I felt my body still as I clicked it open and saw Jimmy’s smiling face in the sender space. I needed to erase it, needed to get away from the computer. It had been too long for him to try and reach out to me, too much damage had been done, but despite all of that, I was compelled to read it.
Cora: I know it’s been years and I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I want you to know that I understand now how badly I hurt you. It’s hard to ignore when the exact same thing happened to me. Everyone in the shop knew Ashley and Drake were hooking up behind my back while she had my ring on her finger and no one said a word. I just wanted to try and make it right. You were a great girlfriend and I should have treated you so much better. Your aunt said you moved to Denver and I figured you would have hooked up with Phil. The shop looks nice. If you are open to it, give me a call. I would really like to make amends. I’ve missed you.
He left an e-mail address and a phone number, but I hit delete and just stared at the monitor. Well, wasn’t that all kinds of a mind f**k?
“Now what? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?”
I spun the chair around and met Nash’s curious gaze.
“Have you ever had your heart broken, Nashville?”
He growled at me, which made his client laugh.
“Don’t ever call me that again.” He never used his full name and got touchy whenever someone else did. “And yeah, my heart was broken by the girl every boy loves first. My mom. The second she picked that dipshit over me, she broke my heart.”
“What did she have to say about Phil? Did she agree to talk to him?”
“She was all weird about it. She said Phil is a grown man, and if he doesn’t want to talk about whatever is going on, I should be mature enough to respect it. I still can’t run him down and it’s all starting to piss me off.”
Phil had been scarce around the shop lately, and when I did catch him on the phone, he still sounded terrible. I didn’t like it at all, and the fact that he was still dodging Nash just didn’t bode well.
“I just had a bit of my past bite me in the ass but it’s fine. Nothing to get all twisted up over.”
“You sure?”
That was the question I was struggling with myself, but luckily I had a girl coming in to get the same piercing I had done and I needed to get ready, so I moved to the piercing room to set up and made sure all the instruments were ready to go. I needed to keep busy or the past was going to drag me under, and that was the absolute last thing I wanted or needed.
Rome knew something was off. I met him at the bar because he had to stay later than normal because of a band or something. He fed me and poked and prodded at me, which I tried to evade because I just wasn’t sure what to tell him. He had nothing to worry about. I didn’t want anything to do with Jimmy. He was history and his apology was beyond a lifetime too late, but a part of me couldn’t deny that I was curious about what he thought he could say to me after all this time to make any kind of difference. I was avoiding handing my heart over to Rome, because I was still scarred from the damage Jimmy had done when he drop-kicked it back to me and I wondered if there were any words that existed that could make that fear obsolete.
Dinner was a little bit tense but he let it slide because he was awesome like that even though I could feel those eyes trying to vet me. I was mad he didn’t tell me what happened to the truck and that Asa spilled the beans. I was worried that someone seemed to have it out for him or the bar and that he didn’t seem to be taking the threat very seriously. He said something about Brite having an in with the Sons of Sorrow and that didn’t make me feel any better about the situation, but since I was twitchy and off anyway, I just let it go.
I was mentally exhausted when I got home. I chatted with Ayden for a minute since she was in the living room with her homework spread out all around her. I told her that I was probably moving out and getting a place with Rome before the end of summer, so she and Jet would have the place to themselves. She was happy for me but bummed because Jet was on the road so much. I think really she missed Asa and just didn’t know how to mend that bridge. That was something the gorgeous siblings were just going to have to figure out on their own because I was simply spread too thin at the moment.
I took a shower and crawled into bed. It was weird to be alone, but Rome said he would be home as soon as he could. I slept more on him than on the mattress, which led to my hands being in some very interesting and naughty places in the morning since he typically slept naked. He was just so warm and so solid, he made me feel like anything bad in the world would have to go through him if it wanted to get to me.
I put on a T-shirt and some panties and was out by the time my still-wet head hit the pillow. I vaguely heard my guy come in well after midnight and heard him rustling around in the bathroom, but I was too out of it to rouse. Even when he pulled me up and settled me back on top of him with a hard kiss on my sleepy mouth, all I could muster was a pat on his chest before getting sucked back into dreamland. I felt his arms curl around me, and for the first time since that call from my dad, I felt like I had settled back into my reality. This was now, my then was not something that was going to mess with this. I refused to let it.
I was jolted awake sometime near dawn. I had to blink to try to adjust my eyes to the hazy light coming in through the blinds, but before I could even adjust to it, Rome had rolled me over and was looming over me with a scary look on his face. His eyes were wild, his mouth was tense, and the vein that ran along his neck was throbbing in a rapid beat that I could see even in the low light.
“Rome?” I asked it as a question because this was the same way he looked the last time he disappeared into the night. I didn’t want to spook him, but I wasn’t sure he was even seeing me right now. His hands were harder than normal and shaking just a little when they pulled my shirt up over my head and he didn’t even bother to slide my underwear off; they just disintegrated under the twist and pull of impatient fingers. He jerked his head up and the light blazing out of those blue eyes was tortured and foreign, but there was enough of my guy still caught in there that I told myself just to calm down and ride out the storm. I knew to the bottom of my soul he would never purposely hurt me. He just needed to get away from whatever was hounding him and this was the only way he could do it without taking off on me again. I had asked for honesty and this was as raw and honest as I could get from him.
He positioned me where he wanted me and then his head and shoulders disappeared between my legs. I was still half asleep and nowhere near ready for this kind of assault, so I just threaded my fingers through his hair, which was now long enough to curl and loop around my fingers, and held on. I arched up against his thrusting tongue and tightened my thighs around his head.