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She took the glass off the cart. “What’s the deal with this robe?”
He looked a little embarrassed. “I’m a big Rocky fan.”
She looked at the name stitched on the front. “So he won a lot of fights?”
Nick seemed to be waiting for the punchline. “Seriously? Rocky. Rocky Balboa.” She stared at him, and he pointed at the movie poster hanging over a leather couch. “That’s for the movieRocky. Came out in the seventies.”
“Yeah, sorry, wasn’t around.”
His grip tightened on the cart. “Neither was I. I’m thirty-two.”
“Oh,” she said sweetly. “I didn’t know.”
Hayley smiled thinly at him until he turned away, jaw clenched. She’d guessed his age correctly, and wasn’t that far behind him, but she was enjoying his irritation too much to let him know she was twenty-eight.
Nick was wheeling the cart back to the counter when the toast popped up, and Hayley laughed as he jumped.
“Scared you, huh?”
He kept his back to her. “Not exactly,” he said. “I have what’s called an exaggerated startle reflex. Came with the leg stuff.”
She suddenly hated herself, and then anger welled back up at him for making her seem so mean. “I’m sorry.”
“No problem.”
He busied himself with the toast, and she decided to take the leap. “So what happened to you?”
“We went through this last night.”
“Okay,” she pressed. “Why so many stories, then?”
He smirked as he picked up the jelly knife. “Did you do a survey or something?”
“Everybody in that bar knows you, Nick. Everybody thinks you’re this fantastic guy, and yet you gave everybody a different story.”
“Only the ones who asked.”
“You were a gymnast. You got attacked by sharks. You were a skydiver.” She counted them off on her fingers. “My personal favorite was that you hit your head ejecting from an airplane.Top Gun, right? It’s okay to be a pilot, but not a SEAL?”
He chuckled. “It’s my tribute to Goose.”
She folded her arms. “Why all the bullshit?”
Nick brought her toast to the table, along with his grapefruit and a mug of coffee. “I guess I always figured it mattered to people too much.”
“You don’t like people caring about you?”
“That’s not what they’re doing.” He sat down, handed her the plate and a napkin. “I can understand asking if I need help. They see the walker and they want to do something to improve the situation. It’s a practical question. But asking what happened? That’s satisfying your curiosity.”
“Maybe I want to get to know you more.”
“Sure, because getting to know me involves assessing how broken I am and figuring out how sorry you should be for me.”
She was hurt—and afraid he was right. “That’s not what—”
“Come on, Hayley. Wouldn’t it make a difference?” His blue eyes locked on to hers. “Wouldn’t you care if I said I was injured in Afghanistan saving children, or shot while I was robbing a bank? IfI said I was in a drunk driving accident, it’d sure as hell make a difference whether I was the driver or the victim.” He dug into his grapefruit. “People have seen too many movies about paralyzed heroes and athletes hit by cars. They’re interested in who I was instead of who I am. If they need to fit me into a story to decide what they think of me, I’m going to have fun giving them one.”
She watched him. “So you lie to everyone, then.”
