Nash (Marked Men #4)(2)

As I walked into the house I was hit with a blast of music, and the optimism I’d felt started to waver. A crowd of three guys I recognized from chem crowded past me as they joined the mayhem taking place in the living room. I couldn’t find a safe place to rest my eyes, everywhere people seemed to be doing something that made me blush. I did my best to keep myself from gaping, but I felt the telltale heat creeping up my neck as I pushed my way through the sea of bodies. It was disturbing and I was beginning to think a new hairdo and some mascara would never be enough to make me fit in, in a place like this.

The kitchen looked a little less crowded, so I moved in that direction, keeping my eyes peeled for Nash. I was certain that if I could find him, this night would turn around. My stomach fluttered again as I thought about meeting those purple eyes across the room. I imagined them glinting and crinkling at the sides like they did when he smiled, and I pictured myself suddenly at ease by his side as the rest of the chaos faded away. He would make all the discomfort creeping under my skin disappear.

As I rounded a corner someone bumped into me, spilling sticky, red liquid all down the front of my carefully selected shirt. I gasped in surprise and the jerk moved on without even apologizing. I was shaking and officially freaking out on the inside. It was all too clear that I didn’t belong here, no matter how cute Nash Donovan was. My hands started to shake and it took every ounce of self-control I had to keep tears at bay.

Turned out, the kitchen was just as bad as the front of the party. Worse really, because the booze was apparently kept there and the crowd in that room seemed to be the drunkest of the drunk. It was like walking across a minefield of ugly remarks and dirty looks to get to the sink to try and clean up. I heard a few snickers, saw a few blurry looks cast my way, and it was enough. I planned to rinse off and go home. This place and these people were not for me and I knew better.

“Who invited you?”

The question was slurred and followed with a heavy hand on my shoulder. The voice—and the hand—belonged to none other than the birthday girl herself, and she was drunk. Really drunk and out for blood. Ashley and I weren’t friends, but she had never said or done anything overtly nasty to me in all the years we had gone to school together … I kind of felt like I was going to throw up.

“What?”

“Who invited you?” There was a sneer on her pretty lips, her big brown eyes glassy. “Why are you here?”

I wanted to say Nash had asked me to come, that he had told me we were going to hang out tonight, but I couldn’t get the words out … because just then he showed up.

He entered the kitchen followed by the Archer twins and Jet Keller. There was no mistaking it: these boys brought the party with them wherever they went. Nash had on his customarily sloppy look of torn jeans, skate shoes, and a band T-shirt. He also had a baseball hat pulled low over his forehead that did nothing to hide the high flush in his face or the unclear and foggy haze covering his eyes. It was obvious he was already wasted or even high and I felt the first threads of disappointment start to tie up my cracking heart. I saw his gaze skim over the kitchen, land on me, and keep moving. It made me suck in a painful breath and I had to bite the inside of my cheek—hard—to keep from really crying.

It was like he didn’t even see me. He didn’t smile, didn’t wink, and didn’t so much as incline his head in my direction. It was like I didn’t even exist. I went numb. I felt like my blood turned to ice and everything in the center of my chest ceased to work. I curled my shaking hands into fists and tried to frantically plan an escape route that would save me any further embarrassment or heartache.

Ashley apparently forgot all about my fatness and ugliness marring her party and bounded over to the new additions. If my heart filled with awful feelings at his flagrant dismissal, then it practically burst open when he scooped her up in his arms and let her inhale his face while he grabbed her ass. I wanted to choke on my embarrassment as I scrambled backward out of the kitchen. There was no more thought put to self-preservation, only to escape. I had a frantic, desperate need to put as much space between me and this party—but more so between me and Nash—as possible.

Mercifully, the tears didn’t fall until I was safely at my car. In that moment, slumped in my driver’s seat with black streaks on my fingers from the mascara I’d let Faith smear on, I knew the truth: the beautiful people stuck together and it didn’t matter what was on the inside. Nash might be nice when it was just him and I by our lockers, but put him in a room full of people, give him a skinny and pretty girl willing to put out, and I was invisible. I’d been so stupid to think it was anything more.

So I did what was instinctive and resurrected the shield around my heart. From then on I ignored him every time he tried to tell me hello. I looked away from him when he smiled at me. I avoided my locker as much as I could when I knew he was going to be there and tried to focus on the fact that graduation was right around the corner and I would be leaving this small mountain town and this clueless boy that had hurt my feelings so deeply behind. I knew logically Nash didn’t know how I felt, had no clue that I had thought he was different and special, but that didn’t make the burn of his ignorance or my embarrassment any less hot.

In the warmth of early spring, with my college enrollment all lined up for fall and my insecurities carefully compartmentalized—the sting of my failed crush finally beginning to heal—I stumbled upon Nash and his friends outside smoking after school … My heart lurched, but none of them saw me and I scuttled by, hoping to hurry to my car and planning on ignoring him like I had been doing since the party, when his deep voice assaulted my ears.