Chapter 47
NASH
The lights in our kitchen are low and warm, and relaxing piano jazz plays at a soothing volume as Piper and I do the dishes after dinner.
We cooked a big pot of chili tonight. Well, actually, we cooked two. The first one turned out awful, but instead of giving up and ordering delivery or going to a restaurant, Piper insisted we start over. Our second effort was surprisingly good.
Spicy as anything, though. Something Piper handled a lot better than me, chowing down on it like it hardly had a kick while my eyes watered. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised.
“Nash?” Piper asks, her voice soft and tentative.
I break off humming to the tune playing. “Yeah?”
“I have a question I kind of want to ask. But I’m not sure I should.”
“Baby, you can ask me anything anytime.” Baby.
That word I’ve been using more and more ever since that night in the bed of my truck.
I’ve quickly grown addicted to calling Piper by that name.
It feels like a smooth sip of liquor on my tongue every time, the kind that goes down easy, doesn’t burn, but still warms you through.
Piper gives off hesitant energy next to me. I look over to find her rolling her lips thoughtfully.
“Is everything okay?” I ask.
“Yes, of course, it’s nothing like that,” she answers. “It’s just …” She sighs, like she’s shrugging off the last of her hesitancy. “What happened with your first engagement? With Bridgett?”
A chilly weight forms in my stomach at hearing her name. The muscles around my neck and shoulders pull tighter. But the negative reaction passes quickly.
If anything, the thought of Piper asking about Bridgett is oddly soothing. Like this is now one more topic we don’t have to tiptoe around. Like maybe we don’t have to tiptoe around anything, anymore.
It makes me think that, if she really were ready to drop everything that’s been developing between us when she gets her inheritance, she wouldn’t have even asked.
I take a stretch of time to let all these thoughts and feelings untangle themselves in my head.
“We met a couple months after I graduated college. LA drafted me, and I went to play for their AHL affiliate for a year before they called me up to the roster. That’s when I met Bridgett.”
“How’d you meet?” She hastily adds, “And if you don’t want to talk about any of this, that’s totally fine. We can change the subject any time.”
“No, it’s alright. The team sent us to a professional photographer to have promotional photos taken for the new season. That’s where I met her.”
“She was a photographer?” Piper asks
“No. A model who was getting ready for her own photoshoot.”
Piper laughs, and she shakes her head next to me.
“What?” I ask, grinning.
“Of course you dated a model.”
“Go ahead, keep stroking my ego. I won’t ask you to stop.”
Piper rolls her eyes and jabs me with the point of her elbow. “Get on with the story, model-dater.”
Leave it to Piper to make talking about one of the heaviest topics in my life feel lighter. I never thought I could actually laugh while talking about Bridgett, but here we are.
“She asked me out after we talked for a while there. I wasn’t really looking for a relationship, but I didn’t know anyone else in town, so I thought, why not? Things went well for a while.
“I can’t say I really felt much of a spark at first, but she kept proposing follow-up dates, then started making bigger plans for us.
Vacations and trips and stuff. I felt that things were moving a bit too fast, entirely at her pace, but she did all this in a way that made me feel like I couldn’t say no, or tell her I wanted to slow things down.
Before I knew it, I couldn’t deny that we were in a relationship. ”
“Was there ever a spark?”
My lips press together, brow furrowing in thought. That’s a good question. I’ve asked myself that question plenty of times. I never did come to a satisfactory answer.
“Maybe. But, then again, if maybe is even a possible answer, I guess the real answer has to be no. Like I said, everything seemed to move at her pace—fast. I mean, the first time I told her I loved her was when she broke down crying during a small argument we had, accusing me of not loving her.”
“Sounds like she basically extorted it from you.”
“I guess if I were smarter, I would have realized that at the time. Anyway, time passed, she started dropping hints about getting married. I started to think that maybe there was something wrong with me. That I wasn’t feeling that spark—that something more that love is supposed to feel like—because I was just incapable of it.
And Bridgett went from dropping hints to outright pressuring me, so eventually I just gave in.
