AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Someone who looks good. He works out. Has a decent, safe, corporate job. And he watches her—fuck, but he watches her the way I do.
“What’s the story with that chick, anyway?” Unsnapping his seatbelt and opening his door before hefting a half-dozen steaming pizzas into his arms, Ruiz drops to his boots and turns back to slam the door shut again. “Why’s she so mad at you?”
“None of your business.” I fist my keys and shut my door, too. Then, dropping both hands in my pockets, I start toward the sidewalk. “I don’t wanna talk about her.”
“Why’d you call her a whore?” He falls into step beside me, though with a curious side-eye and a smirk. “Not a very nice thing to call someone you have feelings for.”
“I don’t have feelings for her,” I argue.
But he knows I’m lying, and laughs to prove it.
“It’s for the best,” I growl. “Mind your business.”
“How is calling a sweet girl such a nasty name for the best?” His smirk curves down into a genuine, perplexed frown. “How could that possibly help anyone?”
“Because she needed to love someone else.”Shut up. Shut up. Shut the fuck up, Axel Feeney!“And I asked you to mind your own business.”
“Needed to love someone else…?” He puzzles out my words as we start up the porch steps, while a car ambles along the road behind us, and the porch light illuminates Nicole’s yard, tempting bugs closer to the fixture to die in the half-full bowl of insect carcasses. “I don’t get it.”
“There’s nothing for you to get. I told you to mind your fucking business.”
“And I figured you knew me well enough by now to know I have zero respect for you, your wants, and especially your privacy. So why would you, a young, fit, reasonably funny guy—according to the rest of the crew, though not witnessed by me—ask a beautiful, seemingly keen woman to stop loving you?And,” he pushes on when I open my mouth to speak, “to achieve your goal, call her a nasty name that would for sure hurt her feelings?”
“Dunno.” I reach up and ring the doorbell, though this might be the first time in my life I’m not simply letting myself inside Nicole’s home. “Stop wondering about my shit. This doorbell is new, too.”
“Looks like one of those fancy camera kinds.” Then he looks my way and grins. “You wanted her to be angry with you. You said offensive shit and told her to go away. Then you escaped to my squad for half a damn year.”
“Zip it.”
“You were running away,” he accuses. “From her. Why?”
“Dude!” I swing to face him, and ignore the front door opening to reveal Preston Danes’ stupid fucking smile. “I said to shut the fuck up. I wanted her to leave me alone. I wanted her to live a happy life. And I especially wanted her to never look the wayyoulooked the day you buried Ainsley Cootes.”
And just like I predicted, his eyes brew with a storm bound to end with his fist landing on my jaw.
“I didn’t want that life for her. And chances were, hanging around with me for too long, she’d be just as fucked up as you are now.”
“You didn’t want—”
“Fucking drop it.” With venom in my veins, I turn to my future brother-in-law and ignore the single raised brow sitting above blue eyes.
He watches us, a beer in one hand and his lips pursed.
“Pres.” My arms are free, since Ruiz still carries all the pizza, so I step in before the emotion in my eyes makes me look stupid, and pull him in for a quick hug. “It’s good to see you.”
He claps my back and slams a noisy kiss to my cheek before I can pull away. “You’re in one piece.” He leans backwards and looks me up and down. “Healed leg. No crutches.” But then he narrows his eyes. “A couple of goose eggs, though.” He brings the lip of his bottle up to point at his eyes. “Who hit you?”
I jerk a thumb in Ruiz’s direction and start through the door. “Where are my girls?”
“Mygirls,” he grumbles.
But I’m already moving. Already inside the home that makes my heart swell and my stomach flip.
“Nicole?” I shout up the stairs I spied last night while video-calling my niece. “Juniper?”
“Uncle Axel!” Tiny feet thunder against hardwood flooring, then my beautiful June skids into the hall, and lights up like a fourth of July firework.
Tears burst from her eyes, but she scrunches them closed and runs at my legs, blind, but confident I’ll catch her.
