Nash

CHAPTER 11 Nash

“Wow, dude, this place … it’s epic.”

Rule let out a low whistle as we walked through the empty space that was going to be the home of the new shop. Time just kept rolling on, and before I knew, months had come and gone and I still hadn’t been to the place. Now I felt like a loser because it was epic and it was sandwiched between two of the busiest restaurants in LoDo, across the street from a popular sports bar, right around the corner from all the coffee shops and boutiques that drew people to LoDo in the first place. It was right in the heart of the thriving city and way more stylish and trendy than the Marked was. I felt seriously out of my depth here.

I rubbed the back of my neck and looked at Rule out of the corner of my eye. We didn’t exactly fit in here, and I had no idea how he and I, two beer and chicken-wings dudes, were supposed to make a place that looked like mimosas and caviar a moneymaking business. I felt like we were scaring the locals just by being here, and there was so much work to be done. All of it was overwhelming.

Before Phil had tied us into the place, it had been some kind of exotic tea and coffee shop. It wasn’t in any way set up to be a tattoo parlor, which is why Rule and I had taken the afternoon off to get the lay of the land and meet Rowdy’s friend so he could look the place over and tell us what he thought about it all. I thought it seemed like a long shot, but Rule was intrigued by it and he was totally on board with Rowdy’s idea about expanding what we did and turning the upstairs into a retail store. Besides, I owed Phil nothing less than making his dream a reality.

“We are going to turn this into such a badass shop.” Rule sounded so sure of that.

I wish I had his enthusiasm, and admittedly some of my hesitation came from the fact that Phil’s health was steadily declining. I was watching the disease wither him away, and there was nothing I could do about it. So investing in this shop, getting excited about it the way Rule was, seemed to me like I wasn’t even waiting until Phil was gone to act on his wishes. Plus he was still pushing me to ask my mom for answers to all the questions I had, and I didn’t want to waste any of the time we had left arguing about it with him.

“I feel like we’re going to need to offer our clients infused water and hot towels, as swanky as this location is.”

Rule laughed and walked to the glass door at the front to let in the guy who knocked. They shook hands, and now that I could put a name to the face, I knew I had seen him in Rowdy’s chair more than once. Zeb Fuller was a big dude with dark hair and a serious, unsmiling face. This wasn’t a guy that looked like he had ever lived life easy and carefree. He had Rowdy’s signature old-school style of tattooing scrolled all along both sides of his neck and peeking out of the sleeves of his long-sleeved shirt.

He walked over and shook my hand as well and let his gaze search the mostly empty space. He totally looked like the kind of guy that could tear the place apart with his bare hands and then build it back up. I could see why Rowdy recommended him.

“Swanky digs.”

I chuckled at hearing my thoughts spoken aloud.

“Yeah.”

“So you want it gutted and made to look like the other shop? What exactly is the idea?”

Rule and I shared a blank look and then I shrugged.

“I have no idea. It needs to be a functional shop. It has to have room for at least six artists to work and a piercing room that’s closed off from the rest of the space. We need a front desk and a waiting area and upstairs is offices, but we were thinking about turning it more into a store.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept his eyes moving around the space. I looked at Rule, who looked back at me and shook his head. I snorted out a laugh.

“Is it obvious we have no idea what we’re really doing?” I felt like I had to ask.

Zeb cracked a grin, which made him look less intimidating. “Well, with a cherry location like this, you don’t really have to do much. People will come in and check it out just because of where it’s at, and if you add shopping to the mix …” He whistled through his teeth. “You’re gonna make bank.”

We walked with him through the rest of the space, and I was blown away by how much of it there was. The Marked was a pretty big shop. I mean, none of us ever tripped over the others and the waiting area comfortably held up to ten people at a time, but this place doubled that. I had no idea how I was supposed to manage something like that, let alone remodel and staff it. I felt a slow burn work up the back of my neck.

