Page 48 of Nash
Frankie snorts. "Goodnight, Ruby." She grabs her bag and heads for the back stairwell.
I finish the stations. Lock up. Nash is on the Harley.
"I have to grab something from Frankie's. Left my other sketchpad upstairs last week. Two minutes."
Nash nods. I head around the side of the building to the stairwell entrance. Frankie's loft on the top floor, shop on the main floor, basement below that with its padlock.
I'm on the second step going up when I hear it.
Below me. Through the floor, through the stairwell, through the locked basement door. A scrape. Low, heavy. Furniture being dragged across concrete.
Then silence.
Then breathing.
I back up. One step. Two. My hand grips the stair railing. The breathing continues, steady, rhythmic. I climb to Frankie's loft, grab the sketchpad, and I'm back outside in ninety seconds.
Nash is leaning against the Harley, watching me.
"You're pale," he says.
"I'm always pale. I'm a redhead. We don't tan. We just accumulate freckles and anxiety."
He studies my face for a beat longer than usual. Whatever he sees, he doesn't push. He swings onto the bike. I climb on behind him. My arms go around his waist. My forehead finds its place between his shoulder blades.
His hand reaches back. Taps my knee twice. But this time his fingers linger. His thumb traces the curve of my kneecap once, slowly, before his hand returns to the handlebar.
My whole body goes still.
"Take me home," I say against his back. My voice is barely there.
He starts the engine. The ride to my apartment takes ten minutes in the dark. Neither of us speaks. He parks, walks me up the stairs, waits while I unlock the door, and follows me in.
The apartment settles around us the way it's started to over the past few days. Nash checks the windows, the back door, and the camera feed on his phone. I kick off my shoes, drop my bag, and head for the shower.
When I come out in sleep shorts and a T-shirt, hair damp, he's on the couch. TV on. Volume low. His boots are by the door, lined up with mine. His cut is draped over the kitchen chair.
I pour two glasses of water and bring one to him. He takes it. Our fingers brush. Neither of us pulls away.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
"Today was a good day."
He looks at me. The hardness in his face eases, just barely. The version of him I catch in these quiet moments when it's just us and the TV playing something neither of us is watching peeks through.
"Yeah," he says. "It was."
I take my water to bed. Pull the covers up. Through the wall, the couch creaks as he settles.
I close my eyes.
The compliment. The way he crossed the room without me hearing him.Take it.The knee tap this morning, quick, light. The knee tap tonight, his thumb tracing the curve of my kneecap. His eyes on my hands all afternoon. On mine in the mirror, dark, hungry. My body responded to him watching me with heat between my thighs and want that's been building all day, all week, all month.
Naya crosses my mind. The headband on his wrist. The nights he disappears to the fight circuit and comes back without saying where he's been. But every time I look for evidence, I come up empty. She's protective of him. He's protective of her. That's all the file holds.
The file isn't what's keeping me awake.
