He took a swig of his beer, wishing he had something stronger—much stronger—to deaden the pain. To make him forget. To make him not care. Caring about someone sucked. He wouldn’t make the mistake of doing it again. He was done with women. And relationships. And all the garbage that went with them. He’d always been a loner and now he was more than ready to return to his norm. Well, most of his norm. He still planned to stay clean and mostly sober.
The wooden tabletop beside him shifted slightly and a warm, slender arm brushed his. Heart thudding with expectation, he jerked his head up, but it wasn’t her. Madison hadn’t come back. It was that chick Jacob had banged a few nights before, the one who was friends with Gabe’s girl. The one whose room he’d been in the night before. Hell if he could remember her name. He remembered her face, though. She was quite the looker. Not that he cared. He no longer cared about anything, least of all attractive women.
“Why you out here by yourself?” she asked.
He shrugged and took another draw of his beer, hoping she’d go away and leave him to wallow in his misery.
She took the bottle from his hand, took a swig, and returned it to the loose nook between his palms.
Okay, he was sharing whether he wanted to or not. Why had she come here to bother him? It wasn’t like they had anything in common.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Just lonely,” she said. “Mel went after Gabe. I should have figured she would.”
And he cared why?
“I thought,” she said, staring absently at the space between the table and the white gleam of the bus’s side. “I thought maybe she . . . maybe she could love me. But no, not even her. Why doesn’t anyone love me?”
Maybe they did have something in common. But he had no idea why the girl thought he would be a good sounding board. Didn’t she realize he was too wrapped up in his own problems to give a fuck about anyone else’s? If he couldn’t easily talk to the woman he loved, why would he even consider talking to this walking train wreck?
“I’m sure someone loves you,” he said. “What about your parents?”
She shook her head. “My father loved to rape me and mother loved to neglect me. Does that count?”
He shook his head slightly. “Parents suck.”
“Did your father rape you too?”
He lifted an eyebrow and looked at her. She smiled weakly, and he realized the question was her very inappropriate attempt at a joke. “No. He just turned me into a junkie.”
Adam tossed back the rest of his beer—finishing it in three long swallows—and hurled the bottle against the bus, satisfied when the brown glass shattered. He wished the rest of what was building inside him could be destroyed so easily.
“And your mom?” she asked.
“She left me with him.” And why did this woman care anyway? He hadn’t even been able to help her the night before. He’d been too wrapped up in his own misery to care about hers. Too self-absorbed to remember her name. Fuck, he really was an asshole. No wonder Madison had left him. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”
“Nikki.”
“That’s right. Are you doing better now?” He still wasn’t sure exactly what had gone down with her, just knew that Gabe and his chick had been worried enough to fly back to New Orleans from Austin in the middle of their romantic weekend. He was pretty sure they’d taken Nikki to the hospital. She was banged up. He saw traces of bruises on her arms. Her throat. Her face.
She stared down at her knotted hands and shook her head. “I try to be fine, but I’m not. Not really. I don’t know if I’ll ever be fine. Melanie just makes it easier for me to pretend.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so he said nothing.
She sighed. “Do you ever think everyone would be much better off if you never existed?”
“Don’t think that way.” He rested a comforting hand against her lower back, and she jerked as if he’d punched her in the face.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m a little jumpy today. After last night I don’t think I’m up for sex, but I can blow you if you want.”
He’d had hundreds of women come on to him in his life, but her suggestion shocked him to his core. “I don’t want to have sex with you, Nikki.”
Her gaze returned to her hands. “Oh. I guess you have a girlfriend or something.”
“Actually, no. She dumped me.” And seeing as she had yet to text him, much less call, he was certain it was over with Madison. He just hadn’t let the truth sink in yet. He was still planning to go after her in a couple days, but was convinced it would be a fruitless endeavor and he was just setting himself up for more heartache. “But that’s not why I don’t want to.”
“Oh,” she said, her brow knotted. “Am I too ugly?”
Adam rubbed a hand over his face. He was too annoyed to offer this damaged young woman the level of care she needed. “Do you really think that your only value lies between your legs?”
She didn’t answer, just wrapped her arms around herself and tipped her head forward so that her silky brown hair concealed her face. A drop struck her jeans and blossomed into a dark spot on the fabric.
Shit, he hadn’t meant to make her cry. He didn’t need any further complications at the moment, yet he couldn’t very well walk away from a woman in so much pain.
“You’re beautiful, Nik. And not just on the outside. Don’t you believe that?”
Another teardrop landed beside the first. Her sniff was scarcely audible, as if she’d learned long ago how to cry in silence.
He reached to tuck her hair behind her ear so he could see her face, and her tears didn’t bother him half as much as the bruise on her cheek did. His fingertips hovered over the mark, but he didn’t touch her. He had no business touching her. He dropped his hand and clenched it into a fist on his knee. How could he reach this woman? He knew what it was like to be a bullet train on a collision course with a reinforced brick wall. And yes, he’d often thought that everyone would be better off if they let him run headlong into it. Jacob had tried to stop the inevitable crash, but he hadn’t been able to reach Adam. Only Madison had gotten through to him. What had she done that was so different from what Jacob had done? He thought back to their early sessions, when he’d been too angry with the world to even answer her questions, and then to the session when he’d finally opened up. What had she done differently?