"Come in."
Amanda pushed open Nick's bedroom door slowly. He was laying on his back on top of the blankets in just his jeans. His shirt lay abandoned on the seat by the window. It was dark and cool in the room. Amanda leaned against the door jamb. "Hey," she said.
Nick rolled and turned on the bedside lamp, then flopped back to his original position. "Is she okay?" he asked.
"She went to bed," Amanda nodded.
Nick sighed and stared at his hands, which he'd stitched together against his stomach. Concern weathered his forehead. Amanda couldn't help but notice the barely-noticable hair on his chest, leading a trail across his abdomen and disappearing beneath the waistband of his jeans. She swallowed and looked away, her mouth drying out. Sixteen years might've passed since the last time they'd been in Boulder - the night of their first encounter had, after all, been in Boulder - but Nick's body had scarcely aged, and other than the fact that he wasn't as well formed as he'd once been, he still was absolutely breathtaking. Especially to Amanda, who had longed for him for ten years.
"Can you believe Leighanne?" Nick asked, breaking through Amanda's reverie, "Not telling Bree about her father?" He frowned.
Amanda wanted desperately to agree about how awful Leighanne was, but at the same time she couldn't help but recognize how incredibly hypocritical that would make her. She and Nick hadn't talked about Brian, either, not even to each other. And how much harder it was talking to someone who had never met him before - trying to capture the essence of Brian, to describe his personality to them. She couldn't imagine trying to do that with a child - a child whose eyes looked so much like his, whose jawline was cut exactly the same way as his had been. Amanda knew that if she was in Leighanne's position, Bree probably wouldn't know much more than she did already. Not that Amanda wouldn't have felt guilty about not telling Brianna about her father, but who was to say that Leighanne didn't, either? And she couldn't honestly picture Nick being anymore capable - especially sixteen years ago. After all, not talking about Brian had been exactly what split the two of them up to begin with... wasn't it?
"You might as well come lie down," Nick said, nodding to the space beside him on the bed.
Amanda hesitated.
"I'm not trying to make a pass at you, if that's what you're concerned about," Nick said.
Amanda flushed. She crossed the room and sat down on the edge of the bed beside him, crossing her legs and pulling her strawberry blonde braid around her neck to rest on her shoulder. She ran her fingers over the knots of hair and stared at her fingernails as Nick rolled to his side and studied her for a moment, his head supported by one arm. He picked at the stitching on the quilt beneath them.
After a long moment, he looked up at her. "I've thought about you a lot in the last ten years," he said, his voice solemn.
Her eyes met his. "You did?" she asked. She'd always wondered if he did. She would sit - especially on days that held weight in their history, anniversaries of various aspects of their relationship - and wonder if he was thinking of her the way she was thinking of him. At times, especially during her brief marriage, she found herself wondering if he had forgotten about her and moved on.
"I regretted everything that I did," he said quietly, "Right after the door closed behind you." His eyes shifted to the blanket.
Amanda couldn't look at him, either. The painful memories he was digging up burned in her throat like acid. She licked her lips and struggled to maintain a steady breathing pattern. Imags from that night - that final fight - flashed through her mind like a crappy projector slide presentation. Nick's contorted, angry, yelling face... the glowing mixture of hatred and booze in his eyes... the words he'd shouted echoing in her mind, like tiny sledgehammers on her brain...
"You should've told me sooner," she finally stammered.
"I couldn't," he said. Nick swallowed the lump in his throat. Amanda looked at him - the question in her eyes, and he answered it, "Because I knew you deserved better, and I was too broken to get better."
A tear traced the contour of Amanda's face. "I didn't want better, I wanted - needed - you, Nick."
Nick's nostrils flared with emotion. Amanda's hands fretted over her hair and Nick reached out, took hold of them, and, sitting up, faced her, crossing his legs as well. He stared at her hands, running his fingers over her knuckles, over her nails and the lines in her skin. His yes burned dark blue with fear and anticipation. "Past tense?" he whispered.
"No," Amanda answered, her voice catching ever so slightly in her throat. "Present tense."
His jaw jutted out, his lips fighting emotion, his eyes pooling slightly. He drew a deep breath. "I need you present tense, too," he said.
