Page 75 of Damaged Desires

“He should.”

“Mac, really. You’re being ridiculous. It was a spur-of-the-moment stop that none of us expected her to be at. They were all standing guard like we were some British nobility or the president or something.”

“Where is Nash now? Where are you?”

This was the moment I dreaded. Even though he was younger than me, Mac had always done the big-brother-watching-over-his-sister thing, and I knew exactly where his mind would go when I told him the truth.

“I’m with Nash at his home in Georgia.”

Silence.

“Nash has a home in Georgia?”

I couldn’t help a sputtered laugh. “Right? Get this. It’s his childhood home. And it’s a frickin’ huge estate. An antique, Georgian mansion with hundreds of acres of fields and a manufacturing plant that makes essential oils and that sort of thing.”

“Nash? Nash Wellsley?”

I laughed again, and it helped to lighten the tightness that had begun to gather again in my chest. “He said I shouldn’t have expected him to spawn from the devil, but that’s almost what I thought, because who can possibly imagine him as a child?”

Mac chuckled a little. Then, silence settled down again.

“So, you’re not alone?” he asked.

“Back off, little brother. But yes, there are other people here—an uncle and a woman who Grandma would seriously invite to tea at the clubhouse.”

He breathed out a long sigh into the phone. “It’s just… There’s been this weird vibe between the two of you lately, and I don’t want to see you hurt. Not again. Not after…”

His voice trailed away. Not after Russell. I had been more hurt by Russell than I’d expected. The casual dalliance we’d had, which had progressed to the point of my keeping a couple of sets of clothes at his apartment, had been more serious than I’d intended. The fact that he’d met his ex-girlfriend instead of me on the night Fenway assaulted me had cut a little hole into my heart, which I’d never thought I’d given to him. No one had seen the holes except Mac and Georgie.

“Nash isn’t going to hurt me like that, Mac,” I told him, but what I didn’t say was that I wasn’t going to let him. Sure, our bodies were attracted to each other. The sex had been off the charts. The kisses had been the same way, but both our hearts were caged with barbed wire and iron. There was no way either of us was getting through. At least, that was what I told myself.

Nash

DEMONS

“Don't get too close,

It's dark inside.

It's where my demons hide.”

Performed by Imagine Dragons

Written by Mosser / Grant / McKee / Reynold / Sermon

I retreated from Dani to theroomthat had always been mine. A room I’d grown up in but had not maintained a single aspect of my childhood. Instead, it had been redone in deep blues, burgundies, and whites that Maribelle had insisted wasn’t because I’d joined the Navy, and yet still bled America like a theme song.

It was masculine and sturdy, and in many ways, it reflected my personality, but it still wasn’t a room I’d call home. It took me all of a minute to unpack my bag. I was reluctant to throw my dirty clothes in the hamper because then Maribelle would have whoever was helping her in the house these days wash them. I was uncomfortable with strangers handling my clothes after doing them on my own for so long.

I pulled aside the heavy curtains and looked out, trying to see the estate from Dani’s eyes. My view was almost the same as hers from three doors down. I was farther away from the conservatory, but the room still looked out at the pool and the myrtle trees whose scent was in full bloom in the early fall air.

I was hiding. It was ludicrous.

I wasn’t afraid of Carson. I’d never been afraid of him. For most of my life, he’d been the largest person in my entire world. I’d strived for his respect and his approval more than either of my parents. I’d adored him. Until that adoration had slowly been rotted away by disillusionment and hurt to reveal him as the uncompromising and cold man he truly was.

The man who’d failed in the moonlight even more than I had.

These days, I avoided him and this place simply because I didn’t want to deal with the expectations he wouldn’t set aside. I refused to have another argument about responsibility and privilege when we clearly saw those concepts through different lenses. Plus, I wasn’t ready for him to see the world I’d built beginning to crumble at the edges. Not while I was desperately trying to keep it from cracking apart completely.