Chapter 23
SEPTEMBER 30 – TUESDAY 7:07 PM
T heo
“Mmmm, this is so good,” Ren said, licking her fingers and giving me ideas as I watched her tongue slide up a digit before she sucked it into her mouth. “How did you get grumpy, Mrs. Edwards, to let you bring food in here?”
Blinking away my dirty thoughts, I cleared my throat. “Would you believe she is a huge cat lover? She has like ten of them.”
Ren stopped eating the piece of fried chicken and stared at me.
“Please tell me this is going somewhere kinky?”
I laughed hard and loved to see the smile on her face. She’d been trying to act like nothing happened when she was away with Nash, but a cavernous void had opened between them.
They’d always fought and poked at one another. Hell, they even flirted, but this was different. Ren actively went out of her way to avoid Nash. She did it casually and thought she was being smart about it, but Nash was acting just as cagey. Combined, all the signs were there.
Something had happened, but neither was talking.
“No, nothing kinky. At least, not that I know of. Anyway, her cat was sick the other day, and no one on staff could cover for her. I offered to look after the library so she could take her cat to a vet appointment. I have keys from late-night studying, and she knows I’m a stickler with the books and rules, so her precious books would be safe.”
Ren’s eyes filled up with tears. “That’s so sweet.”
Shifting closer, I touched her chin and made her look at me. I searched her face, but she’d gotten so much better at hiding what she was feeling.
“What’s wrong,” I asked, running my thumb over her cheek. “It was nice of me, but not tears worthy. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Nothing, it’s just so touching. Don’t mind me. I’m just overly emotional, you know us girls,” she said, and I shook my head at her.
“Don’t do that. You know as well as I do that you’re never emotional unless it’s for a good reason, and…how damn sexist of you,” I teased, making her smile.
“That was pretty sexist of me. Good thing I’m a girl.”
I kissed her lips softly and could feel the soft tremble coming through the light contact to mine.
“What did Nash do?”
She looked away and poked at her dinner.
“What makes you think he did something? We’re fine. Just another typical week dealing with the annoyance that is Nash Collier.”
“You keep saying words, but they are all lies. Why are you lying to me, Ren?” She dropped her fork and rubbed her forehead. “Give me something. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”
“You can’t fix this. It’s just Nash being Nash and me being me,” she said.
“You’re going to have a great career in politics,” I teased, nudging the triple chocolate brownie toward her like a bribe.
“I don’t want to talk about it.” She shrugged but broke off a small piece of the brownie and started nibbling on it. “I went to Seattle with thoughts, feelings, and expectations that, looking back now, were stupid.” The soft grey of her eyes held a new layer of pain when she looked at me. “I was wrong, and I need to just get over it. Nash is who he is, he always will be, end of story.”
“Did he hurt you,” I asked as she blinked away the tears shining in her eyes.
“No more than he always has,” she said, but I didn’t believe her.
“I’m not great at this like Myles or Blake. But I’m here for you, you know that, right?” She nodded. “You know we love you?” She nodded again. “Are you protecting him?” She shook her head, but a half second of hesitation said enough.
He’d hurt her. Nash said or did something to change their entire dynamic while they were in Seattle. If I found out what it was and he purposely crushed her, I was going to make him hurt.
“Come here,” I whispered, pulling her to my side and linking our hands together.
“I’ll be fine, I promise. Just need to process and work through my feelings on everything.”
“Like how I needed to process when I came to see after the fight with Liam?”
“Sort of. It’s hard letting go of something you thought was real but never was. Like clinging to a fantasy that was as real as unicorns. What you and Liam have is special, but Nash and me…it’s not even in the same game, let alone ballpark.”
Closing my eyes, I kissed the top of her head.
“Want to try and beat me in a game of Strip Jeopardy?”
“I’ll take hell yes for five hundred,” she said, making us both laugh.
I stood, and Ren looked up at me.
“Where are you going?”
“Strip Jeopardy,” I smirked. “I’m kicking everyone out of the library and locking the fucking door. Because you’re going down, and then I’m going down on you.” Her cheeks flamed a vibrant shade of red. “You’re going to look so sexy laid out with textbooks all around you.”
“You have strange fantasies, Theo O’Brien.”
“Tonight, you get Murk.” I winked and walked away, yelling that there was a gas leak and everyone needed to leave.
Maybe Liam would have more luck with Nash because it was obvious that Ren was staying tight-lipped about Seattle.
Liam
“I know what you’re trying to do,” Nash said, holding up his drink. “You’re trying to get me drunk and then take advantage of me. I always knew you liked my ass.”
I sipped my scotch. “Guilty. It jiggles a little when you walk.”
Nash looked insulted and even stared down at his lap like he could see his ass. “It doesn’t jiggle.” I smirked. “Whatever, it doesn’t. I know why you’re really doing this anyway.”
