I knocked on the door more out of desperation to get away from her and her curious gaze than to see if Nash would answer.

Of course he didn’t and I felt like an idiot. I shifted uneasily from foot to foot and tried to knock again.

“Good luck. He hasn’t opened it for anyone else.” She sounded amused and I flushed bright red. I would never get over feeling like I was always the butt of someone’s joke. It made me feel kind of sick to my stomach, more so because she looked the way she did.

I was lifting my hand to knock one last time when the door suddenly yanked open and I was face to chest with a mostly naked, furiously scowling, obviously inebriated Nash Donovan. Those amazing eyes that were trapped somewhere between purple and blue blinked sluggishly at me and I let out a startled gasp as he grasped the hand I still had lifted up to knock and pulled me toward him.

“You must have the lucky touch, Red. Good for you.” The neighbor’s laughing voice followed me into the apartment as Nash stumbled unsteadily backward, taking me with him.

He slammed the door closed behind me with a thud and tried to focus on me out of bloodshot eyes. He smelled like booze, cigarette smoke, and I couldn’t help but wrinkle my nose up in distaste. I could physically handle myself. It was a job requirement in the ER, but at the moment he looked kind of feral and I had to admit his glowering, grumbling presence was slightly menacing.

He was taller than average, but so was I, meaning he wasn’t really looming so much as he was threatening, because he was so unfamiliar and unhinged in his current state. It would be a flat-out lie if I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice that even in his disheveled and drunken state he was in good shape. He obviously took pretty good care of himself aside from pickling his liver and that awful habit of smoking. He had always been a darkly handsome guy, his dark brows slashing and dramatic on a face that was full of character holding a hint of unknown ethnicity behind it. Those purplish eyes of his were out of this world and unforgettable. They were really too pretty and delicate-looking to be on such a masculine face.

I think it was the fact that all he had on was a pair of black boxer shorts revealing there wasn’t an exposed part of his olive-toned skin that didn’t have some kind of design inked on it that was making me a little bit overwhelmed. I liked tattoos, had a couple myself, but Nash’s dedication to decorating his body was on an entirely different level. I mean I wasn’t surprised at the amount of artwork he was sporting considering he had those brilliant flames tattooed on his head and a curved ring in the center of his nose. That was all designed to make a statement, to proclaim that he didn’t have to live by anyone’s rules but his own, which I guess was fine and worked for him, but it was a lot to take in for me when I already considered him a danger and kind of a douche bag.

I refused to admit I was openly checking him out. I couldn’t help it. He was missing clothes, built and gorgeous, even if all that was under miles of ink.

“I ordered pizza.”

I looked up at him and asked like a moron:

“What?”

“I thought you were the pizza guy, but you’re not.”

He stumbled back a few steps, grabbed the back of the couch, and sort of just slithered down until he was sitting on the floor across from me. He stuck his long legs out in front of him and rubbed his watery eyes with the knuckles of his hands. What in the hell was happening right now? It was like he had just folded in on himself right in front of my eyes. He was disappearing inside of himself.

“Are you okay, Nash? A lot of people are worried about you.”

He gave a laugh that sounded so broken, so jagged, I felt it scrape across my skin, leaving goose bumps in its wake.

“No.”

I wasn’t following his slurred or broken side of the conversation, maybe because I was totally distracted by his naked torso. I had seen a few good-looking guys in their underwear in my time, some at work, some not. None of them in memory held a candle to Nash. Someone should tell him what he did for a pair of black boxers should be considered a lethal weapon to a woman’s sanity.

“No, what?” I had to make a real effort to try and follow his scattered additions to our choppy conversation.

He tilted his head back so that he could look up at me. The flames over his ears were attached to more tattooed flames that curled up over his massive shoulders and onto the front of his chest. I guiltily wanted to see what they attached to on the backside of him. He also had what appeared to be some kind of intricately inked wings that draped all the way across his rib cage, down both sides of his corrugated abs, and disappeared into the front of his boxers on either side of his belly button. I couldn’t even imagine how bad something like that had to hurt, but the tattoo work was impressive in its enormity and detail and so was the rock-hard body that it lived on.

“No, I’m not okay.”

I blew out a breath and crouched down so that I was more on his level. His gaze followed me as I lowered myself to my haunches. People told me all the time how pretty my eyes were and it made me blush and stammer. They were all right, gray and clear, and my patients seemed to find them soothing. But I thought, as I gazed somberly into the sad depths of his, that clearly no one who thought I had pretty eyes had ever looked into Nash’s. I had never seen a more striking or unique color than the columbine blue of his. Sitting under those raven-black eyebrows, they were just magnetic.

“You need to talk to someone, family, your friends, or maybe a girlfriend. This isn’t a good situation for anyone, Nash, and drinking and smoking a carton a day isn’t going to make it any better. You need to be strong for your dad, but you also need to be strong for you. It seems like you have a lot of people you can lean on, they’ve been in and out of that hospital room all week. Trust me, this is not a fight you want to battle on your own.”

He threw his head back until it thumped on the dark leather of the couch. He squeezed his eyes shut. He pulled his long legs up and clenched fists up on the top of each knee. He even had scrolling artwork inked on his skin from beneath the hem of his boxer shorts to his knee on one leg and to the top of his foot on the other. There was simply too much of it for me to pick apart all the separate images and designs, all I knew was that it was all bold, dynamic, and full of color and had obviously been put on him by someone with an incredible amount of skill.

“Until a few days ago I thought my father walked out on me when I was just a baby. My mom told me he was a deadbeat, that he didn’t have any interest in being a husband or a father, so every time that asshole Loften talked shit to me, told me I was garbage, tried to put me under his thumb, I told myself it was cool because my mom deserved nice things, a guy to take care of her since my dad was an asshole. Only Loften is a judgmental, superficial prick and basically forced her to pick me or him. She picked him even though my dad was in the same fucking state all along and never walked out on anyone.”

He gave that laugh that made me hurt for him again, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out a hand and putting it on one of his balled-up fists. I could feel the tension and dissonance creeping all over him.

“Turns out the only adult I ever looked up to, that ever showed me I was worth anything just the way I was, fucking lied to me my entire fucking life. Phil took me in when my mom kicked me out. He pretty much raised me, taught me how to tattoo, gave me a future, and showed me how to be a man. I walked into that hospital room, took one look at him, and wondered how I had missed what was right in front of me all along.”

He grunted and let his eyes drift shut again. I was following along as best I could with his story, but I was kind of lost. I felt like there was someone else he should be telling all of this to, but for whatever reason I was the one he had let in, both figuratively and literally. He hadn’t known Phil was his father until the other night? That was huge and just as hard to work through as the fact that his loved one was terminally ill. No wonder he was just a mess. I couldn’t blame him.