“I’ll call you later, Josie. Once you’re done doing your good deed of the day.” Colt stalled for a second in the doorway, probably waiting for Josie to hustle up beside him. Unlike me, he didn’t have fifteen years of experience with Josie Gibson’s unparalleled stubbornness. That girl wasn’t going anywhere until she was good and ready.
“Night, Princess. Same time next week?” I called after him as he charged out of the bar. Good fucking riddance.
“Next time you do that in my place of business, I’m aiming this here barrel between your eyes. I don’t care how dark and brooding and sexy they are, you hear me?” Brandy’s face hovered above mine and she lifted an eyebrow.
I answered her with a weak salute. Brandy was back to the customers and the customers were back to their drinks when Josie kneeled beside me.
“What am I going to do with you, Garth Black?” She sighed, her forehead lining as she inspected my face.
“I’ve got plenty of answers for that question, Joze.”
“Mind wowing me with that plethora of answers?”
A girl who knew the word “plethora” should not be allowed to date a guy who’d only graduated high school because his daddy offered to foot the bill for a new football field.
“I would, but I’m afraid I’ll get slapped if I give you any of those answers, and I’m not sure how much more my face can take tonight.”
Josie sighed again, not quite as long as the first. “Sure, now you decide to keep your mouth closed. That would have come in real handy five minutes ago when Colt Mason came at you with his fists.”
I let Josie help me up. Even with her help, by the time I stood, I was feeling enough pain to know I was close to blacking out. It had happened before, but it had been a while. And damn it all to hell, Colt Mason hadn’t only broken my nose. I was pretty sure he’d cracked a couple of ribs, too. “You and I both know if I was interested in fighting back, Colt would have left here on a stretcher.”
Josie slung my arm over her shoulders and helped me to one of the tables in the corner. Having my arm around her, even though it was only to steady myself, made me feel something I wasn’t ready to feel. Especially not when it came to feeling it for Josie Gibson. I wasn’t made to give and accept that kind of thing. Ever.
“I do know that. I’ve seen you in enough fights since the testosterone switch flipped on when you were barely out of first grade to know you could have dropped Colt like you dropped first period trig.” I shot her a tight smile. “So why did you let him beat on you like a flesh-and-bone punching bag?”
My smile went up a notch on the tightness scale. “Because.”
Instead of sighing, she rolled her eyes. When I was close by, Josie was either glaring, groaning, sighing, or rolling her eyes. I could measure my life by her expressions. “I see you’ve made a lot of progress in the whole opening-up department. Bravo. Go, you.”
“Opening up’s never been my thing. It really gets in the way of that whole mysterious vibe I like to let off. It drives the women wild.”
“It drives them something.” She leaned in to inspect the left side of my face. She came so close, I smelled that coconut shampoo she’d been using since our freshman year of high school. Josie’s coconut shampoo had marked many milestones in my life. The first time I’d noticed it was in ninth grade at the homecoming dance. That was the only dance I’d ever gone to, that dance with Josie the only one I’d danced, and coconut shampoo was the thing I remembered. Then that night a couple winters back, I’d buried my face into her hair right as I was about to—
Shit.
Scratch that.
Fuck.
What the hell was I thinking? My face probably looked like a science experiment gone wrong, and I was teetering on a chair dreaming about coconut shampoo and Josie Gibson. I wasn’t sure what I was more disturbed by: that I was fantasizing about shampoo or that my dick was hard from remembering that night with Josie. My dick, along with everything attached to it, needed to stay far away from Josie Gibson. She and her coconut shampoo were messing with my head. Messing with my brain.
“That’s going to need stitches. And probably that one, too.” Josie studied my face with a furrowed brow. “I’ll drive you to the hospital if you promise not to get blood all over my truck.”
“I don’t need doctors and stitches. I need a bottle of whiskey, a woman, and some sleep. I’ll wake up tomorrow good as new.” Gauging my pain level, I probably needed a couple of pain relievers too, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I had a reputation as a badass to uphold and asking for a couple of Tylenol had a way of ruining that.
