“Nettie, he doesn’t mean?—”
“YES, I DO,” Tate barked, the roar of it rattling her bones. Spittle shone on his lip, his whole body vibrating with barely controlled rage. “You could have fallen out of the window, got hit by another car, died, and I’ve had a crappy day already. Seeing you do this bit of stupidity is not helping?—”
A honk blared behind them. Without looking away from where Nettie sat frozen as he dressed her down verbally, Tate shot up his middle finger to the other vehicle with zero care. Fury was radiating from every line of his body as he glared at her like she’d wronged him personally.
He was immovable.
An angry god scowling them into dust.
“Gina—take her home.”
“I’m gonna tell Mom you got a crotch-rocket…” Gina sing-songed under her breath in a taunt that only a sibling could toss recklessly between them, knowing the effect it would have.
“Ginaaa…” Tate growled hotly – enough to give Nettie goose bumps in warning.
“Byeee!”
The tires squealed as Gina hit the gas, the car fishtailing briefly before shooting forward. Nettie’s stomach stayed behind, her pride shredded and smeared across the asphalt… by Tate.
Beside her, Gina rolled her eyes. “Tate’s so pissy sometimes—I swear.”
But Nettie couldn’t speak.
She couldn’t breathe.
Because Tate Cassidy wasn’t just pissy, he was the one man who could strip her bare with a single word, crush her with a single look. He had shattered her confidence years ago—mocked, ignored, belittled—until her innocent crush had withered into ashes. He’d left her broken, humiliated, invisible.
And now he was here, back in Texas, again. A bottle of dark rage on a black Ducati. A man who could never be hers. The scowling boy she had once loved had turned into the monster of a man she could never trust again.
When had he returned?
Why hadn’t Gina mentioned that?
And if opposites attracted, then they were completely doomed.
They were oil and water – boiling water and the most pathetic, rancid oil. There was nothing but fire and fury between them. Zero attraction. Zero compassion or consideration. Zilch. He hated her with a passion, and she was hesitant to even be within range of his line of fire. And always would be like that between them.
Forever.
CHAPTER 4
TATE
Tate screamedout a single foul word as he pulled into his garage almost at full speed, swinging the bike sideways next to his other cars, and yanking the helmet off his head, flinging it at the wall where it bounced off after leaving a satisfying concave dent before clattering to the floor. He glared at the dent, saw the scuff mark on his new helmet, and turned off his bike as his shoulders sagged.
He was gonna have to get that dent repaired now.
Nothing would fix the emotions within him, seeing the horror and disgust in Nettie’s eyes. Even his sister looked at him from around Nettie, who was hanging out of the passenger side window like the biggest idiot. Didn’t Gina know she could have gotten Nettie killed? Why would Nettie be trying to pick up a stranger like that – and the forward things Nettie had said to him?
Instant – involuntary – unwanted visceral reaction.
His body slammed with need at the unwanted idea of her underneath him – and that was not something that was ever supposed to cross his mind. This was his sister’s dorky friend, the girl he’d seen lance a pimple on her forehead with a straight pin. The same girl used to get M&M’s stuck on the top ofher orthodontic expander in her mouth and freak completely out because she was terrified one would fall at the most inopportune time and block her windpipe. The woman had such an unhealthy, freakish fear of that, and it used to amuse him so much. In fact, he would buy M&M’s and have them at the house waiting every single time he knew Gina was bringing her twerp of a friend over.
He wasn’t interested in Nettie.
And that thought ranked high among other things that seemed almost rancid or foul to his mind. He’d rather have bad breath for a week from a broken nose where the blood had dried in his sinus cavity again than to think of kissing Nettie. A bout of food poisoning from grilled chicken, COVID – where he was down for almost two weeks, heck, anything was better than having illicit thoughts for a woman who was completely off-limits in his mind.
Scratch that – Nettie was not a woman. She was and would always be a sexless person in his mind, heart, and soul - with the same amount of sex appeal as a filthy urinal. And what pissed him off the most was that Gina knew that.
