Page 34 of Nailed

“Oh my god.”

“Yeah, my god too.” I squeezed the pressure point between my brows, right where a wicked headache was starting to throb. “Look, we're not best friends or anything. I just know the basics and if you want anything more than that, you're gonna have to ask him yourself.”

She nodded eagerly.

“He ran around with the wrong people. He had no family to fall back on, back rent out the ass and more than a few bad breaks. His crowd eventually decided a smash-and-grab at some cell store was the answer to their problems and it went wrong.” I shrugged a shoulder. “Rafe was just the lookout but his buddies bailed and left him with an aggregated burglary charge. He was nineteen. Spent two years in Stateville and has been doing odd jobs in construction ever since.”

I waited for Lauren's response, expecting shock, disbelief, maybe a little bit of disgust.

“Wow. That poor kid,” she said.

I made a sound that crossed a scoff and a laugh. “What kid, the thirty-year old man breaking through walls for a check?”

“No, the teenager who was desperate enough to do something illegal and had no one to help him,” she said, wrapping her arms around herself against the growing cold. “Desperate people do desperate things, he was probably just trying to take care of himself.”

“And the guy whose store he planned to rob, that guy wasn't also just trying to take care of himself and his family?” I pushed back.

“It's more complicated than that, Brock,” she said. “Did he hurt someone?”

“That makes it better?” I had no idea why I was fighting so hard against her empathy for Merrick. What the hell was I getting out of that? But I just couldn't help myself.

The tequila, I insisted.

“Would you have defended him if he was anyone else? If it was me or Cal or some random asshole down the street, would you say the same thing?” I said. Then I scoffed. “Or is that your type of guy? If so, you have strange taste in men, Lauren.”

My throat was burning. I didn't know why—the drink wasn't that strong. Lauren observed me for a moment, her gaze piercing me right down to the bone. I felt exposed. Maybe I'd let myself unwind just a bit too much.

But then she slowly walked over to me and I swallowed hard at the movement of her hips. Slow and calculated. Malicious, actually.

She straddled me, holding onto my shoulders.

“I'm a woman of many tastes,” she said in a low voice, almost a purr at my ear.

Shit.

She leaned in, so slowly as if to give me time to back away and I should've. But she smelled like clean musk and vanilla, some fragrance that faded and mixed with her natural body scent. Oh god.

Her lips were so close all it would take was an extra inch of movement on my part to close the gap. She was right there. Blood rushed from my head to less logical places and I immediately pushed her off my lap as gently as I could.

“I'm sorry, Miss Wolfhaardt,” I said gruffly. “This was a big mistake.”

Then I practically stumbled away from her and rushed downstairs, collected my bag and toolkit and left without looking back once.

13

Rafe

I dropped the barbell onto the matted weight area, exhaling hard as I counted out my last rep for my final set of deadlifts.

My muscles were already screaming at me but that's what I'd needed, especially after meeting up with Thorne.

As always, there was good and bad news. On the positive side, I was getting a gold star for effort on my parole. On the not-so positive side, Nick and his guys had actually managed to track me down. Which meant that they were definitely going to reintroduce themselves.

I grabbed the water bottle waiting for me near the rack and gulped down as much as I could drink.

The only thing stopping me from cranking out another set was the fact I had work tomorrow and injured Raisers don't get paid. But I was desperate for something, for some kind of distraction from the fact that my life was kind of exploding all over again.

It wasn't enough that they'd let me take the fall the first time around. Knowing Nick, that wouldn't matter. If anything, it would put an even bigger target on my back. I wasn't that same kid they could fool anymore, but I also had more to lose now than I did then. Things were finally starting to feel like they were getting better and now…