Because it would make it easier.
Because he was a man who no longer wanted my love.
Regardless, though, it was still there. I knew myself well enough to know there was nothing that I could do about it.
He was my oldest friend, my deepest friend.
When he needed me, I would be there.
And his stubborn butt needed me, no matter how much he was trying to grin and bear it.
He was a mess.
I'd seen Niro after a lot of fights over the years, but he'd never looked quite so rough before. Really, he should have been going to the hospital to get his head and ribs looked at. But I knew him well enough to know he wouldn't go unless a bone was poking out of the skin or he was bleeding out the ears or something.
Stubborn, just like his father.
It was a trait I both respected and loathed, depending on the situation. I liked that he had strong convictions, that he stuck to them, that he tried hard, that he saw things through to completion. But it also made him bull-headed and resistant to what I thought were valid arguments.
"You've done so much with the place," I teased as I led him into his room that was just as barren now as it had been when he'd moved into it. White walls, a black metal bed frame, white sheets with a black comforter all askew, a black dresser, and black nightstands. No artwork, no knick-knacks. Nothing personal at all.
The only thing there that hadn't been there when he moved in was the round dog bed in the corner behind the door.
Nugget's bed.
There was even a stuffed lamb situated on it still.
There was a gut-punch sensation seeing it there, knowing how important Nugget had been in his life. Before I came and took him away. And he'd barely ever seen him again.
Hell, I would become cold and distant too.
God, I was such a jerk.
"What?"
"What what?" I asked, shaking the negative thoughts away, avoiding his gaze as I led him through his bedroom and into his attached bath, knowing he could read me too well if he saw my face.
The bathroom was smaller than my old college apartment one. I swear you could touch all four walls if you stood in the center and threw your arms out. And aside from a razor and shaving cream on the sink counter—that clearly hadn't been used in a while given his stubble—there wasn't much around that was personal here either.
"Can't bullshit me," he said, drawing my attention as I pushed him to sit on the lid of the toilet. "You were looking sad."
He was right.
I always wore my feelings right on my sleeve.
He was better at seeing them than anyone else.
"I was just thinking it was wrong of me to take Nugget from you," I told him, shrugging, as I dug through the cabinet drawers for first aid supplies.
"He's your dog."
"He was our dog," I corrected, a little hurt that he didn't think so as well. "You don't have any witch hazel," I said, wincing when the words came out like an accusation.
"Got peroxide."
"Which eats away at the skin," I told him, like I'd told him many times in the past. "It will work this one time, but don't use it again when you clean the wounds out."
"I'm fine," he told me, but I'd heard the way he'd hissed when he'd lowered down.
"You hurt your back," I corrected.
"I'll toss back a handful of ibuprofen and be fine."
Ignoring that, I wet a cotton pad with the peroxide, moving in front of him, wincing down at the cut on his temple that maybe should have gotten some stitches, but knowing I'd have to settle for butterfly sutures.
"Sorry sorry sorry sorry," I said when I pressed the pad down on his skin, feeling my stomach tighten.
"Think this is hurting you more than me," he told me, gaze lowered, refusing to look at me.
"I'm better with animals," I admitted. "I nearly fainted when my mom sliced her finger with the garden shears that summer before I left for college. But I barely flinched at the poor dog on the side of the road with a leg bone sticking out. Plus, you know, you're never supposed to work on someone you..." I trailed off, not wanting to say the words when he'd made it clear he didn't want to hear them.
"Okay. I am going to put like five sutures on this," I told him, turning to do just that, making short work of it so I didn't have to look too closely at the wound for too long before moving on to inspect the other minor cuts, tracing the one that sliced his lower lip, a motion that made his gaze flicker up to mine.
I couldn't tell you why, but the look I saw on his face then made my belly flutter, a strange, unfamiliar sensation.
"Okay, stand up," I demanded, voice strangely husky, taking a somewhat frantic step backward, giving him room. Or, more accurately, giving myself some room. "Can you lift your arms over your head?" I asked, watching him grit his teeth and do so, trying not to show how much it was clearly hurting him. That ego of his could be frustrating, but it was working in my favor this time.
Moving forward, my hands grabbed the hem of his shirt, starting to lift.
"The fuck are you doing?" he asked, voice a strange, airless, harsh sound. It landed almost like a slap, making me suck in my breath.
"I'm taking off your shirt. I need to see your ribs and back," I told him, lifting the material, going up on my tiptoes to pull it off from his arms, tossing the sweaty, bloody thing in the general direction of the hamper. "Put your arms down," I reminded him, feeling the warmth of his skin even through my dress, a warmth I found I wanted to move closer to. But just because I was cold. There was no other possible explanation.
I should have packed a sweater.
I took two big steps back as he lowered his arms back down.
I'd seen Niro without his shirt hundreds of times from infancy right up through the early days of college. I'd always known he was fit thanks to the training he did with his father all through his childhood and teens, chiseling muscles out of the soft flesh the rest of the guys our age had.
