Nash. Jay Crownover

day isn’t going to make it any better. You need to be strong for your dad, but you also need to be strong for you. It seems like you have a lot of people you can lean on, they’ve been in and out of that hospital room all week. Trust me, this is not a fight you want to battle on your own.”

      He threw his head back until it thumped on the dark leather of the couch. He squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled his long legs up and clenched fists up on the top of each knee. He even had scrolling artwork inked on his skin from beneath the hem of his boxer shorts to his knee on one leg and to the top of his foot on the other. There was simply too much of it for me to pick apart all the separate images and designs, all I knew was that it was all bold, dynamic, and full of color and had obviously been put on him by someone with an incredible amount of skill.

      “Until a few days ago I thought my father walked out on me when I was just a baby. My mom told me he was a deadbeat, that he didn’t have any interest in being a husband or a father, so every time that asshole Loften talked shit to me, told me I was garbage, tried to put me under his thumb, I told myself it was cool because my mom deserved nice things, a guy to take care of her since my dad was an asshole. Only Loften is a judgmental, superficial prick and basically forced her to pick me or him. She picked him even though my dad was in the same fucking state all along and never walked out on anyone.”

      He gave that laugh that made me hurt for him again, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out a hand and putting it on one of his balled-up fists. I could feel the tension and dissonance creeping all over him.

      “Turns out the only adult I ever looked up to, that ever showed me I was worth anything just the way I was, fucking lied to me my entire fucking life. Phil took me in when my mom kicked me out. He pretty much raised me, taught me how to tattoo, gave me a future, and showed me how to be a man. I walked into that hospital room, took one look at him, and wondered how I had missed what was right in front of me all along.”

      He grunted and let his eyes drift shut again. I was following along as best I could with his story, but I was kind of lost. I felt like there was someone else he should be telling all of this to, but for whatever reason I was the one he had let in, both figuratively and literally. He hadn’t known Phil was his father until the other night? That was huge and just as hard to work through as the fact that his loved one was terminally ill. No wonder he was just a mess. I couldn’t blame him.

      “He looks like he’s dying … so fucking sick, and he called me son. For twenty-five years I called him Uncle Phil and now that he might not be around much longer, he has the nerve to call me son. I grew up thinking I wasn’t good enough for anyone. Not my mom, not that shithead she married, not my dad who couldn’t even be bothered to see what kind of kid I would turn out to be … only Phil made me feel like I was worth a damn, and now I don’t even know what to do with any of this shit. Why didn’t he just tell me? He was more my dad than my uncle all along anyway.”

      I sighed because he was spinning himself in circles and I could see the faster he turned the worse it was making him feel. I put my other hand on his and leaned forward.

      “I don’t know, Nash. What I do know is the only person who can answer those questions is sick and hurting just as badly as you are. And I know that the two of you obviously need each other right now. This is wasted time you will never get back. I see it every day and you will live to regret it if you don’t move past it and go see him.”

      He was drunk, obviously distraught and not thinking clearly. I doubted he would remember much of this heart-to-heart when he sobered up, but there was just a nagging part of me that wanted to try and make this heartbreaking situation more manageable for him. I thought I still hated him, still held him responsible for all my shattered teenage dreams of love and romance, but right now I just felt sorry for him. It didn’t matter how big and strong he was, or how much of a badass he appeared to be on the outside, not being able to fight back against something as devastating as cancer, especially when it was affecting someone he obviously loved, sucked. I knew it made him feel impotent and ineffectual, and right now it was obviously making him scared enough to think hiding from it was a viable option.

      I gasped a little in shock when both of his wide hands suddenly seized my face on either side. His hands were a little rough but his touch was soft as his eyes suddenly flashed from periwinkle to a dark, intense indigo. His eyelids drooped down, and his erratic breathing suddenly slowed, making those flames dancing across his shoulders and pecs look like they were alive.

      “You’re really beautiful, Saint.”

      I narrowed my eyes at him and lifted my hands to wrap around his wrists. My fingers didn’t reach all the way around and I didn’t want to think about how sexy that was. It was on the tip of my tongue to remind him that he hadn’t always thought that, in fact if my memory was correct he had said it would take a bag over my head for him to be interested in spending any kind of intimate time in my offensive presence. I still felt the burn as the memory flashed behind my eyes.

      “I just want to help.”

      “You are helping.”

      No I wasn’t. I shouldn’t have come here. He wasn’t my problem. What he was struggling with and whatever complicated family dynamic he was working with had nothing to do with me, but it was like I was seventeen again and couldn’t deny that there was just something about him that grabbed at me, pulled at my too-sensitive heartstrings.

      I sighed and gave him a tight smile. “No I’m not. You need to let the people who love you, who care about you, in to help you out with this. That’s a heavy load to try and balance alone. Especially on top of everything else with your parents. It’ll be all right, Nash. You’ll see.”

      His eyes got even darker, and it was like watching midnight fall over the sky. I was balanced on my toes, and he had a firm grip on my face, so when he suddenly pulled me forward I was both startled and off balance. I had to let go of his wrists to catch myself as I fell forward, and I swore the heat coming off his bare skin when my palms landed on the smoothness of his naked chest was enough to meld me to him forever.

      I was going to ask him what in the hell he thought he was doing. I was going to tell him that I had stopped by more for his father’s sake than his. I was going to snap at him that he was the last man on earth I would let put his hands on me after the lasting damage his unnecessarily cruel actions and thoughtless words a lifetime ago had done. I never got the chance.

      One of his hands snatched up the end of my long braid and wrapped it around his fingers like a rope. His other slid across the nape of my neck and unceremoniously jerked me forward until we were chest to chest, mouth to mouth, and I was plastered all along the very much undressed front of him. I pushed ineffectually at his rock-hard shoulders, tried to wiggle my way free, but he was too strong, had too good of a grip on my hair—and if I was going to be entirely honest, even drunk and sloppy he was one hell of a good kisser, so my effort to get away may have been halfhearted at best.

      I had spent a good portion of my last year in high school wondering what it would be like to kiss Nash Donovan. Granted, in my fantasies it usually involved candles, soft music, and him being madly in love with me while I just laughed at him and told him there wasn’t a chance in hell he ever had a shot at getting with me. Wouldn’t it just be fate to shove it in my face that even though I didn’t particularly care for him, didn’t think there would ever be a situation or set of circumstances in the whole wide world where I would let him put his hands on me … that as soon as I was tested in those beliefs I crumbled like the Berlin Wall coming down.

      His lips were a little dry, his skin rough from too many days without a shave, and when he moved his head just a fraction to run his tongue along the seam of my lips, I refused to open, and I felt the slight brush of metal against my upper lip from that hoop in the center of his nose. I thought it would weird me out, but it made me shiver, and when he pulled my hair just hard enough to make me huff out a breath of pain, he got the entrance he wanted and I quickly slipped from indignant and annoyed to something squishy and foreign that made my heart rate pick up and my pulse flutter jerkily under my skin.

      Man, could he kiss. He was intent on it, like whatever was happening between my mouth and his