Page 24 of Love Me, I Dare You

Boys worked that way. They never thought before they jumped off the cliff. Not until they were free falling and drowning in the depths of the frigid water, frantically reaching for a safety raft to pull them out.

I figured it would take him a few days to realize that raft would be me. I would be the one to pull him out of his thoughts and calm the waves of unease that were threatening to drown him. What I never expected was to wake up the next morning, still reeling from the exhilarating feeling of being with him, to find him gone. To find he’d given up, and I found myself drowning with nothing or no one to keep me afloat.

Especially when Jase, who’d been his best friend, didn’t seem to care.

After Nash left, Jase didn’t seem so preoccupied with finding out why his best friend fled town, letting no one, not even his family, know where he was going or why he was leaving. I thought maybe he knew and was just covering for Nash, but as the years went by, that seemed less likely to be the truth.

It made no sense then, and it makes no sense now.

Why is Jase adamant on convincing me to let Nash into my home?

To let him into my world, my safe space. Maybe it’s because he never fully understood the extent of what Nash’s leaving did to me. It broke me. Made me a husk of the girl I once was. I changed everything about myself. Took on a new identity, changed my plans, outfits, my morals—all to outrun the ghost of him who haunted me infinitely.

I did so well to hide the truth behind all of those changes. I’d blamed it on rebellion. A Christian girl out in the real world, away from her sheltered upbringing. When in reality, it was thatlife I was running from and I was willing to do anything to escape the reminders of him.

Everything about Crossroads reminded me of Nash. The last two years of school, I rarely visited home, even though our campus was a quick road trip away. If I did, I avoided people who weren’t my immediate family at all costs.

It’s nearly two am when we lock up for the night, the last of our stragglers being safely placed into Ubers to ensure no one leaves Stingers intoxicated, causing some tragedy. It’s all part of the deal. We serve so long as you follow our rules, and that means we take your keys if you’re too intoxicated to drive. We make the judgement call.

“Alright, B. I’m heading out,” Jase calls out, grabbing his jacket that’s hung behind the bar counter. After appearing suddenly while I was arguing with Nash, he stayed the entire night by his side, the two of them chatting it up as if they remained the best of friends.

At first, things seemed tense and awkward, but soon enough, they were laughing and acting like the old friends they once were. Until they plotted to ruin my night, and the next two months of my life, convincing me to let Nash stay in my apartment. The same Nash I’ve loathed and resented for so long, by preying on my one weakness—to help those in need. Nash needed a place to stay since apparently no one else in town would take in a stray.

Too bad for me, I was known to take them in. When I was five years old, I brought a baby possum into my room when I found it crying out by our chicken coop one night. I’d told my mama it was cold and alone looking for its mama, but she wouldn’t have it and threw it back out in the night. I cried for hours and from that moment on, promised myself to always help someone in need despite who they were or where they came from—and apparently, despite what they’d done to me.

I pretend to wipe down the counter once more, though it’s now squeaky clean, and act as if I’m not attentively eavesdropping on their conversation.

“Nash,” Jase calls out before heading toward the front double door. “It was good to see you again, man. Hope you’ll stick around for a while.” Nash nods his head in agreement, but they don’t make a move to hug or even shake hands. “Let me know if you or Monty need help with anything around the ranch.”

Have I been swallowed into some alternate universe where no one but me remembers the last ten years?

One thing is leaving the past in the past, but picking back up where they left off. There has to be something going on with Jase. Guilt, possibly for being part of the reason Nash left to begin with? It’s just unlike him to be this nonchalant about something I knew angered him for so long. I’ve suspected for a few days that Jase’s keeping something from me. He’s not only been acting distant and ignoring my messages and calls, but this calm and collected demeanor is unlike him.

I toss the dirty towel in the hamper under the bar and push through the swinging doors toward Nash. He lifts his head up from his phone when he hears me approaching, giving me a dangerously wicked smirk as I halt right before him.

I stand quiet for a moment, my gaze raking over him, unable to fathom how incredibly sexy he looks standing there, leaning against the table in that sinful leather jacket. There’s a patch of a skull sewn onto his shoulder, but I don’t allow myself to look close enough to make out what it says.

Those dark blue eyes are unreadable. So much tension bottled up in them. They’ve seen so much, yet when they look at me, it’s like I’m the only thing they see.

I clear my throat when his smirk widens, letting me know he’s caught me ogling him. Again. “You need to go pick up yourstuff or something?” I ask, suddenly nervous about being alone with him.

He smiles, pearly white teeth gleaming at me. “Got everything I need in a bag on the back of my bike. Didn’t come with much. Remember, I ain’t here to stay long.” He lifts the duffle bag he must have gotten earlier tonight to show me.

Of course, he can fit his entire life into a small leather bag. Nash doesn’t seem like the type of man to set down roots wherever he’s been.

“Alright then, Bishop. Let me show you your new home.”

Nash follows me down the long corridor on the left side of the bar, where we have our liquor storage, the office Jase, Penny and I share, and a staircase leading up to my apartment. We take the stairs to the second floor and up to my front door, a rustic wooden door with one of those vintage brass door knockers you see around the older buildings in town. I kept it since ‌it gives the place character and shines some of the history behind the building.

Before Jase and I purchased the foreclosed property from the bank, it was home to a town legend. The Old Nellie was the most popular honky-tonk this side of Tennessee after it first opened its doors in the sixties. But after nearly forty years, and the death of its owner, Nelson Harper, Nellie’s was forced to close the club's doors. Nelson himself had run the place bankrupt, running an underground gambling ring in the basement, and riling up a debt unlike anyone in Crossroads had ever seen.

My grandaddy Benson King was the one who’d told us stories of the Old Nellie in its prime and it was always a dream of mine to reopen a place that could keep the history of Crossroads alive the way the old honky-tonk had.

“What are you waiting for, B?” Nash asks, when I don’t immediately open the door. I’m reluctant to take the step inside,knowing it will only make this incredibly stupid decision I made a reality.

Taking my keys out of my back pocket, I feel Nash’s gaze on me, but I don’t dare turn around. “Wondering if I should have made a deal to let the devil in my home.”

He chuckles, a deep, throaty sound that makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise at the feel of him so close to me. Rough fingers swipe my hair off my shoulder, his hot breath teasing the back of my neck as his left hand flattens against the door, caging me in.

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