Chapter 35
ASHLEY
Nate: Stop calling me. Stop texting me. I love Ashley and refuse to jeopardize my future over a misplaced sense of guilt. Seek therapy, Paige. It sounds like you need it.
T o our disappointment, the smash room I’d been talking about was closed for a bachelorette party and the high-pitched shriek of drunk women echoed out into the street as we contemplated another plan.
“I have an idea,” Nate said after a few minutes.
“Let me just make a couple of calls to make sure it’s safe first.” But he didn’t leave me alone to make his calls in privacy.
He kept my hand in his as we walked back to his truck while he spoke with some guy called Mouse about a place he referred to as Drake Place.
He was asking Mouse whether there’d been any recent activity on the cameras and seemed satisfied with whatever the response was.
“We’re on,” he told me after ending the call.
“On for what?” I asked, puzzled as he opened the passenger door of his truck for me.
I climbed into the cab, and he closed my door before circling around to his side. “A better smash room,” he told me once he was in his seat. “One that I think we will both get a lot of joy out of. We just need to take a quick stop on the way.”
His mischievous smirk said he wouldn’t be sharing any further information, so I mentally told myself to exercise some patience. Our little stop being at a hardware store was even more intriguing…especially when he ducked inside for only a few minutes and returned with a pair of sledgehammers.
“Essex…” I said suspiciously when he started driving again. “Where are we going?”
He flashed me a toothy grin. “You’ll see.”
“Have I ever mentioned that I don’t like surprises?” I muttered mostly to myself, slouching in my seat with a huff.
His laugh was warm enough to thaw ice, and I closed my eyes briefly to absorb that sound. “Well, it’s not technically a surprise. I already told you: we’re going to a different sort of smash room so we can both let off a little steam.”
I huffed again but didn’t push the issue. Literally anything was better than the strained awkwardness that’d developed over dinner, and I couldn’t shake the look on Nate’s face when he thought I wanted to go home. He’d been genuinely hurt .
Surely that meant something?
A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of an apartment building not far from our home. It was an older style but no less grand, with a concierge-staffed entry foyer and marble floors.
The uniformed guard on the desk gave the sledgehammers in Nate’s hands a long look but said nothing as we breezed past to the elevators, where Nate pressed the button for the seventh floor.
If I was going to guess, I’d think maybe there was some rich-kid version of a smash room here?
Maybe an empty apartment with a fucking Ferrari parked in the middle of it or something equally obscene.
Nate had the key on the same key ring as his truck keys though, which was…curious.
Inside, he flicked on the lights to reveal what seemed to be a very normal, albeit upper-class, apartment. Enough money in the decoration and styling to be someone’s home rather than a rental property, but no real signs of whose home we were standing in. Holding sledgehammers.
“Where are we?” I asked, confusion getting the better of me as Nate closed the door behind us.
He confidently strode farther into the apartment, heading for a shelving display that seemed to hold some vases and small sculptures. “How many times do I have to tell you, Layne baby? We’re at a smash room.” Then he raised his sledgehammer and swung it at the shelves.
The sound of shattering ceramics echoed through the apartment, and I gasped my shock at the destruction. Then Nate snatched a framed photo off the next shelf and threw it so hard at the wall near where I stood frozen that it broke the drywall before shattering on the floor.
On instinct, I moved over and knelt to pick out the photo from the mess of broken glass, and realization dawned.
“Is this…?” I couldn’t even finish the sentence as Nate’s cold smile confirmed my guess. I glanced down at the photo again, then swiftly ripped it in half. Fucking Jocelyn didn’t deserve to keep happy photos of her family when she’d tried to murder her own son.
“How safe are we here?” I asked with an edge of fear as I looked around. In my head, she lived in a dark lair. Maybe a creepy science lab with flickering lights and rats locked in cages. Not a luxuriously comfortable apartment only a few blocks from where we lived.
Nate crossed back to me and held out a sledgehammer.
“As safe as we are anywhere right now,” he answered honestly.
“But I’ve had this place under surveillance for some time, and she hasn’t been back here since before my birthday.