At the end of the tour, we ended back on the main level of the shop, and Zeb was writing things down on a pad of paper he had produced from out of nowhere. Rule was asking him questions and I was just standing there feeling useless and panicked. Zeb looked up and took in my expression.

“I’ll draw some stuff up, put together a couple quotes. What’s the time frame?”

I sighed. “Well, Cora’s gonna have to be in on the hiring and the actual business setup and she’s due fairly soon, so like maybe May?” I didn’t even know when I needed to have the place open by. I sucked at being a business owner. “That gives her time to be at home with the baby while remodeling is going on.”

Rule nodded. “Yeah, I would think May would be good, we would be open for a lot of the summer tourist business then.”

Zeb made a couple more notes and muttered something under his breath. He gave a quick nod then stuck the pen he was using behind his ear.

“It’s gonna be some work, not gonna shit you, but this is a great space and I think with minimal effort I can give you something that reflects what you guys are about but also fits in with what the downtown crowd looks for as well.”

“Sounds perfect.” Rule and I agreed.

“I’ll touch base after I get some ideas on paper, and we can talk firmer time lines and budgets. I know Rowdy threw my name in the ring, but I appreciate the shot.”

Rule lifted the eyebrow that had the studs in it and ran his tongue over his lip ring.

“Any friend of Rowdy’s …”

Zeb barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. “Yeah, Rowdy’s a good dude and I appreciate he doesn’t hold my past against me. Neither does Wheeler.” He dropped the mechanic’s name as I tilted my head a little to consider the common connection we shared.

“The past?” I had to ask.

He sighed and that massive chest that looked like he regularly did bench presses with a Buick rose and fell.

“I shouldn’t say anything because it’s cost me more than one job, but if we’re gonna work together, you might as well know that I served time. I got out over two years ago, but I have a record.”

“Served time for what?” Rule’s tone was sharp, but we both knew Rowdy wouldn’t send us anyone that was a danger to the business or anyone’s safety.

“Assault. I made some bad choices, and I paid for them.”

Well, that wasn’t awesome, but none of us were strangers with the other side of the law. Hell, less than a year ago Jet had gotten locked up for a day for beating the crap out of his dad. Granted, the old bastard deserved it and way worse, so the lot of us tended not to pass judgment when it came to past mistakes.

I told him simply, “As long as you can do the job and the price is fair, I don’t care about what happened in the past. Our working relationship is all about what’s going on in the here and now.”

He seemed to take my words at face value and we all exchanged business cards. He left and Rule and I walked out to the front of the building so I could lock the door.

“What do you think?” Rule’s tone was curious.

“I think I want a cigarette.”

He cut me a dirty look and followed me to where the Charger and his truck were parked on the street.

“Seriously?”

“I think that I don’t know what I’m doing. I look at that space and can’t even imagine tattooing there or the kind of clients we might have. I think I have no idea how to run a business, or how to get Phil to tell me the truth, and I think I’m falling for a girl who can’t seem to trust me fully, and as a result won’t let me get nearly as close as I want to. Do you know how much that sucks? I never wanted to get this close to any girl, ever.”

“Whoa …”

He laughed at me a little and reached out and clamped a hand on my shoulder.

“Chill out, brother.”

I swore and propped a hip on the fender of the Charger and crossed my tattooed arms over my chest.

“Seriously, Rule. I feel like I’m losing control of everything. The ride can stop anytime and let me off. Being dizzy sucks.”

Both his eyebrows shot up and he took up a spot next to me, his pose almost identical to mine. “Listen, Nash, you need to breathe. You have a lot going on right now, and trying to deal with it all at one time is going to make you flip the fuck out. Phil won’t tell you what you want to know, so go talk to your mom. Seriously, that’s the easy solution, and if Ruby the Great won’t tell you what you need to hear wait until Cora’s dad gets here for the birth of the baby and ask him.”

It made sense. I just wished I could do it without the talking-to-my-mother part.

