Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 232(@300wpm)
I sighed and leaned back into the seat, very conscious that the leather was allowing the water dripping off of me to pool in my seat.
“Then I’m sorry,” I said, trying to talk more quietly.
It obviously didn’t work because Nash flashed me a grin and said, “You are still talking loud as fuck.” He paused. “But that is pretty normal for you. Just not this loud.”
Now this was NN—Normal Nash.
“How did your doctor’s visit go?” I asked, trying to keep the easy conversation going.
“Not that great,” he admitted.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked, hating that his doctor visit didn’t go great. I hated that anything wouldn’t go great for him. Especially when I bet on him and his races and he didn’t win, making me lose money.
“No,” he said. “Definitely not.”
His ‘not with you’ was left unsaid, but I heard it anyway.
“Gotcha.” I nodded. “We’re not that kind of friends anyway.”
“We’re friends?” he chuckled.
“We’re great friends,” I countered.
My ears popped again, and my hearing changed yet again, this time for the better.
His muffled replies didn’t sound so muffled anymore.
“Well, just sayin’, but you’ve gone out of your way to make me feel about as welcome as a piece of shit on the bottom of your shoe,” he stated. “The last time we were in a room together, you glared so hard at me that we made the front-page news.”
“That wasn’t my fault,” I returned. “You said you were leaving without getting your head checked. How exactly do you want me to act when I hear stupidity like that?”
Even I knew you couldn’t just leave the damn hospital without getting that checked.
“Well, if it makes you feel better, the follow-up exam that I had with NASCAR, it all came back clear.” He leveled me a look between traffic breaks. “All is good with my head.”
“Meaning, something else happened today that didn’t involve your head or the wreck you were in last week?” I asked.
I’d watched that wreck on the TV after it’d happened.
Nash had been testing out a car when the right front tire literally came off the damn vehicle. One second, he was going a hundred miles an hour through lane two, and the next he was hitting the wall so hard that I feared for the man’s life.
He’d come out of it okay, no broken bones or anything. But despite all the new safety features of the helmets and concussion prevention equipment, he’d still managed to hit his head hard enough to require a hospital visit.
“Meaning it’s none of your damn business,” he answered shortly.
I clamped my mouth shut.
Okay, so that was a touchy subject.
Noted.
What I also noted was the way he kept fisting his hand and unfisting it, like he was imagining my neck was under his fingers.
“Okay, okay.” I held up my hands. “I’ll just sit here quietly and pretend like I’m a quiet person.”
He grumbled something under his breath, but he took up my request to remain quiet and didn’t engage me in conversation again.
I also noted that he never stopped fisting that hand.
When we arrived back at the apartment, he flashed his fancy key card, that apparently he could keep up with when I couldn’t, and pulled into the garage. He expertly backed into his usual spot and shut the engine off.
It was so damn quiet in there that I could do nothing less than bail out of the truck because I didn’t do awkward silences. Especially with someone that I was fairly sure couldn’t stand me.
I rounded the truck and could hear the squish-squish of my feet in my boots.
“I’ll be right back with a towel,” I said as I darted for the door.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “Get a shower and get warm. I’ll get the towel out of the back and…”
I changed directions, going to the back of the truck to try to peer over the side.
He came up beside me and easily pulled his gym bag out of the back.
“That’s soaked,” I pointed out.
“It’s waterproof,” he corrected me. “And still has a dry towel in it.”
He pulled out said towel, and I snatched it from his hands.
I then nearly groaned because the towel smelled like him.
All yummy and not mine.
“I can…”
I tossed him a glare over my shoulder which had him sighing.
He waited until I’d cleaned it to the best of my ability before taking it and saying, “It’ll still smell musty in here. But it’ll work.”
I mentally went through a list of people I knew who might know a car detailer and thought to ask Crimson to ask Winston.
“Thanks for the ride, Nash,” I said as I walked away. “I wish I could say that it was great, but I’ve had better rides before.”
The door to the stairwell slammed behind me, but I chanced a look over my shoulder through that little piece of security glass and saw him shaking his head at me, a smirk sitting on those perfect lips.