Start a War (Saint View Psychos #1)(7)

I bit my lip, realizing how incredibly rude I’d been. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.” I turned away, face burning and tears pricking at my eyes.

“Hold up, wait a minute.” The woman placed her tray of drinks down in the middle of a nearby table of men, who were all more interested in me than drinking anyway.

I shuddered at their stares.

The woman followed my gaze and turned back to her table. “Hey! What do we say when someone gives you a drink?”

The guys all looked suitably chastised by the fairy-sized woman, and there were mutters of “Thanks, Rebel,” as they reached for their glasses.

With her hands on her hips, she nodded. “Now, drink up and mind your own business. You ain’t ever seen a lost Disney princess before?”

I stared at her wide-eyed. “I’m not a—”

Rebel sidled up beside me, taking my arm. “Sure you are, Disney. And they might be behaving right now because they just got new drinks, but if I don’t get you out of here in about five minutes, you’re gonna get eaten alive. And not in the good way.”

I blinked at her, letting her drag me along. “There’s a good way to be eaten alive?”

She raised one eyebrow. “What the hell are they teaching you people over in Providence? Your husband never eats your pussy?”

Shock and embarrassment punched through me. I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it, then tried again. But each time, I couldn’t find words.

Rebel rolled her eyes. “Jesus, all that money but no pussy-licking? All the money in the world ain’t worth it if he’s a dud in bed, Dis.”

We moved quickly through the crowd, now with her leading, and I shook my head, finally finding my voice. “He’s not a dud in bed. And he does…do that.”

Once. He’d done it once and never again, leaving me with a complete and utter complex that there had been something wrong with me. Rebel didn’t need to know that, though. I hadn’t told anyone. Not even Sandra.

“Well, good for you and your cunt. What do you want with Axel if it’s not for his oral sex skills?”

I scrunched my nose up at the thought of my brother doing that. I didn’t need that mental image. “He’s my brother. I’m worried about him.”

Rebel stopped and stared up at me. I wasn’t tall, but she was really short. “You’re Axel’s sister?”

I nodded.

Her black makeup-ringed eyes widened. “Fuck, Dis! Why didn’t you lead with that?”

“Sorry?”

She tugged me through the last of the crowd, muttering something about getting fired while elbowing aside patrons who stood waiting to be served. At the bar, she rested her elbows on the countertop and let out a piercing whistle that somehow managed to cut through both the thumping of the music and the buzz of shouted conversation around us. “Hey, boss man number two. Get your sweet ass over here. We got a problem.”

The man behind the bar turned around, frown creasing the space between his eyebrows. He wiped his hands on a small towel and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Fucking hell, Rebel. What now? I’m sick of the shit toni—”

His gaze collided with mine, and his eyes widened. “Bliss?”

I was suddenly thrown back twenty years. “Nash?”

With shock etched into his expression, he moved past the other bartenders to where Rebel and I stood, his gaze wandering over me, sweeping all the way to my toes and back up to the gold chain hanging around my neck.

I did the same thing to him.

I hadn’t seen my brother’s best friend since he’d been a gangly teenager who’d come to save me in the night.

He was a gangly teenager no longer.

Nash was all man, with broad shoulders and a filled-out, solid-looking chest beneath a tight white T-shirt and a flannel shirt left undone. I took in every inch of his familiar face, reconciling all the changes there. There was scruff on his jawline now, and smile lines at the corners of his eyes, reminding me he was almost fifteen years older.

“Okay, you two clearly already know each other, so I’m just gonna…” Rebel jerked her thumb over her shoulder and disappeared into the crowd once more before I could thank her for her help.

“Holy shit, Nash. Where you find a hooker in a ball gown? And will you share?”

Nash dragged his gaze to the drunk sitting two stools down. The man leered toward me, his unsteady gaze flittering all over my body.

My skin crawled. Coming here had been a mistake. A huge one.

Nash seemed to realize it at the same moment and swore low under his breath. He reached out and took my hand, wrapping his fingers around my own. The noise of the crowd around me swallowed my gasp of surprise at his touch.

“Come on.” He tugged me behind the bar and then through a door on the back wall.

I followed him inside and grimaced at another Psychos wall mural, complete with scary, crazy-eyed clown. I shuddered.

Nash noticed and shook his head as he closed the door behind him. “Fuck, Bliss. If a mural gives you the creeps, you’re really in the wrong place. What the hell are you doing here?”

It was quieter inside the little office, and I babbled out the whole story as quickly as I could. “Axel called me. He said our code phrase. You remember? About the Goldfish crackers? It worried me. And then there was a noise that sounded like a gunshot, but it couldn’t have been, right? It was probably a car backfiring or something completely unrelated. I don’t know. I didn’t want to come here. I know he said not to. But I just needed to check he was okay.”