I decided it must be the right decision, based on ‘objective’ arguments I was rationalizing to myself, rather than actually feeling that she was the person I wanted to spend my life with. ”
“I know what that’s like.”
A sad feeling pierces my chest that Piper had to go through the same feelings in her engagement. At the same time, it feels good to talk with someone who can sympathize with my experience.
“So, we got engaged. Then my contract with LA expired, and Austin signed me. We were all set to move here, but she told me she wanted to stay in LA for a couple months, to finish up some of her modeling gigs before relocating. Didn’t bother me.”
“And then?”
“Things were normal for a while. We were planning our wedding. Then, one weekend, I was supposed to be in Austin for team stuff while she was in LA for a photoshoot, but my coach let me take a day off to go surprise her. I walked into the apartment we still kept in LA, and found her in bed with another man.”
Piper’s jaw drops. “No.”
I shrug. Even though I’ve long come to accept Bridgett as no great loss, it still stings when I think about it.
Except this time. This time, it doesn’t sting. This time, when I shrug, it really does feel like a weight falls off my back.
“It was a photographer she was working with. Turns out, they had a whole plan. Bridgett was going to marry me, stay with me for a year or two, maybe even three, and then divorce me, taking half of my money to start her real life with him.”
“That’s awful.” Sympathy and disgust show in Piper’s eyes.
I shrug again, giving her a reassuring smile. “Sure. But it’s in the past now. Honestly, it’s never felt more in the past than this moment. It’s never mattered less.”
We’re still washing dishes. Piper’s focusing on really scrubbing one clean, even though it’s already spotless. A thoughtful look is taking up her face.
“Do you still feel that way? The way you described earlier? That maybe you’re not capable of feeling the spark? Feeling the extra something that lets you know you’re in love?”
“For a long time, I did.”
“But now?”
I take a deep breath through my nose. “Not anymore.”
Piper turns to me. A charge thickens the air between us. The tiny hairs on the nape of my neck stand up.
“What changed it?” she asks.
“Living with my wife.”
Piper’s eyes widen, breath catching silently in her throat.
I take a step forward, feeling like the electricity threading through the air crackles against my chest as my body moves closer to Piper. I bring my hand to the side of her neck, letting my thumb brush against her pulse point.
“I hate to sound cheesy, but everything changed when I started living with my wife. With you. Really, everything changed when I saw you walking alone on the side of the road and grumbled to myself because I couldn’t drive by without picking you up.
What I didn’t know was that you were going to be the one picking me up, putting pieces of my heart back together that I thought I’d lost, or just never had. ”
Piper’s body shifts closer to mine. Keeping my left hand on the side of her neck, I plant my right on her waist, pulling her closer so our chests brush together.
“I feel that something every day now, Piper. That extra something that lets me know I’m in love. Because I feel nothing but that when I’m with you.”
The surprise on Piper’s face slowly melts into a soft look. A playful smile hitches on her lips.
“Are you saying that you’re in love with me, Nash Miller?” she asks with a coy tease that makes me smile, too.
“I’m saying that I love you, Piper Dashwood.”
“In that case, I’d better admit that I love you, too.”
My heart is twisting and swirling, like it’s writing her name in cursive in my chest.
“Your heart’s racing,” I say, feeling her pulse beating fast against the pad of my thumb.
“I’m a little scared,” she says, still smiling. She lets out a shallow chuckle. “This feels like more than the just sex we agreed to.”
I grin. “I think it’s supposed to feel like more than just sex, with your husband.”
She laughs, letting her forehead drop onto my chest. Then she looks up at me. “I can’t believe I was going to go through with marrying Crew if it hadn’t been for you. Because if this is what love feels like—that was never it.”
“Baby, I’d rather fake marry you than really marry anyone else.”
Piper throws her head back on a laugh that makes my chest pulse. “I don’t know if that’s the most romantic or the most fucked-up thing someone’s ever said to me.”
I loop my arm around her, pulling her flush against me. “It’s the truth. And while we’re telling the truth, I’ll tell another one. I want you to stay. After you get that inheritance. After you don’t have to anymore. I want you to stay because you want to.”
She rises on her toes to press her lips softly to mine. “I’m not going anywhere.”