Married to the Enemy: A Small Town Enemies-to-Lovers Romance (Bliss River Book 2) Read online

  Nash mentioned that his mom and dad both have to work really hard, and often take on extra night shifts to pay for everything their family needs, but I didn’t realize he meant this kind of hard. I didn’t realize his parents were literally working themselves to the bone or how poor his family must be.

  I suddenly feel terrible for all the things I take for granted. For my closet full of clothes and my weekly allowance and the car I suspect I’m getting on my sixteenth birthday.

  I’m already deep in the guilt pit when Nash’s mom shoots me a weary look that makes me feel very foolish and childish and small.

  She listens to Bea’s report of the incident without saying a word then asks, “Do I really have to take him home? I’m sure nothing like this will happen again. Nash really loves it here.”

  Bea’s husband, Phil, a man close to my dad’s age who’s looked sick to his stomach since the moment he and Bea shined flashlights on our blanket, exchanges a loaded look with his wife.

  Bea purses her lips, continuing to avoid eye contact with both Nash and myself as she says, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Geary, we have a very strict policy on being out of bunks after hours. Nash will absolutely have to leave, but…” She shakes her head. “Well, we’ll have to wait to see what Aria’s parents have to say before we can send him home. We may have to contact the police.”

  Mrs. Geary’s brows pinch together. “The police? What? Why would—”

  “Aria is a minor,” Bea cuts in. “Nash is not. I don’t want to start throwing around ugly words, but technically this is a very serious situation. Laws have been broken.”

  “But Nash only turned eighteen last month,” Mrs. Geary says, her skin going even paler. “He’s still a boy.”

  Phil sighs heavily, a sound that seems to pain him. “I hear you, ma’am, but she’s only fifteen. Hopefully we can work this out without anyone getting in more trouble than they’re in already, but if the Marches want to press charges, we—”

  The rest of Phil’s sentence is cut off by a rampaging rhinoceros thundering into the room, smoke steaming from his ears.

  It’s my dad, in full, protect-his-offspring, beast mode. His thinning blond hair is standing up in a crazy fuzz-halo around his head as he demands to know “what the hell is going on here!” His voice is so deep it makes the walls vibrate. Even dressed in suit pants and dress shoes paired with a Bob and Sue’s Smokehouse tee-shirt from before I was born, back when Mom and Dad opened the first of their chain of BBQ restaurants, he somehow manages to be terrifying, not ridiculous.

  Daddy’s only five ten and on the slim side for a man with an abiding love of red meat, but he has the kind of personal energy that knocks larger men off their feet from half a football field away. He can be a lot on a normal day. When he’s mad, he’s flat out impossible.

  This isn’t going to go well.

  Not well at all.

  The thought has barely passed through my head when Daddy’s gaze locks with Nash’s. My father’s eyes catch fire and his jaw unhinges, the better to fully unleash the power of his vengeful fury.

  Words I’ve never heard emerge from his mouth stream into the room in a vicious river of ugliness, making my blood run cold. The things he’s saying are so awful that at first my brain refuses to process the information.

  I sit, stunned and silent in my chair as my father accuses my boyfriend of being a “low life piece of shit,” among other, far worse things. Things that turn my breath leaden in my lungs, making it feel like I’m being crushed to death by my own shame.

  But finally, when Dad points a finger at Nash’s chest, promising to prosecute him “to the full extent of the law,” my lips remember how to move.

  “No, Dad! Stop,” I shout.

  “I will not stop!” he thunders back in that awful voice that sounds nothing like the father I’ve known and loved for my entire life. It’s so jarring—and terrifying—that I burst into tears.

  Big, sloppy, ugly-cry tears.

  I try to pull myself together, but I can’t seem to stop, no matter how embarrassing it is to lose control in front of Nash and his mom and Phil and Bea—the directors have already seen me almost naked, for God’s sake, do they really have to see me wailing like a toddler on top of it?

