Nash (Marked Men #4)(39)

The door clicked closed behind me and I shivered inside my coat as much from adrenaline as from the freezing Colorado air. I had on a knee-length skirt and a pair of knee-high boots that went great with my sparkly tank top. It was appropriate, cute, and not in any way suggestive, but it wasn’t made for pacing up and down the end of the driveway waiting for my getaway ride in the middle of winter.

I heard the car long before I saw it come around the corner. It was loud, distinctive, made my ears ring, and there was no missing the black-and-chrome monster, much like there was no missing the car’s owner. I barely waited until he rolled to a stop before hopping in the passenger seat. My fingers were numb and my cheeks were freezing cold, but the interior of the car was nice and warm and smelled like a mixture of Nash’s cologne, Armor All, and cigarette smoke. I put my fingers in front of the heater vent on the top of the dash as he wheeled around and headed out of the affluent subdivision.

“Thank you. I hope I didn’t pull you away from anything.”

He cast me a look out of the corner of his eye and tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. He had the Dropkick Murphys playing low on the radio and I thought it seemed like a fitting musical choice for him.

“Nope. I was just at a friend’s bar. Rule’s out of town and Jet took Ayden to New York with him for a show he was playing. Rome is expecting a baby, so he’s all about acting like a respectable adult, and Rowdy is my only single friend left, so we just hit the bar. Asa—he runs Rome’s bar for him—is the only other unattached member of our little gang and he and Rowdy both set their sights on the same cute little brunette. You called right when they were trying to outhandsome each other. It was getting ridiculous, so I probably would’ve bounced early and headed home anyway.”

He glanced over at me and I saw his gaze skim over my legs where the hem of the skirt had ridden up and my skin was bare between it and the top of my boots.

“You look really nice.”

“You didn’t always think that … I looked nice, I mean.” I hated that my voice cracked and broke. He jerked his head to look at me and the lights from the dash made the dime-sized discs in his earlobes glint at me. I muttered my address when he stopped at a red light while he was still staring at me.

“Seriously? What the f**k are you talking about?”

I looked out the window and used my finger to trace a little stick figure on the condensation on the pane. I gave him a top hat and a bow tie.

“In high school you said ‘someone would need to put a bag over her head if she wants to get laid.’” I turned to face him and he looked astonished and incredulous. “You and a group of guys that you hung out with were smoking when I came around the corner and I heard you. I heard stuff like that all the time because I was fat and had awful skin, but it hurt coming from you because I thought you were different. You said I was a mess and needed to look in a mirror and do some work.”

I closed my eyes and replayed that moment over in my mind. Even now it made my chest hurt and old insecurity rise up.

“And before that … before that, I thought you were so nice. Every time you smiled at me, every time you said hi to me, I thought it made you different. I went to Ashley Maxwell’s birthday party because you asked me if I was going.” I saw it all as clear as if it was happening right in front of me, and if I had bothered to look over at him, I would have seen the stunned confusion on his handsome face as he was trying to pull the puzzle pieces of our history out of his memory.

“It was so stupid of me. I felt like an idiot. You looked right past me and then kissed Ashley like she was something special. You didn’t even know I was alive, and then you had to go and say those awful things about me. I went from thinking you were wonderful to hating you. The way you made me feel …” My voice dropped low and I could hear the old hurt, the old disappointment, in my tone. “It stayed with me for a long time, Nash.”

It was quiet save for the guitars and bagpipes on the stereo and I thought maybe he felt guilty or embarrassed, but when we got to the front of my apartment building and I was turning to tell him thanks for the ride, I was startled when he turned fully in his seat and yelled at me like he was the one who’d been wronged for so long.

“Jesus Christ, woman, you’re out of your ever-loving mind!”

I pulled back a little and frowned at him, alarmed at the vehemence in his tone. “What?”

“I never said anything like that about you. No way in hell, and if I ignored you at some stupid party, it wasn’t on purpose. I was a f**king idiot when I was a teenager, Saint. My priorities were locked firmly in my pants. If a girl was a sure thing back then, you think any eighteen-year-old guy was going to turn her down?”

I gave him a sad smile and reached for the door. “But I heard you that next week, Nash. I saw you with my own eyes. It was a long time ago, but my memory is clear, and if it was just a case of boys being boys, it still really, really hurt.”

He shook his head and threw his hands up as far as the interior of the car would allow.

“Bullshit. I never even thought that about you, Saint, so there is no way I would’ve said it. I thought you were shy … and yeah, maybe pretty awkward and a little too studious for my taste, but I always thought you were pretty. Why do you think I said hi to you every day, tried to engage you? I thought your smile was beautiful, and when you finally loosened up enough to give it to me on a regular basis, I was stoked. Your hair is awesome and wild, I love that shit … and your eyes. Fuck me, but your eyes could inspire men to go to war, to paint works of art, to rip their goddamn heart out of their chest and offer it to you without a second thought … then and now. None of that has changed over the years, so there is no way I would have said that stuff about you … no f**king way. You heard me say, ‘Saint Ford needs a bag over her head to get laid’? I don’t think so.”