“Garth, you need medical attention.”
I lifted my hand, catching Brandy’s attention. She had a double shot of whiskey in front of me in thirty seconds flat. I swallowed the whiskey before slamming the empty glass on the table. “There. Medical attention. Check.”
“You really are a stubborn pain in my ass.” She sighed and started for the door. “Wait there, and try not to get in another bar fight before I get back. If you’re still thirsty, try some water. You know, that stuff that comes out a faucet. It’s easier on the liver.”
“And I’m a pain in your ass?” I called after her, but her only response was a shake of her head as she disappeared out the door.
“You want another, sugar? From the looks of you, I’d say you need another after another. After another.” Brandy grabbed the empty glass and waited.
Actually, I needed a line of “anothers,” but I couldn’t get Josie’s voice out of my head. “I’ll have a water.”
“A what?” Brandy’s mouth dropped open a bit.
“A. Water,” I repeated slowly.
Brandy looked at me like I’d grown two heads. “Anything else with your . . . water?”
Even rolling my eyes was painful. “Ice.”
Brandy gaped at me for a while longer before heading back to the bar. In all fairness, looking at me like the world as she knew it had just changed because Garth Black had ordered a glass of ice water in a bar was probably to be expected. Despite being underage, I’d been venturing into Brandy’s bar since I turned fifteen, and that was the first time I’d ordered water. Waiting for my H2O, I grabbed a couple of napkins, twisted them, and stuffed them up both nostrils to stop the bleeding. As far as medical attention went, that was about all I needed.
“You sure you don’t want anything else? It’s on the house.” Brandy set a tall glass of ice water in front of me and waited.
“No, I’m good. Me and my water. What else could a man wish for?”
Brandy shifted, dropping her hand on her hip. “I could think of a few things. You decide you need something else, anything else, you know where to find me.” Glancing at the back room, where Brandy and I’d had plenty of after-hours “get-togethers,” she winked before walking away.
Sex was, like alcohol, my go-to when I wanted to block out something like a shitty day, getting thrown from the bull before the eight-second buzzer, or taking a serious beating. I’d already drowned myself in alcohol. Sex was the next thing on my journey toward “healing,” but sex with Brandy wouldn’t cut it. I don’t know how I knew that, or why; I just did. Sex with just anyone wouldn’t work like it normally did for me. When the face of who I did want flashed through my mind, I wished I’d asked for a bottle of whiskey with my water.
I wasn’t going there again. Not with her. Not ever. Once was enough to fuck a man up good for the rest of his life. I didn’t want to be fucked in the hereafter as well. Not that I wasn’t already fucked when it came to any kind of hereafter reserved for the likes of me, but that wasn’t the point.
“Since when did you start drinking vodka on the rocks?” Josie slid into the chair beside me and dropped a first aid kit on the table.
“Since never.”
She scooted her chair closer until her legs brushed mine. “What are you drinking then? Gin? Tequila? Hemlock?”
I gave her another tight smile. “What you basically ordered me to dr
ink.”
And I thought Brandy’s face had been shocked.
“Water?” I nodded. “No way.” She grabbed the glass and actually took a sip. “Well, crap. Just when I think I’ve got you all figured out.” She set the glass down and shook her head.
“I go and order a glass of water? Mind blowing, I know.”
She fumbled through the first aid kit before pulling out some bandages and ointment tubes. “Consider my mind sufficiently blown.” She pulled out a few small squares and tore one open. Even though I felt like a panty-waist sitting in a seedy bar having a chick patch up my war wounds, I wasn’t about to get up and leave. I probably should. Being alone and in close proximity to Josie Gibson did strange things to me . . .
Like making my heart feel like there was something more to it than just pumping blood.
Speaking of panty-waists . . . I was so far gone in the land of make-believe and shit that I barely registered when Josie lifted a damp towelette to my face. That changed real quick when she pressed it into the gash above my eyebrow.
