Sometimes the hardest thing and
The right thing are the same
The waves lapped on the shore, and the cry of gulls echoed over the beach. The sky was a deep blue with barely a cloud in the sky. Nick stood ankle deep in the water and gazed out at the far away horizon. Sunlight reflected off of the dark sunglasses shading his eyes, and a hat covered the rest of his face.
The last time he’d checked his watch, it had read two-thirty. East coast time, he calculated, it would be five-thirty. That meant that Shelby was a married woman and completely lost to him. Divorce would never enter her vocabulary because she followed through on everything she did. Knowing that, he still couldn’t squash the tiniest flickers of hope.
Sighing, he turned away from the ocean’s depths and contemplated a vacation. Somewhere he could go to be alone and be anonymous. Somewhere warm and by the water. Plenty of sun and fresh air could cure him. Maybe.
Mostly, he just wanted somewhere to go where he could lick his wounds in private. Maybe give his heart time to heal.
He knew he’d done the right thing by letting her go, and he’d half-convinced himself of that. Whatever she’d said to him two nights ago, he thought it best not to think of it. The conversation and the truth in it would be only hers to know.
When he arrived home, he found his siblings’ cars and the camera crew’s van had disappeared. That was fine with him because he needed to be alone. It had been hard to act unaffected and casual around the idiot cameras that would capture everything, but he’d done it. No one other than his family and the Boys knew that something was bugging him.
They’d started working on the visual layout for the new album, and the mournful pictures that had been taken of him had been some of the best of his career. He’d known it, and so had the others. The raw, real emotion had been impossible to hide.
“This, too, shall pass,” he muttered to himself as he parked the car. “Nothing good lasts forever. And why the hell am I talking to myself in fucking clichés?”
But he would, Nick thought, get over Shelby Washington. After her honeymoon, he’d have to see her eventually. They were friends now, and he wanted to hold onto her friendship. Somehow, he’d have to bury this enormous need he had for her and go on.
When he found the door unlocked, he muttered curses at his siblings for being irresponsible. He’d told them a thousand times, he mused as he shut and locked the door behind him, that any psycho could get into the house and hide until they were sleeping. Then, said psycho could hack them to bits for no reason at all while…
And he figured he should probably stop trying to distract himself from the fact that he had really and truly lost the woman who’d come to mean the world to him over the last few months. Wondering how long it would take the pain to run its course, he made his way to the den and curled into a ball on the cushy couch.
When he’d been younger, he’d always burrowed into himself when he hurt. Of course, his mother had been there then and had often held and soothed him as he wept his child’s heart out. Now, Nick thought, now there was no one there to comfort him but himself in an enormously empty house.
Once, fame, money, and the glory of it all meant everything in the world to him. Then they’d meant nothing compared to how he felt about Shelby. In a few short months, he’d fallen in love and lost in the game. Shelby was probably deliriously happy, he thought sadly, but how was he supposed to go on with the rest of his life without her love?
Because, no matter how hard he’d tried to prevent it, Nick Carter had wanted Shelby Washington, needed her, and lost her to someone else.