“Enlighten me.”
His scowl darkened. “You want to know what happened last weekend.” He pointed at me. “Don’t think I haven’t seen you staring at me with your disturbing looks.”
“Disturbing looks?”
“Yes, that one. The one that says you’re staring into my brain and picking me apart. You really should be a psychiatrist. You’d kick ass at it.”
“I’ll take it under advisement.” I stared at him for a moment, and the far-off, distraught look in his eyes said it all. I waited until he put the glass to his lips—because I was a jerk like that—before I spoke. “I don’t need to get you drunk to know you fucked her,” I said, and Nash started choking.
He coughed while I grabbed his glass and refilled our drinks.
“Fucker.”
I shrugged. “You probably deserve it for something.”
Snatching his scotch, he stood and walked over to the bar and stared up at the bottles. This place had gone from a rundown piece of shit to a club with sexy lounge vibes and all the high- end services to bring the customers and cash rolling in. If I could only convince him to let me hold high-stakes poker games downstairs, we would make our investment back in no time.
“Was it any good?” I took a sip and watched as Nash turned around to face me.
He smirked. “Indescribable.”
“That good?”
“That good.”
“That seems like an exaggeration. Are you sure it wasn’t because your dick felt like it had been cut off from water and finally got a drink?”
“No,” he said and looked down into his glass. I shook my head.
“You actually like her, don’t you? Like really like her.”
He chugged the two fingers I’d poured for him and walked back over to flop down in the leather chair.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Let me guess, you had a full-blown meltdown. We both know you can’t handle any emotion, let alone something close to real. So, you got all up in your head and took it out on her. You probably said something stupid and hurt her. You hurt her bad enough that she doesn’t want to talk to or see you ever again.”
Nash screwed up his face as he stared at me. “Were you fucking there? Did you hide under the bed and watch it all from your creepy stalker position? Did you at least get to jerk off while you watched? Fuck me.”
“I did squirt a little. She screams well,” I said, and he grabbed one of the hundreds of pillows and threw it at me.
Nash sobered, the internal conflict alive and well. “I really fucked up. I had good reasons, but the shit I said to her…I can’t take it back with a sorry. I don’t know if this can be fixed.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
“I’ve never known you to roll over and play dead before.” He squeezed the glass, and I thought it was going to be the next thing flung at my head.
“I’m not.”
“Then what do you call this.” I held my hand out toward him. “She’s avoiding you, so what? She’s been trying to avoid you for a year now, and it’s never stopped you before.” He sat there, staring straight ahead like he was watching a movie only he could see. Sitting back, I rubbed my bottom lip as I thought. “You know she loves you, right? It’s so obvious when she looks at you.”
He cringed and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Trust me, if she did, she doesn’t anymore. I’d hate me forever.”
“I don’t know what to say ‘cause your go-to is poking at one another, and that’s not going to work. What you really need is a way to apologize.”
“I might as well wish for a miracle,” Nash said before emptying the rest of the bottle into our glasses.
He was already well on his way to having a buzz—I glanced at the glass. “You not planning on training tomorrow for the meet?”
“Why?”
“Okay then, forget I said anything.” I sighed and leaned forward to rest my arms on my knees. “I have to ask….”
“Must you?” He groaned.
“Yes.”
“Fine. What do you want to know?”
“Do you want to fix things? I don’t want to hear anything other than yes or no.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No, it’s really not. Choose what you want. Life and death are on the line,” I said, and he rolled his eyes at me.
“Yes, but I can’t. Not right now. Trust me, it’s better if she stays away from me because I don’t know if I can control myself.”
“Interesting. Well, that leads me to question two. Is this going to blow back on us? Do I need to start looking over my shoulder and working out a way to keep us safe?”
He stared at me for so long that I was ready to pick up the phone and call everyone I knew for an emergency lockdown.
“It shouldn’t.”
“But there’s a possibility?”
“There’s always a possibility, Liam. But in this case…I think I have the situation under control or I would’ve looped you in that we had an issue.” Nash shifted and rested his head on the back of the chair, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m going to state the obvious here, but I feel I have to fucking say it.” Nash rolled his head in my direction. “If you care for her in any fashion and wait too long…you may not get a chance to fix what you broke. Even a partial fix now is better than none at all.”
“I know, but I have to evaluate all the risks while my father is still in play. Whether I like it or not,” Nash said and closed his eyes. I hadn’t seen him like this about a girl since Mya, and I never thought I’d see it again.
Nash might not be able to say it or was too scared to admit it out loud, but he loved Ren. Whatever he said to her was eating him alive. But I knew my best friend well enough to know that by the time he got his head out of his ass, it would be too late, and for once, I couldn’t let it happen.