Page 26 of Mr. Not Nice Guy

I grit my teeth as I continue to dab her cheek. “You’re angry about the festival. I get it. You needed—”

“It’s not just the fucking festival,” she snaps, a crack in her voice, and a tear trips over her lower lashes. “You’re a mean, nasty, vindictive man. You’re trying to squash me because you’re scared shitless that these people are going to find out that you’ve already fucked me, and that it’ll somehow ruin your sterling reputation.”

On pure reflex, I glance at the sound booth to see if anyone’s there.

“See?” Scarlett scoffs. “You’re such a fucking pussy, August. It’spathetic.”

What’sreallypathetic is her calling me that causes rage to crackle in my veins, and I grip the nape of her neck, pulling our faces closer. I press the cotton firmly to her cheek, and the peroxide drips down her cheek, mingling with her tears that continue to spill.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Scarlett,” I murmur. “Just like you have no interest in telling me what happened to your fucking face, I have no interest in telling you why I am the way I am with you.”

After all, I can’t exactly say to her,you do things to me that I can’t allow because you’re just one more woman who could potentially break me.Because that would fuck up this whole professional relationship even more than it already is.

“All we have to do,” I go on, my fingers absently and automatically stroking the soft strands of her hair while I continue dabbing her cheeks, “is figure out how to coexist. I have no interest in fighting with you, Scarlett. So, I need you to try not to fight with me. I need you to act like a goddamn professional. That shit you pulled at the salon was not fucking professional, and I can’t—”

“Well maybeyoushould act like a goddamn professional,” she hisses, jutting her chin forward, her trembling bottom lip only inches from mine, and I can taste her breath. Spearmint and raspberry. My mind is catapulted backward in time to that night at the bar, and the flavor is still just as erotic as it was then, but somehow the fire-and-ice dichotomy that we’ve become only heightens that eroticism.

I’m one second and a forward tilt of my head from pressing my mouth to hers, and I can’t have that.

“You think it wasprofessionalto get revenge by forcing me to cut off all my hair and change the…the…” Scarlett’s breath hitches, and more tears slide out of her eyes. “I never wantedred hair, August. You don’t know what you cost me by doing this to me.”

My brows draw together. “It’s just hair, Scarlett.”

“It’snotthough.” She pulls away from me and turns on the bench to face away. “It’snotjust hair. You willneverunderstand.”

Her shoulders convulse, and my hand is hovering in midair between us. I’m reallynotmean, or a piece of shit, and I can’t just let a woman cry in front of me without doing something.

And since Scarlett has no Brennan waiting in the wings to comfort her like Liza does, comforting her falls squarely on my shoulders.

I set the cotton and the first aid kit aside so I can move to sit on the bench next to her, and place my hand on the space between her shoulders. “Help me understand.”

“Ican’t.”

More hitches, more sobs, and then the light clip-clop of high heels on hardwood.

I glance up to see Liza watching me and Scarlett from a far corner of the studio. Her face is still blotchy from crying. Brennan is at her side. And both of them are wearing the weight of expectations that I’m supposed to fill the void of a dead man, whom they both loved, and who would never let something like this happen.

And letting myself do what I need to do right now is going to fucking costme.As soon as I knock down the barrier I have erected between myself and the young woman sobbing next to me, there’s going to be little holding me back from that terrifying place I have no desire to go.

But I promised. And something’s going on with Scarlett that’s a hell of a lot bigger than just her hair and her relationship with this record label. So, I have to do something.

With my hand still on her back, I lean toward her face, find her ear, and take a page from the Brennan Riley playbook. “Come here, honey.”

Scarlett’s shoulders heave once more with a quiet sob, and she slowly shifts around, keeping her head low, but allowing me to hold her against my chest.

Andfuck.

It hurts.

I’m not exactly sure whatitis, but it hurts.

For a long span of time, Scarlett cries herself to a state of near exhaustion while I hold her in a manner that is reserved for close friends, but feels a hell of a lot more intimate because of the depths of physical intimacy that we’ve already shared.

“My grandmother’s dying,” Scarlett suddenly sputters into my shirt, and my hands go still where they were rubbing her back. “She’s dying in one of the worst ways possible, and she’s all I’ve got.”

My gaze absently drifts to Liza and Brennan where they’re still watching across the room, and she brings her hand to her mouth as though her own tears are about to start up again. I look away from her and back down at Scarlett’s face pressed to my chest, her marred cheek on full display for me, and this is suddenly a whole other level of intimate. This is the kind of intimacy I had mentally and emotionally prepared myself to give Liza for the rest of my life, but never had a chance to for her or anyone else.

Until now.

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