Amanda pulled one hand away, pressed her palm to his cheek and guided his face up so that their eyes met. She leaned forward, and kissed him softly, shifting her weight so she was kneeling on the bed. He imitated her, and they were kneeling together, facing each other, mouths locked, bodies pressed against each other. He released her other hand and slid his hands around her, pulling her closer, his wide arms enveloping her, one hand centered between her shoulders and the other on the small of her back. She stretched her second hand around his shoulders and slipped her fingers into his hair, her heart beating wildly in her chest. She'd waited for this moment for so long, it felt nearly surreal.
Nick laid her gently back onto the bed, it was with one hand cupped beneath her head, protecting her. She felt safe with him, as she always had, and she remembered the feeling that no harm could come of her so long as he was there beside her that she'd had the last time they'd been here in Boulder, when they'd been seated in that horrible boat in the middle of the white capped waters. The emotions that flooded her rushed just as quickly as that river had, and she found her breathing coming harder as Nick's mouth traveled away from hers, across her neck, into the dip along her collar bone. He slid her sweater over her head, and she undid her braid, and his fingers played along her skin like she was a musical instrument and he the master. She responded to every touch he administered.
When they had finished, they lay there in the dark, holding each other quietly. She had her ear pressed to his bare chest and listened to his heart beat and the rhythmic pattern of his breathing. She pressed her palm against his chest, as though to remember that he was real, actual, and there. She turned her head by tilting her chin up towards his, and whispered, "You're my best friend."
Nick wrapped his arm tighter around her. "You pick really shitty friends," a breath of a laugh followed the words.
"I don't," she argued.
"You really do," Nick answered, "I've been a horrible person to you. I've hurt you, I've abandoned you. I've turned my back on you." He ran his thumb across her cheek and looked into her eyes, searching them, writing a promise into them with his own eyes. "And for some crazy reason, you've picked me to be --" he paused, choking up. "To be yours..."
"Brian picked us for each other," Amanda pointed out.
Nick laughed, "What'd you do to him to deserve that?" he asked, smiling.
Amanda laughed. "I'm not quite sure. But it must've been horrible." She leaned up and placed a kiss on Nick's mouth. He kissed her back. She pulled back and looked deep into his eyes. "Just promise me something?"
"Yes?"
"You won't ever lie about loving me again."
Bree's stomach hurt the next morning from crying and her pillow had that damp morning-after-crying-yourself-to-sleep feeling. She curled to one side, hugging her stomach and staring at the wall, her knees to her chest. That was the first time she'd really let herself feel her loss, she realized. She'd completely felt it, from the tips of her toes through every fiber of her being. Amanda had been so gentle and so understanding about the break down... Bree was just thankful that it had been Amanda - practically a complete stranger! - that had been there instead of her mother. Amanda had held her and listened, where as Leighanne... well, her mother's ability to comfort her had never been all that great. Leighanne was an action comforter. She was the person who held their cool long enough to call for help in an emergency, who did things like go to fetch the first aid kit. She was the person who made the plans and mapped out responses and analyzed situations. But Bree was a needs-a-silent-hug sort of person when it came to comfort, and she'd never received that from her mother. Particularly when it was something to do with her father that she was upset about. After all, there really wasn't any action to take to heal that ache. There was nothing Leighanne could do to bring Brian back. If there was, Bree was certain Leighanne would've done it already.
It was well after eight in the morning when a knock came on the bedroom door. "Bree?" It was Amanda. "Are you hungry? Nick wants to go get breakfast before we head out to Omaha..."
"Yeah," Bree answered, struggling out of the cocoon of blankets she'd created. "I'll be right out."
An hour later, the three of them were sitting in a diner on the main street of Boulder. "Are your pancakes grilled?" Nick asked, smirking at Amanda, who laughed.
"They're prepared on a griddle, if that's what you mean?" the waitress had said, a bit of confusion in her voice.
"That'll do," Nick replied, winking.
Amanda stared at him as though she were observing a rare wild animal that might bolt at any given moment. He was too beautiful of a blessing to tear her eyes away. And besides that, she was afraid that if she didn't keep watch he would simply disappear.
"They've already left." The Boulder City police officer assigned to pick Nick up from the address he'd given Pat at Lost Paddle River Adventures said into his cell phone as he started up his car. "There's no indication here of where they're headed next. All they left was a half-finished box of cheerios in the cupboard and a jar of peanut butter that smells a little funky."
"We'll put a search out for the plates," replied the head officer on the case. "Wherever they're headed next, there's not a chance in Hell they'll get there before we pick him up."
