’s judgment. If I keep it to myself, my own judgment is all I have to deal with. I can only take hearing from myself how selfish and awful I am for wanting my brother’s girl for so long. I certainly don’t need to hear it from anyone else.

  “What? Just say it.” I stand
up straight and wait for Matt to lay into me. I’m not even sure why I expect that after how long we’ve been friends. It’s not really his style. But I suppose I feel like that’s what I deserve.

  He doesn’t though. “I’m not gonna do that, man. I’m sure there’s more to this story, but I don’t think we’re going to get it today.”

  “We get second-rate pastries instead,” Jeremy says as he reaches for a third.

  Both Matt and I give him a look.

  “What?” He squints at us, the next pastry inches from his mouth. “It’s market research.” Then he shrugs and bites into it.

  After a deep exhale, I say, “Yes, there’s more. Maybe after work I’ll be in a better mood to tell you about it, now that it’s shown up on my doorstep.”

  The brothers reel back in shock. Eyes wide. Eyebrows raised. Mouths thankfully closed.

  I hold a hand up before they can say anything. “Don’t even start. I’m getting to work now before you two can…” Not wanting to give them any ideas, I just trail off and get into my truck.

  Their smirks are the last thing I see as I pull away.

  After my fourth stop of the morning, my phone buzzes in my pocket. I haven’t bothered checking it since it started buzzing around when I left for work, and I don’t want to start now. It’s either my brother, who I haven’t seen in six years, or Nic, who I saw last night and wish I hadn’t. If only because it makes the simple life I’ve created way too fucking complicated. And I can’t have that right now. Or ever.

  We both made choices way back when. She chose my brother. I chose to leave. That’s where our story ended. I was sure of it. Because there was no way I was “stealing” her from my own flesh and blood. If she didn’t want me, then that was that. And she made herself clear. Loud and fucking clear.

  Not that Mason knew about any of this.

  When my phone goes off again in quick succession, I decide that it’s finally time to see who it is. When my brother’s name flashes on the screen, I stuff my phone back into my pocket. I’m at work, so he’ll just have to wait. And it looks like I might be busy after work now too. So he’ll have to wait a little longer. I’ll tell Matt and Jeremy everything they want to know, answer any question they might have, if it means putting off a family reunion that much longer. But I won’t tell them that.

  I just know I won’t be able to stomach seeing them together. I’ve avoided it for this long.

  What’s one more day?

  ***

  Nic

  “Veronica,” Mason says through the bathroom door. “I finally got a message from him. It was a text about a place called Giana’s Bakery. Want to run over there with me when you’re dressed and ready to go? We can get coffee and something to eat if you’d like.”

  For the past few months, that’s how Mason’s been speaking to me. In long, rambling sentences designed to give me an invitation I can refuse if I want to but might feel bad about. He’s not doing that last bit on purpose, but I feel it anyway. He’s trying to go out of his way to be nice to me, but the reason for that grates against my nerves every time I think about it too long.

  I tell him, “Yeah, sure,” as I pull my jeans on. No skirts today. If I run into Aidan somewhere, I don’t want to make the same mistake as yesterday. I saw the way he tried not to look at my foreign clothes with disgust. I may be a glutton for punishment by hoping to see him again, but that look on his face is not the kind of punishment I’m into.

  Once my hair has been combed out, I open the door and let the steam out. It feels good to be clean after the long flight and my Aidan encounter. I’d like to get some yoga in before we go, but that might not happen much on this trip. The look on Mason’s face, however, makes me want to run back into the shower.

  That expression of awe and familiarity—it nearly chokes me. His hand fights to stay by his side instead of reaching out for me. When I start moving past him, the tension in his hand fades as he realizes the opportunity has passed. Not that I would have let him take the opportunity, but that’s beside the point.

  I don’t know the real reason why he brought me on this trip. He said that he thought it’d be nice for us to see Aidan together after all this time. I’m not sure if he doesn’t want to face his brother alone or if he wants to use this business trip as an excuse for us to “get away.” Whatever the reason is, he never took my true feelings into consideration about it. “No” wasn’t going to be an acceptable answer.

  Not that it mattered. I couldn’t have told him precisely why this trip was a bad idea for me. And for his brother. Though I guess I didn’t expect Aidan to react that way. I thought maybe six years was enough time to put the past behind us. But I knew I was wrong the second he pulled into his driveway and tried to blink me away.

