26. Harper
TWENTY-SIX
HARPER
"Fuck, man, I said I was sorry!" I stormed across the fucking parking garage of the asylum, hands thrown in the air, rolling my eyes. "What more do you want from me?" I met Angel’s steely, condemning glare with a confident one of my own. "Should I drop to my knees and suck your dick to make it better, Angel? Would that help soothe your bruised ego?"
Nash was still doubled over with laughter, Rowan a silent stone gargoyle at the top of the church roof, but Angel was seething.
So what if I’d scared them a little bit? I managed to save the fishtail and keep us from going over the edge of the bridge. Wasn’t that the important part?
So one of the tires kissed the edge of the bridge. It wasn’t like it’d been dangling in the air.
His reaction was totally uncalled for.
"You nearly killed us, Harper!" Angel’s six foot four stature was intimidating on a good day, and with the rage boiling over in his glare, paired with the way he clenched his teeth and growled at me, it shook something primal inside me loose. I should have been afraid. I should have bent to his will and begged for mercy. Instead, I was filled with the sudden urge to actually suck his dick while his brothers watched.
Bet that would shut him right the fuck up.
A part of me was prepared to crash, to end my own life and take these fuckers with me as payback for what they’d done to me years ago. But at the last moment, I came to, the brakes screeching like demons from hell as I skidded to a very close call of a stop.
Rowan dumped the body while I moved to the passenger seat without a word of complaint or argument. I didn’t have the willpower to speak after nearly killing myself and two of the three men who tormented and teased my libido in equal measure.
I hoped the idea of entertaining my offer at least stuck in his head for a second longer than it did mine.
To that end, I was still clearly thinking about it.
Now that we were back at the asylum, the adrenaline had worn off, and it took everything in me not to crash and burn in a ball of anxiety.
I’d come damn close to ending my own life, man. And not in a pretty way, either. Never in my life had I been suicidal, and I wasn’t planning on breaking that streak today, but fuck me, for a brief moment in time, I lost the ability to control myself and my actions. It was like being on autopilot; no willful or conscious input from me able to alter my movements.
I didn’t like it.
Nash slung an arm over my shoulder and chuckled some more, wiping a fake tear from his eye as he turned that gruesome leer on me. "Fuck me, you’re fun. Whaddya say we go in and have a drink? I could use a chaser."
He still reeked of cheap vodka and sorrow, but my choices were limited to the Rage Monster, the Stern Man In Charge, or Mr. Drunk in Public.
Not the most stellar of options. But at least with Nash, I wouldn’t have to talk. Only drink.
Drinking, I could do. Drinking made me forget. And unlike when I was in hiding, there was no secret to keep here. These boys were the secret, and I wasn’t afraid to loosen up in front of one like Nash.
Considering how toasted he already was, there was a high probability he’d pass out soon, anyhow.
And if he passed out, there was no pressure to talk with him.
A solid plan in my book.
Turned out, my solid plan had some flaws .
For example, I had no clue that Nash had the fucking tolerance of a seasoned alcoholic.
I sat in the middle of the couch, inches away from him as he tipped the bottle back with a cheesy grin. "Okay, your turn. Tell me a secret you’ve never told anybody."
I took the bottle he handed me and frowned, thinking of something that I actually hadn’t told anybody, but also something I wasn’t afraid for him to find out. "When I was in high school, I accidentally walked into the boys’ bathroom and had to hide in a stall while two seniors had a war they called the ‘battle shits’. Oh, my god, it stunk so bad ? —"
"That was you?" Angel shouted from the kitchen as he pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. "Oh my god, that was Tommy Rogers and William Scott."
I thought of the two boys in question, both sexy at the time and the swoon-worthy boys every girl in school lusted over, me included. A shiver of relief that I hadn’t ended up with one of them crawled down my spine. "Ew."
"Okay, okay, drink," Nash urged. "Then you can ask your question."
"Fine." The tequila slid down my throat like an old friend, and I groaned at the burn, turning scarlet when I noticed how many sets of eyes were on me in a not-so-innocent manner.
Angel’s throat worked, that defined Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed his water and rushed to his room. Rowan made an excuse about working the case, ran his hand over his pants, and skittered away, shutting the office door behind him.
That left me and Nash. And Nash was looking at me like he’d just as soon eat me literally as well as figuratively.
It thrilled me a little too much.
"Alright, my question for you is . . . do you have any tattoos?"
