Chapter 41
FORTY-ONE
Emmett
My oxygen is nearly cut off when Davis swings his arm around my neck, squeezing me tightly. “I was gonna jump on ya,” he drawls, taking a spot next to me at the bar, “thought I might break you, though.”
“You can take a shot with me,” I laugh.
“Oh, hell yeah.” He uses two fingers to flag down the bartender and order a round of shots – tequila, of course – and we clink our glasses together when they arrive.
His hand finds the back of my neck and he holds onto it with a firm grip.
“Don’t try to skip twenty-seven, ya little shit, you hear me? ”
“I hear you.”
We throw our shots back and the liquor burns on the way down. Davis shakes his head with a satisfied exhale while I grimace at the flavor and set my glass down on the bar top. I never have been a big tequila guy, but I don’t mind shooting it when ‘big brother’ Davis is out.
“Can you try? With Nash?” He curls his lip and gives me the same exact look that he used to give me when I was a kid and he’d tell me ‘you’re ridin’ my nerves, Hoss.’ “Your face is so goddamn loud,” I laugh.
“I don’t like him.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I’m never gonna like him.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“He fucked with Sophia’s life.”
“He saved mine,” I counter with a shrug, “and he’s still trying to.”
I regret it almost the second that it comes out of my mouth, because Eric Davis is a lot of things, but invincible isn’t one of them.
We still haven’t really talked about what I did and we may never.
When he called to yell at me for the letter I’d written him, it was also the first time since I’ve known him that he’d ever hung up on me.
Davis doesn’t handle heavy things well when it comes to the people he cares about, and he tends to carry guilt for things that aren’t his fault, even if he’ll never admit that.
I know that a part of him blames himself for taking me out drinking, and probably for not pushing me harder when I didn’t want to talk, but he doesn’t understand how much he helped me that night.
That wasn’t a fair comment for me to make to him, and I knew that. The way that the muscle rolls across his jaw and he looks away from me makes me wish that I could pull the words back in and swallow them.
Flagging the bartender down, he orders another round of shots, sliding one over to me when they’re poured. I clink my glass against his in a similar fashion as with our last round, and we down the tequila together.
Davis’s fist pounds against the bar top for a few seconds too long before he finally turns to me, his knuckles turning white. “He ever pulls some shit with you…”
“I know.”
“He so much as breathes near Sophia in a way I don’t like…”
“I know.”
“Damn near puked when I realized it was Nash knockin’ your fucking socks off,” he grumbles.
The laugh that comes out of me while he calls over the bartender for another round of shots is nothing short of hysterical. I brace my forearm against the bar top and rest my head against it while I cackle.
“Happy birthday, you little shit,” he chuckles into his shot glass before throwing the drink back. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key fob, handing it to me.
“Davis,” I gape, staring at the wing logo embedded into the fob.
“Don’t you start with that shit, too. Sophia gives me enough of it on her own,” he tells me. His arms wrap tightly around my neck and he kisses the side of my head. “Go find your old man, he was lookin’ for you.”
Unspoken understanding passes between us as I drop a hand to his shoulder and offer him a grateful squeeze before scanning the crowd in search of my dad.
I find him near the area designated for collecting donations, with Rowan’s arms wrapped around his waist. “That’s a lot of zeroes,” I tease as I approach, peeking over his shoulder at the check in front of him.
With a smile, he folds the check and passes it to the attendant before turning to me. “We were just talking about game night,” he tells me as he pulls me into a hug.
“We had an idea,” Ro adds, looking at my dad with an all-too-innocent smile.
“If you’re up for it,” Dad adds. “I know your first day back, you might not—” Ro jabs him in the side with her index finger, loudly clearing her throat, and he sighs. “We’d like you to bring Nash with you.”
My chest warms and I have to fight back the smile that wants to crawl across my face.
When my dad told me that he wasn’t sure things could be normal between us again, I worried that my relationship with Nash would be part of that.
A small corner of my mind told me that while he can accept anyone else, a bisexual son wouldn’t be something that he could handle; I worried that I’d disappointed him, but that worry was misplaced.
The only thing that has shifted between us is how much he worries; he checks in with me four times a day, every day, and he’s stopped by every single afternoon at twelve fifteen on the dot while I’ve been out of work so that we can have lunch together.