I didn’t flinch. I didn’t wince. I all but leapt out of my skin. I was doing fabulous things to my notorious rough-and-tough reputation. “Shit, Joze, warn a person before you douse alcohol on a serious wound. Give them a second to brace themselves first.”
She gave me an exaggerated eye roll, holding the bloody alcohol swab off to the side. “First of all, I hardly consider an alcohol swab to be ‘dousing.’ Second, you gave up the right to call any of your wounds serious when you refused to seek medical attention and left me strapped with the burden of patching you up in the corner of some hygienically-deficient bar. And third”—she had to work to disguise her smile—“I thought you were immune to pain.”
Josie might as well have just slit me open and gutted me for as vulnerable as I felt. She was looking at me like she could see everything, everything, and was waiting for an explanation. I gave myself a proverbial shake before replying. “I am immune to pain, but no man, not even the toughest son of a bitch in the universe, is immune to alcohol applied to a gaping wound.”
“Gaping? Really? You on some sort of exaggeration kick or something?”
I couldn’t catch a break with Josie to save my life. “You said I needed medical attention. If something isn’t gaping on my face, you’re the one exaggerating, not me.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus. You are the most exasperating person I’ve ever known,” she said around a sigh, reaching for another alcohol swab. “For a man who doesn’t seem too picky about his alcohol, you wouldn’t think he’d turn his nose up at the rubbing kind.”
“Let’s get something straight. You, princess”—I lifted a brow until the pain registered. No raised brows for me for at least twenty-four hours—“are the most exasperating person I’ve ever known. And if it has the audacity to call itself alcohol and put a warning on itself saying not for personal consumption, then hell yes, I’ll turn my nose up at it. Calling something alcohol when you can’t drink it is kind of like Colt Mason calling himself a cowboy. It’s heresy.”
Josie knew from enough experience with me that I would never forfeit an argument. It just wasn’t in my nature. To start an argument with me was to lose an argument with me. So instead of going a few more rounds, she gave close to her dozenth head shake before lifting the swab to my other eyebrow. “Brace yourself, you big baby. I’m about to douse your gaping wound with the redheaded-stepchild of alcohols.”
I still flinched when she pressed the pad into my skin, but at least I didn’t act like a cat on a hot tin roof. I bit the inside of my cheek and blew out a slow breath.
“Big baby,” she muttered before moving closer and blowing on the spot she was dabbing.
Shit, that felt good. If I had a tail, it would have been wagging. No one had to tell me twice that Josie leaning in, that damn coconut-scented hair brushing my face, and softly blowing on my battle wounds was probably the worst thing that could happen to me. One step above the apocalypse. No one had to remind me that I needed to keep as much distance between her and me as space would allow. Hell, I was reminding myself of that. But when Josie broke through my walls and got close, physically and every other way she could, I was incapable of pushing her back out. No, nobody needed to tell me how fucked up that was. I reminded myself of it every day.
“This is one deja vu moment getting doctored up by you,” I said to distract myself from my thoughts.
She tore into another alcohol pad and blew on the next patch of face even before pressing it against it. “After these past couple years, I actually regret that day on the bus.” Her eyes looked everywhere but into mine.
I pulled out the knife she’d just lodged my chest before replying. “I guarantee you not as much as I regret it.”
Josie was a tough girl, one who I’d seen cry about as much as I did, but when her face broke, I was reminded for the billionth time what a dickhead I was. My default when someone hurt me was to hurt them back. It was a reflex, but it was one I wished I could turn off with people like Josie. She tore the next alcohol swab package open like it was to blame instead of me. Even though my words had cut her, she still dabbed my face gently, blowing the entire time.
I sighed. “Shit, Joze, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be such a dick but—”
“Something about me brings out the dick in you?” She tilted her head and waited.
“What? No. Not even close.” I shook my head. “Being around me brings out the dick in me.”
It was Josie’s turn to shake her head. “Sucks to be you.”
