Page 130 of Things We Hide from the Light
But these were not things Morgan men said out loud.
Instead I stuck with our comfort zone. “So now you’re fine if I hook up with your friend? Christ, man, you’re fuckin’ mercurial.”
“Bite me, asshole. Accordin’ to Naomi, Lina feels something real for you. Something you didn’t fully fuck up yet. Unless that speeding ticket put the final nail in that coffin. And since you’re over here makin’ a fool of yourself over her, I’m thinkin’ maybe there’s something there worth exploring.”
I scraped a leaf off my face. “Lina feels something? What did she say?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Knox said, irritated. “Daze and Sloane were singin’ it with British accents between verses of ‘Wannabe.’ Ask them once they sober up and leave me the hell out of it.”
We were quiet for a while. Just two grown men lying in a ruined flower bed staring up at the night sky.
“Heard Naomi threw dog shit at the guy Lina was chasin’ and then Sloane distracted him by flashin’ him her tits,” I said.
Knox snorted next to me. “Jesus. No more girls’ nights out. From now on, the three of them go out together, it’s with a goddamn escort.”
“Agreed.”
We heard the creak of the screen door but never saw the bucket of cold water coming. It hit us both in the face.
Sputtering and swearing, we got to our feet to face the enemy only to find Naomi, Waylay, and Waylon on the porch looking down at us.
“No more fighting,” Naomi said regally. Then she hiccupped.
Waylay snickered as she turned the hose on us.
TWENTY-SIX
NASH WHO?
Lina
Nash Morgan no longer existed to me.
That was the mantra I chanted as I powered my way through the last set of back squats. I could focus entirely on my workout and not the sweat-slicked chief of police who, from the tingle at the base of my spine, hadn’t stopped glaring at me since he got here.
The physical pull of the man was overwhelming and quite frankly pissed me the hell off.
“Drop that booty lower,” Vernon barked, bringing me back to my present suffering.
“You…drop…your…booty,” I wheezed as I dug deep, preparing to exploit the last remaining molecules of energy in my legs.
“Bring it home, Solavita,” Nolan called from the weight bench behind me. Apparently he and Nash had reached some sort of peace accord and were working out together now.
I managed to raise both middle fingers off the bar and then muscle my way back to standing.
The whoops of approval from my elderly workout buddies echoed in my ears as I parked the bar back on the rack and hinged at the waist to catch my breath.
Unfortunately, I forgot to close my eyes and caught a glimpse of the Man Who Didn’t Exist full-on staring hungrily at my ass.
Knox, sweaty and grumpy from his morning workout, walked up to his brother, noticed the direction of Nash’s gaze, and slammed an elbow into his gut.
They both had fading bruises on their faces, but I was so over Nash, I had zero interest in finding out what happened.
Okay, maybe, like, ten percent interest. Fine. Forty percent tops.
Not that I’d ask either one of them. Knox and I had maintained our tentative truce as long as neither of us brought up Nash. And Nash seemed to have finally gotten the message that he didn’t exist. After three days of me refusing to answer my door or my phone, he’d stopped knocking and calling.
It was better this way. We’d proved on multiple occasions that we couldn’t be trusted in any kind of proximity to each other.
