The Off Limits Rule (It Happened in Nashville 1)

“You okay?” Lucy asks when she notices the storm cloud that has settled over my head.

“Yeeeeep,” I say, drawing out the word a little too long before taking a deep drink of wine and letting it warm my chest. How am I going to watch Lucy go on more dates? Whatever. I’ll have to worry about that later because, right now, I’m here alone with Lucy. Me. Not Ethan. Not any of the other guys. ME.

And apparently, when I get jealous, I turn into a caveman. Me get Lucy.

She watches me with an amused, calculating look, letting me know I must be openly displaying more of my jealousy than I realize. Sometimes, I can’t handle her eyes on me like this. It makes me want to fidget, and I’ve never been a fidgeter before. I reach up and flick one of her unruly locks of hair, tossing her my best attempt at a relaxed grin just so she doesn’t look too hard and find all my flaws and insecurities. “What are we watching tonight, Marshall?”

Her eyebrows rise, making her glasses shift a little on her face. “You want to watch with me? It’s a Turkish romance. I doubt you’d be into it.”

“Try me.”

And that’s how I wound up on Lucy’s couch, drinking wine and watching a sappy show until the early hours of the morning. At some point during the night (I think after her second or third glass), Lucy’s legs ended up draped across my lap. They are still there now, and I have one hand on her foot and the other covering her shin. The side of her face is sort of smooshed against the couch cushion, and we both angrily groan when, once again, the show cuts off with the main couple’s lips hovering a hair’s breadth away from each other.

“WHY DO THEY KEEP DOING THIS TO ME?!” Lucy says with overly dramatic, slurring words, shoving her whole face into the cushion and sloshing a tiny bit of wine onto her t-shirt. I’ve lost count of how many glasses she’s had now, and her raised blood-alcohol level is showing.

I laugh and tighten my grip on her foot, liking how freely I get to touch her when it’s just us. “Should we start another one and see if they finally kiss?”

Lucy’s head pops up and her glasses are askew, eyes a little glazed. I right the frames on her face and can’t help the sappy smile I feel on my mouth. I can’t remember the last time I felt this comfortable and happy. Is this why all my friends with girlfriends and wives always disappear? I thought it was because their women wouldn’t let them go out anymore. Turns out, it’s that the men don’t want to leave.

“No. They’re never going to kiss. This show is one nevvvver-ending tension torture device.” Her words stick in a few places, but she finally manages to get it all out. And then her gaze swings toward the TV, smile slowly fading. “'Sides, it’s not good to watch stuff like this.”

“Why not?” I watch closely as Lucy reaches up and tugs her hair free of her bun. Wild auburn locks fall down around her shoulders, and I stare in amazement at how beautiful she is even when she’s in this state. But it’s not just Lucy’s skin, hair, and eyes that contribute to her beauty. It’s every smile, every laugh, every little thing she does for her son and did for me when I was sick. It’s all of it. I meant it when I said I thought Lucy was the complete package. She’s too good to be true.

She gathers all of her hair and pulls it to the side, sectioning off three pieces and stumbling over her own clunky hand coordination, attempting to braid it. She’s doing a poor job and has very clearly tipped over into I’ve-had-too-much-land. “Because it’s not re

al. In life, the guy doesn’t wait a hundred years for the most romantic moment to kiss the girl. He sleeps with her right away, gets her pregnant, and leaves her sorry butt with a baby.”

The vessels of my heart constrict at the sight of Lucy. A broken-hearted woman is bad enough, but a broken-hearted woman who’s a little drunk, slurring, and spilling her wine as she tries to balance the glass and tame her hair…it’s too much. She looks like a wounded baby bird, and all I want to do is scoop her up, take her home, and protect her until her wings heal.

First, I take Lucy’s wine out of her hands and place it on the coffee table because she’s had enough. Then, I scoot a little closer and move her hands so I can pick up where she left off. Her eyes meet mine, and with an overly dramatic breathy flair, says, “You know how to braid?!”

I laugh and continue to move my hands through her soft locks, overlapping strands and moving slowly as I go. Being this close to Lucy and keeping things strictly friendly is the equivalent of jumping off a roof with the hopes of defying gravity. “I have several female cousins. Any time we would get together for the holidays, they would teach me stuff, like how to braid hair and paint nails.”

“And you wanted to learn?”

I give her a half-smile. “Around age thirteen, I realized if I knew how to braid hair, I’d be a hit at summer camp.”

“Were you?”

I meet her eyes and wag my eyebrows playfully. “Best summer ever.”

Lucy laughs and shoves my arm. I pluck her hair tie from her fingers and wrap it around the end of the braid. When I look back at her face, I find her watching me closely, head leaning against the couch, legs still draped over my lap. “Jamanji was an idiot.”

A laugh shoots from my mouth, and I lay my head back against the cushion, eyes level with Lucy’s. “Janie.”

She frowns and shakes her head a little. “No, I’m Lucy.”

“No—not you, drunky. My ex’s name is Janie.”

“Ohhhhh. Yeah, that’s what I said.” Lucy shrugs her bare shoulder, drawing my eyes to the sharp line of her collarbone and velvety skin. I reach over to pull her t-shirt back up to cover her.

A soft smile tugs the corner of her mouth, and the next thing I know, Lucy is running her finger across my eyebrows. “You have pretty eyes,” she tells me in a dreamy voice.

I’m trying not to laugh at her, but it’s difficult. “Thank you. So do you.”

“But yours make me want to go to Tahiti. I have a screensaver that looks like your eyes.” I think she’s trying to tell me she has a screensaver with a body of water from Tahiti on it, not that she has an up-close photo of my eyeball, but I’ve been wrong in life before. “Jackie is stupid for giving your Tahiti eyes up.” She places the warm palm of her hand on my now scruffy jaw and looks deep in my eyes. “I wouldn’t have given them up. I would have said yes.”

My mouth opens, but I’m not sure why, because it’s not as if I have any words to let out. I don’t know what to say, what I should say…what she’ll remember in the morning of her own words or of my reply. Luckily, she doesn’t even seem to want an answer.