“Well I can’t say I’m sorry to see Gabe go, but you do deserve someone that treats you amazing and loves you in all the right ways. You’ve earned it because no one I’ve ever met in my whole life loves as freely and gives as much as you do and seeing as those parents of yours might as well be carved out of ice that’s just a damn miracle. You’re a good girl Shaw and at the very least you deserve a good guy.”
I folded my hands together and laid my cheek down. My head was slowly starting to stop throbbing and all I wanted to do was take a nap and maybe work on processing everything that happened today.
Ayden was right, I did deserve a good guy, I knew what one looked like, knew what one acted like in fact I had been best friends with the ultimate good guy. Remy embodied everything any sane girl would want in a boyfriend and yet I had never had those feelings for him, not once. I remembered clearly the first time he had taken me home with him. I was thirteen and having a really hard time fitting in with all the preppy, rich kids my first year of high school. I knew now that image and brands mattered, but then I just wanted to wear jeans and my hair in a ponytail. Remy had been seventeen and captain of the football team. He found me crying in the girl’s locker room one day after a particularly nasty verbal beat down from Amy and her crew. He didn’t make fun of me, didn’t ask questions or get all weird because I was a freshman and he was a junior he just bundled me up and carted me home with him because I was sad and alone and he didn’t want me to be either of those things ever again. He told me he could tell by my eyes that I was a kind person, that I needed someone to look out for me and from that minute on he decided he would be the person to do it. I remembered all the warm and fuzzy feelings that came with that moment, remembered the gratitude and overwhelming joy I felt at finally having someone see how worthy and deserving of unconditional love I was, but what I remembered most was everything inside me going upside down when Rule walked into the kitchen and titled his chin up at me and asked, “Who’s the chick?”
My heart stopped beating, my lungs felt like they were going to collapse; my skin was suddenly too tight all over my body and I couldn’t form a rational thought or a coherent sentence. Of course then I chalked it up to a silly teenage crush, all the Archer boys were good looking and had qualities that made them larger than life and every girl I knew had to have a prerequisite infatuation with a bad boy at one time or another, of course they normally grew out of it when they realized the bad boy was just an ass and they deserved to be treated better, but as time went on and as things changed my feelings never did. It was clear they were never going to be returned, Rule only saw me as Remy’s little tag along, as a spoiled little rich girl and then as we got older as Remy’s girlfriend, which sucked because I had never been any of those things and as a result I sabotaged relationships, turned down guy after guy simply because I didn’t want a good guy, I wanted the one that was damaged and blind to the way I felt.
I was a good girl, I was loyal and honest, and I worked hard and invested a lot of time and energy in building a secure future for myself. I stayed out of trouble and went out of my way to try and be the polished and perfect daughter my parents wanted me to be and the successful driven woman the Archers had given me the confidence to be, what I never spent any time being was the person that I actually felt like I was. She was locked somewhere deep inside of me, suffocating and still holding on to the hope that Rule would notice she was alive. It was exhausting and on the vulnerable moments when I was brutally honest with myself I had to admit I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep it up.
Chapter 3
Rule
It was a crazy busy week at the shop. I think mostly because we were right in the thick of tax refund time and people that had extra money to spend often wanted to spend it on ink. I was booked with back to back appointments all the way through Saturday and even went in on Monday night to work on a guy’s sleeve I had started a few months ago because I just didn’t have any room in my schedule to fit him in. Nash was just as booked as I was, so when Saturday night rolled around we were both ready to let loose and tie one on. Sunday afternoon went about the same as last week only this time I walked the girl to her car and didn’t have to worry about Shaw bursting in on a scene I didn’t want her to see. I called Rome to see when he was going to come to town, but apparently things at home weren’t any better after last week so he wasn’t ready to leave mom on her own yet. I wanted to care, wanted to feel bad for her but I just couldn’t muster it up.
I was getting ready to crack open a beer and plop in front of the flat screen to relax and watch the game when Nash came out of his room pulling on a hoodie and a black ball cap over his shaved head. He was a few inches shorter than me, built a lot stocker but in all actuality was a hell of a lot better looking. He kept his black hair shaved close to the scalp because he had twin tattoos on the side of his head and bright, bright eyes that looked more purple than blue and stood out starkly against his much darker complexion. He didn’t have as much metal in his face as I did, just a hoop through the center of his nose and both ears sporting obsidian gauges, and for whatever reason he kept his hands and neck free of ink, which always made me laugh because of the stuff permanently marked on his head. We were a matched set so when we went out together it was usually a given we wouldn’t have to come home alone. Nash was a much nicer guy than I was, he just looked several degrees more badass.
“Jet and Rowdy are at The Goal Line watching the game. They wanna hangout if you’re game.”
Rowdy worked at the shop with us and Jet was the lead singer of a local metal band we liked to go see play. They often rounded out the group that Nash and I traveled in and going to the bar to watch the game sounded a lot more fun than brooding on the couch by myself. So I put my beer back in the fridge and shoved my feet into my black boots.
Nash drove a fully restored 73’ Dodge Charger. It was a monster of black, chrome and motor. I was pretty sure everyone in the apartment complex knew whenever we were coming or going because it was just that loud and rumbly but it was a cool ride and I knew it meant a lot to him because he had done the rebuild mostly by himself. Nash’s background was a little sketchy, but since my own was less than stellar I never really pushed him to talk about it. I knew his dad had died when he was really young and that his mom had remarried some rich asshole that to this day Nash refused to have anything to do with. Phil, the same Phil that let us make his shop our own, had been integral in getting Nash to adulthood without a criminal record and a whole pack of illegitimate kids.
The bar was in lower downtown or LoDo as the locals called it. It was a popular hangout for mostly locals and industry people and since I hadn’t been around on a Sunday in years I forgot how packed it could be when the Broncos played. The guys had a table in the back right under a massive flat screen and already had glasses and a pitcher of beer waiting. Fist bumps and head nods for greeting went around the table as a raucous cheer went up in the packed bar as the Broncos scored.
“What up fellas?” Nash poured us a round as we settled in. Rowdy wiggled his eyebrows up and down and motioned to a spot over his shoulder towards the bar.
“Isn’t this better than family time? Nobody wants to see mom dressed like that.”
The girls that worked in the bar were all dressed in sexy sports themed uniforms, some were super sexy cheerleaders, some were in really small jerseys and hot pants that laced up like football pants and my favorites were dressed in little tiny referee outfits that barley covered their bottoms. It was hot and way better than getting torn to pieces by my parents just for breathing.