I have the door staff on my payroll now too, so if she were to suddenly show up, she’ll be stopped. ”
That was a relief. “I guess she’s wanted by a lot of people right now. She wouldn’t just casually return to her own apartment…” I took the hammer from him and gripped it with two hands to compensate for its weight. How the fuck had he just swung his so freaking easily? “Where do we start?”
His grin was wide and wicked as he grabbed the back of my head, then crushed a bruising kiss to my lips. “Anywhere you want. Destroy the entire fucking place with me.”
Holy fuck. Some people said I love you , but Nate gave me a sledgehammer and asked me to demolish his mom’s home. Same thing.
That first swing of my hammer was possibly the most cathartic moment in my entire damn life. The impact when it hit Jocelyn’s mirror was second only to sex with my guys…and even then, it was a really close second. A high-pitched, slightly unhinged giggle escaped me, and I glanced over at Nate.
He met my eyes with a look of total understanding, then swung his hammer at the flat-screen TV, shattering it in a dramatic burst of glass before the whole thing toppled off its stand and crashed to the floor.
This date was officially going down in the memory bank as one of the best.
For the next half hour, we systematically worked through the apartment, destroying everything we could swing a hammer at, and it was exactly what we both needed.
Eventually, though, I had to admit defeat because my arms were screaming at me, and I could barely lift the hammer off the floor.
Nate was having such a good time making toothpicks out of Jocelyn’s baby grand piano that I didn’t want to stop him, so instead I dragged my hammer back through to the kitchen.
A couple of moments hunting in the cabinets led me to a stash of unbroken glasses so I pulled two out and found a bottle of wine in the under-counter wine fridge. The least Jocelyn could do was provide drinks with her smash room.
Smiling to myself, I poured two glasses and listened to the crash of Nate destroying one of his mother’s most prized possessions.
Eventually, the sounds stopped, and Nate swaggered out of the hallway a moment later with his sledgehammer slung over his shoulder like a baseball bat, sweat coating his thick biceps. He’d taken his shirt off at some stage, and I was not mad about it.
“Thirsty?” I asked, offering him a glass of wine.
The look he gave me in response nearly turned me into a puddle, and my breath caught in my chest as he took the glass slowly. “Around you? Always.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, grinning like an idiot as I let my gaze slip from his eyes to his lips…then continue to drop lower. Without even meaning to, I let out a little groan.
“Keep looking at me like that, Duckling, and we’re going to have to switch off the security feed.” He said it so casually, sipping his wine afterward like he wasn’t threatening me with a good time in the middle of the wreckage we’d caused.
I would have taken him up on it too, except I noticed a thin line of blood running down his ribs and that snapped me out of the heat that was fast creeping over my skin.
“You’re hurt,” I announced, putting my wine down and gesturing for him to come forward into the light of the kitchen. I’d accidentally smashed the pendant light in the living room earlier when my grip had slipped on my hammer, so it was dark in there.
Nate joined me in the kitchen and raised his arm to look where I was gesturing. It wasn’t a bad cut, but still, a shard of wood was embedded in his skin. Not overthinking it, I pinched the end of the wood and tugged it out, making Nate hiss with pain.
“Oh, stop it,” I scolded, giving him a teasing slap on the chest.
He gave a little grunt, his lips curling in a sly smile. “Is that all you’ve got? Maybe I shouldn’t have let you work all that aggression out on furniture. There’s nothing left for me.”
My jaw dropped even as my pulse raced. “Remind me again why we were arguing at dinner?”
His teeth tugged on his lower lip thoughtfully before responding, and that gesture held my whole focus. “I’ve been talking to my ex behind your back,” he told me in a husky voice, “despite the fact that she talks shit about you in every conversation.”
Wait, what? My palm connected with his cheek faster than my brain could even process the shift of my emotions, and Nate let out a low groan.
“Are you lying?” I asked in outrage, ready to march right over to Paige’s house and drown her like a rat in a cage.
His hands gripped my waist, pulling me in closer as he dipped his head low enough that our lips nearly touched. Nearly. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.”
Furious irritation filled my chest, and I gave him a little shove. “I’m not fucking around, Nate. Tell me the truth.”
He tipped his chin up with a cocky smirk on his lips. “Make me.”