Nash (Marked Men #4)(25)

That didn’t make feel any better, but I guess nothing ever would.

“When are you going to tell me how all this happened? How did no one ever think I needed to know the truth about you and Mom?”

He sighed, which started a round of coughing that had his whole body contorting. I wanted to feel bad for asking but I needed to know.

“That’s a long story for another place and time. Really I think you should ask your mother about it.”

I threw my big frame back in the chair and glared at him.

“I want the truth and I doubt she even knows what that looks like.”

He clicked his tongue at me and shifted in the bed again. He just looked so frail and so unlike the man that I had always wanted to emulate. It scared me.

“We are equally accountable for not telling you sooner. She made some bad choices, decided her future was going to look one way no matter what stood in her path—me, you and anything else. I was grateful for the time I had with you, and the rest of the boys. Do I wish you had known that you were my kid sooner? Yes, but I also understand why your mother wanted to keep it a secret for as long as she did. I made some bad choices along the way as well, Nash.”

“Why did you let her do this to us? To me? My childhood was a nightmare until you got involved.”

He gave me a look I recognized all too well. I saw it on Rule. I saw it on Jet. I saw it on Rome every time they looked at the women that had captured their hearts forever, so I answered for him.

“You loved her.”

He closed his eyes and slumped down on the pillows piled up behind him.

“Love isn’t something you can negotiate, Nash. When it happens, it becomes everything.”

“Oh, trust me, I know. I’ve been on the losing end of love my entire life.”

“You can’t base love on the experience you had growing up. Loving someone you want to make your own has a different feeling, a different power than the love you have for family. It’s different and the chains that bind it can be unbreakable.” His voice cracked and his eyes slid closed.

He was fading fast, so I got to my feet and walked over so I could clap a hand on his shoulder. It took all my will not to flinch when I felt how brittle he was under the black sweater he had on.

“I guess. I just don’t know how anyone can love a guy whose own mom tossed him over. That doesn’t bode well in my book. If Mom couldn’t love me, how is anyone else going to for the long haul?”

He might have had an argument that would’ve made me feel better but he drifted off to sleep before he could give it to me.

I never considered forever with anyone. I didn’t think it was for me, but when I thought about the way Saint’s eyes shifted from light gray to pewter, and remembered the way she felt pressed up against me in both my desperation and her own, I was starting to wonder if I needed to reconsider my view on things.

CHAPTER 6

Saint

The weather had gone from yucky to scary as I navigated the roads into the mountains and toward the upscale suburb of Brookside, where both my parents still lived. Mom kept the big house in the gated community. Dad had moved into a trendy condo closer to the main part of town with his girlfriend. There were miles separating them, but if you asked my mother, the distance between Denver and the moon wasn’t enough space to get away from my father and his betrayal. I really did feel bad for her, but at some point she needed to start to heal or she was going to lose more than just her marriage and her sanity. Faith was hanging on by a thread, and me … I loved my mom, but I was over it. Men disappointed, it was just the way it was.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the choices my dad had made. I didn’t understand how he could so easily walk away from my mom and leave his family in the lurch, but blame only went so far. I could hate him forever for falling in love with someone else, throw him out of my life indefinitely because of the decisions he had made that had led to my mom acting like a lunatic, but it was more important to me to keep my family together. I just accepted that he was fallible. Faith and I would never welcome the new girlfriend into the fold with open arms, but I forced myself to tolerate her and worked on interacting with my dad in a nonresentful way every time I saw him. I think a little part of me expected nothing less from him just because he was a man and I had this belief that all men would ultimately gravitate toward the shiny, prettier, and his case younger option when it came to thinking with what was in their pants.

I had to go slowly and concentrate, which was harder than usual because I was so emotionally drained. I couldn’t get the girl, the horrible loss from yesterday, out of my mind. I also couldn’t stop the endless replay of the way I had thrown myself at Nash from rolling over my eyes every time they drifted shut last night, which led to a sleepless night. Twice now we had shared a kiss in the midst of an emotional upheaval, both times it had made the situation more tolerable, more a shadow than a suffocating fog of bad feelings and hurt. I didn’t want to name what that meant, but I couldn’t deny that kissing him made me feel restored and set me back on solid ground. The fact he didn’t push me away, didn’t grill me endlessly about it, forced me to question all the memories I had that reminded me over and over again that I was supposed to think Nash was a heartless jerk.

I’d been seconds away from accepting his invitation to the wedding, even though the idea of spending time around him, around his friends and a bunch of strangers, made me want to hyperventilate. Thank God he had told me to think about it. There was some kind of current dragging and pulling between us that I didn’t trust, didn’t particularly like, but it was strong, and fighting its momentum was wearing me out, wearing me down. I actually wanted to spend time with him.