he was here.
Was he real?
“I thought . . . I thought you were dead.” The whispered words left my mouth at the same time they formed in my brain.
Nick Armstrong stood silent and unmoving, a stolid sentry, looking at me. Just . . . looking.
The width of his shoulders filled the doorway, leaving scant space between his head and the door frame. I couldn’t help devouring the sight of him, half-wondering if he were a mirage. Despite being as fashion challenged as I was, I easily identified the perfect fit of a bespoke suit, noting how the high-quality fabric closely followed the muscled bulk of his shoulders and arms. The unassuming dark jacket, white dress shirt, and trousers did little to hide his tapered waist and well-developed thighs.
His hulking presence alone ensnared my attention, but his face arrested it. He was striking. Thick, ink-black hair just starting to curl over his collar matched the dark stubble shadowing his square jaw. His slightly off-center nose, likely the result of a break, ruined the pure symmetry of his features. But his eyes were a startling shade of green, the same showy, verdant hue of summer leaves under an ominously gunmetal sky.
So unsettlingly familiar. And yet . . . No, it couldn’t be him. There was no way it was Nick. Not after all these years.
This isn’t possible.
I lurched up and made a spectacle of myself as I struggled to stand. Panic weighted my feet. Disbelief severed any connection with my brain’s higher processing, leaving me stuck to my chair with my mouth hanging ajar. “Letting in flies,” as my Grandma Leffersbee would have said.
I blinked back confusion as I stared at him, captured by a whisper, an echo of a memory. “Who . . . ?”
His mouth moved, like maybe he was going to introduce himself. But instead, he repeated my name for a fourth time, “Zora . . .”
This voice was different from the Nick I had loved. Deeper. But the way he said my name, slowly, as if savoring the taste of something rich? I could never forget that.
It is him.
Any remaining oxygen in the room dissipated. A carousel of memories whirled though my mind at a blurring speed. We’d known each other our entire lives until we didn’t, until he’d disappeared. We’d planned to elope, to make what we knew in our hearts official. Legal. There’d been a time when I was incapable of imagining a life without him.
I still remembered our last words. I remembered the last time he kissed me.
Why now?
“You thought I was dead?” Nick’s dark brows inched toward his hair line as he finally spoke something other than my name. “Or you wished it?”
That statement, and the familiar smirk kicking up one side of his mouth, gave me the strength to push to my feet, to come back to myself somewhat. No, I hadn’t wished him dead, but seeing him here now, alive and obviously just fine? I didn’t know how to feel.
Trembling, I braced myself against my desk with one hand. “What . . . what are you doing here?” I managed to iron some of the breathy quality from my voice.
His confidence seemed to slip for just a second at my wavering. He took a small, hesitant step forward. “Z. Are you okay?”
I held up my hand to halt his progress. My mind was stuck between gears, backfiring, unable to acclimate to this new truth. The current reality. That it was indeed the Nick I knew, standing there, nonchalant, as if an ocean of time hadn’t passed. As if he hadn’t just disappeared.
Why now?
“All this time,” I managed to croak, “and now, years later, you just . . . show up.” I bit the inside of my lip. Hold the line, Zora. You will not fall apart over this—or any—man. Not now. Not here. Not ever. “You disappeared,” I said, mostly to remind myself of his betrayal, and my voice grew stronger, underlaid with the faintest bit of steel. “Without a single word. Nothing but that stupid letter.”
I’d thrown it away and discarded any thoughts of that past. I had moved on. I’ve moved on. He means nothing.
Perhaps reading my thoughts on my face, he looked away, his jaw working, but whatever he’d planned to say was interrupted by muffled footsteps and voices echoing in the corridor. Nick glanced behind him and then back to me. A tic pulsed under his right eye. “Zora.” Air seemed to seep from him as his shoulders