Page 72 of My Fault

“Ronnie hasn’t forgotten about the race.” Now I could guess what this was all about. “He wants revenge, and if he sees you, he won’t hesitate to hurt you.”

“Is he the one who beat you up?” I asked, cursing the bastard in my mind.

“Him and his three friends,” he admitted.

“My God, Nick!” I said, feeling a strange pressure in my chest. I brought my hands up to his face, feeling his wounds. “Four against one?”

He stiffened and then relaxed. Skirting over his wounds, my fingers traveled down his cheeks, feeling the raspy touch of his stubble, which made him so frightening and sexy at the same time.

“You worried about me, Freckles?” he asked. He was trying to be funny, but I couldn’t laugh as I felt his bruises and he grimaced. He reached up and pulled my hands away. “I’m fine,” he said.

“You have to go to the police,” I said, walking off toward the fridge. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and returned to him, placing it over his eye.

“With guys like that, you don’t go to the cops, but anyway, we’ve got other problems.” He grabbed the bag and pulled it away from his face so he could look directly at me. “Noah, until things calm down, I don’t want you going anywhere by yourself, hear me?” His voice sounded like that of a big brother. “These people are dangerous, and they’ve got their eyes on you. Me, too, but I don’t care if I have to take a beating. I can defend myself. You, though… If they find you out on your own, they’ll eat you alive.”

“Nicholas, they won’t do anything to me. They don’t want problems just because I wounded some dickhead’s ego,” I said, ignoring the look of warning in his eyes.

“Until this is over, I’m not going to take my eyes off of you. I don’t care how you feel about it.”

Were we never going to get along?

“You’re unbearable, you know it?” I hissed.

“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged.

“Put a warm cloth on your bruises and keep something cold on your eye and lip,” I said, feeling bad for him. “You’ll feel likeshit tomorrow, but if you take an aspirin and stay in bed, you’ll be fine in two or three days.”

His forehead furrowed, but a smile spread across his lips.

“You an expert in helping people recover from beatings?”

I didn’t bother responding.

That night I went straight to bed… and I had nightmares.

The next morning, I got up in a bad mood. I hadn’t slept well, and the one thing I wanted was to stay there lying around my room. Only one thing made me slide out of the bed and walk toward the bathroom. Whether I admitted it or not, I wanted to know how Nick was. I don’t know when or how or why, but I felt suddenly worried about him. Things seemed to be going smoother with us. He hadn’t tried anything with me since he’d touched me in the kitchen that time I had almost cut my finger, and a part of me was bitter over it. The only time my life felt good in LA was when I was in his arms. He made me forget everything else. But I knew it was better for us to get along than to be constantly shifting between making out and hating each other to death, which was the way things had been before.

I took a quick shower and thought about the night before. I’d been angry at Nick for how he talked to Mario at dinner, but my fury had disappeared as soon as I’d seen him looking like hell in the vestibule of our home.

Mario had been a gentleman the night before. He’d invited me out again, and I’d said yes. I wanted to forget my ex and my ridiculous obsession with Nicholas.

I got dressed quickly and walked down to the kitchen barefoot to have breakfast. There wasn’t a trace of Nick, but Will and my mother were sitting at the table talking loudly about something.

“Good morning,” I said, going to the fridge and serving myselfa glass of orange juice. Prett, our cook, was making something that smelled wonderful. I walked over and looked down into the pot, where she was stirring bubbling chocolate.

“That looks delicious! What are you making?” I asked.

Prett smiled.

“Mr. Leister’s birthday cake,” she said cheerfully. I turned to Will.

“Wow, happy birthday, I didn’t realize,” I said, looking sheepish. He laughed.

“It’s not my birthday, it’s Nick’s,” he said, amused. My mother smiled, too.

Wow. Nick’s birthday… I didn’t know why, but it made me mad that I hadn’t known.

“He’s outside. Go congratulate him,” my mother said. “Yesterday he got in a fight with some thug who tried to rob him, so don’t get scared when you see his face.”