“As for the shop and being a business owner, you are not in this alone. I’m here, Cora is here, Rowdy has your back, and we still have Phil. The success or failure of this shop will not be solely on you, Nash. We all want it to succeed, we all want to make Phil proud whether we do it in time for him to see it or not.”

He was right … more than my future was at stake here and I needed to remember that.

“As for the girl …” He bumped me in the arm with his fist. “There is no falling. You fell. She’s got you and there is no getting loose from that. So she’s guarded, so she’s hard to figure out … did you stop and think maybe the reason you like her, that she matters, is because she isn’t easy like all the rest? Easy is very forgettable, my friend, complicated and difficult stays with you forever. Believe me, I married it.”

I looked at him and tried to think of something to say that could refute what he said. There wasn’t anything.

“We were all a bunch of pricks back then; it took finding the right person to make me not want to be that guy anymore. You, well, you were always the nice one, but even the nice guy can have a bad day. Eventually she’ll get over her hang-ups over the past, and if she doesn’t, you move on because that means she’s not into the guy you are now.”

I huffed out a breath and watched it turn into vapor in the cold in front of me.

“When did you turn into the relationship sensei?”

“All my friends and family are falling in love around me, I’m just trying to keep them from making the same mistakes I made with Shaw. I wouldn’t waste any of the time I did getting to her if I could do it all over again.”

I would’ve made fun of him for being sappy and sentimental, but I had been there for the journey he took to get to his girl. It wasn’t always pretty and they had both hurt more than they needed to along the way, so discounting his words of wisdom didn’t seem very smart.

“All right. I guess I’m gonna cruise up the mountain and try and see if I can have a conversation with my mom without strangling her or trying to choke myself out.”

“Good luck with that. Hey, you still bringing the nurse to the Bar this weekend?”

It had taken a week of persuasion with both words and sexual lures to get Saint to agree to come out and meet my friends. Ayden and Shaw were champing at the bit to get to actually meet her outside of the hospital setting.

“If she doesn’t back out on me. She’s really shy, timid around new people.”

“You better tell her if she plans on sticking around, she needs to get over that, or else Cora is going to put together an ambush and the girls will end up on her doorstep without you there as a buffer.”

That was exactly what would happen, so I made a mental reminder to push Saint a little harder the next time we hung out. I didn’t mind pushing her, usually the results ended up with us naked and wrapped around each other, but I was still leery of pushing too far because I just didn’t know where her breaking point was. And frankly, I didn’t know where mine was either. I liked her, really liked her, in bed and out of it, but there was always something unknown about her that kept me on the edge. She was a strong girl, had to be in order to do her job and be as good at it as she obviously was, but outside of her work and away from the hospital, there was a veil of vulnerability and unease that surrounded her. I could practically see the struggle she was having within herself when we were together. She wanted to be with me, wanted to spend time together, but the gears in her head would start turning and I could see her trying to figure out how much of herself she could give to me and still feel safe.

I was also doing my best to show her a good time. Ever since the incident in the backseat of my car, I kept it in the forefront of my mind that she essentially had missed out on all the teenage nonsense that went along with boys figuring out how to get into a girl’s pants. So I took her to the movies and tried to get my hands in her shirt. I took her out for pizza and made out with her on her doorstep when I dropped her off. I tried to get her to go on a double date with Rule and Shaw, but she had balked at the idea, not ready to be that fully ingrained in my life yet, which led to the question of what exactly we were doing together.

I had never spent more than one night or one weekend with the same girl, so to me we were doing something that looked like starting a relationship. To her, though, I just didn’t know. She texted me, called me when she had free time, but never stayed the night at my place when she came over and never asked me to stay when I was at hers. Granted, she never asked me to leave either, but there was just a lot of gray area happening, and I felt like I was navigating all of it blindly since I had never even been interested in starting something with anyone before. I knew she was special. I just didn’t know how to show her that beyond what I was already doing.

