Page 31 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Nathaniel

T he nice part about having two excited girls with us is that the whole morning has been filled with their chatter.

Hollyn and I aren’t speaking.

Barely a word has passed between us since I went to their apartment to pick them up for the day of sightseeing and visiting their old haunts.

We ride in the car to their old apartment with the girls talking to the two of us or to each other, but we’ve frozen one another out, a thick layer of ice between us. As though both of us decided last night that we aren’t going to start something but instead draw it to a close.

This stop and start with her is painful, torturous.

When we were teenagers, we were full throttle from the moment we met.

I never had to put up with any back-and-forth, and even once Hollyn decided we were done, she didn’t lead me on, drag it out.

We had a clean break, which I hated at the time.

Loathed more than anything that had ever happened to me.

Her complete lack of caring broke something in me—I wasn’t lying about that—and I think the only thing that’ll heal that wound is to have her choose me.

To have her decide that I’m worthy of the forever label I so desperately want.

As much as I long to chase her, I need to know she’s choosing me. I’ll woo, but I won’t chase.

“When we’re done here, I want to meet some friends for coffee,” Kinsley says as we pull up to their apartment building.

“Coffee?” I ask, surprised, trying to hide my sour mood, not wanting to spoil Kinsley and Indy’s day. “You drink coffee?”

“I do here. Everyone does.” She glances at her sister, looking for approval.

“It’s one of the things we do together when Hollyn’s not working.

Which, like, isn’t a lot, but still…” She seems suddenly uncertain, as though she might be giving too much away.

“We have a coffee shop down the street that I meet my friends at when Hollyn is working.”

“If you want to hang out with your friends, that’s fine with me,” I say.

Hollyn is staring out the other window, lost in thoughts I can’t access.

A bright smile splits Kinsley’s face, and she jumps out of the car, dragging Indy behind her. Hollyn leaves behind them. I tell our driver to find somewhere to park and I’ll let him know when we’re ready. I follow the three of them into the entrance and up the stairs to the second floor.

The building is older but not as ratty as I feared. Hollyn must make fairly good money at Reyes and Cruz. Once we’re at the apartment door, Hollyn bites her lip and glances at me over her shoulder. Her long auburn hair falls across her cheek.

“You can just wait here if you want,” she says.

If she thinks I’m missing a chance to see what her life has been like, who she’s become, she’s dead wrong.

“I’ll stay out of the way,” I say, not exactly agreeing with her suggestion.

As soon as the door is open, Kinsley drags Indy into the apartment, but they don’t get far before they stop. The square footage is tiny—even smaller than her Aunt Verna’s in Bellerive.

“This is where you’ve been living,” I say, and I can hear the judgement in my voice, and I silently curse myself.

“Yes,” Hollyn says, her tone bristling. “New York is an expensive city.”

“I didn’t mean that—”

“Look,” Kinsley says, pulling down what appears to be a cupboard to reveal a single bed. “I sleep here, and my sister has the bedroom. Feels like so long ago already.”

While Kinsley shows Indy where all her clothes are hidden in drawers and closets that should probably hold other important things, I trail Hollyn to her bedroom.

“You’ve been happy here?” I ask, drilling into the ice between us, testing its depth.

“Happier than I ever was in Bellerive,” she says, and it comes out so quickly and smoothly that I know she means it. She spares me a glance from the edge of her shoebox closet. “I didn’t mean… that wasn’t meant to be…”

A dig. Still a hit, intended or not.

Maybe trying to pursue her is a lost cause.

I can’t seem to break through long enough to leave an impact.

The thought causes a stone to drop into my stomach.

Maybe I’m fooling myself to think whatever is between us is enough to overcome the past, the trauma of her upbringing, whatever sent her running and has kept her from stopping.

I drag a hand down my face and turn away from her, going the few steps it takes me to be back in the main room.

Kinsley has another backpack slung across her shoulder, and drawers are flung open. “I’m never coming back here,” she says to me and Indy.

I’m tempted to tell her that I agree, that the idea of the two of them living in this tiny apartment is depressing as fuck, but Hollyn might literally murder me if I fanned the flames of Kinsley’s discontent.

“Some of my friends are meeting us at Kaelin’s Coffee in twenty minutes,” Kinsley calls out to Hollyn. “We’re leaving.”

Hollyn appears behind me. “I didn’t say yes to this.”

“He did in the car,” Kinsley says, pointing at me. “It’s not my fault if you weren’t listening. Besides, I go to the coffee shop all the time by myself when you’re working.”

The claws are out, and they are sharp. “I shouldn’t have said yes,” I say, holding up my hands. “Your sister is right—that wasn’t my place.”

“She wasn’t listening,” Kinsley says. “The minute we’re back in New York, it’s like”—she waves her palm up and down in front her face—“the wall goes up and she’s not listening.”

I cannot comment on that, but I have a hard time believing Kinsley is being fair.

“An hour,” Hollyn says. “You get an hour, and then you need to be back here.”

Kinsley leaves with Indy, slamming the door behind her. Pictures on the wall rattle, and I raise my eyebrows at Hollyn, but I don’t say anything.

Instead, I settle into one of the two armchairs that have a small coffee table between them.

There’s no kitchen table or even any discernable space for one.

The place is crammed with storage and, if I didn’t think Hollyn would object to me poking around, memories that I’d love to uncover.

She’s this puzzle that I can’t stop trying to solve even though I know I might never have all the pieces.