"God, that’s lame," he groaned, but instead of arguing, he lifted his shirt with one hand and yanked down the edge of his jeans with the other. Right there in the divot of his adonis belt, the soft dip of his hip, was a name so tiny, you could hardly see it. "But yes. I have one. I got it seven years ago."
I put my nose damn near against the tattoo before I realized what it said.
And then my whole world tilted on its axis, all his past transgressions forgotten for the moment.
In a scrawling script I recognized as my own, the name ‘Harpie’ was inked into his skin, traveling the line of his muscles, tempting me to run my finger along it.
So, of course, as inebriated as it was, I did.
The skin there was soft, a smooth-as-velvet inch-long expanse that made me weak and melty for the man in front of me. It didn’t matter that he’d just killed a woman in cold blood, though it should have. It didn’t matter that we’d been at odds with each other here and there since I first asked to go back to my normal life. It didn’t even matter that at one point, I’d called him my brother.
I wanted this man. And thanks to the alcohol, I could admit it to myself.
Could I admit it to him?
"My turn," he whispered, his left hand sneaking under my chin to tilt my gaze to meet his as he took a huge swallow from the bottle. "Do you wanna see the inside of my bedroom?"
"I’ve already seen the inside of your bedroom, Nash," I started, my brain slow to pick up what he was putting down. It clicked, and a light went off in my head as a blush washed over my face. "Oh. Oh. Yes, I think I’d like that." I dragged my finger over the tiny tattoo again, mouthing the name in silence as his eyes fluttered closed and he tipped his head back, moaning at my touch.
"Fuck, Harpie," he sighed, jerking free of my touch with another groan. "Come on."
With a bottle in one hand and my traitorous, misbehaving fingers in the other, he dragged us into the safety of his room, slamming the door and flicking the lock in a heartbeat.
In the second heartbeat, he had me against the wall, his lips on mine, devouring me like he’d starved for affection for his whole life and would die without it.
And we couldn’t have that, now, could we?
"Nash," I moaned against his ear as he nibbled along my neck, his hands pinning my arms at my sides against the wall.
"Be quiet unless you want the others to hear what I’m doing to you."
"Maybe I want that," I mumbled, so incoherent I could barely form words. "Maybe I want them to know."
"Oh, you’re a naughty fucking brat, aren’t you?" He nipped the skin at the juncture of my shoulder and throat, smiling as he placed a kiss there to soothe the pain. "Fuck, Harpie girl, I wanna do bad things to you."
I broke free and dug my nails into his hair how he’d always liked, especially when he came home stressed or had it out with his father. Sure enough, like the obedient dog he’d always been, his head tipped back and moved into my touch, a small groan slipping from his lips.
"What kind of bad things, Nash?" I whispered, arching into his body like a cat in heat.
Truth was, I wanted whatever personal brand of pain Nash subscribed to. I needed to feel alive again, in a way I’d never felt before. Needed the rush, the pain, the reminder I was alive.
Nash growled at me, his hands moving to lift me by the waist so he could throw me on his bed. "They’re unspeakable," he rasped, crawling up the bed after me. "I’m quite fucked in the head. I wanna put my blade to your skin, drag the tip across your body from head to toe." His finger drew the imaginary line up from my ankle, along the inside of my calf and thigh, swerving to the outside edge of my bikini line at the last minute. "I wanna tease you with it, keep you on the fucking edge, until you’re not sure if I’m gonna cut you or fuck you, and you just want it, no matter what my choice."
"Shit, Nash," I panted, feeling my panties dampen at the idea. "That’s hot."
"Maybe I’ll cut you just a little so I can lick the blood off your skin." His finger crawled lazily over my ribs, curling around the edge of one breast as I arched into the feeling, needing more than he was giving. "Maybe I’ll tease you until you can’t take it, and you’ll cut yourself for me."
"Mmmm," I moaned as his hand closed around my throat, not tight enough to cut off oxygen, just enough to have my heart pounding through my chest at a mile a minute.
"Harper."
I didn’t register the movement of his hand from my throat immediately, but I felt him withdraw from me mentally. I don’t know what I’d said or done to cause such a disgusted look on his face, but I wanted to rewind and take it back off. I wanted a do-over, so he’d keep touching me like he had been.
"Harper," he said again, a little more insistently this time, his eyes hollow, voice faint and pained. "Harper, where’d you go on me?"