The drive to Brookside went quick, mostly because my mind was running over everything and didn’t give me a minute of peace. I pulled into the driveway and breathed out a grateful sigh that at least my idiot stepfather’s SUV wasn’t anywhere to be seen, unless it was in the garage. That was highly unlikely because what good did it do in the garage where the neighbors couldn’t see it, marvel at its awesomeness, and be eaten alive with envy at Grant Loften’s obvious wealth and prestige? Fucker. I would never hate anyone as much as I hated that guy and God willing there would come a time that my fist and his face had a meeting.

My entire childhood had been spent under his disapproving eyes. I could never do anything right, was always treated like a burden by him. One of my clearest memories of his sheer shitheadedness had been when I couldn’t have been more than four or five. I had just discovered crayons. I loved the colors, loved to swirl designs on anything and everything I could get my little, unruly hands on, including the walls. It was just crayon and what little kid didn’t draw on the wall? But to Grant it had been a crime akin to murder. To this day I can see him snapping every single one of the crayons and making me watch. I remembered the acrid smell of bleach as he made me scrub not just my bedroom wall where my art lived, but all the walls in the house. I was just a little kid, but to him that didn’t matter. Just like now, he never thought I did anything right.

What made it worse was the fact that he obviously loved my mom, treated her like she was a queen, and gave her whatever she wanted. He just had no time or use for me. And I would never, ever forgive him for making her choose between the two of us. Of course my mother should have picked me, I was her child, it was her job to love me unconditionally, but she hadn’t, and it was Grant who had made her have to make that call.

He was a man that had always been about appearance, a man all about prestige and perception, so the fact that I looked the way I did, acted how I wanted, had never made my time under his roof pleasant. As an adult … every single time he looked down his nose at me, every time he puckered his lips in disdain at what I was wearing or what I was saying … it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to knock all his perfectly veneered teeth down his throat.

I jogged up the walkway that had a light dusting of snow on it still and knocked on the door. How sad was it that I was a stranger in the place that was supposed to be where my family lived? I saw my mom’s dark head peek through the window and then it took a solid four minutes for her to decide to open the door. We faced each other through the glass of the storm door and there was no mistaking the look of disappointment that flashed across her eyes when she took in my black hoodie, baseball hat, and jeans. I looked like I looked every other day of the year, and it was always lacking in her eyes. It shouldn’t still sting. I was an adult, had been on my own for way longer than she had ever pretended to raise me, but still there was always a tiny part of me that wanted her to see worth in me even though it always ended up with me feeling like she had drop-kicked my heart.

“What are you doing here? You didn’t call, Nashville.”

God, with the full name. I think she used it mostly because she knew how much it irked me.

“No I didn’t, but I want to talk to you for a minute, and I figured I could catch you at home.”

She played with the diamond necklace at her throat and put a hand on the door. My mom was a fairly tiny woman. I got my dark skin tone and hair from somewhere in her lineage. I could only assume everything else that made me who I was I got from Phil. Thank goodness for small favors.

“Grant will be home shortly. He won’t like that you dropped by unannounced.”

And just like it had always been, what Grant liked always won out over what was right and decent.

“It won’t take too long, Mom. Seriously, just give me five minutes.”

“You drove for two hours just to talk for five minutes, Nashville? That makes no sense.” Always with the censure and disapproval. It was a miracle I had managed to turn out as normal as I had.

“Mom …” I sighed and narrowed my eyes at her. “Phil is getting sicker and sicker. He has around-the-clock help at home, but he’s hardly eating and he sleeps all the time. I see him every day and I ask him every time to explain to me what in the hell happened. Someone needs to give me answers, Mom, and I’m not going anywhere until I get them. If you want me gone before Grant comes home, then you best start talking, otherwise I will hang out in the driveway and gladly have it out with him. No one wants that, I’m sure. What would the neighbors think?”

She looked like she was considering her options, and when one of the neighbors pulled out of their garage and looked over to see what was going on, I snorted at the irony as she finally relented and opened the door to let me in.

