CHAPTER NINE
NASH

Ainsley’s been distant since I picked her up at the gate. She hasn’t said a word since we left, but her bright yellow fingernails have been tapping out a steady rhythm on the armrest. Whatever happened in there must have been heavy. “Are you okay?” I ask her again, trying to break the ice.

“Uh-huh.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm, what?” she asks, turning to look at me. Her eyes are bloodshot and glistening from tears she must’ve been fighting back the whole way here. I had planned on giving her shit, but seeing her hurting like this… I can’t. I want to take it away from her. “Is there anything I can do?”

Her nose wrinkles as she tries to process what I mean. “Do?”

“It looks like you might have something pretty intense that you’re dealing with. If I can help, all you have to do is say the word.”

She nods and looks back out the window and resumes the fingernail assault on my passenger side door.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

Okay. “I get it.” There’s a definite pattern to her finger taps against the black leather; so, I let myself focus on the sound, trying to find something I can run with. Finally, I hear it and let my thumbs tap out a complimentary beat on the steering wheel.

“Sometimes when I get overwhelmed, I need to be alone with my thoughts too.”

“Like when you bolted off the roof yesterday?” she says through a faint chuckle. It’s the first time she’s spoken a complete sentence to me since we left. It lights me up on the inside. The fact there was a chuckle attached is the icing on the cake. She may not be happy right now, but we’re closer than we were two minutes ago.

“Yes.” I grit my teeth, tucking my chin to my chest in feigned shame. “Like when I bolted yesterday.”

She purses her lips together and tilts her head just slightly. “What do you do the other times?”

I was so lost in the beat we created that I missed it when she quit tapping along. “Which other times?”

Her lips transform into a straight line as she narrows her eyes at me.

“Oh, right. The times when I don’t bolt and retreat into myself after getting overwhelmed?”

“Uh-huh,” she says with a nod.

“I assault my car with various random melodies and beats…” my words trail off as I play along with the radio.

Her laugh is music to my ears. In this moment, I can’t think of a single thing I wouldn’t do to make sure that smile stays on her face. Not because it makes more her more beautiful; it doesn’t. She’s breathtaking in every single form, every mood, every moment, but that smile means she’s happy and I’m realizing I want nothing more in life than to make Ainsley Meyer happy. It’s a lot to process, especially after spending most my life putting my brothers’ needs and interests first. I think I had almost forgotten I have needs of my own. It’s almost like I’ve been going through this life half-asleep. Part of me present and here to be the person they needed me to be, but the part that takes care of me? That piece of me has been hitting the snooze button for over fifteen years.

Lately, it’s been increasingly difficult to keep hitting that snooze. I can only think of one reason why.

Her.

She’s waking me up and bringing every single one of those needs to life.

“You could take me to get food,” she says out of nowhere, snapping back into the moment.

“Huh?”

“Food.” She taps one of her nails against the window, drawing my attention to a restaurant just off the highway. “You asked if there was anything you could do. I need food.”

I let out a chuckle and change lanes to work our way over to the exit ramp. “Then food it is.” It’s a little dive of a restaurant, but the parking lot is row-to-row cars. “It must be good.”

“I used to stop here all the time with my family when we’d take vacations in Texas. We’d always stop here on the way back. It was the only place along the way that wasn’t a drive-through or greasy spoon. They have the absolute best queso in the state.”

“Is that a fact?”

She nods once. “Facts.”

I throw the truck into park and hop out so I can grab her door, but she opens it and is already halfway out of her seat by the time I make it to her side of the vehicle, so I stuff my hands in my pockets to hide the fact I was just cut-off mid-reach for the door handle.

Nope.

Not awkward at all.

“Did your stomach just growl?” she asks, squinting her eyes at me.

It did. It was loud enough, I’m pretty sure they heard it inside. “Food was an excellent idea.”

The inside of the restaurant is decorated with bright colors and smells amazing. My stomach growls again in response.

“That thing is fear-inspiring,” she teases.

“Not my fault. You said queso.”

She laughs again. “A table for two, please,” she tells the host as he grabs the menus from a stand behind him. He leads us to a small booth in the back corner of the restaurant. I take the seat on the outside, placing my back towards the rest of the dining area. Her eyes scan the room behind me as she takes the open seat across the table from me. “It’s funny…”

“What is?” I ask, grabbing the menu and zero in on The Grande Platter. Well, I know what I’m ordering. That sounds like it might do the trick.

“Your career dictates more of your life than I realized.”

At first, I’m confused, then I watch as her gaze shifts scanning the room full of people behind me. “Don’t get me wrong, I love the job. We get to create music every day of our life because the fans let us do that for a living.”

“But?”

“But… we have to create music and perform every day of our life because the fans expect it.”

She nods. “I’m guessing you chose that seat intentionally, and it wasn’t just a random thing, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Doesn’t that get exhausting?”

One-thousand-times over, yes. “It can.”

“How do you deal with it?” she asks, leaning forward so I can hear her over the busy sounds of the restaurant. Everything seems to echo in here because of the extra space between tables and the ceramic tile floors, which were made to look like old stone pathways.

“Most of the time, it’s not an issue, but…”

She leans in closer to hear me better as my words trail off. “But?”

I shrug and start to answer as the server comes by with two waters, placing them in front of us. “What else can I get you to drink?” he asks, looking at me first.

I nod to Ainsley snatches the drink menu out of its place behind a jalapeno bobblehead wearing a mustache and a sombrero. “Margarita, please.”

“I’ll just stick with the water and lemon. Thank you.”

“You’ve got it. I’ll be back to take the rest of your order in just a few minutes,” he says, hurrying back behind the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“It’s only become an issue for me over the last few months,” I admit. Am I giving too much away? I don’t want to scare her away.

