Текст книги "Finders Keepers"
Автор книги: Nicole Williams
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FINDERS KEEPERS
Copyright © 2013
Nicole Williams
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events of persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical without express permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes.
Cover Design by Sarah Hansen of Okay Creations
Editing by Cassie Cox
Formatting by JT Formatting
Find more titles by Nicole Williams on Amazon
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
About the Author
This one’s for the book bloggers.
For making this series what it is, and for reading and spreading the word in ways I never could have imagined. For helping me title this one (thank you, Natasha!), and for pushing a square sort of series through the round hole of the present book market. I love you all.
Keep on, keepin’ on . . . because the world needs more lovers of books.
TRYING TO IGNORE her was like trying to ignore a bull charging me. Especially when that was her fifth fake laugh in fifteen minutes. How did I know that laugh, along with the smile and the whole damn act she’s trying so hard to put on, is fake?
Simple.
I’ve known Josie Gibson since before I figured out girls like her were disastrous to guys like me. Girls who could give a boy one look and make him feel it all the way into his boots were ones for me to avoid at all costs. Girls who could give a boy a look and make him feel equal parts irritation and infatuation were ones I didn’t only need to avoid but have permanently erased from my mind.
Girls like Josie Gibson spelled one thing for me: doom. The only thing I was more sure of was that I spelled even more doom for her. Doom was too soft a word, actually.
I would infect Josie like a virus, spreading until I’d done so much damage it went way past the point of repair. That was more like it. I was a virus to Josie Gibson. A toxic one.
I tried to ignore that for too many years. After the past couple years, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. Josie and I should stay on opposite corners of the planet. Unfortunately for her, we lived in the same state. In the same region. So we’d just have to figure out how to live in opposite corners of Missoula County.
Sitting across the bar from one another wasn’t exactly staying in opposite corners.
I’d had too many drinks, and she’d thrown too many glances my way, for me to stay quiet any longer. “You might want to step it up a few hundred notches, Mason, because you’re exciting Josie about as much as cow shit on the bottom of my boots.”
When Josie’s eyes flickered to mine, they narrowed into a glare. “Control yourself, Black.”
“I might if I could, but since I can’t, it’s kind of a moot point.” Lifting my once-again full shot glass, I downed it in one easy drink. I could hold my liquor—kind of a side effect of drinking like a fish since age thirteen—but when whiskey tasted like water, I knew I probably had enough alcohol sloshing through my bloodstream to kill me.
The Jack had started tasting like water three shots ago.
When Colt Mason finally noticed who was propped into the bar stool across from them, he bristled. “Come on. Let’s just go, Josie.”
Hell, I would have bristled too if I’d seen me sitting across from myself. I had something of a reputation for getting into bar fights, and the only reason Brandy still let me in her joint was because I was her best customer. Plus I gave her a little after-hours action when she was feeling lonely and I was feeling drunk.
“No.” Josie shook her head emphatically. When it came to me, she did everything emphatically. It was my curse. “If I left every time Garth Black started running his mouth, I’d never have a chance to get comfortable. He can leave.”
If I’d had a dozen shots less, the look on her face would have made me squirm. “No can do, sweetheart. You see those bottles?” I waved my finger in the general bar area. “They’re still full, and I’m not leaving until a good bunch are empty.”
“Your liver must be jumping for joy right now,” she snapped before grabbing Colt’s shot. She downed it in one drink, but to Josie’s light-weight credit, her whole face puckered up.
“Come on. We’re leaving.” Colt nudged Josie and slid out of his stool.
She shook her head and lifted her finger at Brandy. Like the bar-tending elite she was, Brandy had another shot in front of Josie in under ten seconds. Josie downed it, her face grimacing less that time. I didn’t miss the lingering look Colt gave her chest while she was mid-whiskey wince.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said.
I might have felt my anger flaring when he’d run his eyes all over her, but when his hands moved to her, that anger exploded. I was out of my seat and moving toward them before Colt noticed me coming. Josie knew enough to expect my next move. The rule was simple: whatever normal, sane people did, I went with the opposite.
