Page 45 of Hold Me Today

Seconds tick by as she watches me and I study her. We say nothing, allowing tonight’s insanity to sweep away with the chilly night wind. Then, just when I expect her to bypass me, she steps in close. Her hand goes over my heart, her body angled parallel to mine, as though she’s already prepared to run.

“To the surprise of no one,” she says, humor lacing her tone, “it’s not the ink on my butt that takes the number one spot.”

I wait her out, not willing to say anything that might lead to a subject change. The need to know this piece of her is overwhelming, for a reason I refuse to look at too closely.

She huffs out a laugh under her breath. “You push a hard bargain, Stamos.”

Mina doesn’t even know the half of it. I haven’t gotten to where I am today by sitting on my ass and letting the world run me over. If that was the case, then Stamos Restoration and Co. never would have gotten off the ground. My parents would still be living in that ancient, cramped apartment that I grew up in. Effie wouldn’t have had the money to finish off her last year of college when I came damn near close to emptying my bank account to help my little sister walk across that graduation-day stage, diploma in hand.

Most days, I’m not pushing a hard bargain, I’m the one fucking dealing it.

Finally, Mina speaks—though it’s not at all what I expected. “Patience,” she murmurs, “written in script along the sole of my left foot.”

If anyone else gave me that answer, I wouldn’t think twice about it. But this isMina, the woman who only just told me that tattoos are a camera reel of one’s life, which means that inking a word likepatienceon her body carries significant weight. Particularly when Mina’s the very opposite of patient. Impulsive. Reckless. Take-life-by-the-balls-and-go-for-it. That’s her M.O.—always has been. And, like the opening of Pandora’s Box, I’m desperate to discover more.

She slips around me.

I spin on my heel, gently clasping my hands on her arms, and stop her in her tracks. With her back to me and her wrists cuffed by my hands, she glances over her shoulder and quirks a brow.

“Why patience?” I ask.

That brow lifts higher, taunting me. “Why do you suddenly care? Because of one thong sighting?” She tugs on her wrists and I let her escape. For now. “Mine can’t be the only behind you’ve seen, Nick.”

She’s not wrong. I’ve seen others.

For some reason, though, I can’t bring any to mind—not even Brynn’s.

“Tell me.”

Her gaze never deviates from my face. “Because I’ve been waiting my entire life to feel as though I’m finally where I belong. You said that dreams are nothing more than temporary longings, one always leading into the next.” Delicate shoulders square off, like she’s going into battle instead of talking with me, a guy she’s known her entire life. “But I’ve been dreaming of the same thing since I was a kid. So, patience. A constant reminder that no matter how many steps I take in life, no matter where I go, I still only want one thing: to belong.”

My feet might as well be cemented to the sidewalk as Mina follows the curve of the street back up to my family’s house. They’re all probably wondering where we went, and it’s safe to say that there’s no chance of summarizing what happened out here into quaint, simplistic bullet points. No cliff notes that could possibly condense the magnitude of it all into digestible highlight reels.

I nearly kissed Mina.

For the first time in my life, I almost lost control with a woman I shouldn’t even want in the first place. I’ve seen her sick. I’ve seen her cry. I’ve seen her casually flirt with guys at bars on the few times I’ve gone out with her, Effie, and Sarah.

But never, in all these years, have I seen the blatantwantthat was written in her expression tonight. It matched the need written in my soul, and though that should terrify the hell out of me, it doesn’t.

Mina Pappas is the one woman I shouldn’t crave.

Because I’ve been waiting my entire life to feel as though I’m finally where I belong.

Tonight, for a slip of a moment, a snapshot in time, she belonged with me.

16

Mina

It’s official: Sophia is off her damn rocker.

I plunk my wineglass down on the dinner table. “No.”

“Why not?” With careful, precise movements, she cuts a sliver of steak and pops it into her mouth. Bony elbow planted on the table, she stares at me, her fork dangling from loose fingers. “Do you know how much fun we could have?” Those tines swivel to point in my direction. “Think about it: a few days up on the ski slopes, wine, fires roasting, old friends you haven’t seen in ages. What’s there to say no to?”

A weekend trip to the middle-of-nowhere Maine with Sophia and the other kids from our graduating Greek school class isnotmy idea of fun. Picking out sinks for my salon? That’s fun. Trimming off a client’s dead ends? Shiver me timbers, someone hand me a pair of shears. Standing outside in the freezing temperatures, Nick Stamos’s mouth inches from mine? Oh so tempting and the most fun I’ve had in ages. But a weekend trip with people I have little in common with aside from our mutual Greek-ness? No, thanks, I’m all good.

“I don’t think so.”

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