Page 154 of White Lies
“You know,” he says about an hour into packing my bedroom, “you can take anything you want. You can takeeverythingif you want.”
“I’m taking what matters,” I assure him, holding up a pair of pink panties. “See?”
I successfully distract him, and we move on to the living area and make the rounds from there. The entire time, he builds the boxes and tries to overstuff them, and I pull things back out. Time gets away from us, and it’s nearly sunset and time to get ready for dinner when it hits me that I haven’t packed a box of random items like gloves and scarves that I keep in the closet. Afraid I’ll forget again, I rush to the bedroom and the closet. Grabbing a decorative wooden container where I have various accessories stored, I stick it in an empty box in the center of the small room.
I rotate to leave and find Nick leaning in the archway, his hair half around his face and half tied at his nape. His blue eyes are stark. “Are you having second thoughts?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You aren’t taking anything with you, Faith. It’s as if you aren’t committed to leaving or, rather, staying with me.” There is a hint of vulnerability in his voice, his eyes, that Nick Rogers doesn’t allow anyone to see. But he does let me now. He lets me see that I could hurt him the way he could hurt me.
And I am instantly in front of him, my hand settling on his chest. “I am committed,” I assure him. “I want to be with you.”
“Then why do you read like someone packing for a vacation and planning to come back home?”
“Because you’re looking for one thing and not seeing what’s really going on.”
“Which is what?”
“I just don’t feel connected to anything here. Only my studio.”
“You bought this house. You designed it.”
“Because I needed something of my own.”
“And now you’re accepting something that’s mine.”
“No. It’s not like that. I don’t want your place to look like mine.”
“It’s not my place anymore. It’s ours, and I’ve never wanted to share my home with anyone, and I have zero hesitation in this. I need to know you feel the same.”
His cell phone rings, and he draws in a breath, then breathes out. “Why do our phones ring at the worst possible times?” And when I would expect him to ignore the call, he doesn’t, which tells me he’s the one shutting down now, withdrawing.
“Nick,” I say, but he’s already looking at his caller ID with a frown.
“Rita. This is an odd time for her to call.” He answers the line. “Rita?” He listens a moment. “Kasey?” he asks, and after a pause: “Right. She’s standing right here. She’ll call him.” He ends the connection and offers me his phone. “Call him. There’s a problem.”
“I guess I don’t know where my phone is,” I say, punching in Kasey’s number, and the moment it rings, he answers.
“Faith?” Kasey asks.
“Yes. Sorry. I was—”
“We have several busted water lines in the west vineyard. It’s bad. I’m trying to get someone out here, but I’m struggling at this hour.”
“How bad is bad?”
“It’s flowing from numerous locations, and flowing isn’t even an appropriate description. Gushing is more like it. If we don’t get someone out here soon, it’s a total loss.”
My stomach knots. “We’ll be right there.”
“Faith, I don’t know if we can save it even if we get someone out here,” he adds, pretty much repeating what he’s just said but obviously trying to prepare me for what he feels is the inevitable: we’ve already lost the west side.
“Do what you can,” I say, ending the call. “We need to go there. There are several broken—”
“I heard,” Nick says. “Grab your purse and phone. We’ll go now.”
I head into the bathroom, grab my purse, and hunt for my phone, which I can’t find. Frustrated, I shout, “I can’t find my phone!” and Nick appears in the bathroom, holding it. “Oh, thank God,” I breathe out, racing toward him and grabbing it. “This is bad, Nick. He can’t get anyone out there.”