Page 55 of Hesi-Dating
He wasn't ever going to leave me alone.
I stepped out of his arms and took his hands in mine. Instinct screamed that I run. I didn't want to remember the past. I didn't want to be beholden to him any longer. I wanted him out of my life. "You don't owe me and I don't owe you. We're even from the past. None of it matters anymore. It was long ago." I forced a smile. "I'm just a dumb girl with big tits. You said so yourself."
"If they threatened you, I'd respond. I'd have to." He lifted my hand to his mouth. "No one hurts my Joley baby."
The suggestion in his words held so much more than two people who shared a crappy past. That tone was way beyond the brotherly type love.
Oh dear Lord, no.He mightlike-like me?
I'm not yours. I don't want anything to do with you.I compartmentalized the horror that he might like me to readjust my read on him. This didn't only have to do with local law enforcement's legal threat to him. Seth himself threatened the hold Nosh had on me. Somehow, he must know that for me this thing with Seth was different. That's what scared Nosh.
"I brought you a gift." Nosh didn't release my hand while he signaled to Mitchell.
Mitchell brought over a cell phone and pulled up a live feed. Two men dragged a white man bound in duct tape into the camera's view. It was the guy who'd hit me at the gas station.
Oh no. No, no, no, no.
I tried to back away, but he didn't let go of me.
He moved to stand behind me and pulled me into him, cradling my chin to force me to watch. "This is what I do to people who hurt you."
"Let go of me, Nosh," I said in as clear a voice as I could manage. "What you do to some guy who impersonated one of your people is your business. He didn't hurt me. Maybe he bruised my pride a bit, but I kicked the shit out of him and got him arrested. I'd call that a win on my part."
Things were heating up in the video.
"Nosh," I said low. "Let. Me. Go."
He released.
I reached over and turned off the phone. "Leave the sheriff alone. We're not involved beyond paying back a favor I owed him for the flat tire, and being sort of friends. Please, leave. I have to go to work in an hour."
"You should work for me."
"As what?" I shook my head, erasing that question in my head like it'd been on a dry erase board. "It's not a lucrative offer. You don't have a dental plan. I'm looking into braces soon since I missed that as a kid and my teeth are out of alignment. I also need to keep my current medical insurance. I'm scheduled to have several fibroids in my uterus removed. They're painful as hell and make my periods awful. The bleeding is crazy for days. I'd prefer my coverage to not stop, which means I need to keep my current job."
Nothing like period talk to shut down a man. He turned a slight shade of green and backed up like I had the plague.
Time to put the topper on the woman's health sundae. "I'm bleeding right now. A lot."Total lie."That means I couldn't have slept with the sheriff. My doctor says I won't stop bleeding until I get the surgery, which sucks. Please, go. Leave me out of your life."
He seemed to pull himself together before he pulled me back into him again. Even the brief contact felt interminable. "I can't do that, Joley. It's you and me. It's always been you and me."
I watched him and Mitchell leave, holding myself upright by sheer will. The moment the door shut I heard Amber say something, but I walked to my room. The pit bull who favored me, Kirby, rushed into the room behind me. I sat on the floor. Instead of knocking me over, the intuitive dog lay down and put his head in my lap.
"Thanks, bud." I laid a hand on his head. Tears flowed. I wasn't sure why they flowed. Perhaps, for the forced loss of the first real-feeling relationship in my life. Maybe for feeling locked to Nosh.
ChapterTwenty-One
JOLEY
I held my hand motionless with a finger extended toward the ring button for the gate that sealed off Isiah Walter's house from the rest of the world in San Diego suburbia. What choice did I have?
Isiah was way more than a superstar first baseman who emerged from a gang neighborhood in North Compton. Before his rise to sports success…before he cleaned up his image, he'd been one of the scariest leaders on the street. He'd been the man people went to when they had problems, even when he was a teenager. He was the only person in L.A. who had scared Nosh. I wasn't sure whether he still had feelers into gangs of this area, but he might be able to help me understand where Nosh's obsession with controlling me came from.
I pressed the button. Of course, he admitted me.
He opened the front door himself. We stared at each other in silence for long moments until he finally said, "I knew one day that sonofabitch would push it. What did Nosh do?"
"I need advice."