I couldn’t make my lips move, couldn’t say the words I needed to make him understand that I wanted this. Needed it.
Why couldn’t I say anything?
I realized belatedly that I’d shut down in one of my classic panic attacks, so with the little willpower and autonomy I had left, I curled up in a ball in his lap and muttered, ‘ hold me’, and closed my eyes, focusing on things I could hear, see, smell, and touch.
One, two, three. Nash’s hands around me, rubbing up and down on my shoulders. The soft blanket under my feet, rubbing against my toes. The cool air from the air vent above his bed.
"I’ll be okay in a minute," I whispered, hoping I was actually talking and not just thinking it. "Panic attacks. I get them all the time."
I actually did have them all the time. They were in no way related to him, me, or the situation, but I could see Nash spiraling right alongside me. I could feel it in the way his hands shook as he clutched me tighter. I could feel it in the way he shivered against me.
Four, five, six. Nash’s wavering breath. The beat of my heart. The repetitive sound of the refrigerator in the other room cycling on and off.
"Nash, I’m okay, really?—"
"No, you’re fucking not. You shouldn't be here, shouldn’t be turned on by anything I just said to you." Clearly, he was sobering up some because his thoughts had turned self-inflictive. He blamed himself, and I didn’t have the ability to tell him this wasn’t anything to do with him. That I wanted all those things he talked about.
I couldn’t think straight enough to do more than reassure him between waves of paralyzing fear and irrational anxiety.
I could feel the situation turning into a runaway train laden with dynamite, but I was powerless to stop it.
And then, like a weight had been lifted from my chest, it was over. I got control of myself, stopped shaking, and I sucked in a desperate breath.
"Fuck."
"What the fuck, Harper?" Nash stood up, pacing back and forth like a caged lion. "Look what being near me does to you!"
"Nash, it’s not you, fuck—they’re panic attacks. I get them every once in a while." I reached out to put a hand on his arm, but he shook me off, snarling like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Except Nash had never made light of or tried to hide who he really was. I’d just refused to see it.
And he refused to believe someone could love him despite it.
"No, Harper. I can’t be trusted with you! One day, I’ll snap on you, and then what will I do?" He grabbed my upper arms, pinning me in place as he stared down at me. "What will you do when I finally lose control and hurt you?"
"You won’t," I said confidently, the words an echo of the words I had spoken to Rowan on that bridge seven years ago as he did hurt me. "Nashville Blackwood, I trust you."
His eyes fell to the floor, and he scoffed, locks of brown curls hiding his face. "You shouldn’t."
I felt like fighting him, the adrenaline and anger chasing away the last of my panic attack. It was like I only had so much capacity for mental payload, and when something more important came across my mind, it shoved everything else away.
My hands settled on my hips. "And why the fuck not?" I leaned down, forcing him to look at me. "You would never hurt me."
"But I fucking would," he whispered, barely loud enough for me to hear him. "You don’t get it, Harper."
"Then make me understand."
His hands tightened around my biceps, and he shook me gently, trying to rattle some sense into me. "Don’t you get it? When you showed up, and you laughed at me, I came so close to hurting you, to snapping it’s not even funny."
"But you didn’t?—"
"Not because I didn’t want to. I wanted to hurt you, Harper." He shook me harder, his face pale and eyes sad. "I wanted to hurt you."
It was starting to sink in. The look in his eyes when Angel had jumped in and stepped in front of me an inch, telling Nash about his fly being open. The way he wouldn’t meet my eyes after that, how he looked defeated, angry, almost.
He wasn’t lying.
But he was drunk, my addled, lovestruck mind offered as an excuse. Anything to deny what was staring me in the face.
Nash was dangerous. And here he was, admitting that to me, telling me I should be scared of him, and here I was making a whole list of excuses for him in my head to justify still jumping his fucking bones.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Who had I become?
I tried to reach him one last time. "Nash, that’s not?—"
"No, Harper. Don’t." His hands were so tight around me now that I was afraid there’d be bruises when I woke up tomorrow. "Just go. Fucking get away from me before I do something to you we both end up regretting."
He shoved me at the door and disappeared into the bathroom, the door swinging closed as I put my hand on the doorknob to the common area. As I turned it, the last thing I heard from Nash was the sound of him losing the contents of his stomach.
The thought of me wanting him made him violently ill.
And I’d never before felt so utterly broken.