I followed her into the kitchen, where she begrudgingly offered me a drink. I turned her down and leaned against the counter while she poured herself a cup of coffee.

“I want to know why you never told me who Phil was. I want to know why you let me think my dad was just some deadbeat that took off on us. I spent my entire childhood thinking you couldn’t deal with me, didn’t love me because I reminded you of a stranger that disappointed you.” I glared at her for all the years of blame and guilt she had needlessly let me carry on my too-young shoulders.

“Phil was here, he took care of me, and he obviously cared for you and would have been in both our lives. I think I deserve to know what happened and why it took him facing death for the truth to come out.”

Her hands curled around the mug and I saw her pale a little under her makeup.

“What difference does any of that make now, Nashville? What purpose does rehashing any of it serve?”

“Stop calling me that. Nash, just Nash, and you know it. The purpose it serves is I want to know why I wasn’t ever good enough, why you still look at me like I’m a disappointment. Phil doesn’t get to pass on, get to die without me understanding why it mattered so much for him to keep your secrets.”

She heaved a sigh like I was annoying her more than anything else and looked at me over the rim of her mug.

“I met Phil when he was on leave from the navy. I was in New York on vacation the same time he was there for Fleet Week. He was good-looking, a handsome and dangerous young man in a uniform. I figured no one would get hurt if we indulged in a harmless fling. I thought it was just temporary, just a young girl sowing her oats, but it turned into something more. I came back home, back here, and when Phil’s service was up he moved out here to be with me. He was always very dedicated and chivalrous, he just wasn’t what I was looking for in a long-term partner.”

She cleared her throat and set the mug down on the counter. She wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“I liked Phil, he was a lot of fun, and for a while the relationship was a great time, but when it came time to settle down, I wanted a life that didn’t fit with a guy who rides a motorcycle and thinks tattooing is a viable career—that was not in my long-term plans. I broke it off with Phil when I met Grant. Grant is the kind of man who could provide a future, could provide the kind of home I always wanted. I knew what the right choice for me was between the two men without a question.”

I scowled at her because hearing her talk about Phil’s life and choices was hearing her belittle my life all over again. Her hands went back to the necklace at her throat and she twisted the ruby around and around.

“I didn’t know I was pregnant when Grant and I started seeing each other. When I figured it out I just assumed the baby was his.”

I choked a little. “Jesus, Mom, you were sleeping with both of them?” That was more than I needed to know for sure.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I was young and figuring life out, Nashville. Anyway Grant and I got engaged and married before you were born. We were both excited with the prospect of having a little boy, and Phil had opened the shop and started his own kind of life. Everything was going to be perfect.”

She walked to the other side of the kitchen and I realized she had moved as far away from me as she could without leaving the room.

“It was pretty clear the second you were born that you were Phil’s and not Grant’s. You were all brown like me, but the hair was Phil’s and those eyes … even as a baby they were too bright and too unmistakable. They were Donovan eyes. Grant was furious, accused me of having an affair, and told me it was him or my bastard baby. He couldn’t face everyone in Brookside knowing the baby wasn’t his. I thought he was going to leave me for sure.”

I already hated the guy, but now I wanted to pull all his teeth out with rusty pliers.

“I didn’t want to lose him, so I explained about Phil, about the relationship. Grant eventually realized that no one would judge him for taking care of a child that was left by his father. He refused to be on the birth certificate or give you his last name, though.” I could literally feel the temperature of my blood drop.

My hands clenched into fists at my sides. “But Phil didn’t go anywhere. He just didn’t know I existed.”