  The only good thing about falling to pieces is that it seems to pop Dad’s anger balloon. The next time I dare to lift my face from my hot, tear-soaked hands, he’s sitting on the couch beside me, patting my back. “There, there, baby,” he says in his normal voice, “It’s okay. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell like that.”

  “Please, Dad,” I say, my voice thick. “Nash didn’t hurt me or make me do anything I didn’t want to do. Please, don’t call the police.”

  “You’re only fifteen, Aria,” Dad says, what looks like fear in his pale eyes. “You don’t know what you want.”

  “I do, too,” I insist, sitting up straighter. “And I know good people from bad people. You taught me that, Dad. And Nash is a good person. He’s so sweet and thoughtful and talented. He didn’t deserve any of those things you said about him.”

  Daddy’s mouth tightens. “Well, that may be. If I ever see the boy again, I’ll apologize. After I tell him to stay at least five miles away from my daughter for the rest of his perverted life.”

  “He’s not a pervert,” I say, but my voice sounds weaker than it did. I glance around the room, shocked to realize my dad is right. Nash is gone. He’s gone, and he left without saying goodbye. “Where…”

  “Nash and his mother went to get his things,” Bea says, pity furrowing her brow as she sits down in the chair across from me, the one Nash was sitting in only moments before. “As the older, supposedly wiser party, he should have known better than to do what he did. But since you’re only fifteen and have been with us for so many years…” Her lips curve in a small smile. “Well, we’re going to offer you the chance to stay, providing you promise not to break the rules again and spend your free period helping out in the cafeteria to make amends.”

  “I…” I swallow the words rising in my throat. It’s not fair for me to get to stay while Nash is kicked out, but Bea isn’t going to change her mind. Even if she did, my dad wouldn’t let me stay at camp if Nash was still here. And if I insist on going home in solidarity with my boyfriend, I have no doubt I’ll be grounded from my phone and my laptop, ensuring I’ll have no way to reach out to apologize for my psycho father.

  But if I stay here…

  Camp is a cell free zone, but there are payphones in the rec room and Delilah has an emergency burner phone her mom made her smuggle in just in case she has an anxiety attack and needs to talk to family in the middle of the night. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t have the chance to get Nash’s cell number. Surely the Geary’s have a landline. They seem like grounded, landline kind of people, the sort who have a listed number a girl can track down if she Googles hard enough.

  I’ll be able to talk to him if I stay.

  That thought is the only solid thing in my mind as I nod and say, “Thank you. Yes, please, I’d like to stay. I’m sorry for breaking the rules.”

  After a lecture about believing in myself that I can’t see has anything to do with getting caught making out, my dad leaves and Bea escorts me back to my bunk, where I lie awake all night, waiting for the sun and a chance to call Nash.

  I have to talk to him.

  If I don’t, I’m going to go crazy.

  The next morning, I sneak online during Photoshop class and track down the Geary’s phone number.

  But for some reason, in the harsh light of day, I can’t bring myself to dial the number. I’m so mortified by the things my dad said last night, and also a little…afraid.

  What if Nash hates me now? What if he took one look at my rhino dad and decided he wants nothing to do with me? Surely, if he still cared, he would have at least said goodbye, even if he had to shout it over his shoulder as Phil shoved him out the door.

  I worry myself sick about it all day and almost pass out i
n the shower I’m so stressed out. Finally, I decide to stick a pin in the problem. I’ll call Nash when I get back home, where it will be safe to spend days crying my eyes out if things go wrong.

  I can’t lose it here in front of my friends. They would freak out. I’m the upbeat, confident one, not the girl who falls apart because a boy doesn’t like her anymore.

  Even if he is the best boy she’s ever met.

  Four weeks later, after our final show and the reception for the parents, I spend the entire drive home from camp pumping myself up to face my fears.

  I’m going to call him.

  And it’s going to be okay.

  Or at least it will be over, and I won’t feel like a coward anymore.

