Page 95 of Nash

While he stows food in the kitchen, I sit on the bench by the table, staring out the window. The sky is smeared with dark, ominous clouds, and the water is starting to crest with white caps.

“Please tell me we’re not leaving the marina.”

“We’re safer anchored in the inlet than here,” he answers, turning toward the helm outside.

“But it’s going to storm.”

“It’s just rain,” he replies over his shoulder. “It’ll pass.”

But it doesn’t pass—this feeling I have around Nash now. This heavy heartbreak once the adrenaline rush is gone. Being near him has picked my wounds open again.

How else did I think this would end? How can I be mad at him when he warned me it would?

I knew he’d choose to protect Alena. I love that about Nash, which makes this hurt so much.

For a few stolen weeks, we were perfect together. Beyond perfect. It was passion beyond my wildest dreams. We can’t deny it. I finally felt loved by a man, and on the edges of my pain, I can’t find regret about it.

But it’s as if he’s ashamed of it now. Nash won’t look me in the eye. He won’t speak to me. He stays focused on his mission. Whipping the ropes free with the help of a dockhand, he starts the boat’s engine and aims the bow toward open water.

The rising white caps I see through the windows terrify me, and the boat rocking makes it worse. I try lying on the bed for hours, but the nausea rolls in. I try sitting at the banquette table, twirling the gun like a toy since he told me not to, and it’s no relief.

The storm outside matches the one I feel inside.

When this ends, I’ll have to say goodbye to Nash and fall into the darkness again. I’ll have to figure out how to live without love, and I don’t know what’s worse.

Never having love or losing it.

Having no man love me, or having the one I love be the one I can’t have.

My past bleeds into my present around him. Nash has always been there. He used to heal my pain, and now … heismy pain.

The wind and waves outside make the boat pitch, swaying back and forth, but…

All I can feel is the girl inside, waiting for her father to pick her up and take her for cheeseburgers, but he never came. All I can remember is the sobbing teenager taking off her torn prom dress and throwing it in the trash can. All I want to be is the woman held in the arms of a man who kissed her hair and made that pain go away, but then he left me, too…

…and the pain came back.

It finds me running for the toilet. It retches everything out of me until I’m empty and lying on the floor, afraid this will never end. I close my eyes, helpless to make it stop. It’s not the storm making me sick. It’s the love—the loss.

Forever, it feels like I lie in it.

“Vale?”

I flutter my eyelids open to Nash squatting beside me.

“I can’t do this.”

“You don’t have sea legs. It’s okay.” He brushes the hair off my face. “I’ll take us back in.”

“No, Nash. This.” I touch his hand on my cheek. “I can’t dothis.Please, just let me go. I’ll find someplace to hide alone. I just can’t be near you and not feel like I’m broken all over again.”

“Poison, I…” He swallows hard. “I can’t let you go.”

“I can stay with Stacey,” I urge. “Ford will keep me safe and?—”

“No,” he says. “I mean this…” His thumb gently brushes my bottom lip. “You. I know it now. I can’t let you go again. I lo?—”

A sudden wave knocks the boat, tilting the vessel, making Nash fall over as I slide across the floor and slam against the wall.

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