Suddenly, it hits me that Nash’s depression could possibly be tied to the deaths of the five men he had me find addresses for. Were they perhaps friends of his rather than just acquaintances? Is he grieving for them, missing them? That’s so freaking sad that I want to wrap him in a hug and hold on tight for days. Or climb him like a tree and rub up on his dick until he fucks me so hard I can’t walk the next day. Both would be equally nice in their own way. A combination of the two would be even better…
“Lucy?” Nash calls my name to get my attention when I leave reality and enter my dream world. “You ready?”
“Yes,” I answer with a sigh. “Let’s go.” Grabbing my purse, I hurry past Nash out of the apartment. As soon as he is clear, I lock up and lead the way to my car, unlocking the doors with the key-fob and making the headlights flash in the dimness of the sun finally setting.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Nash asks when he comes to a stop next to the passenger door.
“About what?”
“You drive a purple car?”
“Yeah, why?” I ask.
“It’s so…girly.”
“Huh,” I mutter before I tug the front waistband of my jeans forward and glance down them. “Well, what do you know! I do indeed have girl parts!” With a roll of my eyes, I open my car door and stare at Nash over the hood. “What’s the matter? You too masculine to ride in a purple car?”
“Possibly.”
“Shut up and get in!” I tell him.
He grumbles but does slip into the passenger seat while I toss my purse into the back seat and get buckled up. No one as tall as Nash has ever ridden in the passenger seat, so it’s sort of funny to see him cramped in with his knees touching the dash even after sliding the seat back as far as it goes.
“Sorry,” I tell him.
“Yeah, right,” he grumbles.
“So, should we start with the closest address and work our way out further or start with the furthest and work back this way?” I ask.
“I really don’t care. However you want to do it.”
“Fine. We’ll go closest first, which would be…” I pull out the sheet of paper from my pocket to look at the list of cities. “The two in Carolina Beach.” I then grab my phone and type in the address for turn-by-turn directions.
It doesn’t take us long to pull up outside the first house, a small run-down one-story on a street where most of the houses are boarded up. I’m guessing they could really use any amount of money out in this neighborhood. “Give me a second,” Nash says when he takes one of the envelopes and then gets out. He jogs up the front steps and quietly puts it in the mailbox beside the door.
While he’s busy, I grab one of the other envelopes and pinch the metal clasp to open it for a quick glance inside.
“Holy shit!”
It’s not one hundred dollars. There are, like, stacks of hundreds!
Nash returns to the car before I recover from my shock, catching me red-handed snooping. He snatches the envelope from me and seals it up. “You don’t know how to mind your own business, do you?”
“How much money is that?” I ask since there’s no reason to pretend like I didn’t see it.
“Not enough.”
“That’s like thousands, right?”
“Ten,” Nash responds.
“Ten thousand dollars!” I exclaim with my jaw hanging open.
“Just drive the car to the next address.”
“Why are you giving them so much money? What are you doing with that much cash?” I ask.
“If you don’t put this car in drive within the next five seconds, I’ll get out and walk the rest of the way,” Nash grumbles.
“Might be tough since I have all the addresses,” I remind him.
“Just go!” he shouts. So, I enter in the next address on my phone and pull away from the curb.
“This is really nice of you,” I say as I drive through the dark streets.
“No, it’s not,” he argues.
And despite my many attempts to get him to talk on the way to the other four addresses, that’s the last words Nash says the rest of our trip.
It’s pitch black when we get back to the apartment complex.
When Nash starts up the steps to his apartment without even saying goodbye, I find myself already missing his surly ass. That’s why I blurt out, “Your beers are still in my fridge!”
His hand pauses on the banister, halfway between the first and second floor. After a momentary deliberation, he turns around and comes back down. I try not to grin like a lunatic that he’s coming back to my apartment. For all I know, he’ll grab the beers and leave.
But after I let us in, Nash only grabs one beer and then pops the top as he heads over to take a seat on my sofa. He grunts as he settles into the cushions, rubbing his hand up and down the armrest, looking ridiculous in his badass leather cut on such a feminine sofa. His tall frame takes up more than half of the cushions. “Ugly as fuck, but this thing is comfortable.”
“It’s not ugly,” I argue without effort since I’m just glad he’s staying. Picking up the television remote from the entertainment center, I carry it over and sit down on the right side of the sofa as far away as I can get, making myself as small as possible with my legs folded underneath me to turn the television on. Even as balled up as I am, my kneecap still ends up pressed against the outside of one of Nash’s spread thighs. “Want to watch a movie or something?”
“Whatever,” he mutters before taking a sip from his bottle. “As long as it’s not a chick flick.”
Once I pull up the Netflix menu, I hand him the remote. “Here, you pick.”
Nash cuts his amber eyes in my direction, looking from the remote in my hand to my shirt and jeans. When he finally takes it, he says, “I’ll find something if you want to change and get comfortable.”
Comfortable?
Do I not look comfortable in my baggy jeans and tee? They’re comfy enough for lounging.
Unless…is Nash hinting that he wants me to put my cami and shorts back on instead? The set came from the junior’s section, so I never really considered them to be sexy or anything of the sort. In fact, I was wearing them the night Malcolm came over, and he didn’t even spare them a glance. But he’s also got a woman with a kid he obviously adores…
“I’ll be right back,” I say when I hurry to the bedroom and shut the door, my heart beating a million times a minute. It’s entirely possible that I’ve misinterpreted things and Nash didn’t mean anything. On the off chance that he did, I quickly undress, stripping out of my bra and panties too, then apply lotion to every inch of my body and brush my teeth before dressing in my pajamas. Looking at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I still look like the geeky computer girl who stopped growing at five foot nothing with only a half-decent rack.
If it’s been three years since Nash has been with a woman, his comment, if it even meant anything, could just be out of desperation to screw the closest available woman now that he’s a free man.
I’m okay with being convenient.
The old Lucy wouldn’t have considered engaging in meaningless sex with anyone, especially not an outlaw biker. This new and cancer-free Lucy would count her lucky stars to be touched by a man as hot as Nash.