  I call the minute I get home, before I start my laundry or grab a taco from the plate my sister, Lark, made to celebrate my return. I listen to the phone ring, my heart in my throat, until an old-fashioned sounding answering machine picks up.

  Who even has those anymore?

  I’m so shocked—and stressed about what I could say that will be worthy of being recorded for potentially everyone in the Geary household to hear—that I drop the phone back into its cradle without saying a word.

  It takes me the rest of the day—and four tacos—to come up with a solid, family-friendly message that will get my point across to Nash without upsetting his parents, if they happen to be the first ones to hear it.

  I write it out on a notecard, reading it aloud to myself over and over again before I call the next day.

  But when I hear Mrs. Geary’s tired voice asking me to “leave my name and number,” I chicken out again. And again and again—five times total in my first week home.

  I can’t seem to get anyone on the line, but maybe that’s on purpose? Maybe Nash somehow knows that unfamiliar number is mine and is refusing to pick up the phone on principle?

  I’m still stressing about it—and trying to psych myself up to leave my message when a miracle happens.

  I’m downtown, shopping for a first-day-of-school outfit with my friends, when Nash materializes around a corner with two other boys. They’re all eating corn dogs and laughing and he looks so gorgeous—and perfect and kind and familiar—that before I make a conscious decision to bolt, I’m dashing out of the store and hurrying to catch up with him.

  “Nash, wait!” I call, holding my breath as he turns, praying he’ll be happy to see me, too.

  But when his eyes meet mine they go cold. Almost as cool as his voice. “Hey there, Princess.”

  When I was growing up, I enjoyed playing princess as much as any other little girl, but the way Nash says the word makes me want to rush home and burn every crown and tiara.

  He is obviously not happy to see me. But can I blame him? I should have left a damned message. But surely, if I explain how nervous I was, he’ll understand. If only he were alone instead of flanked by two jocks, who are staring at me like a zoo animal.

  “Can we talk?” I squeak, sounding about ten years old. “Please?”

  “No thanks,” Nash says still sounding like a stranger. “Wouldn’t want to piss off your daddy.”

  “Please,” I beg, willing him to see how sorry I am for the way things went down. “I can explain. I—”

  “I’m sure you could, but you didn’t,” he cuts in. “So why bother now?”

  “Because I want to apologize. And maybe…be friends again?”

  Nash sighs.

  His friends smirk, knowing smirks that make me suspect I’m not the first girl to beg Nash for a few minutes of his time.

  Suddenly, in that moment, I begin to doubt everything I thought was true. Maybe Nash isn’t nice, and I wasn’t special to him. Maybe everything that went down between us at camp was just what my dad shouted the night he barreled into the director’s office—a trick to get into an innocent girl’s pants.

  And then he says, “Friends? Were we ever friends?” and my heart drops into my stomach, making me regret every bite of pizza I had for lunch.

  But I’m not going to let him see how much he’s hurt me.

  “I guess not,” I say, covering with a bitchy curl of my lip as my thoughts race, searching for a verbal dart to throw that will wound him the way he’s wounded me. Only one thing comes to mind. “Too bad. My parents always taught me it was good manners to be kind to the less fortunate.”

  It’s a low blow and a shitty thing to say. I know that, but in the moment all I care about is giving Nash a taste of his own medicine.

  His flinch as my dart flies through the chink in his armor is so simultaneously gratifying and shame-inducing it makes my pulse race and my cheeks flush hot.

  But he recovers quickly, shrugging me off. “Whatever. Yeah, I’m poor, but at least I’m not a spoiled brat. Or a liar.”

  I want to tell him he’s crazy, to insist that I never lied, that every sweet thing I said to him and about him was the absolute truth.

  But I can’t.

  He’s not who I thought he was, and I’m not the type to take abuse lying down. I’m a fighter, always have been, always will be. So I simply arch what I hope is an amused brow and mutter, “Whatever, loser,” before spinning on my heel and walking back to join my friends.