He won’t admit out loud that he trusted Nash to be there that first week, but he gave us space.
He didn’t start dropping in until Nash had gone back home.
We don’t talk about it, but…he’s told me, in his own way.
“We’ll be there,” I smile.
Pulling in a deep breath, he brings me in for one of his good old-fashioned bear hugs, and I let him. “I know I’ve said it a hundred times already, but—”
“I love you, too,” I tell him with a few claps to his back. Before he has the chance to ask me again, I add, “I’m okay. And yes, I took my meds.”
He offers a proud smile with a squeeze to my shoulder. “Monday evening, then,” he says. “Around seven thirty?”
“I’ll bring pizzas.”
Pulling my phone from my pocket, I shoot a quick text to Rowan.
Me: Is Mariah here?
Ro: No. She said she can’t make it.
When I meet her gaze and she offers me a sympathetic smile with a tilt of her head, I know exactly what she means.
I guess I had to figure that not everyone would be able to be as forgiving for what I did.
I’d hoped by now, she would have come around, but I get it.
She tried to help me and I hurt her. She loved me and I used her.
I don’t think I’d be able to forgive me, either.
“Alright,” I say as I slip my phone back into place, “you crazy kids don’t get too wild tonight.”
I offer Dad another clap to the shoulder and wrap Rowan in a crushing hug before heading back toward the bar, where Nash now sits, anxiously tapping at a glass in front of him.
“Is your name Google?” I ask as I sidle up next to him. “Because you have everything I’ve been searching for.”
“What?” He cackles.
“Wait, I got more. Are you tired?” I ask, throwing on my most obnoxious ‘fuckboy’ smolder. “You’ve been running through my mind all day.”
“Are you drunk?” He laughs, looking at me as if I’ve completely lost my mind.
“No, you just looked like you needed a laugh,” I shrug. “You alright?”
“My father believed that because he can’t reach me any other way, it would be a good idea to bring the press here to try and smear the event,” he tells me.
My smile falls, replaced instead with anger.
Nash has worked so hard to rebuild from what that man took from him.
He’s put in too much effort to undo the damage that he’d done because of it.
Everything that he’d done, the monster that he’d created of himself, was a direct result of what those people did to him.
It was easier for him to be a monster than to risk being hurt again.
If he didn’t attach himself to anyone, he couldn’t be betrayed.
If he didn’t let anyone else in, they couldn’t use his vulnerability against him.
“I’ll kill him,” I grumble.
“He’s in his sixties and has a history of heart disease,” he chuckles into his drink. “I don’t think you’ll get there in time.”
Dropping my hands onto his shoulders with a squeeze, I say, “Come on. You’ve made all your speeches and done all your mingling. Let’s get out of here.”
·
Nash and I barely make it three feet past the front door before I peel off my suit jacket and toss it onto the couch. Clover yelps and whines, running toward us with her tail wagging wildly, and we each bend down to give her scratches and kiss her on her furry little head.
I waste no time heading back to my room to change out of my clothes and into a pair of joggers, like I’ve been dying to do since the minute I got dressed this evening.
Once I’m changed, I grab a pre-roll from my dresser and the case of gummy worms that Ro dropped off with breakfast, tucking it beneath my arm as I head back out toward the living room.
As I reach the end of the hall, I see Nash resting his elbows against the kitchen island with his hands clasped together, and I tilt my head to the side, leaning against the wall to watch him.
His eyes are closed, and after what feels like a long time, he touches his fingers from his forehead to his chest, and finally across his shoulders.
“Were you just praying?” I ask him.
I could almost swear that he looks embarrassed as he reaches behind him to scratch at the back of his head. “Yes, I was,” he tells me. “I have been since your…”
I approach him, dropping the case of candy onto the island. “How does it feel?”
“Like coming back to myself,” he smiles.
I stand behind him, massaging my thumbs into his shoulders, and I press my lips to the crook of his neck. My hands trail down his sculpted back, wrapping around the front of him when I reach his hips.
“It’s still your birthday,” Nash tells me, reaching back to massage the back of my head. “What do you want to do?”
“I wanna get high and eat candy, and I wanna fuck my boyfriend,” I whisper against his ear, “because he raised twelve million dollars for charity tonight and he looks fucking incredible in that suit.”
Turning his head to meet me in a kiss, Nash smiles against my lips. “Get your things,” he orders.