“No, he didn’t, and, in a perfect world, it would have stayed that way. Grant took care of us, provided for us, and we told you that your dad had abandoned us. But as time went on you just looked more and more like Phil. One of his friends saw you with me at Cherry Creek Mall when you were about four and told Phil. He was furious, threatened to take me to court, to fight for custody. Grant didn’t want that kind of mess, didn’t want the whole sordid tale out in public and we didn’t need child support, so we made a deal. I begged Phil, pleaded with him to keep his real identity and relation to you a secret, to keep it quiet until you were older. He very reluctantly agreed, but only as long as he got to be in your life and only as long as I agreed to let you have his last name. I never put a father on the birth certificate, so making you a Donovan officially was the easiest thing in the world.”

She twisted her hands together and had the nerve to look at me like this was somehow my fault.

“When you got older, you were too much. Too wild, too loud, too hard to handle. You didn’t want to dress nice or play with the right kind of kids, Grant was already resentful that he was raising Phil’s kid, but the way you were, how much you looked like Phil, it was his breaking point. It was just easier to let Phil handle you, try and put you on some kind of path, because where you were going wasn’t any kind of place Grant or I wanted any part of. You were always so much more Phil’s son than mine.”

My back teeth snapped together, and I felt my temper start to surge in an angry torrent under my skin.

“I was a kid. Maybe if you hadn’t constantly been on me about shit I couldn’t change, like my eye color, I would have picked a more acceptable path to you. You never gave me the chance. You were always too busy trying to make Grant happy to worry about what all that vitriol was doing to your kid.”

“You were always too much like your father, even though you didn’t know who he was.”

“He loved you, still does.”

Her mouth tightened and turned white at the corners.

“He loved the idea of me. He never really knew the real me.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when I was older, when I went to live with him permanently?”

“He didn’t want to.”

“Bullshit.”

“Fine, he wanted me to be the one to tell you and I refused. I didn’t think Grant or I needed to deal with the fallout. You had moved on, Phil was a better parent to you than I ever could have been. It was all said and done.”

I wanted to throw something heavy at her. I wanted to break every stupid piece of Williams-Sonoma cookware in her fancy kitchen. My fingers curled into fists at my sides.

“But I’m still here, Mom. Still trying to live my life, and now the only father I’m ever going to have is dying and there is nothing I can do about it. You robbed me of that relationship because you didn’t want to deal with the fallout, because you didn’t want to inconvenience that dipshit husband of yours? How does any of that sound right to you?”

“What’s right for me has never been what’s right for you, Nashville. You don’t even use the name I gave you.”

“Because it’s ridiculous … all of it. What’s right for me isn’t what’s right for you because I’m an actual human being with feelings and emotions, and you, Mom … you’re a goddamn monster.”

I had always longed for her attention, thirsted for her love and approval, but now looking at her, seeing the absolute lack of remorse or regret in her eyes, I was thankful she had simply let me go. If I had tried any harder, worked any more to make her love me, who knew what kind of miserable, unfeeling robot I would have become at her hands. As an adult, I was still pissed at her, still resentful she had such an easy time letting me go, but I was also overwhelmingly grateful that I wasn’t anything like her and her people.

“I’m not a monster, Nash.” Finally, my name. “I’m just not the mother you wanted or needed, and frankly you were never the son I wanted or needed. Having you made it pretty clear I was never cut out to be someone’s mother. Why do you think Grant and I never had any more kids? We wanted it to just be us.”

“Thank God for that.”

I pushed off the counter and headed toward the door. I knew once I walked out I had no reason to ever come back. This solidified it for me, it was why Phil had pushed and pushed me to make her be the one and tell me the entire sordid tale. I was finally free of any chains to the past that she might have held. I didn’t need her approval. I was a good man, had a good life, had the best friends in the entire world, and I was working really hard on figuring out how to have a good woman on a permanent basis. There was no need for my mother to be proud of me or find worth in what I was doing, because I was proud of myself, and Phil had given me that.

It didn’t matter that I had no idea what to do with the new shop, or that Saint had me spinning in circles. I would figure it all out, and there was no way I was going to let him or anyone else down while doing it, not because I needed validation or appreciation, but because that was just the kind of guy I was. The kind of guy my father had raised me to be.