  So it begins.

  And so it continues…

  For the next three years—while I’m finishing high school, and Nash graduates and starts working construction with his uncle—the two of us exchange verbal grenades every time our paths cross.

  Which, in a town the size of Bliss River, is way more often than I’d like.

  By the time I move to Paris to study to be a pastry chef the summer after graduation, I can’t remember feeling anything for Nash but contempt.

  I’ve forgotten the way he knocked me off my feet when I was fifteen, and I refuse to admit, even to myself, that no one has ever lit me up the way Nash Geary did one hot, summer night.

  I forget I ever dreamed of a future with him…until the night something crazy forces me to remember.

  Chapter Three

  Aria

  Twelve Years Later

  “Ms. Aria March?” The man at the door is dressed in a fitted white polo shirt and khakis. He’s reasonably attractive and familiar-looking in a bland sort of way, but I can’t remember meeting him before.

  And the way he said my name wasn’t exactly friendly, more…determined.

  Not an old friend, then. He must be one of the people Mom said would be stopping by about the house renovations, even though Mom just renovated three years ago and we seriously don’t need fresh carpet on the stairs or new finish on the kitchen cabinets.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” I hitch Felicity higher on my hip, wishing I’d left the baby in the backyard with the rest of the family. My nearly one-year-old is way too keyed up to have patience for a chat about cabinet stains.

  We’re in the thick of a family barbeque to celebrate my sister Lark’s engagement and Felicity’s been running Mason, Lark’s fiancé, ragged playing ball in the grass. I should have let them play, but I was afraid to disappear for more than a minute or two, even to use the bathroom. Felicity’s been so clingy lately. And whiny. And not inclined to tolerate me being out of arm’s reach without throwing a fit to end all fits.

  She’s just tired, I know, but so am I. We’re both running on empty. Neither of us has slept through the night since Felicity was born, and eleven months is a long time to go without more than three hours of rest at a stretch.

  I’m seriously starting to lose my mind a little. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture in some particularly brutal prisons. It can make a person’s brain malfunction, a fact I prove by blinking in confusion when the man holds out an envelope and says, “You’ve been served, ma’am.”

  “Served?” I continue to blink, unable to make sense of the words. “What?”

  “It’s all there, ma’am,” the man says, pressing the envelope into my free hand before backing down the walk, heading for a beige Volvo idling at the curb, poised for a quick g
etaway.

  My forehead furrows. This has to be the weirdest special delivery in the history of special deliveries.

  “What’s all there? Hey wait!” I call after him, lowering my voice when Felicity begins to chant—

  “No, no, no, no, no,” at the top of her lungs.

  Felicity knows three words: “No,” “mama,” and “deer.” The last thanks to my father’s twisted fascination with taking his only granddaughter down to the basement to view his vast collection of mounted deer heads.

  Which Felicity loves. For some inexplicable reason.

  “Oh, hush, it’s okay,” I whisper, kissing the baby’s forehead half a dozen times, until Felicity’s chant becomes a yawn and she leans in to put her cheek on my chest.

  I smile, my heart overflowing the way it so often does when my little girl is in my arms. I might be sleep deprived, exhausted, overworked, strapped for cash, and a struggling single mom, but I have never been more in love with anything or anyone than this sweet monkey. Felicity is my world, and the major reason I still spend a good portion of every day smiling, despite the fact that my ex continues to refuse to send money for diapers or baby food, let alone come see his daughter the way he promised to do when I left Nashville to move back in with my parents in Bliss River, Georgia.

  But then, Liam is probably still busy. With Carrie, or Sherry, or Nanette, or whatever the heck his latest conquest’s name is.

  I’ve done my best to forget their names, all of their names, every girl Liam slept with in the three years we were together. I don’t want to think about Liam rolling around in bed with other women while putting off our wedding again and again, until I ended up pregnant and giving birth to Felicity outside of marriage.