Page 32 of Treachery

“Nadia, what’s going on?” Vicki asked, hurrying toward them, her eyes wide, her cheeks flushed.

With a huff and a curse, Locust halted, and she jerked her arm from his grip.

His eyes blazing, Locust spun on her, and snarled, “What the fuck was that back there? Were you trying to embarrass yourself?”

Reaching them, Vicki peered between Nadia and Locust, concern and wariness in her gaze. “Nadia, what’s going on? What’s he talking about?”

Nadia snorted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Locust got bossy, I got pissed, and the whole bar got to hear all about Locust’slone rangering,” Nadia offered nonchalantly, totally belying the fact that her heart was about to jump right out of her chest. God, she’d really made an ass of herself in there, and she was sure she’d never be able to step foot through those doors again. Then again, she’d had an awful lot of fun making Locust squirm.

Locust growled, throwing his hands out in a gesture of frustration, but Nadia remained silent, watching him as emotions she’d never seen before flashed over his expression.Finally, anger etched itself in his features, an expression she knew he’d worked hard to hide from her all those months they’d been together. This was a part of the real James/Locust that he’d hidden from her.

But, God, he looked good angry; his face hard, his eyes intense, his body vibrating—every muscle taut as if ready to pounce.

Kicking herself for devolving into a needy cavewoman, she narrowed her eyes at Locust.

“Nadia,” Vicki said, and Nadia jerked her head toward her friend, having forgotten she was there. Heat bloomed in her cheeks; she’d been so caught up in Locust, no one else existed. “Are you okay? You called me…do you—did he do something to you?”

Locust grunted, shaking his head. He scrubbed his hand down his scruffy jaw, his eyes sad yet furious. But it was the disappointment she saw there that made her heart hurt.

Sucking in a breath, he said, “Nothing…I did nothing to her in there.” He shook his head again, as if he couldn’t believe what he was going to say. “She was a totally different person in there….” Swallowing, his Adam’s apple bobbing, he rasped, “What happened to you?”

Recoiling as if slapped, she gasped, the breath breaking up on the explosive inhale.

It was her turn to shake her head; disbelief, frustration, resentment, indignation—swirling rage and hurt and humiliation bled through her body, right down to her soul.

She could barely keep the tears at bay as she met his gaze once more.

“What happened to me?” she snapped, incredulous. Shaking her head, she ignored the curling grief in her gut, grief she hadn’t even felt with Joe, and declared, “I fell in love with a lie. My heart broke, shattered into pieces so small and jagged, I may never putthem back together again. I am fundamentally changed; what you did, how you hurt me, rewrote who I am as a person. The old Nadia would never have said any of that in public—hell, she’d never say that in private, but the new Nadia, the one who is a mutation of the woman you met that day on the side of the road, she would have raged, and cursed, and damned you until God struck her down.” Breaths ragged, she almost cried out at the utter devastation on Locust’s face. But she wasn’t done. She needed to say this, for him to hear it, feel it. “I fell in love with a lie, Locust, that’s what happened to me. And I’ll never be the same again.”

FOURTEEN

Two weeks passed,spring slipped into summer, and Nadia slipped into a melancholy only slightly alleviated by work.

So, she worked her ass off, focusing on member needs and wants as though her life depended on it, thankful that the summer wedding season was kicking off, which meant more busyness than she could handle. And sometimes if felt like her lifediddepend on it…in those moments of quiet and stillness, when her mind would conjure images ofhim, and the sounds of his voice….the way he’d held her in the aftermath of her step-brother’s vandalism.

He’d been gentle, caring, thoughtful…. He’d gone about protecting her the wrong damn way, but his intentions had been good, and she knew that especially after she’d learned just how much trouble Elijah had been in. Stealing from Italian mobsters? Really? What had the fool been thinking?

Horde had been nice enough to come by and inform her that her step-brother was “handled,” and that he wouldn’t be bothering her again. He’d assured her that Elijah was a little banged up but still alive. She’d been relieved but also…disappointedthat Locust hadn’t come to deliver that news himself.

After the fallout at Cool Hands, Locust had left her in the parking lot, sobbing into Vicki’s neck, without saying a single word. Vicki had given her a ride home, telling her she’d pay for the Uber back in the morning for Nadia to pick up her car. Back at her house, the house that had been the epicenter of her emotional upheaval that day, Vicki had held Nadia some more, force fed her oatmeal, honey, and buttered toast—basically not leaving her side until she had to pick up Sylvia from her dad’s. Nadia didn’t remember how long she sat on the couch, staring at the blank TV, her eyes burning from crying, her nose sore from blowing it, and her heart and mind battling it out with one another, but the next day, not much had changed. She was still confused, hurt, angry, frustrated…and she missed James. She couldn’t get the look of devastation on his face out of her mind. She couldn’t stop hearing him say“What happened to you?”And she couldn’t stop the terrifying realization that he’d been right to ask that question, because that hadn’t beenherin that bar.

She hated the woman she’d become, the mean, petty, careless, stubborn lunatic who refused to listen when other people talked. And Locust had wanted to talk, he’d been trying to talk to her for weeks, and she’d kept shutting him down. What did that make her? How would she ever get closure if she never faced what happened head on, if she never heard the entire story from beginning to end?

The questions Locust could answer ran through her mind daily, only helping to wind her up more, to make her more and more angry—and she didn’t want to be that woman anymore.

It didn’t help that Locust was out of sight, but she obviously wasn’t out of mind. Nadia didn’t see Locust again, but that didn’t stop the occasional delivery of Sunny Lee’s, or the odd text asking about her day, or telling her good morning. It was almost as if he’d disappeared…but his ghost was still around, haunting her. He’d made it so that the moment she told herself to forgetabout him, he was there, reminding her he was watching her. Watchingoverher.

She hated it…and she loved it.

God…she missed him—and it was driving her crazy! She couldn’t count the number of times she went to the text chain in her phone and started writing a message. The desire to reach out, to hear his voice, to hear him tell her that he missed her just as much, was like a throbbing ache between her lungs.

Signing out of her computer, she turned off the monitor and turned to grab her lightweight coat from the back of her desk chair. There was a soft knock on her door, and she sighed. She was that close to getting out of there on time for the first time in days, and she’d so been looking forward to left over sweet and sour pork, and the final two hours of herLord of the Ringsmovie marathon. She’d shifted her crush from Matthew Goode to Viggo Mortenson, hoping to fill her nighttime fantasies with a sexy Dúnedain in plate armor instead of a certain panty-melting biker in leather.

This is what you wanted…him gone, out of your life.

True. So why wasn’t she happy? Why did she still yearn for him, desperate for a single glimpse of him on the corner, in a crowd, in the next aisle over at ShopRite?

Another soft knock on her door, pulled her from her thoughts once more.

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