That said, he'd put on a lot more bulk. His muscles etched deeper, swelled larger. And there were tattoos over his chest, upper arms, and back I'd never seen before. There was the expected Henchmen logo and the one he'd gotten for his mom that I did know of. The others, though, seemed to make no sense at all. There was no rhyme or reason to them.
There were what looked like a list of geographical coordinates over his heart, a flower on his arm, a clock with a broken face with the time frozen in place, and at least four others that I found myself trying to make sense of.
"Oh, God, Niro," I said as my gaze slipped down to his ribs, seeing the ugly smattering of bruises. Bruises on top of bruises, more like. There was the purple and red of new ones forming, but they were layered over yellow and green ones that were older, already healing.
"It's fine. I'm fine," he said, trying to shake it off.
"I mean, no, no, it's actually not. This," I said, reaching out, pressing my palm to his side, feeling him flinch back, hearing the hiss out of his breath, "is not fine."
"They're not broken."
He would know better than me.
"Still. They're bruised," I insisted.
"They'll heal."
"You're so freaking stubborn," I told him, lessening the pressure on his side, pretending I didn't notice the way my thumb developed a mind of its own, slipping downward to slide over the edge of some of his abdominal muscles.
It was his shaky inward breath that snapped me out of it, drawing my attention back to his face.
There was openness there for a split second, gone so quickly that I didn't get a chance to interpret what I'd seen there. Then everything was locked down behind that cold, harsh new man he'd become.
"Okay, turn," I demanded, taking a steadying breath. "Let me look at your back," I added as he slowly moved.
There were bruises to be found there as well, some more violent than others. "Does this hurt?" I asked as I pressed my hand across his back.
"No."
"Liar, you just
flinched," I accused when my hand went low on his back, out more toward his hip.
"It's not that bad."
"You're walking funny," I shot back. "Does it hurt down your leg?"
"Yeah," he admitted.
"I think you hurt your sciatic nerve. It runs from here," I said, gently jabbing fingers in near his spine, then gliding them down and outward, "and all the way down your butt and the back of your leg. It's going to bother you for a while. You might even have your leg fail you on occasion. Especially if you don't take it easy," I told him, realizing my fingers were sort of, well, jabbing him in the flesh of his upper, you know, ass.
My hand slipped upward, settling on his side instead. And since it didn't belong there, I made a show of pressing around the uninjured area.
"This seems okay," I said, wincing at how fake my voice sounded even as Niro suddenly turned, making my hand slip from his side right to his abs, my fingers slipping into the indents of them.
I swear our breaths sucked inward in tandem.
My head shot up, gaze finding his, seeing that spark again, something familiar, something so missed.
My Niro.
Except my Niro didn't make my chest feel so strange, so tight and skittery.
But this Niro, yeah, he did that.
As if that wasn't strange enough, there was an odd wobbling in my stomach as well.
Niro's hand rose slowly, reaching toward my head. Like he was going to pluck some leaf from my strands like he'd done so many times before.
Only instead, it slipped backward, going behind my neck, applying pressure even as his other arm rose, that hand moving to frame my jaw on one side.
This time, when my belly wobbled, I understood why, even if it seemed impossible.
That wobble, it was anticipation. It was attraction.
Before I could even fully wrap my head around that revelation, his hand at my neck was applying pressure, pulling my chest and stomach flush to his just a breath before his lips crashed down on mine.
I don't know what I had been expecting, if I could have been expecting anything since I never thought Niro would kiss me, but somehow I guess a part of me thought there would be a softness, a patience, a sweetness, the things that Niro had always shown me, if no one else.
But there was nothing soft or sweet or patient about his kiss. It was hard and rough and demanding. Teeth nipped my lower lip, forcing them to part, allowing his tongue to move inside, toying with mine in a way that left me feeling strangely claimed even as he retreated.
When his lips claimed mine again, they were somehow harder, hungrier than before. So much so that the cut on his lip ripped open again, making the metallic taste of his blood meet my tastebuds.
Even then, though, even then I didn't do what I knew I should have. Pulled back. Moved away. Put an end to it.
I couldn't.
I felt frozen in place, my body a bundle of nerves firing off with sensations I never should have been associating with Niro.
The weightlessness in my head.
The fluttery wings of my heartbeat in my chest.
The skittish pulse in my wrists, temples, throat.
The aching, heavy sensation of my lower stomach.
The acute awareness of the emptiness between my thighs.
A low, mewling sound moved up through my chest, throat, vibrated across our joined lips.
And it was that very sound that seemed to snatch fantasy back, leaving nothing but the cold, uncertain reality in its wake.
Niro simultaneously yanked backward from me as well as pushed me back, creating a void where there had been nothing but closeness, but a rightness I never could have known before.
My eyelids fluttered open as my system struggled to process the changes.
There was Niro, back pressed close to the shower curtain, breathing as ragged, as uneven as my own, the heat I felt in my core reflected in the flicker of his eyes.
For one moment.