“Especially right now.” I held back the wince when she dabbed some ointment on my left eyebrow. Colt must have split that sucker right open.
“This one needs stitches, Garth. Some gauze and a Band-Aid just aren’t going to cut it.” Josie bit her lower lip, studying my eyebrow.
I snorted. “Yeah, right. There’s no way I’m going to let Colt Mason brag about giving me a good enough beating to require stitches. No. Way.”
“You don’t think he’s already bragging to his brothers about how he kicked your ass?”
“He might be bragging about it now. But once word gets around that I let him take his best shots with my hands all but tied behind my back and he still couldn’t manage to land a solid enough punch to require some stitches, I’m going to be the one with bragging rights.” Another eye roll from Josie. We had to be nearing the half a dozen count. “I’m made out of fucking steel. There isn’t a man alive who could hurt me.”
Josie pressed the alcohol swab back into my eyebrow but stopped blowing.
“Ow.” I snapped my head away from the swab. “That hurt.”
The corners of her mouth twitched before she blew on my eyebrow again. “There might not be a man alive who can hurt you”—she arched an eyebrow at me—“but I’m no man.”
I chuckled. “You’re a bruiser, Joze. A regular killer. Remind me to never pick a fight with you if I don’t want to get my ass beat.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time you got your ass beat by me, would it?” The corners of her mouth twitched up again.
“No need to bring up bad memories. I’m not drunk enough for that.”
“I thought the first week of kindergarten when I socked you in the jaw for pulling on my pigtails was a repressed memory, not a bad one.”
“A repressed memory and a bad memory are one and the same. If you had enough of them, you’d know that by now.”
“Spoken like someone who has a few . . .”
I closed my eyes as she continued to work on my eyebrow. One eye was about to swell shut anyway. “Spoken like someone who only has those kinds of memories.”
“Exaggerate much?” Josie muttered.
“Only about the things that are important.”
That made Josie laugh. Her laugh started off small and got bigger until it almost rocked her entire body. That laugh had been one of the few constants of my past. I loved that laugh.
I shouldn’t love that laugh.
&n
bsp; “Okay, last call for stitches. Anyone? Any takers?” she said once she’d stopped laughing.
I sealed my lips and shook my head, but Josie was already grabbing a thick Band-Aid from the kit. She knew me about as well as I knew myself.
“You’re impossible.” Sliding my hair back from my forehead, she tore open the bandage.
“Are you just figuring this out now? That I’m impossible? Because I would have thought by now, you especially would realize what an impossible, stubborn ass I am.” My fists curled around the chair-arms as Josie settled the bandage into position.
“I know who you are, but what happened to the guy who made me believe he’d walk through fire rather than hurt one of his only friends? What happened to the guy who punched Roy Watkins at recess for calling me a prissy little bitch?” Josie leaned back, looking about as exhausted as I felt.
She was waiting for an answer, so I gave her one. “Someone he cared about fucked him up good.”
Josie’s hands balled in her lap. “I know your dad’s hard on you. Why don’t you move out already? Get away from that toxic environment.” She grabbed the ointment again and dotted it on a few other areas on my face.
“My dad wasn’t the person I was talking about.” Why in the hell did I say that? I couldn’t even blame the alcohol for my momentary lapse into opening up like a goddamned pansy. When Josie’s eyebrows came together as she worked out who I was referring to, I gave myself an imaginary beating. I was already bleeding; no need to spill my guts all over the damn place too. I needed to change the topic. And the mood. I didn’t do vulnerable for a mountain of reasons.
So I slid that lazy smile of mine into place. The carefree, I-could-give-a-shit one that drove girls wild. Well, every girl but the one sitting a foot in front of me. It drove her wild, I guess, although in a totally different way. “So? You and Mason, eh? How’s that working out?”
“Better when some asshole in a bar doesn’t pick a fight with him.” She shot me an accusatory glare as she capped the ointment.
Finders Keepers Page 2
