Sebring

Eric’s lips thinned again, not a big fan of anyone talking to him that way, but he still got Nick so he also nodded.

Nick turned away and said no more.

Eric fell silent with him.

Minutes later, Eric broke the silence.

“I think of a way in, we’ll talk.”

“Appreciated,” Nick muttered into his glass, lifted his eyes and caught the bartender’s attention.

He got another drink.

So did Eric.

He caught the girl at the other side of the bar looking at him two more times.

He went home alone.

* * * * *

11:17 – That Night

Nick stood at his kitchen counter, his fingers wrapped around another glass of whisky, a framed photograph held in his other hand.

The picture was of Hettie. A woman who looked like a girl. A pretty girl. A mature girl.

But a girl.

When she was alive, Nick had thought she’d always look like a girl and would do just that until the day she died. He’d thought this thinking that day would be decades in the future.

But in the end, in a way he hated, it had turned out he was right.

Blonde hair, it had been thin-ish but it was soft. Big blue eyes. Freckles on her nose.

She could act like a dork. She was sometimes klutzy. She had no problem being a big goof.

She could also take down a two hundred and fifty pound man who was six inches taller than her.

She looked so far from FBI it was hilarious.

Which made her perfect for undercover work.

He stared at her picture in its frame, something he’d had out for years. Something he’d put away when he’d started inviting Olivia over.

And he stared at her picture realizing that over the years, she’d become a part of the décor. He hadn’t paid much attention to the fact, in one pad or the other, she’d been on the chest he now had at the wall between his bedroom and the workout room for years.

She was a memory.

She’d died and he’d vowed to himself she’d never be reduced to that.

But she was a memory.

A happy one.

The wound of the shock of her brutal death fading, the rest, the good times, had floated to the surface.

Hettie smiling. Laughing. Joking around. One of the guys but in a way that was all girl. Giving great head. Fucking up the eggs. Acting like she was having an orgasm the first bite she took every time he cooked for her.

Hettie. A happy memory.

But a memory.

And he stood there looking at her and her freckles and he did it for once not missing her fucked-up eggs.

He did it wishing he’d taken a fucking photo of Olivia.

“I’m an asshole,” he whispered to the picture.

You’re not an asshole, sweetheart. We both know oh-so-fucking-well you can’t control who you fall in love with, Hettie whispered into his brain, and his back went straight.

Fall in love?

“Jesus, shit, now I’m a lunatic,” he muttered.

With determination, he turned his attention to his whisky.

He downed it.

After he did that, he thought maybe he wasn’t a lunatic.

Maybe he needed to stop fucking drinking.

On that thought, he walked the picture to the chest but he didn’t put it on top where it used to be.

He slid it in the drawer where he’d hidden her when he’d had Olivia.

And he forced Hettie out of his mind as he moved to his bedroom.

The problem was, he tried to force Olivia out of his mind too.

He succeeded with Hettie.

But as she’d been doing since that night he decided to save her from him, Olivia kept him awake all night.

* * * * *

6:23 – Sunday Evening

“Okay, you want to tell me why it looks like you haven’t slept in a year and you’re all broody?”

Nick turned from his contemplation of the lights of Denver that he could see from his place staring out the floor to ceiling windows of Anya and Knight’s condo.

He saw Anya had sidled close.

He hadn’t felt her approach.

Fuck, he had to get his head together. Turner, Hettie and Deacon had taught him better than that.

He looked across the expanse of sunken living room to the other side of the space where the kitchen was. Knight and his two girls were there too, cooking. He saw Knight smiling, Kat giggling and Kasha in her own world, not helping her father and sister, but for some reason she was in the middle of the kitchen twirling.

There it was again. Knight was a natural at everything he touched.

Even being a dad.

There were parts of that that weren’t really a surprise. Their mother, back then fucked way the hell up, had had Knight and named him so he’d be her protector.

But not in a million years would Nick guess his brother would be comfortable in a kitchen with two little girls, letting one twirl happily in her own world while making the other one giggle.

And not in a million years would Nick guess he’d be happy seeing his brother had that, content in his place being a part of it, and not feeling less because of either.

He turned back to Anya.

And Anya, being his in a way he would also never guess he wanted, but in a way now he wasn’t sure he could live without, that being the sister he’d never had, he laid it out.

“I don’t think of Hettie anymore.”

She looked confused and spoke cautiously, “I…well, I can’t tell by the way you said that. Is that good?”

“I don’t know,” Nick replied. “Is it good not to think of someone you loved who you watched get shot in the head?”

Her face registered a minor wince and he wished he hadn’t laid it out so bluntly.

Before he could apologize, her eyes swept to the kitchen and she moved closer.