Hollyn sighs, and when I glance at her, the toll that fighting with Kinsley has taken on her is obvious. Though Kin had a point about Hollyn not listening to her this time, I also understand how frazzled Hollyn might feel, ’cause I’m all over the fucking place with my own emotions.

“She’ll be thankful for you someday,” I say.

“Sometimes I think I should just sit her down and tell her in detail how much worse it could be. What her life could have been.” She runs her fingers along her wrists where scars are either a faint outline or clearly visible. I haven’t consciously clocked them like I did when we were teens.

Mickie Davis was a monster, and I fucking hated her before I ever met her.

At one point, I even considered trying to sic my mother on her.

Celia isn’t altruistic, but I would have been willing to manufacture something my mother would care about, frame Mickie in a way that would make my mother respond.

But I never did because as terrible as Mickie Davis was, Hollyn’s feelings were always conflicted because of her aunt’s connection to her mother. Hurting her mother hurt her aunt. The worst tangled ball of emotion that left Hollyn, sometimes, unprotected.

“Other than ‘because they can,’ why does the Tucker family have two massive apartments?” Hollyn asks, toying with the shirt in her hand.

“My parents stayed in one, and all of us kids stayed in the other with a nanny.” I give her a slight smile. “As you know, my parents ascribed to the whole ‘seen but not heard’ mantra as far as their children were concerned. And ‘seen’ was only when they felt like it.”

“I heard you and your mom are closer now?” She’s twisting the shirt, and she hasn’t fully entered the room, despite the tiny size of the apartment, as though she’s most comfortable close to an escape.

And the whole time I’m looking at her, there’s an ache in my chest, this intense desire to minimize the awkwardness, recapture what we once had. Maybe I’m a fool for thinking it’s possible after fourteen years apart.

“We are closer, I guess,” I say tapping my fingers on the arm of the chair.

“I grew up. Realized Celia Tucker did the best she knew how. Could have been worse.” My gaze slides to Hollyn’s wrists, and she twists the shirt around her hands and wrists, shielding them from my gaze.

“She’s got a protein issue with her kidneys, which could mean a transplant if they can’t get it under control.

The first step in the treatments they can do to kick-start her kidney into functioning properly isn’t working yet, but the doctors have a pretty extensive plan of attack. ”

“You’re not worried?”

“Ava and I are both a match for a kidney, so Mom shouldn’t die from this, but I think it’s definitely shaken her. She’s not immortal and untouchable after all.”

“Softened her?” Hollyn asks, and there seems to be a hint of hope in the question.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I admit. “I’m still not sure it would be wise for anyone to cross her.”

“I’m just going to finish getting some stuff together in my room,” she says, and she takes the few steps back until she’s out of sight again. After a few beats, I hear movement, rustling of clothes, opening and closing of drawers.

The briefest thaw in the ice between us hardened, too thick to penetrate, in the blink of an eye.

It’s so impossible to be sure if I need to push more, if I’m pushing too much, or if we’re truly a lost cause in her mind.

If only she’d tell me what she wants, not just what she doesn’t think she can have.

We spend the rest of the day buffered by the girls and their excitement, and it’s the only saving grace in what might otherwise feel like a descent into darkness.

I’m starting to think I’m fooling myself to believe Hollyn will come running to me, embrace the reality of us.

A few stolen kisses in an office might be the peak.

I’ve made my feelings clear, and they just seem to create more barriers between us, not less.

The concert is loud and chaotic, but the private suite makes it bearable. I managed to get us into a suite with other studio and television executives, so this is as much a work opportunity for me as a kindness for Kinsley.

Instead of sitting with Hollyn, Indy, and Kinsley in the seats in the open area of the suite, reveling in the music, I’m back at the bar area, mixing and mingling, trying to drum up more investors in some of the projects people are pitching me in Bellerive.

Redesigning Home , the show Posey and Hollyn are fronting, has cracked open the interest in reality-style television in our limited streaming-focused community.

So many Bellerivians now believe our country is the ideal backdrop.

Convincing others who reside outside our island is the trick.

Once the concert ends, we’re swept up by people from Mia Malone’s crew and taken to a separate oversized room where other fans with the same lanyards are already mingling.

The meet and greet is militant in its organization, and as soon as we’re in the room with Mia, she’s bubbly and personable despite just doing a two-hour show.

Indy and Kinsley only seem to fall more in awe and in love with her.

The only moment that isn’t joyous is when Mia’s mother enters to usher us out, and a blend of annoyance and exhaustion seems to descend over Mia before she can conceal it.

Then we’re back in the car on our way to the apartment, ears ringing from the concert, the girls high on adrenaline.

Hollyn’s been quiet all night, and I’ve compensated by talking to the girls or mingling with other industry people I recognized.

I can’t seem to find my footing with her, no matter how badly I might want to.

In the hallway between the apartments, the girls float in their door, elevated by the whole experience.

“We need to meet the car at eleven in the morning to get to the jet in time,” I say, walking backward to my door. The whole day has been rife with tension, and I’m exhausted.

Up until this weekend, I felt determined, like patience and perseverance were the keys to getting her back, but I’m not so sure anymore. She’s sealed herself off.

“Okay,” Hollyn says, and she gathers her long hair into a fist and then lets it go. “Thank you, Nate. She’ll remember this forever.”

I nod, and I slot my key into the other apartment’s door, feeling more defeated and unsure than I’ve been in a long time.