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At the time, I didn’t know Nash and that he wasn’t the bad guy that I thought he was. All I’d known was that I wasn’t going to mess up again—not when Brynn needed me to protect her.
In the end it hadn’t been Nash that I needed to protect her from. Had I still been in Scotland with Leith, Brynn’s stalker—the man who ran her down with a damn taxi in Norway—would have killed her that night. There would have been no one home to beat the son of a bitch half to death with a bat.
So I’d used that as my justification for hurting Leith and tried to close that chapter of my life.
Unfortunately, that chapter now lived across the hall and smelled and looked just as good as he had four years ago, and he had two handsome packmates to boot.
“Hot in the untouchable kind of way,” Brynn finally surrendered once I’d glared enough. “But, I also know for a fact that there is a very handsome new defenseman on the team who is still holding a candle for you.”
She was talking about Wiz, who had in fact made it to the Stallions as a trade after all. I’d only seen him twice and each time he’d shot me that same damn smile that had made my insides flutter in Scotland.
And I’d promptly run in the other direction each time.
I had enough on my plate without adding him into the mix.
“What is this?” I grumbled, looking at each of the women whose faces were filled with expectation. “Air out Ciara’s dirty laundry day? I thought this was supposed to be girl’s night?”
“That’s the exact point of girl’s night, Ceer,” Aurelia said as she took the nail polish from my hands and gestured for me to sit on the couch next to her so she could paint my nails too. “Besides, our lives are boring. We’ve got to live vicariously through you.”
I snorted at that. Their lives were far from boring, but I always loved to humor them anyway.
“Well, far be it for me to not let you watch the life that is very quickly turning into an episode of The Days of Our Lives,” I sniffed, referring to the soap opera that used to be constantly on our TV back in Minnesota.
They all grinned at me like a bunch of maniacal birds.
“Hey, silver lining, at least Richter seems to have finally gotten the hint about you not being interested,” Penelope pointed out. “When I was heading into the office earlier this week the poor thing looked absolutely deflated.”
After graduating law school, Penelope took a job with the Complex’s legal department. She called it the driest of the dry work—but it seemed to pay well and the hours weren’t insane for her like many first-year associates had to deal with.
“I think Nash and Dutch finally talked some sense into him after he showed up outside of her car,” Brynn said as we all shuddered.
That should have been the last time I slept with someone so close to me, though the pretty-eyed defenseman who’d somehow followed me from Scotland showed that my self-control wasn’t as good as I thought it was.
I threw my hands up into the air. “That’s it, I’m putting an embargo on all men. No more for the foreseeable future.”
There was a beat of silence in the living room before they all burst into laughter.
“Hey—” I started, looking from face to face with an open mouth. “I could do it.”
Their laughter just grew louder and I eventually leaned back against the couch and crossed my arms over my chest with a pout.
“I could,” I repeated, though my words sounded false even to me. I always had a knack for getting myself into messes, it seemed, and they knew it.
“Of course you can.” Aurelia wiped away the teary traces of her laughter from her eyes. She was always the one to be in my corner even if I was in the wrong.
I could still remember the teacher she went head to head with when I was only thirteen and she was a scrap of an eighteen year old. I’d sworn up and down I hadn’t passed a very crude drawing of the woman around to the classroom and Aurelia had defended my innocence to the point of becoming red in the face.
Then on the drive home she’d read me the riot act for using my art skills for evil. She could always see right through me—it’s what made her one of my favorite people in the world. One of the only people who could cut right through my bullshit and see me as I was.
Throwing myself across the couch at her, I hugged her tightly. “You’re my favorite, Aurie.”
“Hey!” Brynn protested, but I ignored her.
I could feel Aurelia’s smile against the side of my cheek as she squeezed me back. “Oh, I know I am, now do you want all of your toes purple or should we do different colors?”
The air was crisp the next morning when I stepped out of the lobby of the apartment building, dressed for my morning run.
Stretching my arms high over my head, I began to warm my body up for the run to the sound and back.
