Chapter 2
NASH
Piper Dashwood is in my truck.
Hm. That fact should probably annoy me more than it does. After all, she’s annoyed me more times than I could possibly count over the years.
But having her next to me in the front seat of my truck, feeling even closer in the confined space thanks to the lack of a center console in this old-fashioned bench seating, actually feels kind of …
“Do you remember the last thing you said to me in college?” