Chapter Ninety-One:
If I Only Had a Heart

“Ok, I need an opinion, quick,” Carly flew into the living room of the Brownstone apartment, sandals clutched in one hand but otherwise fully dressed in a halter sundress with a full skirt. “Does this say Kansas to you?”

Nikolas took a moment to at least make it look like he was considering the question, then answered “Sure.”

“Sure. That’s the kind of response I was going for, ‘sure’.”

“I’ve read In Cold Blood. That’s where my experience with Kansas ends.”

She rolled her eyes. “I think it’s slightly more Marilyn Monroe that it probably should be, but it’s cotton, so…” She turned to the side and fiddled with one of her straps. “That’s wholesome, right?”

“No one is going to expect us to be in costume, I promise.”

“I know, but we can still play along,” she called as she headed back to the bedroom.

“They also don’t expect me to play along.” Nikolas was speaking mostly to himself. And regretting letting Carly see the invitation. She was taking this more seriously than he wanted her to – he wasn’t sure if it was because she wanted to please him or please his… Well. Family, for lack of a better word.

It was possible this was just because she was in a good mood. Things at the mansion had gone smoothly. Nikolas had been on edge, waiting for her to do something to antagonize the Quartermaines – but the Q’s had kept their distance, and it was Alan, of all people, who turned up at the end of the visit to take Michael to dinner.

“Ok,” his wife burst back into the living room with more neutral cotton and strode towards him. It was one of his shirts, apparently, and the thrust it at him. “This is slightly more Kansas than that… Whatever, Polo shirt thing you have on.”

Nikolas sighed in a pick-your-battles sort of way. Though really, he would rather sit here and fight with Carly about his clothes – but they were already arriving late, due to Michael, and he knew Lulu wanted him there for the actual cake and presents portion of the event. He dutifully pulled off his shirt and pulled on the button down she was brandishing at him. Once on, he put out his arms for her inspection and she bit her lip critically before coming forward and – rather than just telling him to roll up his shirt sleeves – did it herself.

“Better?” Her proximity, the intimacy of the action, improved his patience. Slightly.

“You need suspenders.”

“Carly.”

“Ok,” She threw up her hands. “This is as good as it gets, I guess. Let’s go.”

She spun away from him and grabbed a blanket off the table. “Have we got everything?”

“It’s all in the car.”

“Right.” She stopped dead and turned back to him. “Oh my God. Are we getting her a present?”

“I got her a book. It can be from both of us.”

Carly looked vexed. “I completely forgot this would involve presents. Oh my God, like they don’t hate me enough.”

“Carly –“

But she was back off to the bedroom for God knows what. It took some degree of discipline for him to follow her. He found her in their bedroom, digging through a wooden cigar box she’d evidently pulled out of the top drawer.

“What are you doing?”

“I have to have something… little … girl…” She straightened up with a shriek of triumph. “There!” She turned back, something clutched in her hand. “I’m ready.”

“What –“

She handed her find off to him as she walked past, then started down the hall while simultaneously hopping into her sandals. He looked down at his hand and then followed after her.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a necklace. With a butterfly.”

“I see that – what are we doing with it?”

“I am raiding Bobbie’s closet for a gift box and giving it to your sister.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s nice enough without being something her mother will lock up, and it has a butterfly.”

“We have a present,” Nikolas pointed out again.

“You have a present.” She stopped and turned back to him. “Ok. Remember when we first got married, how it drove you crazy whenever I did anything that even suggested there was a chance we weren’t going to work out? Well, this is the opposite. I’m going to be Lulu’s sister-in-law for a long time – It just feels like I should give her that necklace. Good enough?”

Nikolas found himself smiling, something he hadn’t expected to do much of for the rest of the day. He forced himself to take a breath.

“Good enough.”

By the time they got to the park, the party was in full swing. Even if Carly hadn’t just called her mother to check on the best place to park, it would have been pretty hard to miss the Spencers. There were balloons and music and a barbeque in progress – before you even got the squeals of little girls. Carly felt her stomach flip over as they walked across the grass and she reached out for Nikolas’s hand in an effort at solidarity.

“You have seen The Wizard of Oz, right?” She prodded.

“Yes.”

“Because you said your experience with Kansas –“

“The Wizard of Oz is set mostly in Oz.”

Carly frowned. “Ok. Good point.”

“Also, it has a talking scarecrow.”

“Right. Speaking of which,” Carly turned in the grass and took a fortifying breath. “There’s one right now.”

Nikolas glanced across the grass and saw immediately what Carly was talking about. Luke had taken Scarecrow.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Carly murmured. She could feel a sweat breaking out along her hairline. It was one thing to go to Lulu’s birthday party. It was another to be in the same place as her husband and uncle for the first time since she’d started to work for him.

“No,” Nikolas’s voice was flat. “But it’s not negotiable. Lulu invited us.”

“Yeah,” Carly tried to breath, but couldn’t seem to fill her lungs. “But you know that standing agreement we have about the next time you ask me to do something?”

Nikolas took a moment before he murmured, “The one where you’ll actually do it?”

“Right. Well – I think today should be a freebie. You know? Anything you tell me to do while we’re at this party? I will do. No questions.”

“Why?”

“Because … I don’t know. This is your family – but not the way it’s my family. If I’m not trying to make you happy, I can not promise you I won’t do something stupid.”

“Like what?”

Carly gave him a dark look. “Take a guess.”

“So no fighting with Luke, then.”

That was surprisingly hard to promise. “Whenever he goes after you, I just want to slug him.”

“I know. I’ve always liked that about you.”

“I think I can promise no blindsiding.”

“That would be nice.”

“I’m pretty sure there’s nothing to blindside you with, so it’s kind of a cheat.”

“Maybe. But I’ll take it.”

They started back towards the party. Carly spotted her mother talking to the Luke by the barbeque and then caught Lucas’s eye. Her brother, exhibiting his stealth ability to spot adults in need, immediately careened away from his trajectory towards Lucky and started jogging across the park towards them. Carly’s heart soared . She loved her brother. She really did. She hadn’t loved being an only child, but she truly had not appreciated how useful siblings were until she’d suddenly had one. She was so consumed with her delight that Lucas was going to help ease their entry into the party that she completely neglected to notice the sudden appearance of Nikolas’s grandmother.

“Nikolas!” Leslie cried, approaching from their immediate left, which Carly thought was just cheating. “You made it!”

Carly felt his hand tighten around hers, but his voice came out soft and mannered. “I always do,” he leaned down and dutifully kissed the woman’s cheek as she gripped his forearm.

“Yes, I can always count on seeing you at Lulu’s birthday, even if the rest of your calendar is booked.” She was beaming, but Carly caught the implications.

“Leslie,” Nikolas was retreating into formality at a breakneck pace, dropping her hand to slide his arm around her waist and propel her towards his grandmother. “This is Carly, my wife.”

“Yes!” Leslie turned her 100 watt smile towards her somewhat new granddaughter-in-law. "Bobbie's daughter – We've met a few times now, haven't we?"

They had, but nonetheless, Carly shook her hand. She noticed that Lucas had changed course and was now talking to Lucky over by the barbeque. Damnit. "I think it's been a couple of years."

"Oh, not that long," Leslie would not stop with the smiling and it was beginning to look slightly manic. "Bobbie had that birthday party for you last summer, I think. Do you remember? I came with Laura." She tisked her tongue, having hit on the memory. “Yes, it was definitely summer, I remember Laura gave you that lovely sundress.”

Lovely sun… Oh, hell. Carly’s epiphany registered on her face, and she realized she was going to have justify it. “Right. The sundress. You're right, that was last summer. I-I-I would have worn it today --" she stammered, half for something to say.

“Oh, no, your dress is lovely. It just reminded me of it, with the color.”

“I wore the other one to my wedding.” She blurted it out and then realized that she’d just done exactly what she had promised she wasn’t going to do – provide new information to a relative of Nikolas's without having provided it to him first. To be fair, right up until 30 seconds earlier she hadn't remembered who had given her that sundress -- and how... totally frightening to realize the source of it now. “I mean, our wedding.”

Leslie, for her part, looked somewhat taken aback. "Oh! Oh, well that's... lovely."

"Yes." The adjective of the afternoon, Carly was beginning to believe. "It... It was." She stepped back, taking Nikolas's hand from her hip and drawing it across her abdomen as she leaned back against him. There were times when she had made a point of being affectionate to Nikolas in front of near strangers for territorial reasons, but this felt more like a protective instinct. “I may be biased.”

Argh. Abort! She could feel herself hurtling towards the sort of behavior that caused trouble – it was such a deep-set instinct, to try to convince people that she belonged here. With Nikolas. Who, it would seem, dealt with these sorts of situations by saying not much at all.

On the other hand, she did sort of like her wedding. She hadn’t given it that much thought at the time, but now that she was letting herself get all gooey on the subject of her marriage, there was a lot to recommend it. The fact that no one else had been there, for instance.

“Well, I’m sure Laura was delighted to hear her dress has been put to such good use.”

“Mmm,” Carly nodded. Awkward. She glanced up at Nikolas but his eyes were fixed on some spot of earth a few feet away. If she’d been forced to come up with a description for the expression on his face, she would have described it as ‘checked out’. “Honey?” she prodded, and he blinked and turned his attention back to her. “We should probably say hello to your sister.”

“Yes,” Nikolas stepped back from her, very slightly. “If you’ll excuse us, Leslie.”

“Oh, absolutely,” his grandmother was nothing if not ready to be accommodating. “She’s over there, running around with Georgie Jones.”

They thanked her again, and moved off. Carly counted to ten, then checked to make sure they were out of earshot before breathing, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“The sundress thing. I was just trying to… I don’t know. I hated that dress, and I panicked.”

"In retrospect, it doesn't seem like your style.”

"At the time, neither did you." She smiled and reached out for his hand again, grateful to find he wasn’t making anything of that little revelation. "It was a panic choice. Sort of like this. Oh! Incoming!"

Lulu had spotted her brother and was pelting across the grass, Dorothy Gale braids flying. Carly released Nikolas's hand just in time for him to catch his sister as she leapt up into his arms.

How Lulu managed to be so thoroughly unaffected by the tension that had every other person in this family (with the possible exception of Luke) on tenterhooks was beyond her. Determination, probably. Which boded ill for her teenaged years, Carly could only hope.

She took a few steps back as Lulu gushed "You're here, you're here, you're here!" at her brother, sparing a quick "Hi, Carly," before launching into a detailed account of the party so far. Her instinct was always to give them space.

Not so Lucas, who she discovered had followed them when she backed into him standing right behind her.

“Jesus, Lucas,” she sucked in her breath as she turned around.

“How’s Michael?” Lucas, knowing just how important yesterday had been, was not even attempting any pre-teen cool. Or pleasantries.

“Good,” Carly lowered her voice, grabbing her brother’s wrist and stepping away from Lulu and Nikolas. “Does anyone here know about yesterday?”

“Just me and Mom,” Lucas confirmed. “Mom’s not keeping her cool, though. Everyone keeps asking her what she’s she so happy about.”

Bobbie had nearly gone into hysterics when Carly and Nikolas had gone to the Brownstone the night before to tell her the news. Tears, laughter, a complete inability to articulate her feelings – it had been a mess. A glorious bit of mayhem.

“Well, the Quartermaines know, obviously, so it’s not a big secret.”

Lucas shrugged. “Yeah, but better to be safe, right?”

“Probably,” Carly allowed, spotting her mother very nearly sprinting across the grass to join them. “Aaaand here comes Mama.”

Lucas turned and they watched their mother as she hurried towards them, wearing a grin the size of Kentucky, her arms already outstretched to pull them into a jubilant hug the moment she reached them. A night’s sleep did not seem to have dampened her enthusiasm. Carly could relate to that.

“Oh,” Bobbie let out a little yelp as she pulled back from an ecstatic Carly and a tolerant Lucas. “Tell me how it went. Was Michael happy? Does he understand what’s happening?”

“Not exactly,” Carly bounced on the soles of her feet, the overwhelming joy that had possessed her since Alexis’s visit taking hold once more. “But what he does understand, he’s pretty happy about. It might still be crazy, next week, but when we told him he’s get to see where we live, he was pretty thrilled.”

Bobbie’s smile faltered. “So he’ll be visiting that guest house, then?”

Carly took a deep breath. “Um. We were thinking… Your place?”

Her mother looked like she might take flight then and there, and seemed to physically struggle to stay earthbound. “Are you sure about that? You don’t want to take him to the island?”

“Kinda loaded,” Carly rolled her eyes upward, trying to remember exactly what Alexis has said to her the night before. “And we’re supposed to downplay how we keep moving around, so Alexis says if we treat the Brownstone like a … What do you call that thing, when you have one home –“

“Pied de Terre?”

“Right. That.”

Bobbie made a face.

“It’s not an insult!” Carly insisted.

“No,” her mother narrowed her eyes. “But it makes it sound like you’re going to be living on the island permanently.”

Yeah. That. Well.

“We don’t really know where we’re going to be living, permanently.” Carly noticed she had more patience for this conversation that she’d had for a long time. “We’ll probably end up getting out own place, but... Just… Something gotta give with Stefan, you know?”

“Nothing has to give with Stefan,” Lucas was quick to fulfill his role as resident Spencer male. “Stefan can go—”

“Lucas!” Carly and Bobbie scolded in unison, a family first.

“He’s Nikolas’s father,” Carly hissed.

“And we don’t talk like that,” Bobbie added, apparently less offended by the sentiment than the language. ‘But, Carly! You can’t stay there. How can you stay there?”

Carly gave a quick glance over her shoulder and noted that Nikolas, while still engaged by Lulu, had observed the confab. She flashed him a quick smile, and then turned back to speak between gritted teeth. “Can we talk about that later?”

“I suppose,” Bobbie grabbed Lucas’s elbow and pulled him closer to her, essentially closing their family ranks. “So if I understand you correctly, we’re looking at having Michael visit the Brownstone in seven days.”

“We have some shopping to do,” pure joy rushed through her again. God, it was good to love shopping again. “We can get a toy chest, and keep it in the living room of my apartment.”

“Yes!” Bobbie was right with. “I’m not working Wednesday, we can go to that bookstore down near the water – do you know the one?”

“Oh my God,” Lucas muttered, and stepped back from them. “I’m going to go talk to Nikolas,”

“Hey,” Carly grabbed her brother’s sleeve as he stepped away. “No Death Match 2000 when Michael’s there, ok?”

Lucas rolled his eyes, but grinned all the same. “Let go of me,” he muttered, freeing himself from her grip. It was a loving rebuff.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Carly spun back to Bobbie. “It was seamless today. Nikolas must scare the hell out of all of them – It was crazy.” Out of the corner of her eye, Carly caught movement and glanced to the side to see Elizabeth – dressed as… it had to be a dog costume, so she assumed Toto – waving her over. She put a hand up to indicate she’d be five minutes and then continued, “and he was so excited about it. Usually I don’t want him to get too excited, because I never knew what was going to happen, or if I could keep my promises, but this time –” She shook her head. “It felt so good. You have no idea. Just… It felt SO good.”

“I have some idea,” Bobbie quirked her mouth, silently reminding Carly that she hadn’t lived a custody-fight-free existence. “And did you just wave at Elizabeth?”

“Well. She waved first… But yeah.”

Bobbie grinned.

“Don’t read anything into it!”

“Oh, I won’t!”

Carly crossed her arms, feeling oddly defensive. “She’s Lucky’s girlfriend. She’s around all the time.”

“Yes, and she asked me about fifty questions about what time you were coming, and how you were doing…”

“Well. She’s also a bit … quick to invest.”

Bobbie raised her brow. “Really? That’s… Not a phrase I would use to describe Elizabeth.”

“Ok,” Carly sighed. “How’s this? She’s on a crusade in light of our impending sister-in-law-hood.”

“And that,” her mother started to smile again, “has got to be some kind of miracle.”

“Thanks, Bobbie.”

“Any time.”

At the picnic tables by the barbeque, Laura laughed and chatted and passed out lemonade. And when the line-up waned, she snuck quick glances at Nikolas. Specifically, she watched Nikolas holding his sister’s hand and being greeted by Bobbie with enormous enthusiasm. Nikolas accepted her hug, and then step back to listen intently to his mother-in-law as she spoke quickly, employing excessive hand gestures.

Bobbie had very nearly adopted him. Again. Laura knew she should be grateful for it. From everything she’s experienced with Nikolas and everything she’d been told, he had become distant with very nearly everyone over the past few years. Not the way he’d been with her – not completely cold and cut off – but certainly different than he had been. He didn’t look that different, at the moment. His body language looked closed and manner was tempered.

She got the feeling, from Bobbie’s enthusiasm, that she was the cause of that. That Nikolas wasn’t normally that muted. That, since marrying Carly, he had become the sort of person you could greet with enthusiasm without feeling like you were being a fool.

She tore her eyes away from the sight of her son and sister-in-law and busied herself with wiping down the table. She felt the familiar arms of her husband close around her waist and straightened up to hear him murmur “How’re you hold up, darlin’?” against her ear.

“Good,” she forced cheeriness, not something that ever fooled Luke. “We’re on schedule. That’s a major accomplishment.”

“I see Little Nikky made it.”

“Don’t,” she warned, turning in his arms. “Just, please, don’t.”

Her husband gave her a private smile that made her insides twist in a not-entirely-un-pleasurable way. “Anything for you,” he promised, before raising his head and calling “Hey Cowboy! You want to gather the troops? We’re about ready to serve.”

Laura turned to see that Lucky had arrived, returning a couple of Frisbees and a soccer ball to a laundry basket they’d brought alone. “On it,” he promised. “I think the Good Witches are about ready to eat each other alive.”

“I thought there’d be more Dorothys,” Laura fretted, adjusting her own tiara.

“Dorothy wears gingham and braids,” Lucky pointed out. “Gilda’s got the princess vibe wrapped up.” He paused to lean against the edge of the picnic table and asked quietly, “you ok?”

“Yes!” Laura turned the cheer up to 11 and Lucky was about as fooled as Luke was. She let out her breath and murmured, “Bobbie certainly looks happy to see Nikolas.”

“Yeah, well. The Prince Charming delivered. He’s the conquering hero.”

Laura looked at her son questioningly. “Conquering what?”

Lucky appraised her a moment, then glanced back at the relatively low-key celebration across the grass.

“Uh, according to Emily, Carly and Nikolas won a pretty major victory yesterday. They got Michael’s custody re-opened.”

It took Laura a moment to fully take that in. “What… How? What does that mean?”

“Well. Taking into consideration that I got this from a Quartermaine, it means possible Armageddon and the ruination of all mankind. But technically, I think it mostly means that Carly is definitely going to get more access to Michael, and it might open the door to her getting full custody again.”

Laura shot another glance back towards the Brownstone Cohort, and then back at Lucky. “Oh my God.”

“Yeah. Pretty huge.” He glanced in her direction. “And legal. No shortcuts.”

Laura felt herself flush, but it was impossible to pretend the thought hadn’t already flashed through her mind. “How do you know that?”

Lucky exhaled. “Do you have any idea how much time I’m spending with Nikolas and Carly these days?”

Well. Actually, no. She knew Lucky and Carly were working together, but he wasn’t talking about that very much. She frowned, and turned her attention back to the table. “I think everything is set here,” she fumbled with a pile of paper plates. “Can you go spread the word? We have to get through the cake and presents before dark, remember!”

“Mom.”

“I’m fine,” she looked up at him. “Really, I am. I’m … I’m very happy for them.”

“Right,” Lucky took a step backwards, hands digging into his pockets. She glanced at the t-shirt he was wearing – it had a stylized MGM logo on it. His nod to the Cowardly Lion, she’d guessed, until Elizabeth had pointed out that the company had released the film. “Hang in there, Mom,” he gave her a slight smile and then turned and headed off to gather the party.

Lulu loved the necklace. It was something Nikolas guessed he wouldn’t entirely be able to understand, having never been an 8-year-old girl himself. Somehow the necklace – which had some sort of color treatment on the pendant, and was apparently reversible – brought Carly into sharp focus for his sister for the first time. She had officially moved from random cousin/sister-in-law to someone to be revered. It was that big a deal.

He’d have to ask Carly about it later, because he truly did not comprehend the magic of it.

Carly had given him a frown when Lulu had opened his book – a leather-bound, exquisitely illustrated Wizard of Oz – and murmured “that’s your idea of ‘a book’?”

It was, actually. She’d leaned into his body as they sat together on a picnic bench and had brushed a quick kiss across his knuckles. He had felt, not for the first time, deeply grateful that she’d come with him. As much as he’d been dreading this, as much as he had felt like he didn’t want her to see this, it was so much easier with her there. And not just her – acting like it was absolutely normal, that he was in the same space as his mother and Luke Spencer – but Bobbie, Lucas… Even Lucky and Elizabeth. Lucky had tried to throw him a rope in this situation for at least the last few years, but it felt different now. Less like he was an object of pity; more like it made sense for him to be there.

Lulu, in the past the only bright spot in this whole event, still paid him an inordinate amount of attention. This was due, he knew, to the fact that it was such a rarity to have him around. She also seemed outrageously delighted to see that Elizabeth and Carly had set up their blankets together on the hill in preparation to watching the movie.

“I like Carly,” she had confided to him, pulling him away from his wife long enough to have what was apparently a very serious sibling conversation she’d orchestrated by asking him to walk with her to the bathroom. “She’s nicer since she married you.”

“You didn’t like her before?” he asked, as they walked together through the crowds of people who had also come out for this Movie in the Park event.

“She never talked to me,” Lulu shrugged. “I liked her baby.”

“Michael.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, Michael’s not a baby anymore. Maybe you’ll get to see how much he’s grown pretty soon.”

“Really?” Lulu twisted around to look up at him. “Do you think he’d come next year?”

“I think there’s a chance,” Nikolas allowed. “Yeah.”

Arriving at the public restrooms, Nikolas was instructed to wait under a large oak tree and wait while Lulu ran into the girls room. He was just checking his watch when he saw his mother approach, looking very much like she’d followed them.

And like a switch had been through, he felt everything fall silent, his body turn to stone. He watched her walk towards him dispassionately. This, really, was inevitable.

“You’re waiting for Lulu?” Laura smiled unsteadily as she reached him. He gave a half nod.

“She asked me to.”

“She’s so happy you’re here,” Laura continued. “It’s really been nice – you know, seeing you here with Carly.”

He never knew what to say to her. It wasn’t like he wanted to be silent and unresponsive. He just honestly had nothing to say to her. He didn’t even really want to tell her to go away. He just felt cold and robotic.

“You seem happy,” Laura continued, though she said it like it was a question. She wanted some sort of confirmation, probably. He gave a half nod, then looked down towards the ground.

“I’m glad,” Laura tried again. He could hear the strain in her voice. “I’m really glad you’ve found someone –”

“Yeah, we all know how unlikely that was.”

Oh… God. It always happened this way. She’d say something light and innocuous and he – thinking he honestly would never feel anything again – would suddenly feel like his insides had ripped in half and he’d spit something out. Something hateful and bitter and very nearly wrathful. He shut his eyes a moment. Tried to reign himself – or anything, really – in.

“I-I-I,” Laura faltered. Which he hated her for, he really did. “I didn’t mean that.”

“I know,” he forced himself to look up at her. “I know. You didn’t. But I don’t want you… I don’t need you to be happy for me.”

“That’s not –

“I don’t actually like to know that you think about me. If you don’t mind. If you actually do care about how I feel about things,” He managed a breath. Barely. “I feel like I want you to leave me alone. And my wife alone. I feel like that’s the best thing for everyone.”

