Page 31 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)

LINCOLN

The lack of hearing from Nash had gotten under my skin, not that he had a good way to get in touch with me. He didn’t have a phone or email or anything else. No, we just had a simple agreement that he’d think about and get in touch with me if he decided to take me up on the offer.

But before that, I was somehow roped into agreeing that I’d stop stalking him. He didn’t call it that, but we both knew that my chasing him around town when he kept disappearing was exactly that.

My gut told me he was long gone, but I didn’t want to trust my gut. It had betrayed me a few too many times. I learned over the years that the facts didn’t always match the uncomfortable, anxious feeling in my gut.

And the fact was: I had no idea if I’d ever see Nash again. It wasn’t a no, but it certainly wasn’t a yes either.

My personal phone vibrated loudly on the counter, and I grabbed it, recognizing the front desk number.

“Mr. Cassidy, there’s a man standing here,” the desk guard said. His voice dropped as he added in a hushed whisper, “He’s… I think he’s homeless. He might be dangerous—”

“He’s not dangerous,” I interrupted with a sigh. The preconceived notions of the people in this area drove me fucking crazy. Technically, yes, Nash was dangerous, but not in the way they were acting like he was. “He’s a friend. Send him up.”

I hung up before he could argue with me because he would. Instead, I opened the door of my condo and waited for Nash to come up the elevator. The fact that he was here had to be a good sign.

At least, I hoped it was.

I knew how crazy I sounded. It was a ridiculous and risky proposal, one that would put us both constantly in one another’s orbits. It came with a slew of potential problems, but I had a foolproof plan for those.

“It’s a yes on paper only,” Nash announced the second he was out of the elevator.

“Felonies, not relationships,” I assured him with a small chuckle. I stepped aside to let him in. “But we do need to talk.”

“I figured.”

“Set some ground rules.”

“Yeah, we need those.”

“And get to know each other,” I continued. I gestured across the condo to the spare bedroom—to his bedroom. As he wandered in to put his bags down, I followed.

“I don’t think we need to go that far,” he retorted. I held my tongue to not scare him off because that was a necessary part of my plan. Baby steps for now. I’d gotten him to say yes, and that was a good start.

“I’m going to order lunch,” I said instead. “What do you want? We can sit down and start going over everything.”

“Can I… take a shower first?” Nash asked, and I tried not to smile at the simple request. I wasn’t oblivious to how much time he’d spent in the shower the first time he was here. I couldn’t imagine that he had access to running water all that often.

“Yeah, take your time,” I told him. The rest could wait for him to be ready.

“We have to come up with a plan of attack,” I said more than an hour later.

The two of us sat at my kitchen table with an assortment of food between us.

While I tried to get as many options as possible, it wasn’t lost on me how he picked at a roll and nothing else.

Between the quarter of a bowl of soup at the restaurant and now the roll, I wasn’t sure if he didn’t eat all that much or if he couldn’t.

I was slowly beginning to think it was the latter.

“We have a plan of attack,” Nash retorted. “Lie, get fake married, lie some more, steal money from your insurance company. That’s a pretty solid fucking plan.”

“Get real married,” I corrected.

“But it’s really just a fake marriage.”

“But on paper it’s real.”

“Papers don’t mean shit,” he replied with a shrug. I opened my mouth to say something but promptly shut it. Papers were everything, especially legally.

“We’ll come back around to just how wrong all of that is,” I informed him, but he just made a sound that told me we’d never be having that conversation. “We need to go over ground rules for this thing, and we need to spend time getting to know each other. I have a list of questions.”

“Why?” Nash demanded. “Does the insurance company need to know that we know things about each other?”

Fuck. There was a good chance this was where I was going to lose him.

“This can’t just be on paper for the insurance company,” I said carefully. “While yes, it’s a fake marriage, you do realize that I have a social life.”

“I don’t give a fuck who you date.”

“It’ll start to look real fucking weird if I’m married on paper at my company, but not married in life outside that door.” I gestured to my front door. “It’ll be fake, but out there, you’d have to be my husband. Where the world is concerned, we’d be married.”

“Right,” he drawled, nodding slowly. I could see the wheels turning in his head as he thought it through. Yeah, he hadn’t realized that part either. “I’m not your fucking toy, Linc.”

“ I know.”

“You said you’d help me.”

“I know.”

“This was supposed to be about the insurance,” Nash continued. “I’m not about to be paraded around like some stupid kind of arm candy.”

“Well, you are adorable enough to be just that,” I quipped before I thought better of it. Thankfully, a ghost of a smile turned the corner of his mouth. Point for me. “Look, I get it. It’s the crappiest part of the agreement, but my life is full of attachments and expectations.”

“Sounds miserable,” he muttered under his breath. Compared to his no-walls, wandering lifestyle, I had to imagine it didn’t make sense.

“Yeah, well,” I shrugged slightly, “it’s my life.”

I watched in silence as he tore off a tiny piece of bread and chewed on it. He swiveled in his chair to stare out the long windows in my living room, the expression on his face unreadable, something severe and intense. Those green eyes were a million miles away as he thought it through.

I gave him the time he needed and focused on eating my fries. He’d get there when he was ready. I knew it was one thing to offer medical help, but it was another to completely uproot his lifestyle.

“I won’t let you change me,” Nash said finally, his voice quiet. “I don’t want to be one of them.”

That single word dripped with disdain, the kind that came with years of thought and built-up emotion. I wasn’t sure who he meant, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask either.

“Okay.”

“I am who I am,” he continued as he tore off another piece of bread. He rolled the dough between his fingers, staring hard at it. “I’d rather be dead than cave to the pressures of a system built on the pain and extortion of those they deem beneath them.”

There was something in his voice—something I couldn’t quite place—that ebbed its way into the back of my mind. Some kind of haunted experience laced his words, building a world I had no understanding of and one he knew all too well.

A world where he and I were brutally divided by the socio-economic line designed to bury people.

“Okay, “ I repeated softly. “Ground rule number one… I won’t let this arrangement change you.”