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“Wow,” she breathed, running her fingers up and down his arms. “And to think, none of this would have happened if it weren’t for you being such a terrible driver.”
She’d meant it as a joke, but the way his body turned from relaxed to rigid had her hand pausing mid-stroke.
“Nico?”
He lifted his head to look at her. Even with the lazy grin and bedroom eyes, she noticed a sadness in him that hadn’t been there before. All too soon, the magic spell of mind-blowing sex was broken, and the conversation that had loomed in her subconscious since last night was now right in front of them.
“What is it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Liar.”
He shuffled up the bed, turned onto his back, and stared at the ceiling. Lexie nestled into the nook of his shoulder.
After what felt like an eternity, he spoke.
“I don’t talk about the accident much.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no. It’s okay,” he replied, wrapping an arm around her. “You should know.”
“Know what?”
“The reason I was on the island that day.”
Lexie had always known there was more to the story, things she suspected but didn’t know for certain. Things she wasn’t sure she even wanted to know. Making peace with that, she had decided if Nico ever wanted to tell her about those things, he would. Thanks to a not-so-gentle nudge from their recent argument, it seemed that day had come.
“You were right,” he said. “It does have something to do with Sara Riley.”
Lexie slid her arm across his middle. “Tell me.”
“In Boston, I was assigned to work her case when her name was flagged as a missing person on a random drug bust. This guy—Bryan Fowler, real piece of work—got arrested for dealing, and apparently she showed up on a list of known associates. His girlfriend.” He shrugged. “Guess she didn’t see the harm in using her real name after she turned eighteen. I don’t know. So, I went to the address hoping to find her, talk to her.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t pretty. She’d been out on her own for a lot of years and didn’t look to have made many good choices in that time. She was skinny, disheveled, tracks all up her arms.”
Hearing what had become of Sara made Lexie’s stomach lurch. How? How could everything have gone so wrong? Why hadn’t she done more to stop it? Darcy had been right; they should have tried harder.
“What happened to her?”
Nico recalled what Sara had told him about her disappearance, briefly relaying the story back to Lexie. By Sara’s own account, she hadn’t been kidnapped or taken anywhere against her will after they lost her at that party, had not been forced or coerced or discouraged from returning to Mercy Cove. She simply hadn’t wanted to. In her mind, she wasn’t missing, but free.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I went to see her every day, sometimes more than once, but no matter what I said, she still refused to come with me or get help. She just wouldn’t budge.”
Lexie frowned. “You didn’t call her parents?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I should have, but she was such a flight risk, I didn’t think having them show up on her doorstep out of the blue was the way to get Sara to see reason or to get clean. They’d just lose her all over again.”
“That was a big responsibility to put on yourself.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen those kinds of situations go bad before,” he said. “Being a junkie didn’t make her stupid. She had no legal obligation to go home now that she wasn’t a minor anymore, and she could have skipped town at any time. I wanted her to feel in control, like it was her decision, you know?”
Lexie nodded.
“Eventually, I managed to talk her into meeting with her parents so they could see for themselves that she was alive and well—even though anyone could see she wasn’t. She agreed on one condition; that I drive her straight back to Boston afterward and never bother her again.” He gave a resigned chuckle. “It wasn’t what I had in mind, but I said I’d do it. It would have meant a closed case for me and at least some semblance of peace for the Rileys, knowing their daughter wasn’t dead in an unmarked grave somewhere. I told her to pack a bag, and that I’d pick her up first thing in the morning.”
Nico had been absently running gentle fingers over the skin of Lexie’s back as he spoke. Glad he felt safe enough to open up to her, if not a little anxious at what might come next, she put all her focus on simply being there for him, as he had been for her. In the pause that followed his last sentence, she observed the way his face hardened, sensed his unease. She knew how this story ended, and she got the feeling they were nearing the part where things took a very dark turn.
“That night, she called me in a panic,” he said. “She was crying. Terrified. Told me she needed help. There was a lot of noise in the background, banging and shouting. Turned out that Fowler had been let out on bail and came home to find her packing. He thought she was leaving him.” Nico closed his eyes. “I got in my car, and I flew to that apartment, nothing in my head except to get there. Get there before he hurt her.”