  “I hope you’re hungry,” Mason says. “Apparently, they make great stuff. Their online reviews say to try their chocolate chip muffins, but they have a lot of things available, so you’ll have your pick.”

  As I pick my purse up, I smile at him. It’s a weak smile. The kind of pacifying one you give to someone trying to please you when you don’t really care. I think we both know what’s going to come of this trip, what will happen when we get home, but Mason isn’t willing to accept that yet. So he’s going to give it all he has to his very last breath and go down swinging.

  I can’t fault him for that. But I won’t let that be the deciding factor, either.

  My phone rings on the way to the car, and I recognize the number as one I don’t want to answer at the moment. My pulse speeds up a bit when I think about hitting the butting to answer it. I’m not ready to hear the news, so I let it go to voicemail.

  In the car, we’re quiet. I’ve been quiet for months now. Since right before I sent Aidan that text he never returned. We’ll have to have a conversation about it sometime. Right? Maybe not. Maybe we’ll ignore that just like we’ve ignored each other for the last several years. Just like I’ve been trying to ignore what’s happened with me and Mason over the last few months.

  Maybe that’ll become my supreme strategy for life now: ignore, ignore, ignore.

  I can hear Aidan’s voice in my head: That’s no way to live, Nic.

  But I’ll ignore that for now too.

  “Oh, there it is.” Mason points at a shop to the right and pulls the car into a spot along the street. When we get out of the car, he says, “It even smells delicious. I’m sure the food will be great. You ready?”

  I blink at him a few times. My patience for his careful questions is running thin, but I remember my new life rule, take a deep breath, and nod. Then I follow him inside, where a small line has formed near the register. I’m grateful for the distraction of having to choose something to eat.

  Unfortunately, all I can think about is if Aidan has ever been here. Maybe this is his morning spot and he sent us here because the beautiful woman with dark hair behind the counter is his girlfriend. Maybe she’s Giana and she makes the best breakfast in the world to him because she’s the one who usually makes his breakfast.

  When we get to the counter a couple of minutes later, the beautiful woman asks if we’re ready to order. Mason points to me and tells me that I should go first. But, when I open my mouth to order, I realize I didn’t spend any of those minutes deciding on what I want for breakfast. The only thing I decided was that I probably don’t like this woman. Which is super unfair, but nothing with Aidan has ever been fair.

  “Uhh,” I say, stalling. “No, I’m sorry. I’m not.”

  “Mind if I choose for you, then?” she asks, a smile beaming across her lips. Her eyes shine as though this is her favorite part of her job.

  “Umm.” I kind of like the idea of letting her pick for me. I’ve made some big decisions in the last few months, so the little ones slip right by me. “Sure. Go for it.”

  Her smile actually widens, though I hadn’t thought that possible. Then she closes her eyes, inhales, and blindly walks to the end of the display case. She trails her fingers along the
glass on her side before opening the case as well as her eyes. After picking something marked peach cobbler Danish, she aims her gaze at me.

  “I made two new pastries this morning, and now, I know why. This one’s for you.” She happily places the pastry on a dish before lifting a second plate. “And this one,” she says, reaching into the case again, “is for you.” She flicks her gaze to Mason as she sets a chocolate croissant on the empty plate. With both of them in her hands, she comes back toward the register.

  “Wow. I love peach,” I tell her in absolute awe as she sets the plates in front of us. Then I look at Mason, who’s nearly drooling over the croissant. “And he’s obsessed with all things chocolate. It’s like you already knew.”

  “She has a gift,” a man says behind me while he approaches the counter. The bag slung over his shoulder sways as he leans down to kiss the woman who picked the perfect breakfast for us. “Don’t tell her I said that though.” He winks at us before going through the door to the kitchen.

  As the door closes, though, he peeks through the cut-out window and squints at me. I take this moment to get a better look at him and realize he’s one of the guys I saw in the car with Aidan yesterday. He is dating the woman who works here? Not Aidan?

  We both look the same amount of confused. And the door swings back open as Mason pays for our food.

  “Do I know you?” the man asks, looking straight at me.

  But I widen my eyes and shake my head. “I don’t think so. I’m not from here.”

  “Are you sure?” He narrows his eyes even further. Then he snaps his fingers. “Wait. Weren’t you at A—”

  “Um, no,” I quickly interrupt. Not that it’s a secret, but I don’t want to get into it now. He might have seen how hesitant we were at first, and god only knows what Aidan’s said about me. So I have to shut this down. “Sorry. I think you have me confused with someone else.”