Nash (Marked Men #4)(58)

“Thank God for that.”

I pushed off the counter and headed toward the door. I knew once I walked out I had no reason to ever come back. This solidified it for me, it was why Phil had pushed and pushed me to make her be the one and tell me the entire sordid tale. I was finally free of any chains to the past that she might have held. I didn’t need her approval. I was a good man, had a good life, had the best friends in the entire world, and I was working really hard on figuring out how to have a good woman on a permanent basis. There was no need for my mother to be proud of me or find worth in what I was doing, because I was proud of myself, and Phil had given me that.

It didn’t matter that I had no idea what to do with the new shop, or that Saint had me spinning in circles. I would figure it all out, and there was no way I was going to let him or anyone else down while doing it, not because I needed validation or appreciation, but because that was just the kind of guy I was. The kind of guy my father had raised me to be.

CHAPTER 12

Saint

I knew his visit with his mom was going to have him in a bad mood. He didn’t talk much about her, or why he had been raised mostly by Phil, and the fact he was quiet about it spoke to me more than I think words could. He’d mentioned more than once that the reason he was so quick to anger, so quick to run his mouth when he was younger, was because of how unhappy he was with his mom, that he acted out for attention and to rile her up, so I knew his visit was going to have him feeling raw and out of sorts. I wanted to do something to make him feel better.

He had gone out of his way to show me a good time, to take me out and keep things between us fun and playful, but always keeping a sexy edge to it all so that I knew he wanted me. I felt like it was time I returned the favor.

He showed up at my apartment sulking, thunderous, and in a full-on bad mood. His eyes were all dark and swirly, and no matter how much I tried to get him to talk about it, he just grunted one-syllable answers at me and scowled at nothing and no one in particular. I couldn’t really shake him out of it, and when I suggested we get out of the apartment, he just looked at me like I had lost my mind. Really he wasn’t fit to be around other people, but I couldn’t stand to see him so unhappy, so I was going to drag him into a better mood kicking and screaming if I had to.

It was a testament as to how much he wanted to please me, wanted me to have a good time, that he agreed to leave the apartment with me in the first place when clearly he would have been content to sit and wallow in his awful mood for the rest of the night. I could have kissed him all over his shaved head for that alone. When we got into the Jetta and he didn’t ask any questions as I drove downtown, I could only hope my plan didn’t backfire and end up with him in an even more sour state of mind.

I had to find a place to park and he gave me a questioning look as I took his hand and guided him toward the ice-skating rink that was located right in the heart of Denver’s downtown at Skyline Park. It was only open a few months out of the year, in the winter, and you could skate for free if you brought your own skates. It had always been one of my favorite parts of growing up in a cold-weather state. There was nothing like gliding around the ice in the dark while white lights twinkled over your head. There was something so fun about doing something so quaint right in the middle of such a metropolitan area … I hoped Nash felt the same way.

He looked at me and lifted one of his midnight-dark eyebrows.

“Seriously?”

I shrugged and bit my lip.

“What? It’ll be fun.”

“If by ‘fun’ you mean me spending the entire time on my ass, then yeah, fun.”

I bumped him with my shoulder and he wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

“You used to skateboard. I’m sure you can keep your balance long enough to make it around a couple times without falling.”

I remembered him rolling around back in high school, so I was sure he would be fine despite the pensive look on his face.

“That was a long time ago, Saint.”

I made him let me pay the guy to rent us skates and secretly thrilled inside when we sat down to put them on and he got on his knees in front of me and helped me lace mine up. I couldn’t resist the urge to bend forward and kiss him on the top of his head. I liked the way the scruff of his supershort hair tickled my lips. I looked up when I heard giggles coming from a group of young girls watching us.

“You can concentrate on not falling, and it’ll take your mind off of today.”

He grunted at me again and rose to his feet in a graceful move that had my belly tightening and the girls next to us sighing. He begrudgingly put on his own skates and towered over me as we trudged out to the ice.

It was rough going for the first ten minutes. Nash was a big guy, and while he typically moved with a lot of grace and ease, perch him on a razor-fine blade on top of frozen water and he just sort of turned into an out-of-control freight train. I wanted to be sympathetic, wanted to help him out, but I wasn’t strong enough to keep him upright and his dirty mouth and hostile expression had me folded over in fits of laughter that were making it hard for me to stay upright myself.

Little kids buzzed around us. Teenage girls twirled and flittered by, obviously trying to catch his attention. Dudes on hockey skates blazed past in a bid to impress, but Nash was focused on trying to stay up and on me. He finally found his balance enough to make it around the rink once and I reached out to grab his hand. He snickered at me and squeezed my cold fingers.