Page 73 of Blind Trust
A new song came on. He lifted his crowbar and she lifted her bat, a toast before they spent the next thirty or so minutes demolishing everything they could in that room. By the time they were done, Lyla was a hot mess of sweat, exhaustion, and peace.Definitely therapeutic.
Outside their rage room, Lyla removed her helmet and set it in a bucket to be cleaned. She caught her reflection in a window. Ew. Half her hair was matted to her forehead and the other half was sticking out all over the place. She pulled her hair free of the elastic band in an attempt to fix it but stopped when she saw Nicolás.
Seriously? She watched him step out of his coveralls, shirt damp with perspiration as it stretched over his broad shoulders. He ran a hand through his hair, which was mussed up just perfectly, before covering it with his baseball cap. His eyes met hers and a warmth slid through her, leaving her feeling a bit heady.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Lyla walked to the water cooler in the hallway and grabbed a paper cone cup. She filled it with cold water, drank, and filled it again. “I was just, um, thinking it wasn’t fair that I came out of there looking like Clifford the Big Red Dog licked my head. And you pop a baseball cap on your head and suddenly you’re MLB’s poster boy.”
Lyla dropped the cup into the trash can and started to fix her hair, but those sore muscles she’d ignored were now having their own rage party. She winced.
Nicolás closed the distance between them, his gaze tracking the movements of her hand as she attempted to pull her hair back. He reached for a piece near her ear, his fingertips tickling her skin, and helped her brush it back.
“Ponytails are my specialty.”
Lyla handed him her ponytail holder and let him work his hands through her hair, gathering it back like he had the night before. Except this time, the feel of his touch, the closeness of his body behind hers caused a chill to skirt over her skin and brought the thudding in her chest to her ears. An awareness fired up inside of her at the intimacy of the moment, and she was left with the sudden realization that his tenderness was filling a space in her heart that hadn’t been filled before.
Nicolás stepped back when he was done, and when he walked around to face her, she noticed the worry in his eyes.
“What?” She looked at his hands as he stretched out his fingers. “Is it your hand? Are you still feeling numbness?” Without thinking, she grabbed his hands in hers and began massaging his fingers and the palms of his hands. “How’s that?”
His Adam’s apple moved a few times before he answered. “Um, yeah, thanks.” His thumbs traced lightly over her knuckles before he tipped his head to the side and his eyes moved to her hair. “I may have overstated my expertise.”
“I’m sure it’s fine.” Lyla laughed. Reaching back, she felt the bumps of his attempt, but at least no loose pieces were hanging out. “Thank you for trying.”
Nicolás pulled off his cap, adjusted the back, and then carefully slid it on her head. “Better.”
It was. Not the hat, but the way Nicolás’s attention seemed to shift everything inside her, causing what she thought she knew about her feelings for the man standing inches away from her toblur. Somehow the way he was tending to her, watching her, didn’t feel like an annoyed attempt to cage her in. It was more.
Her heart continued thundering in her chest.How much more?
Lyla let that question simmer in her mind until they were walking out the doors of Make Rage, Not War. She paused outside his truck. “Thanks for doing this, Nicolás.”
“It was fun.” He half smiled, but it looked like he was holding back.
His silent struggle with whatever was on his mind was making her nervous. “Why are you leaving?”
“That was the other reason I suggested we leave the office—so we could talk.”
Lyla narrowed her eyes on him. “You brought me to a rage room to talk?”
“I figured that if I ticked you off, I’d pay for another hour so you could hit something else.” He shrugged. “Seemed like a smart idea until I saw what you could do with that bat.”
Ugh. Did he realize how charming his modesty was? And why hadn’t she paid attention to that before? Why had she waited until he announced he was leaving to see Nicolás for who he was?Because I thought he’d always be there.
Lyla silenced the painful truth and asked him again when they were back in the truck. “Whyareyou leaving?”
Nicolás didn’t speak for a few minutes until they were back on the road. “When I joined the Army, it was the first time I’d ever seen my father cry. He was so proud, and I realized that it was as important to him as it was to me, and I threw it all away because I dropped my guard and didn’t consider the risks of my choices.”
Lyla shifted in her seat, his words feeling like a chastisement. From the set of his jaw, she knew they weren’t directed at her, though. “What happened?”
“My last deployment to Afghanistan, my buddy Chad and I were on the same explosives team. Chad is charismatic, adventurous, fun, the life of the party, and like you, never shied away fromrisks. We got called out to a convoy that had gotten ensnared between IEDs. I took the rear one, and Chad took the front one. I knew right away something on the device was different, including a single wire that, if clipped, would set it off. But before I could get the message to Chad—it was too late.”
Emotion balled in Lyla’s chest. Her hand reached for his forearm, her fingers wrapping around the muscles bunching there for several seconds. She wanted to take away the pain she could see him struggling to control, but words weren’t strong enough to convey how much she was hurting for him and with him.
After a few minutes, Nicolás cleared his throat. “Chad came home a double amputee, and I came home riddled with guilt. Chad returned to his wife, Tara, and a life of rehabilitation. I returned to...” He swallowed. “A woman I had hoped to marry.”
An undeniable zing of jealousy wrapped itself around her heart and yanked it to the pit of her stomach. She pulled her hand back, pretending to wipe a nonexistent piece of fuzz off her jeans. It wasn’t that Lyla thought Nicolás hadn’t had girlfriends. He was pretty much the whole package. His quiet thoughtfulness and unexpected acts of kindness often revealed how much he knew about someone and about what they needed. It also didn’t hurt that he was attractive. But it stung to hear that he’d been ready to marry.