She looked like he’d slapped her. It wasn’t the first time he’d said that to her – the sentiment, if not the exact words. But it had been awhile – It had definitely been awhile since he’d let that much anger out. There was something about her talking to him about Carly… More than that, there was something about having her wish them well. About her being happy for him. He had nearly wrecked his marriage as recently as a week earlier. And in that moment, he could feel just how much he wanted to blame her for that.

“Tell Lulu I’ve gone back. I’ll see her—” He stepped back from his mother and shook his head. “Just tell her.”

He turned and walked away from her – from all of them – and did not look back.

Carly saw Lulu come back with her mother and immediately felt sick to her stomach. She tried to stay engaged in her conversation with Elizabeth, but her eyes started flitting through the crowd, looking for Nikolas and not coming up with anything. They were interrupted only a few moments later by the start of the movie – the lion roaring and Dorothy running along a dirt road with her little dog, too.

It felt like ages, but Nikolas reappeared just after Auntie Em described herself as “a Christian woman” incapable of telling a neighbor off. Carly looked up at him questioningly, but he just sat down next to her without a word. When he reached out to take her hand, she felt him shake. He didn’t look at her, didn’t move to put his arm around her – just sat next to her on the blanket, stared fixedly at the screen and very nearly quaked. His breathing, while measured, was heavy. After a few minutes, she made the decision to move closer to him. He nearly jumped out of his skin when she put her hand on his arm, but he allowed her to guide him back so that he sat with his back against the trunk of a tree while she sat between his legs and leaned back into his chest. He’d put his arms around her waist, held her tight against him and buried his face against her neck. She’d stroked his forearm with her hand and pretended to care that poor Dorothy had just killed the Wicked Witch of the East with her house.

After awhile, he seemed to relax. If you defined relax as a cessation of shaking. His arms were still locked around her, he held on to her like a life raft for the rest of the movie. They left before the credits were even over. If Carly had any doubts about just how rocked Nikolas was, she got further confirmation from his apparently inability to say good-bye to his sister.

The walked back into the car in silence, Carly carrying the blanket over one arm, and keeping her eyes fixed to the ground. She could not stop trying to figure out what she was supposed to do. She felt like asking him what had happened was a truly abysmal idea. But something had definitely happened. And it was definitely her job to fix it.

She finally ventured a question when they were in the jag and Nikolas had put the keys into the ignition, then stopped dead without turning them. She suspected he wasn’t sure where he wanted to go.

“Do you want to go to the Brownstone tonight?”

“No.”

She swallowed. “The island, then?”

“No.”

He stared straight ahead in the darkness, and for a moment Carly felt like it might be a bad idea to let him drive.

“Baby,” she ventured, finally. He didn’t move. She looked down at her arms, the blanket still folded over them, and then turned to toss it into the backseat. Twisting in her seat, she leaned towards him and whispered, like quiet would help keep him contained, “What do you want?”

It took a moment, but he finally looked at her. In the dark, she couldn’t make out his expression, but somehow her heart clenched in her chest anyway. She reached out for him, her hands moving to cup his face as she leaned in and gave him a soft, heartfelt kiss.

Often, when Nikolas was upset, she would feel it in the hesitation before he would kiss her back. There would be a beat where he just seemed still and distant – like he was making up his mind about whether or not he was going to give in to his feelings for her. Tonight there was none of that. She kissed him and she felt that same tremor shoot through him. He let out a low moan and reached for her, pulling her towards him so that her hip knocked against the emergency brake.

This was what he wanted. He wanted affection. He wanted to feel like someone loved him. Like someone wanted him, needed him. He wanted to feel like he belonged with someone.

She could do that for him. She knew she could. And she was going to keep doing that for him, as long as she drew breath. She swore that to herself as she forced herself to pull back from him.

“Let’s go the boat,” she coaxed, brushing his hair back. “Let’s go somewhere we can be alone. Ok?”

He nodded. Then, without meeting her eyes, he turned forward and started the car.