Anyone else would ignore the couple across from them and let them get on with their Friday night. Me, on the other hand? I was less than a foot away and ready to break the guy’s jaw if he didn’t stop tugging on her arm. Anger management candidates had nothing on me. “I don’t normally give warnings, Mason, but you’re with my friend whose judgment in people, up until recently, I’ve never doubted. So I’m going to give you the benefit and issue one.” I tried to ignore the look of horror on Josie’s face. “Take your hands off of Josie, or you’re going to be slurping your steak through a straw from tonight on.”
That horrified look on Josie’s face? Just went up a few notches instead of down.
“Get lost, Black. Josie isn’t your daughter, your sister, or your girlfriend, so you have no place to order me about what I can and can’t do.”
He was right. And he was wrong. I wasn’t a blood relation, and I sure as shit wasn’t her boyfriend. The man applying for that position was the one who couldn’t look me in the eyes. Since her dad wasn’t there to see Colt Mason all but manhandling her out of her stool and her only brother was on the opposite side of the country, I was temporarily filling both positions.
Moving in front of him, I butted my chest into his. “Josie’s been my friend since before you and your Hollywood family moved out to Montana and insulted us all with your flashy trucks and poser-itis. That gives me the right to put you in your place when I see you put a finger on Josie.”
Josie whipped in front of me, butting her chest into mine. If I hadn’t been so shocked, I would have been turned on. “Leave me alone and go ruin someone else’s life.”
“Spoken like a woman who doesn’t want a man like you putting anyone in their place for her.” Lifting his eyebrows, Colt steered Josie and himself away from me.
They made it a few steps before I slid in front of them again. I wasn’t letting them leave with Colt’s hand still wrapped around Josie’s forearm and with her a few drinks in and wearing that dress Colt had been eyeballing all night. I knew what had happened the last time Josie got drunk when a snake was around, and I wouldn’t let it happen again when I could stop it.
“Fuck off, Black.” Colt’s ever-cool facade was finally crumbling. I was getting under his skin, and when a normal person would have backed off, I kept going.
“You want to hit me?” I said, lifting my arms. I almost wavered in place—probably because I was swimming in whiskey. When Colt shook his head, I cut him off. “Of course you do. You’ve wanted to hit me since the first day of high school when all the girls were more interested in me than you and all your money.”
“I don’t want to hit you.” Colt had managed to collect his cool again, although Josie was picking up where he’d left off. If she could level me with one punch, I didn’t have any doubt that I’d already be horizontal and blacked out.
“You might not want to—which I don’t believe for one goddamned second—but before we part ways tonight, you’re going to hit me.”
From over Colt’s shoulder, I noticed Brandy mouth Take it outside. We weren’t going to make it another step if he didn’t take his hands off of Josie, let alone outside.
For the second time that night, Josie got in my face. Instead of a punch, she almost leveled me with her expression. “Why don’t you stop pretending to be the hero and own what you really are? The villain. Go villainize someone else’s life. You couldn’t possibly do anymore to mine.”
Josie Gibson had just gotten under my skin. I should back up, raise my hands, and surrender, but I couldn’t. Something about having her under my skin, even though it wasn’t the way I might have liked, was a drug for me. One I couldn’t say no to. “How about this? I’ll stop pretending to be the hero when you stop pretending you’re actually interested in this eunuch in a cowboy hat.”
“Ever heard the phrase ‘it takes one to know one,’ Black?” Josie crossed her arms and managed to narrow her eyes farther.
“I have, but I don’t see how it applies. You ought to know, with our history and all, how much of a eunuch I’m not. I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure a eunuch couldn’t make a girl come the way I made you a while back.” That was when the slap came. I was braced for it—it didn’t surprise me—but it stung just the same.
“Go to hell.”
“I’ve been standing in it for twenty-one years, Josie.”
Colt moved to her side, and when he grabbed her forearm, he gave it a good tug. “Come on. We’re out.”
“Ouch,” she snapped, trying to pull her arm from his grip. “Ease up a bit, Hulk.”
What I did next I didn’t think about. It was all instinct. When Colt Mason tugged on Josie’s arm, my fist driving into his jaw was my reflex. It wasn’t enough to land him on his ass, but that had less to do with Colt’s ability to take a hit like a man and more to do with the amount of whiskey in my bloodstream. Josie’s hands covered her mouth as she gaped at me like I was a monster. That was exactly what I was, but at least Colt’s hands were off of her.
“What the hell, Black?” Colt spat, rubbing his jaw.
