The frown was back on Nolan’s face, the deep lines on his forehead peeking through his bangs. I craved to smooth away those lines and brush his hair out of his warm chocolate-brown eyes. A girl could get lost in those eyes, and many already had.
“Why would you be…scared you’d never…see me again?” I asked. “You haven’t exactly…made a lot of effort to…see me as it is.” The bitterness from my laugh had moved over to my words. I hadn’t meant for them to come out that way. Guess the drugs were more powerful than I realized. The truth serum of emotions.
Well, if that was true, I’d have to work super hard at making sure Nolan didn’t figure out how I really felt about him. That’d be the last thing he’d want to hear.
Nolan looked away, his gaze landing on the window. From my vantage point, all I could see was the crisp late-fall sky, blue and almost cloud free. I couldn’t even tell if there was new snow on the ground. The last I remembered, it had been in the forecast.
“I’m sorry, Hailey.” His gaze returned to me, and the sexy one-sided smile crept back onto his face. And once again the stupid heart rate monitor proudly announced the effect that his smile had on me. Seriously, heart, don’t you have something better to do?
“I know I’ve been an asshole,” Nolan continued, and no way was I arguing against that. “I should’ve at least answered your texts and let you know I was okay. I figured you were better off without me in your life, and as selfish as it sounds, I wanted a new start. I couldn’t do that if I kept in contact with people here. I wanted to forget this town. I wanted to forget everything about it.”
Part of that I could understand. And part of it was a lie. “You kept in contact with Brandon.” If he claimed he only kept in contact with Brandon because Brandon was his best friend, I’d nail him on the side of his head with my pillow.
We’d been friends for too long for me not to know what he was thinking. Maybe I was a little rusty now at figuring him out, and maybe he had perfected the skill of masking his emotions while he was away being a rock star. But I could tell he was thinking the same thing as me when it came to Brandon and the best-friend excuse. He knew I’d call bullshit if he tried that one.
“I know,” he said. “And I also figured you’d beat the info out of him if you wanted to know how I was doing.”
Somehow I managed not to laugh at that and at the memory of when I had been twelve years old and wanted to be part of Nolan and Brandon’s secret club. Only boys were allowed. That had been Brandon’s idea. Nolan was all for me joining, and he explained to Brandon how I could benefit the club, most notably because I could sneak in cookies. It was only when I started hitting Brandon on the head with a pillow that he finally changed his mind.
“And I didn’t exactly ignore you,” Nolan added. “Brandon attended all your games back when you were playing on the collegiate team, and he taped them for me.”
My eyes widened. “He did?” I knew Brandon had been at the games, and I’d always thought that was a little odd. Unlike me and Nolan, Brandon had never been a fan of soccer. Hockey and football were more his sports. And unlike me and Nolan, he’d never spent his childhood attending practices. He’d never stayed up late, practicing his footwork until he was doing it in his sleep. No, that had been all Nolan and me.
“You didn’t think I’d miss it, did you?” Nolan sounded almost horrified I would even believe that. “And by the way, congratulations on being voted MVP.”
I blinked. “You knew?”
His sexy grin became a full-out beam. “Of course I knew you were named most valuable player. I might not have kept in direct contact with you, but you were still very much part of my life.” He cleared his throat and shifted on my bed. “Now I sound like a creepy stalker.”
If that made him a creepy stalker, then I was one too. As much as I had claimed I wouldn’t go looking for info about him when his band first became popular, I hadn’t been able to stop myself. When I read the fan sites about how amazing he was between the sheets, I knew I should quit punishing myself that way, but I still kept reading them. Although from the sound of it, beds usually weren’t involved in the quick-and-dirty fuck sessions. Some girls practically wrote erotic novels in their enthusiasm to share about their shameless trysts with him.
When it came down to it, I’d believed I had somehow failed Nolan, but I’d wanted to make sure he was okay, even if he was no longer talking to me.
Now that he was back in my life, though, I knew I wouldn’t survive once he left again—maybe this time forever.
All I could do was protect myself from falling even harder for him.
Only I didn’t know how.
Chapter 6
Nolan