Sherrilyn Kenyon - Invincible

Don’t ask it, Nick. Don’t.

But as was typical, his mouth took off without consulting his common sense or his brain. “Bubba? Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Were you ever married?”

There was no mistaking the grief on his face over that normal question. The agony. The self-loathing. How awful that four simple words, one harmless question, could wring that much pain out of someone.

Bubba cleared his throat before he answered. “Yeah, I was. Long time ago.”

Having inadvertently hurt him, Nick wanted to make Bubba feel better, but he didn’t know how. He shouldn’t have asked. He shouldn’t have. And after seeing Bubba’s reaction, he knew Kody had been telling him the truth. The man was eaten up with guilt. “I’m sorry, Bubba.”

“For what?”

“You look real upset all of a sudden. I didn’t mean to bring up an unhappy memory. Sorry.”

Bubba swallowed hard as he turned to face him. “Nick … I hope one day you find you a woman who loves you like my Melissa loved me. Whatever you do, boy, don’t turn your back on her. If she says she needs you for something, don’t matter how stupid it sounds or what deadline you got, you go to her and you do it. Screw work or whatever else. In the end, the only things that matter are the people in your life. The ones who make your life worth living and whose smiles light up your world. Don’t ever push them aside for fair-weather friends. Everything else is just cheap window dressing that you can replace. But once them people are gone…”

He winced. “You can’t buy back time, Nick. Ever. It’s the only thing in life you can’t get more of, and it’s the one thing that will mercilessly tear you up when it’s gone. It takes pity on no soul and no heart. And all those fools who tell you it gets easier in time are lying dumb-asses. Losing someone you really love don’t never get easier. You just go a few hours longer without breaking down. That’s all … that’s all.”

Tears choked him at the pain he heard in Bubba’s voice. It was rare for him to show that kind of emotion. Big Bubba Burdette was a growling bear of a man. Huge. Tough as nails. Never let anything bother him.

And loyal to the end.

Everyone deserved a friend like him.

Who would ever have thought that such a fearsome, larger-than-life beast could be haunted by something so human as the loss of his wife and child?

Without thinking, Nick went over and hugged him hard.

Bubba bristled. “Boy, what are you doing? Have you lost your ever-loving mind?”

Nick shook his head. “You looked like you could use a hug.”

“Then call up Tyra Banks and send her over. That I’m always up for. Don’t want no straggly teenager rubbing up against me. Jeez.”

“Yeah, yeah. I hear you, you old grump.”

Bubba scoffed. “Not that old. Not that wise. But still filled with enough venom to spank your butt if you don’t leave me alone to my work. Now get on with you and get out of what little hair I got left.”

Nick headed back to the office, but before he opened the door, Bubba stopped him.

“Hey, Nick? You’re a good kid. Don’t let anyone tell you different. I see how you come in here some days after school with your shoulders hanging down from the weight of the world and all its misery. But don’t let them steal your day, boy. I know about your daddy and how you walk around with his ghost riding your back all the time. But those are his sins and his crimes, not yours.” Bubba tapped his chest twice. “You got what counts right here. All you need and then some. More heart and more kindness than anyone I’ve ever met. Don’t let anyone take it from you. You hear me?”

“Thanks, Bubba.”

He inclined his head, then went back to work.

Feeling better than he had all day, Nick opened the door to find Madaug and Mark spread out over Bubba’s desk with what appeared to be hundreds of printed-out pages scattered everywhere. They were so intent on whatever they’d found that they didn’t even hear him enter.

“Hey, guys. What’s all this?”

Mark glanced up with his eyes so wide, they looked like saucers. “Hold on to your bootstraps, ’cause you’re about to be blown out of your shoes.”

“I take it you found something good?”

“Not just good,” Madaug said. His blond curls were sticking out over his head like he’d been tugging at them—something he did unawares whenever he concentrated on a subject. “Incredible.”

It was hard to take him seriously with his glasses askew and so smudged with fingerprints that it made Nick wonder how he didn’t walk into walls. It strangely reminded Nick of his mother’s favorite comedy, My Cousin Vinny, when Joe Pesci was interrogating the witness about what he’d seen through his scum-infested windows on his trailer.

Oblivious of that, Madaug dug under the stack of papers in front of him. Wearing a gray sweatshirt that swallowed him whole—no doubt a hand-me-down from his older brother Eric’s non-Goth days, Madaug smiled as he found what he’d been searching for. He shoved it in Nick’s face.

Nick tilted his head back and took it from him so that he could hold it at a normal, viewable distance. He frowned. It was some old-timey football team, wearing antique clothes.

Dang, the players looked like old men and not college students. How hard did their ancestors live?

“What do you see?” Mark asked.

“Football.”

“Yeah, and—?” he prompted.

Before Nick could answer, Madaug pointed at the man in the back on the far left-hand side. “Meet Coach Walter Devus.”

Whoa. The guy was a dead ringer for the coach at their school. It must be his great-grandfather or something.

“I knew I’d seen him before.” Mark tapped the sheet. “When I played at Tech, they had a wall of honor for all the teams, and this one was hung by … well someplace I spent a lot of time with a certain biology tutor. But that doesn’t matter. I knew I’d seen him, and I was right. The old toad was right there the whole time, staring at me with those beady, greedy eyes.” He grinned at Madaug. “See what happens when you bang your head getting out of the shower? Total recall.”

Nick laughed, then asked a random question that occurred to him. “How old are you, anyway?”

Mark scowled at the sudden change in topic. “Huh?”

“I thought you were only like twenty-one or something. It just dawned on me that you weren’t old enough to do all of this.”

“What? Is there some unwritten Gautier manual on what a person can and can’t do with their life? Really? My birthday’s in November, so I was a year ahead of my classmates, and graduated when I was seventeen. Blew out my knee right before I turned nineteen and doubled up on my classes to graduate by twenty. And for the record, I’m almost twenty-three. That good enough for you, or you want my whole résumé, too?”

“Sorry. Don’t get so testy. I was just curious. I thought you told me you were younger.”

“You want to see my license?”

Nick held his hands up in surrender. He could have sworn Mark had told him he was younger, but then, he could have been screwing with him. Mark was bad that way.

Madaug let out a low whistle to get their attention. “And this is a little more important than Mark’s background.” He shoved another piece of paper into Nick’s face. “Remember I told you Devus coached the Tech team against Georgia?”

“Yeah, and the next day they were all killed.” Nick was now holding the article that had been written about it.

“Exactly.” Mark gave him a third piece of paper with another football team on it. The date on this photograph was a year later and …

Holy snikes …