“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.

“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.

“Whatever. Getting in a bar fight will be the single most exciting thing that ever happens to Colt Mason.”

“Yeah, because being with me or potentially marrying me one day wouldn’t even register.” She tossed the stuff back in the first aid kit, still taking out her irritation on something else instead of me.

“I guarantee if that son of a bitch even thought he had a chance at marrying you one day, that would be the highlight of his life.” I leaned forward, waiting for her to look at me. “But that douche has as much a chance with you as I do.”

She grabbed my hat and settled it back on my head, adjusting it until it was right how I wore it, just a hair off the brow. “He’s an awful lot like Jesse. What makes you think I’d never marry him?”

I wasn’t sure if she was intentionally baiting me, but it was working. “First off, that little dick is nothing like Jesse. Nothing. Other than wearing the same kind of hat, although Colt’s has never so much as seen a speck of mud, Jesse and Colt are about as alike as Jesse and me. Secondly, you’re not going to marry that boy because, well, you’re not going to marry that boy.” I lifted an eyebrow and waited for her to argue. Josie might try to deny it, but she couldn’t lie to herself. She was as likely to marry one of the Mason boys as I was.

“How descriptive.” She leaned back and crossed her legs. Damn Josie Gibson’s legs and that dress that barely covered them. It barely barely covered them when she went and crossed them like that. I tried not to stare for too long, but when I did manage to shift my eyes back to hers, she was giving me a look.

I cleared my throat and tried to forget about Josie’s bare legs a few inches to the side of mine. “Fine. Here’s just one of the million ‘descriptive’ reasons I’ve got for you.” I leaned toward her until I could smell her shampoo again, and I knew she could smell the whiskey on my breath. And then, I leaned in closer. I waited until her eyes met mine. It took a while, but when they did, my point was proven. “You look at me with more fire in your eyes than you do him.”

Her eyes narrowed, but they stayed with me. Continuing to prove my point. “That’s enraged fire, Black.”

Damn. At that proximity, forget the shampoo; I think I could smell her strawberry lip gloss. Which, of course, made me remember the way it’d tasted that night . . .

Get your shit together, Black. This is Josie. Josie Gibson. The girl I needed to stay away from for both of our sakes. When I leaned back that time, I was sure to give my chair a good slide to put some more distance between us. “It’s still fire. And if it isn’t there in the beginning, it sure as shit isn’t going to magically crop up out of nowhere.”

“Says the love non-expert.”

“I’m the expert because I’m the only person on the face of the planet smart enough to know better than to fall in love. That right there is the reason I’ve earned my expert badge in love.” I glanced toward the bar, hoping to catch Brandy’s attention, because a few shots right about then would really dull the pain. Both kinds.

“You’ve got one warped view of love.”

“Why, thank you. That’s the best compliment I’ve heard all week.”