It was gone so fast I would spend the rest of the night wondering if it had ever been there at all, if it was a figment of my overactive imagination.
Soon, all I saw there in front of me was a cold, hard, impenetrable mask.
"There? You got what you need from me now?" he asked, words sharp, shredding through my paltry defenses, ripping me apart.
"What?" I asked, my voice an unsure, airless sound.
"Rubbing your hands all over me. Figured that was what you wanted. And that is all you're getting," he added, hacking away at the strings inside that had always tied us together. "I let you do your nursemaid shit. You can head out now."
He was dismissing me.
He was rejecting and dismissing me as though I had been the one to initiate the kiss.
There was a stunned, horrified moment where I questioned if that was true. But it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. He had kissed me.
But he was acting like it was all my idea.
He was acting like he'd done me a favor.
Hell, maybe he had.
Just not in the way he intended.
New sensations smoldered, flickered and danced to life, a fiery inferno inside.
I couldn't claim to have much experience with rage, with betrayal, but the two of them mingled together, a Molotov Cocktail to the flames inside. I feared when it all burned through, there would be nothing left in its wake.
"For the record," I said, my jaw shaking, but my words came out even, clear,. They were cold flames sparking off my tongue, "I have never wanted that. And thank you, Niro," I added, taking a small step forward, swiping the back of my arm across my lips, wiping away his blood, "for showing me that I never will."
With that, I turned and walked out of his room, out of his clubhouse, out of his life.
Done.
I was so incredibly done with him.
I almost made it all the way inside my childhood home before I collapsed down on the floor, a sob tearing through me.
I cried with fervor, with actual grief.
Alone, then in my father's arms when my cries drew him downstairs.
Because I knew what this was.
This was mourning.
Because there had been so much death that night.
Death of a beloved friendship.
Death of my love for him.
Death of the part of me that had even been capable of loving him.
Nothing would ever, ever be the same again.
Coming home was the biggest mistake of my life.
It was cowardly of me, but I would have chosen blissful ignorance over painful knowledge any day.
But there was no going back now.
I would have to get up and move on with my life.
Without my best friend.
Chapter Nine
Niro
"What did you do to her?" a voice said from behind me in the yard, making me sigh as I turned my head to wipe my sweat on the sleeve of my shirt.
Reign and Fallon had made the executive decision that the gym was now out of the question, that Jax needed to be taught a lesson, that his biggest cash cow could no longer fight for him.
Which meant I had very few outlets for my anger.
And I had more of it than ever before.
At myself, of course.
But it was there. Black and ugly.
So when Fallon had casually mentioned that a section of the security fence was getting wobbly and needed to be re-dug and secured, I'd volunteered for the job, stabbing the shovel into the dirt with as much force as I could put behind it, feeling the shooting pain down my back and leg, then doing it again, intensifying it. It was damn near enough to bring me to my knees.
I needed it, the pain.
The physical kind.
It dulled the other kind, the kind I didn't want to think about, didn't want to let bubble up to the surface after all the work I'd done to bury it over the past week.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said to Hope, shrugging, not bothering to look at her because
I wasn't sure if my face had its usually closed-down mask.
"Bullshit," she snapped, yanking the shovel out from under me just as I was jumping up to put my weight on it with my foot, making me stumble forward, slam into the fence that swayed for a second before I righted myself, turning to face her. "You should know you can't bullshit me," she added, stabbing the tip of the shovel—dirt and all—into the center of my chest, pushing until I had no choice but to lean back against the fence again, or it would press in deep enough to start cutting.
"How about you tell me what you want, Hope," I suggested, going for cold, distant, unaffected. Even though all I wanted to do was beg her to tell me what was wrong with Andi, how she was handling everything.
"What I want? Oh, I want a lot of things. I want my coworkers to stop seeing me as a piece of ass. I want an actual paycheck for all my hard work. I want my neighbor to realize he has absolutely no skill with the guitar, so I can get a full night of sleep for a change. But most of all? Most of all, I want to look at Andi's face and see the girl I have known all my life. Because what I see there now is not her."
Those words were jagged knives to the heart.
But I needed to hear them.
I needed the reminder that I was the biggest asshole in the world, that I knew it, and now, Andi knew it too.
"Again, Hope, no fucking idea what you're talking about. This sounds like a conversation you should be having with her, not with me."
"Oh, you bastard. How can you do this to her?" Hope snapped, voice raising.
"I haven't done anything to her."
That was the biggest lie I had ever told in my entire life.
"You asshole," she hissed, tossing the shovel, moving in toward me, each step a threat in and of itself. "That girl looks broken and empty. Can you imagine seeing Andi smile but having her eyes look dead? I don't need to imagine it; I've seen it. And I know you did that to her."
"You don't know shit, Hope," I said, shrugging, moving past her to go fetch my shovel. But only because I needed an excuse to not have her look at my face right then. Because I knew there was no way to hide the look of shock, of pain that sliced through me at her words.
Because, no, I couldn't even imagine that.
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