Nash (25 page)

I chuckled at hearing my thoughts spoken aloud.

“Yeah.”

“So you want it gutted and made to look like the other shop? What exactly is the idea?”

Rule and I shared a blank look and then I shrugged.

“I have no idea. It needs to be a functional shop. It has to have room for at least six artists to work and a

piercing room that’s closed off from the rest of the space. We need a front desk and a waiting area and

upstairs is offices, but we were thinking about turning it more into a store.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes moving around the space. I looked at Rule, who looked back

at me and shook his head. I snorted out a laugh.

“Is it obvious we have no idea what we’re really doing?” I felt like I had to ask.

Zeb cracked a grin, which made him look less intimidating. “Well, with a cherry location like this, you

don’t really have to do much. People will come in and check it out just because of where it’s at, and if you

add shopping to the mix …” He whistled through his teeth. “You’re gonna make bank.”

We walked with him through the rest of the space, and I was blown away by how much of it there was.

The Marked was a pretty big shop. I mean, none of us ever tripped over the others and the waiting area

comfortably held up to ten people at a time, but this place doubled that. I had no idea how I was supposed

to manage something like that, let alone remodel and staff it. I felt a slow burn work up the back of my

neck.

At the end of the tour, we ended back on the main level of the shop, and Zeb was writing things down

on a pad of paper he had produced from out of nowhere. Rule was asking him questions and I was just

standing there feeling useless and panicked. Zeb looked up and took in my expression.

“I’ll draw some stuff up, put together a couple quotes. What’s the time frame?”

I sighed. “Well, Cora’s gonna have to be in on the hiring and the actual business setup and she’s due

fairly soon, so like maybe May?” I didn’t even know when I needed to have the place open by. I sucked at

being a business owner. “That gives her time to be at home with the baby while remodeling is going on.”

Rule nodded. “Yeah, I would think May would be good, we would be open for a lot of the summer

tourist business then.”

Zeb made a couple more notes and muttered something under his breath. He gave a quick nod then

stuck the pen he was using behind his ear.

“It’s gonna be some work, not gonna shit you, but this is a great space and I think with minimal effort I

can give you something that reflects what you guys are about but also fits in with what the downtown

crowd looks for as well.”

“Sounds perfect.” Rule and I agreed.

“I’ll touch base after I get some ideas on paper, and we can talk firmer time lines and budgets. I know

Rowdy threw my name in the ring, but I appreciate the shot.”

Rule lifted the eyebrow that had the studs in it and ran his tongue over his lip ring.

“Any friend of Rowdy’s …”

Zeb barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. “Yeah, Rowdy’s a good dude and I appreciate he

doesn’t hold my past against me. Neither does Wheeler.” He dropped the mechanic’s name as I tilted my

head a little to consider the common connection we shared.

“The past?” I had to ask.

He sighed and that massive chest that looked like he regularly did bench presses with a Buick rose and

fell.

“I shouldn’t say anything because it’s cost me more than one job, but if we’re gonna work together, you

might as well know that I served time. I got out over two years ago, but I have a record.”

“Served time for what?” Rule’s tone was sharp, but we both knew Rowdy wouldn’t send us anyone that

was a danger to the business or anyone’s safety.

“Assault. I made some bad choices, and I paid for them.”

Well, that wasn’t awesome, but none of us were strangers with the other side of the law. Hell, less than a

year ago Jet had gotten locked up for a day for beating the crap out of his dad. Granted, the old bastard

deserved it and way worse, so the lot of us tended not to pass judgment when it came to past mistakes.

I told him simply, “As long as you can do the job and the price is fair, I don’t care about what happened

in the past. Our working relationship is all about what’s going on in the here and now.”

He seemed to take my words at face value and we all exchanged business cards. He left and Rule and I

walked out to the front of the building so I could lock the door.

“What do you think?” Rule’s tone was curious.

“I think I want a cigarette.”

He cut me a dirty look and followed me to where the Charger and his truck were parked on the street.

“Seriously?”

“I think that I don’t know what I’m doing. I look at that space and can’t even imagine tattooing there or

the kind of clients we might have. I think I have no idea how to run a business, or how to get Phil to tell me

the truth, and I think I’m falling for a girl who can’t seem to trust me fully, and as a result won’t let me get

nearly as close as I want to. Do you know how much that sucks? I never wanted to get this close to any girl,

ever.”

“Whoa …”

He laughed at me a little and reached out and clamped a hand on my shoulder.

“Chill out, brother.”

I swore and propped a hip on the fender of the Charger and crossed my tattooed arms over my chest.

“Seriously, Rule. I feel like I’m losing control of everything. The ride can stop anytime and let me off.

Being dizzy sucks.”

Both his eyebrows shot up and he took up a spot next to me, his pose almost identical to mine. “Listen,

Nash, you need to breathe. You have a lot going on right now, and trying to deal with it all at one time is

going to make you flip the fuck out. Phil won’t tell you what you want to know, so go talk to your mom.

Seriously, that’s the easy solution, and if Ruby the Great won’t tell you what you need to hear wait until

Cora’s dad gets here for the birth of the baby and ask him.”

It made sense. I just wished I could do it without the talking-to-my-mother part.

“As for the shop and being a business owner, you are not in this alone. I’m here, Cora is here, Rowdy

has your back, and we still have Phil. The success or failure of this shop will not be solely on you, Nash.

