How strange to find it in someone I’ve only just met.
“So,” Stella says eventually, nudging my arm with hers, “you want to sit here all night feeling like roadkill, or do you want to pretend we’re twenty-one again and everything’s still possible?”
I eye her warily. “That sounds dangerous.”
“Hear me out,” she says with a grin that just keeps growing. “You, me, and Gabby. One night out. We won’t go crazy, just one drink, maybe more for the two-leggedand non-concussed, some music, some harmless flirting with cute guys we have no intention of seeing again. A little controlled chaos.”
I hesitate. My body aches, my ankle throbs, and I still feel like my insides have been scooped out with a dull spoon. But the idea of sitting here, wallowing in my failure, feels worse.
I exhale. “Iamon crutches.”
“Which just means we’ll get extra attention,” she says brightly. “Peoplelovea damsel in distress.”
I roll my eyes, but my lips twitch. “You’re ridiculous.”
“And you love me for it.”
I huff, shaking my head. “I wouldn’t mind feeling like a normal person for a minute.”
She gasps dramatically. “Oh, yay! We’ll swaddle you in bubble wrap if we need to.”
“That doesn’t sound normal at all!” I laugh despite myself, and Stella grins like she’s just won an award.
The bar is packed, thick with heat and bodies and the steady thump of bass vibrating through the floor. The air is a cocktail of perfume and liquor, with a dash of cheap cologne courtesy of the guy who just shoulder-checked me on his way to the bar. I wobble but catch myself, crutches planted like I’m digging in for battle. Stella watches from a high-top near the wall, halfway to standing to come to my rescue on my way back from the bathroom, but I wave heroff.
Controlled chaos, she said.
Understatement of the year.
I make my way to our table, and a waitress does a doubletake when she sees me hobble up. “Out on the town, huh? Brave.”
“Desperate,” I say with a tired smile. She laughs and takes our order—Long Islands for the girls, an amaretto on ice for me. I’ll sip. Slowly. Just enough to feel like a person again.
I exhale as I settle onto the stool Gabby dragged out for me, my ankle screaming in quiet protest. The bass thumps beneath us. Voices rise. Laughter echoes. It’s the kind of noise that makes me forget, if only for a second, that my life’s on pause.
A guy in a leather jacket wanders over, his grin lazy and a little too slick. “You break the floor, or did it break you?” he asks, nodding at my crutches.
I raise my brows. “Let’s just say gravity’s undefeated.”
He laughs and leans in, eyes dropping to my legs in a way that makes me suddenly wish I’d worn jeans instead of shorts. “What I’m hearing is, you’re a fighter. I like that. Can I buy you your next drink?”
I open my mouth—somewhere between amused and annoyed—when someone cuts in.
“She’s covered.”
That voice.
Masculine. Confident. A perpetual air of annoyance.
I twist toward it, pulse skipping, and there he is—Nash. Black tee. Jeans. Tousled hair. Intense eyes. Thatimpossible mix of tension and ease, like he belongs anywhere and nowhere at once.
His eyes flick to the guy, who shrugs and walks away without a fight.
“Tell me that’s soda,” Nash says, storm-gray eyes holding mine hostage.
Ahh… there’s the judgment I expected this afternoon.
Annoyed, I lift my glass with a lazy smile. “But we’ve been through too much to lie to your face.”