I lifted my finger in his face and fought the urge to deck him again. “That was because you put your hands on Josie.”
“I’ve put my hands on her plenty of times before and never got clocked across the face.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Before I knew it, my other fist was driving into the other side of his jaw. That was my reflex to Colt Mason insinuating his hands had been on Josie in that way. The way that made me almost as furious as imagining them on her in a harsh way. “There! That’s for all the times you put your hands on her before.”
Colt gave his head a swift shake and moved Josie aside as he moved closer to me. “I’m going to—”
That time, my punch was planned. I knew what I was doing before my knuckles crushed into Colt’s jaw. “And that was because you irritate the shit out of me.” Spitting on Colt’s pristine boots, I shoved his chest. “Go back to California and leave Montana to the real men. Pansy-ass poser.”
Judging from the look on Colt’s face, I couldn’t have paid him a greater insult. I moved Josie aside—who was in front of him fretting over him like he was dying—right before Colt charged me. It was about time I got a reaction out of him.
Colt’s first punch landed square on my nose—a true cheap shot—and gauging from the crack, my nose had broken for the third time. Colt’s next punch sank into my stomach, and when I curled, he drove his knee into my jaw. I went down. I didn’t try to move or lift my hands to shield my face when Colt’s fists came at me one right after the other. I didn’t fight back. I didn’t protect myself. Not because I incapable of doing it, but because taking a good beating every now and again did me good. Some people prayed, some did a cleansing, some took a vacation. I did a solid beating. It reminded me I wasn’t invincible and somehow that reminder made me stronger.
Josie tried to pull Colt off of me when I felt my left eye swell shut, and by the time my right was following suit, Colt’s punches had slowed. I could tell they were still a long way from being done though. The unexpected bonus of getting the shit beat out of me was that somewhere along the way, my whole face had gone numb. The hits didn’t sting anymore.
“What the hell are you doing, Colt?” Josie grabbed one of his arms and tugged on it. “What the hell are you doing, Garth?”
Josie had seen me in plenty of fights, but that was the first one she’d seen where I hadn’t come out the winner. She hadn’t seen when my dad used to lay me out with one strong backhand to the cheek starting when I was four. She hadn’t seen his backhands turn into fists as I’d gotten older. She hadn’t seen the guy I’d picked a fight with the night after she and I slept together. That was the first fight she’d seen where I just laid there and took it. I liked keeping those fights private, and Josie having a front seat to my twisted form of therapy was something I couldn’t decide how I felt about.
“Stop it, Colt! You’re going to kill him!” Josie kept trying to drag Colt off of me, but he had her by a good seventy pounds and seven times that in the rage factor.
I was close to blacking out when I heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being racked. Colt’s fists stopped instantly.
“You better get off that boy now unless you want to see how we Montana folk use a shotgun,” Brandy ordered, inching the barrel toward Colt’s face. “And it isn’t to decorate our walls like some kind of fancy trophy. Around here, we shoot coyotes, wolves, and assholes. And it’s been a while since I’ve got to shoot an asshole. I’m going through withdrawals.”
Colt lifted his hands and slowly lifted himself off of me. It was a smart move; I wasn’t afraid of most anything, but Brandy Hansen holding a loaded shotgun in my face was one of them. And yes, it had happened to me once before.
“Now get out of my joint.” Brandy waved the shotgun at the door. “I’d recommend you not come back unless you want me to ask questions second.”
Colt huffed but continued toward the door. “Maybe you’ll wake up tomorrow learning your lesson finally, Black. Don’t mess with me.”
I had to spit out a mouthful of blood before I could respond. “I learned my lesson all right. That you fight like a little girl.” Leaning up just enough to make eye contact with him, I raised my middle finger and blew him a kiss.
Flames rolled through his eyes, and I could practically taste how badly he wanted to come take another swing—or ten—at me, but Brandy took a few steps in his direction and Colt kept moving for the door.
“Josie? You coming or staying?” he called.
I spit out another mouthful of blood. Good thing Brandy liked me because from the looks of it, more of my blood was splattered across her floor than I had left in my veins. “There’s no chance of Josie ‘coming’ if she goes anywhere with you, Mason.”
Colt shot me a lethal glare. “Joes? What the hell kind of nickname is that? ” He shook his head before glancing away from me. “Josie, are you coming?”