We all want it to succeed, we all want to make Phil proud whether we do it in time for him to see it or not.”

He was right … more than my future was at stake here and I needed to remember that.

“As for the girl …” He bumped me in the arm with his fist. “There is no falling. You fell. She’s got you

and there is no getting loose from that. So she’s guarded, so she’s hard to figure out … did you stop and

think maybe the reason you like her, that she matters, is because she isn’t easy like all the rest? Easy is very

forgettable, my friend, complicated and difficult stays with you forever. Believe me, I married it.”

I looked at him and tried to think of something to say that could refute what he said. There wasn’t

anything.

“We were all a bunch of pricks back then; it took finding the right person to make me not want to be

that guy anymore. You, well, you were always the nice one, but even the nice guy can have a bad day.

Eventually she’ll get over her hang-ups over the past, and if she doesn’t, you move on because that means

she’s not into the guy you are now.”

I huffed out a breath and watched it turn into vapor in the cold in front of me.

“When did you turn into the relationship sensei?”

“All my friends and family are falling in love around me, I’m just trying to keep them from making the

same mistakes I made with Shaw. I wouldn’t waste any of the time I did getting to her if I could do it all

over again.”

I would’ve made fun of him for being sappy and sentimental, but I had been there for the journey he

took to get to his girl. It wasn’t always pretty and they had both hurt more than they needed to along the

way, so discounting his words of wisdom didn’t seem very smart.

“All right. I guess I’m gonna cruise up the mountain and try and see if I can have a conversation with

my mom without strangling her or trying to choke myself out.”

“Good luck with that. Hey, you still bringing the nurse to the Bar this weekend?”

It had taken a week of persuasion with both words and sexual lures to get Saint to agree to come out

and meet my friends. Ayden and Shaw were champing at the bit to get to actually meet her outside of the

hospital setting.

“If she doesn’t back out on me. She’s really shy, timid around new people.”

“You better tell her if she plans on sticking around, she needs to get over that, or else Cora is going to

put together an ambush and the girls will end up on her doorstep without you there as a buffer.”

That was exactly what would happen, so I made a mental reminder to push Saint a little harder the next

time we hung out. I didn’t mind pushing her, usually the results ended up with us naked and wrapped

around each other, but I was still leery of pushing too far because I just didn’t know where her breaking

point was. And frankly, I didn’t know where mine was either. I liked her, really liked her, in bed and out of

it, but there was always something unknown about her that kept me on the edge. She was a strong girl, had

to be in order to do her job and be as good at it as she obviously was, but outside of her work and away

from the hospital, there was a veil of vulnerability and unease that surrounded her. I could practically see

the struggle she was having within herself when we were together. She wanted to be with me, wanted to

spend time together, but the gears in her head would start turning and I could see her trying to figure out

how much of herself she could give to me and still feel safe.

I was also doing my best to show her a good time. Ever since the incident in the backseat of my car, I

kept it in the forefront of my mind that she essentially had missed out on all the teenage nonsense that went

along with boys figuring out how to get into a girl’s pants. So I took her to the movies and tried to get my

hands in her shirt. I took her out for pizza and made out with her on her doorstep when I dropped her off. I

tried to get her to go on a double date with Rule and Shaw, but she had balked at the idea, not ready to be

that fully ingrained in my life yet, which led to the question of what exactly we were doing together.

I had never spent more than one night or one weekend with the same girl, so to me we were doing

something that looked like starting a relationship. To her, though, I just didn’t know. She texted me, called

me when she had free time, but never stayed the night at my place when she came over and never asked me

to stay when I was at hers. Granted, she never asked me to leave either, but there was just a lot of gray area

happening, and I felt like I was navigating all of it blindly since I had never even been interested in starting

something with anyone before. I knew she was special. I just didn’t know how to show her that beyond

what I was already doing.

The drive to Brookside went quick, mostly because my mind was running over everything and didn’t

give me a minute of peace. I pulled into the driveway and breathed out a grateful sigh that at least my idiot

stepfather’s SUV wasn’t anywhere to be seen, unless it was in the garage. That was highly unlikely because

what good did it do in the garage where the neighbors couldn’t see it, marvel at its awesomeness, and be

eaten alive with envy at Grant Loften’s obvious wealth and prestige? Fucker. I would never hate anyone as

much as I hated that guy and God willing there would come a time that my fist and his face had a meeting.

My entire childhood had been spent under his disapproving eyes. I could never do anything right, was

always treated like a burden by him. One of my clearest memories of his sheer shitheadedness had been

when I couldn’t have been more than four or five. I had just discovered crayons. I loved the colors, loved

to swirl designs on anything and everything I could get my little, unruly hands on, including the walls. It

was just crayon and what little kid didn’t draw on the wall? But to Grant it had been a crime akin to murder.

To this day I can see him snapping every single one of the crayons and making me watch. I remembered the

acrid smell of bleach as he made me scrub not just my bedroom wall where my art lived, but all the walls in

the house. I was just a little kid, but to him that didn’t matter. Just like now, he never thought I did anything

right.

What made it worse was the fact that he obviously loved my mom, treated her like she was a queen, and

gave her whatever she wanted. He just had no time or use for me. And I would never, ever forgive him for

making her choose between the two of us. Of course my mother should have picked me, I was her child, it

was her job to love me unconditionally, but she hadn’t, and it was Grant who had made her have to make

that call.

He was a man that had always been about appearance, a man all about prestige and perception, so the