“Which part of it do you think is the issue?” she asks.

How do I answer that without showing my hand? “I’ve been trying to figure that out, and I think it’s because I want a relatively normal life, while still being able to do what we love for a living.”

The concern in her eyes shifts to a quiet understanding. “There has to be a way to find that balance, right?”

I nod as the server returns with our drinks. After we order and he’s disappeared once again, she leans back in her seat and swirls her straw in the frozen drink. “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered this.”

“No, of course not.”

“I just needed some help with my nerves, I guess.”

“You don’t have to explain. It’s not an issue for me.” Her expression changes at least half-a-dozen times. “A lot of people know about our code, but they don’t know why it exists.”

Would she run if she knew?

She’s watching me. Waiting. Her eyes flash with anticipation and a hint of concern. I don’t want her to have questions about me—or my life.

“You know the story, right?”

She nods. “I know you lost your parents in an accident on Adair’s birthday and he blamed himself, since they were going back to the store to get the cake for his party.”

“All of that is true, but it’s not the whole story.” I settle into the booth, focusing on the feeling of the cracked worn leather against my hands to make sure I stay anchored in the moment. “I was the high school cliché.”

“Star of the football team?”

“Something like that. Swim and basketball. I stayed busy, and then…” I inhale a deep breath and hold it in, trying to find the nerve to tell her the rest of my story. Sigh. “I thought I was invincible. I was so far ahead of the other guys on the team, I thought I could stop trying and still stay at the top of my game.”

The straw of her drink rolls between her index finger and thumb as she fidgets with it. “What happened?”

“I gave up.”

Her hand stretches across the table, resting on top of mine.

“I started partying, going from one high school cliché to another.” The memories assault me, as I blink away the burning feeling in the corners of my eyes. “I let everyone I cared about down because I got caught up in the shit that doesn’t matter.”

“Everyone has regrets from their teenage years.”

Maybe she’s right, but mine cut like a razor. “I got caught. Shocker. The coach told me I had to get clean, or I was off the teams. I walked.”

The crease between her eyebrows deepens as her eyes search mine.

“My parents told me to sober up or get out. Mostly, because I was a terrible influence on my brothers. They were right, but I wasn’t ready.”

“What’d you do?”

The worst mistake I ever made. “I packed my bag and walked out. Two weeks later, I was back home just long enough for Adair’s birthday party when we got the call.”

Her eyes are glistening as she listens to the ballad of Nash Miller. It was a pathetic song until… “That was when everything changed for me. A drunk driver took my parents, and that same drunk driver gave me back my life by forcing me to wake up. I just wish I had listened to everyone who tried to help me before we lost my parents. The last memory I gave them was being their addict son who strolled in a half-hour late, full of piss-and-vinegar for my brother’s birthday. I’m ashamed of that and I’d do anything to change it.”

“I’m so sorry,” she says, shoving the drink to the edge of the table. “I’ll ask him to take it when he comes back, I didn’t mean to hit a trigger or anything.”

I shake my head and reach out with one hand sliding the drink back to her. “It doesn’t bother me at all. I’m a long time into my recovery and I know what I never want my life to be like again. Being around alcohol isn’t a problem for me, or a threat to my sobriety.”

She’s nervous. Her leg is bouncing under the table like a jack rabbit, occasionally hitting the table and making the silverware rattle and clunk against the heavy wooden tabletop.

“It wasn’t just seeing where that life could take me. It was knowing my family needed me. That was what woke me up. I’m not sure I cared enough about myself back then to do it for me, but I loved my brothers.”

“But you didn’t stop when your parents told you that your brothers could end up following that same path?”

I shake my head. “No, because I knew they still had my parents. I took that security for granted. Once they were taken from them, from me, from us, it changed how I saw things. I knew I was the one who had to be that security for them, and I couldn’t do that with the life I was living.”

“How long did it take you to get to that point?”

“I think it was instant. I decided it as soon as we got the news. It wasn’t a decision; it was just a moment. I knew it, like ‘Okay, this is what we’re going to do now.’ No questions.” I grab my glass of water and take a big gulp to push down the nerves rolling inside my stomach. “The last thing I wanted for my brothers was for them to become wards of the state after the accident, so I went to the doctor, and he oversaw everything to make sure it was a safe process. It wasn’t a question for me. Ever.”

Our server is standing beside our table. I’m not sure how long he’s been there, but he looks annoyed, so my guess is that it’s been a while. “Your food,” he says, sitting our plates down in front of us. Loudly. Carly grabs the drink and hands it to him.

“Would you mind taking this for me?” she asks.

“Of course, ma’am.” He studies the still full glass for a second, which makes his eyebrows pinch together. “Was there something wrong with it?”

She shakes her head as she stabs the first bite of her food with her fork. “I just changed my mind.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes before making his way to the next table. My fist balls up at my side as a reflex to seeing him react that way to her. I let out a long exhale to calm myself down before I get up and make a fool of myself. I refocus my attention on the woman sitting across from me. Her eyes make all the anger fade away. “You know, I’m well past that stage in my life. You don’t have to walk on eggshells around me.”

“Maybe talking with you calmed my nerves, so I didn’t need it anymore.” She gives me a coy smile as she glances away. I catch a hint of a blush creeping across her face just as she goes back to focusing on the plate of food in front of her. I can’t help but notice how for the first time in—I can’t even remember how long—I feel a weight lifted off my back. Telling her my history, being vulnerable with her, it’s something I’ve never experienced before and I’m not sure I could have done it with anyone else.

It’s terrifying. Gut wrenching. Exhilarating.