“I can’t just leave him, Colt. Not like this.” Josie had on a brave face, but her bottom lip looked close to quivering. She’d never been a fan of blood, especially when it came to me spilling mine or someone else’s.
“That’s exactly the kind of guy you leave behind.”
I might have been beat to a pulp, but I didn’t like what Colt was implying.
Crossing her arms, her eyes narrowed at him the way I was used to seeing directed my way. “Not to me.”
“You’re actually going to stay behind with this loser?”
Most days, I tried to convince myself I didn’t like Josie Gibson, and some days I failed. That was one of those failure days. I propped up onto my elbows. I didn’t want to admit it, but that small movement hurt like hell. Colt had done a number on me. “If I’m a loser, what does that make you? Oh, wait. Never mind. There hasn’t been a word created for that yet. Colt Mason is all we’ve got to sum up what a good-for-nothing prick your kind is.”
Colt’s fists balled, but Brandy and her shotgun kept him from coming at me again. “Just what kind am I? The kind who doesn’t go home to a dad who’s the town drunk? The kind who doesn’t live in a ramshackle trailer that should have been condemned two decades ago? The kind who only has friends like Josie and Jesse Walker because they pity you? If that’s the kind I’m not, then I’m good with that.”
I kept my face blank. I went to that place within myself that was always angry at the world because when I was good and burrowed down in that place, I didn’t feel anything. Least of all the words coming from the mouth of the jackass in front of me.
Colt shook his head at me—sprawled out, broken, swollen, and bleeding—and the look he gave me almost brought me to my feet with both arms swinging. That look, a mixture of pity and disgust, far outdid his words. I didn’t take well to people pitying me. Despite Colt saying Jesse and Josie only hung around because they pitied me, that was bullshit. Jesse and Josie and I had history. We’d bled through life together. When people shared the kind of ups and downs the three of us had, the common denominator wasn’t pity—it was loyalty. But Colt Mason was looking at me with true pity. If I didn’t feel like I’d just been stampeded by a herd of cattle, I would have beaten his ass until he’d never even consider looking at me that way again.
“I’ll call you later, Josie. Once you’re done doing your good deed of the day.” Colt stalled for a second in the doorway, probably waiting for Josie to hustle up beside him. Unlike me, he didn’t have fifteen years of experience with Josie Gibson’s unparalleled stubbornness. That girl wasn’t going anywhere until she was good and ready.
“Night, Princess. Same time next week?” I called after him as he charged out of the bar. Good fucking riddance.
“Next time you do that in my place of business, I’m aiming this here barrel between your eyes. I don’t care how dark and brooding and sexy they are, you hear me?” Brandy’s face hovered above mine and she lifted an eyebrow.
I answered her with a weak salute. Brandy was back to the customers and the customers were back to their drinks when Josie kneeled beside me.
“What am I going to do with you, Garth Black?” She sighed, her forehead lining as she inspected my face.
“I’ve got plenty of answers for that question, Joze.”
“Mind wowing me with that plethora of answers?”
A girl who knew the word “plethora” should not be allowed to date a guy who’d only graduated high school because his daddy offered to foot the bill for a new football field.
“I would, but I’m afraid I’ll get slapped if I give you any of those answers, and I’m not sure how much more my face can take tonight.”
Josie sighed again, not quite as long as the first. “Sure, now you decide to keep your mouth closed. That would have come in real handy five minutes ago when Colt Mason came at you with his fists.”
I let Josie help me up. Even with her help, by the time I stood, I was feeling enough pain to know I was close to blacking out. It had happened before, but it had been a while. And damn it all to hell, Colt Mason hadn’t only broken my nose. I was pretty sure he’d cracked a couple of ribs, too. “You and I both know if I was interested in fighting back, Colt would have left here on a stretcher.”
Josie slung my arm over her shoulders and helped me to one of the tables in the corner. Having my arm around her, even though it was only to steady myself, made me feel something I wasn’t ready to feel. Especially not when it came to feeling it for Josie Gibson. I wasn’t made to give and accept that kind of thing. Ever.
“I do know that. I’ve seen you in enough fights since the testosterone switch flipped on when you were barely out of first grade to know you could have dropped Colt like you dropped first period trig.” I shot her a tight smile. “So why did you let him beat on you like a flesh-and-bone punching bag?”
My smile went up a notch on the tightness scale. “Because.”
