Chapter 85

• She sits down in the sand, aware that Baxter is a ways down the beach, and hugs her knees to her chest, twisting her ring around and around on her finger. “No, I need to know what I’m getting myself into.” Nicholas’s eyes snap up to hers, an indiscernible look on his face. “What I’m already in to,” she sighs more to herself than him, but she knows he hears because she sees the muscle in his jaw tic at the words. “You told me that you sabotage anything good. I need to know if you loved any of them?”
• He steps next to her and runs a hand through his hair. She has to crane her head up to meet his eyes. “I’m not capable of love, Annabelle,” he deadpans, his voice a haunted whisper, before staring out to sea and shoving his hands in his pockets. “I learned a long time ago that the more you want someone, the more you covet them, and need and love them … it doesn’t matter. In the end they’re going to leave you anyway.” He picks up a shell and tosses it. “Besides, someone can tell you they love you, but words can lie and actions can be improvised to fake something that’s not.”
• A shudder runs through her at his words. What a sad, horrible way to go through life. To always want but to never have because you think it will be taken away without notice. To be so hurt that you think it’s the words and actions that hurt rather than the person behind them. Her heart is wrenched for the poor little boy who lived a life empty of unconditional love. It aches for the man before her. A man so full of passion and life and possibility but denying himself the one piece that can help make him whole.