Page 167 of Things We Hide from the Light

“Read my lips, Lucian. I don’t need you anywhere near my life. So you can stop pretending you care. We both know the truth.”

“Damn,” I whispered, helping myself to more of Naomi’s popcorn. “Did his eyes just change color and get more dangerous?”

“Oh, definitely,” Naomi agreed.

“He looks like he wants to take a bite out of her,” I observed. The fact that neither one of them was writhing on the ground electrocuted by the sparks they fired off at each other was a miracle.

“I know, right? I can’t believe they haven’t torn each other’s clothes off and hate banged yet.”

“When they do, I bet it’ll shift the earth’s axis and send us spinning off into space,” I predicted.

Nash stole our attention from the picnic table standoff by clapping his hands in the center of what had been the dance floor. “All right, everybody. It’s still a party. What are y’all doing just standing around?”

He gave the band an impatient signal and they immediately launched into Thomas Rhett’s “Die a Happy Man.”

Knox appeared in front of us. With one tug on Naomi’s hand, he had her falling over his shoulder. “Let’s go, Daisy.” He put a hand on her ass and carried her laughing to the dance floor.

Other couples joined them. I was alone on the picnic table, thinking I could use another drink, when someone snagged my wrist. Nash Morgan looked up at me.

“Get down here,” he ordered. His eye was puffy from Williams’s fist and there was a drop of dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Two of his knuckles were split and bleeding. He looked so damn heroic I would have swooned…if the rest of him wasn’t so annoying.

“I’m fine where I—”

He moved fast for a guy still healing from bullet wounds. Before I could fight it, he lifted me off the table and set me on the ground in front of him.

“I’m not dancing with you,” I said as his hands settled at my waist.

“Least you can do after that trouble,” he said as he gave another pull that had my hips meeting his. Those blue eyes smoldered and I wondered if my underwear was in danger of catching fire.

“You don’t look like you want to dance with me,” I said as my arms found their way around his neck.

“What do I look like?”

“Like you want to throttle me.”

“Oh no, Angel. I was thinking of something much worse.”

For once in my life, I had no intention of poking the bear. I’d seen too much of him, felt too much for him. I was standing on the edge of a precipice that I didn’t want to fall from.

We swayed from side to side to the tick-tock beat of the song, never breaking eye contact. He pulled me closer while I used myelbows to push him away, each of us applying more and more force.

“How’s your face?” I asked as my arms started to shake.

“Hurts.”

“I was handling it, you know. I could have hit him myself,” I said as my elbows lost the battle and he pulled me against his chest. Once again, Nash Morgan had gotten closer than I wanted him.

He traced the tip of his nose around the outer shell of my ear. “I know you could, baby. But I was in a better position to do more damage.”

“Clearly you’ve never been punched by me.”

We were swaying flush against each other. My elbows were on his shoulders, my hands looped behind his neck.

“Williams has a glass jaw. Everyone knows it. All you need is one shot to the right spot and he goes down like a ton of bricks. Hit him there after he assaults an officer when he’s already had two similar charges and the situation cleans itself up real fast.”

I pulled back to look up at his face.

“Okay. Maybe I’m a little impressed.”