Page 53 of Looking Grimm

“Nothing’s ruined,” he replied. “Just different. And to be honest, I was ready for a change.”

The wind rushed by again, and I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets to warm my numbing fingers.

Nash sighed and released his hold on me. “Don’t move,” he said sternly. Shrugging out of his coat, he threw it across my shoulders, then tugged the collar closed under my chin.

The residual heat in the garment eased the tightness in my chest. A last, lingering chill rattled my teeth as Nash took off his beanie and pulled it down over my ears.

Stripped down to one of his many flannel shirts and khaki pants, he ducked into my line of sight and asked, “Better?”

Tears broke free like they’d been frozen in my eyes. Now that I was thawing, they were, too.

Nash swiped his thumb through the moisture on my cheeks. His gaze traveled upward, and his fingers chased it to graze the knot on my forehead. “What happened to your head?”

“I wrecked the Bronco,” I said.

“Oh.” His face scrunched, and he looked me over in what I knew was a check for more injuries. Little chance of finding any with his coat blanketing me.

“There’s a dead body in it,” I added, my voice monotone.

“Oh,” he repeated. He’d gone very still, one hand resting on my shoulder and his eyes unfocused, lost in thought.

“It’s Ezrah Everett. I left his brother in a field. He’s dead, too.” I rambled on, unprompted, narrating the events as though they’d happened to someone far removed from me.

When I fell quiet, Nash fixed me with a look I couldn’t quite decipher.

“Not friends of yours, I take it,” he said.

It struck too close to Holland’s sniping comment about my friends and enemies, and I snapped, “Most people know better than to be friends with me. Rarely ends well.”

He didn’t react—barely blinked before responding, “Then I guess it’s a good thing we’re more than friends.”

It made me angry, like everything did. I wanted him to be angry, too. Pissed off at me for dodging his calls while his business failed, for showing up here with all my baggage and bullshit. Turning aside, I looked across the rippling ocean waves.

“Nash…” I flexed my jaw. “You shouldn’t be here right now. I wanted to be alone.”

“You want me to leave?” He raised a ginger brow.

I couldn’t bring myself to say anything in response, so I stood there, bundled in the coat that smelled like him while tear tracks dried on my cheeks.

After a lengthy pause, Nash shook his head. “No, you don’t.”

“Holland doesn’t believe me,” I said, spilling over with more of the secrets I’d been keeping. “About the investigators. They’ll find me eventually.”

Nash’s head bobbed. “I know you’re scared—”

“I killed Isha,” I interjected, needing to say it now or risk not saying it at all. “It was an accident…” Tears leaked out like a faucet with a slow drip. “She was saying things about you, about us…”

I felt silly to mention it, and I might have guessed he would ask before he said, “What things?”

Inside the coat, I wrung my hands together. “That you’ll leave me.”

Nash hummed a low note. His hand stretched toward my side in an invitation to closeness that I didn’t want to refuse. Rather than let myself be reeled in, I squeezed my arms around my middle and wished I could disappear.

“She said as soon as Grimm’s gone, you’ll get rid of me, and I…” I choked on my own pitiful admission. If this was how I felt at the thought of losing him—frightened and lonely and so very weak—maybe I was in love, after all.

He grabbed me and stepped forward to wind his arms around me. With my head tucked under his chin and that firm, soothing pressure binding me up, I felt safe, and as near to peace as I’d ever been.

“I could never leave you, Trouble,” Nash whispered. “I’d miss you too much. My bed’s too big without you in it. I hate when you aren’t there. That’s why I want you to come home. That’s why I’ll wait for you. Because if I get to have you at the end of it all, I’ll be a lucky man.”

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