Instead of sighing, she rolled her eyes. When I was close by, Josie was either glaring, groaning, sighing, or rolling her eyes. I could measure my life by her expressions. “I see you’ve made a lot of progress in the whole opening-up department. Bravo. Go, you.”
“Opening up’s never been my thing. It really gets in the way of that whole mysterious vibe I like to let off. It drives the women wild.”
“It drives them something.” She leaned in to inspect the left side of my face. She came so close, I smelled that coconut shampoo she’d been using since our freshman year of high school. Josie’s coconut shampoo had marked many milestones in my life. The first time I’d noticed it was in ninth grade at the homecoming dance. That was the only dance I’d ever gone to, that dance with Josie the only one I’d danced, and coconut shampoo was the thing I remembered. Then that night a couple winters back, I’d buried my face into her hair right as I was about to—
Shit.
Scratch that.
Fuck.
What the hell was I thinking? My face probably looked like a science experiment gone wrong, and I was teetering on a chair dreaming about coconut shampoo and Josie Gibson. I wasn’t sure what I was more disturbed by: that I was fantasizing about shampoo or that my dick was hard from remembering that night with Josie. My dick, along with everything attached to it, needed to stay far away from Josie Gibson. She and her coconut shampoo were messing with my head. Messing with my brain.
“That’s going to need stitches. And probably that one, too.” Josie studied my face with a furrowed brow. “I’ll drive you to the hospital if you promise not to get blood all over my truck.”
“I don’t need doctors and stitches. I need a bottle of whiskey, a woman, and some sleep. I’ll wake up tomorrow good as new.” Gauging my pain level, I probably needed a couple of pain relievers too, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I had a reputation as a badass to uphold and asking for a couple of Tylenol had a way of ruining that.
“Garth, you need medical attention.”
I lifted my hand, catching Brandy’s attention. She had a double shot of whiskey in front of me in thirty seconds flat. I swallowed the whiskey before slamming the empty glass on the table. “There. Medical attention. Check.”
“You really are a stubborn pain in my ass.” She sighed and started for the door. “Wait there, and try not to get in another bar fight before I get back. If you’re still thirsty, try some water. You know, that stuff that comes out a faucet. It’s easier on the liver.”
“And I’m a pain in your ass?” I called after her, but her only response was a shake of her head as she disappeared out the door.
“You want another, sugar? From the looks of you, I’d say you need another after another. After another.” Brandy grabbed the empty glass and waited.
Actually, I needed a line of “anothers,” but I couldn’t get Josie’s voice out of my head. “I’ll have a water.”
“A what?” Brandy’s mouth dropped open a bit.
“A. Water,” I repeated slowly.
Brandy looked at me like I’d grown two heads. “Anything else with your . . . water?”
Even rolling my eyes was painful. “Ice.”
Brandy gaped at me for a while longer before heading back to the bar. In all fairness, looking at me like the world as she knew it had just changed because Garth Black had ordered a glass of ice water in a bar was probably to be expected. Despite being underage, I’d been venturing into Brandy’s bar since I turned fifteen, and that was the first time I’d ordered water. Waiting for my H2O, I grabbed a couple of napkins, twisted them, and stuffed them up both nostrils to stop the bleeding. As far as medical attention went, that was about all I needed.
“You sure you don’t want anything else? It’s on the house.” Brandy set a tall glass of ice water in front of me and waited.
“No, I’m good. Me and my water. What else could a man wish for?”
Brandy shifted, dropping her hand on her hip. “I could think of a few things. You decide you need something else, anything else, you know where to find me.” Glancing at the back room, where Brandy and I’d had plenty of after-hours “get-togethers,” she winked before walking away.
Sex was, like alcohol, my go-to when I wanted to block out something like a shitty day, getting thrown from the bull before the eight-second buzzer, or taking a serious beating. I’d already drowned myself in alcohol. Sex was the next thing on my journey toward “healing,” but sex with Brandy wouldn’t cut it. I don’t know how I knew that, or why; I just did. Sex with just anyone wouldn’t work like it normally did for me. When the face of who I did want flashed through my mind, I wished I’d asked for a bottle of whiskey with my water.
I wasn’t going there again. Not with her. Not ever. Once was enough to fuck a man up good for the rest of his life. I didn’t want to be fucked in the hereafter as well. Not that I wasn’t already fucked when it came to any kind of hereafter reserved for the likes of me, but that wasn’t the point.
“Since when did you start drinking vodka on the rocks?” Josie slid into the chair beside me and dropped a first aid kit on the table.
“Since never.”
She scooted her chair closer until her legs brushed mine. “What are you drinking then? Gin? Tequila? Hemlock?”
I gave her another tight smile. “What you basically ordered me to drink.”
And I thought Brandy’s face had been shocked.
“Water?” I nodded. “No way.” She grabbed the glass and actually took a sip. “Well, crap. Just when I think I’ve got you all figured out.” She set the glass down and shook her head.
“I go and order a glass of water? Mind blowing, I know.”
She fumbled through the first aid kit before pulling out some bandages and ointment tubes. “Consider my mind sufficiently blown.” She pulled out a few small squares and tore one open. Even though I felt like a panty-waist sitting in a seedy bar having a chick patch up my war wounds, I wasn’t about to get up and leave. I probably should. Being alone and in close proximity to Josie Gibson did strange things to me . . .
Like making my heart feel like there was something more to it than just pumping blood.
Speaking of panty-waists . . . I was so far gone in the land of make-believe and shit that I barely registered when Josie lifted a damp towelette to my face. That changed real quick when she pressed it into the gash above my eyebrow.
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t wince. I all but leapt out of my skin. I was doing fabulous things to my notorious rough-and-tough reputation. “Shit, Joze, warn a person before you douse alcohol on a serious wound. Give them a second to brace themselves first.”
She gave me an exaggerated eye roll, holding the bloody alcohol swab off to the side. “First of all, I hardly consider an alcohol swab to be ‘dousing.’ Second, you gave up the right to call any of your wounds serious when you refused to seek medical attention and left me strapped with the burden of patching you up in the corner of some hygienically-deficient bar. And third”—she had to work to disguise her smile—“I thought you were immune to pain.”
Josie might as well have just slit me open and gutted me for as vulnerable as I felt. She was looking at me like she could see everything, everything, and was waiting for an explanation. I gave myself a proverbial shake before replying. “I am immune to pain, but no man, not even the toughest son of a bitch in the universe, is immune to alcohol applied to a gaping wound.”
“Gaping? Really? You on some sort of exaggeration kick or something?”
I couldn’t catch a break with Josie to save my life. “You said I needed medical attention. If something isn’t gaping on my face, you’re the one exaggerating, not me.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus. You are the most exasperating person I’ve ever known,” she said around a sigh, reaching for another alcohol swab. “For a man who doesn’t seem too picky about his alcohol, you wouldn’t think he’d turn his nose up at the rubbing kind.”
“Let’s get something straight. You, princess”—I lifted a brow until the pain registered. No raised brows for me for at least twenty-four hours—“are the most exasperating person I’ve ever known. And if it has the audacity to call itself alcohol and put a warning on itself saying not for personal consumption, then hell yes, I’ll turn my nose up at it. Calling something alcohol when you can’t drink it is kind of like Colt Mason calling himself a cowboy. It’s heresy.”
Josie knew from enough experience with me that I would never forfeit an argument. It just wasn’t in my nature. To start an argument with me was to lose an argument with me. So instead of going a few more rounds, she gave close to her dozenth head shake before lifting the swab to my other eyebrow. “Brace yourself, you big baby. I’m about to douse your gaping wound with the redheaded-stepchild of alcohols.”
I still flinched when she pressed the pad into my skin, but at least I didn’t act like a cat on a hot tin roof. I bit the inside of my cheek and blew out a slow breath.
“Big baby,” she muttered before moving closer and blowing on the spot she was dabbing.
Shit, that felt good. If I had a tail, it would have been wagging. No one had to tell me twice that Josie leaning in, that damn coconut-scented hair brushing my face, and softly blowing on my battle wounds was probably the worst thing that could happen to me. One step above the apocalypse. No one had to remind me that I needed to keep as much distance between her and me as space would allow. Hell, I was reminding myself of that. But when Josie broke through my walls and got close, physically and every other way she could, I was incapable of pushing her back out. No, nobody needed to tell me how fucked up that was. I reminded myself of it every day.
“This is one deja vu moment getting doctored up by you,” I said to distract myself from my thoughts.
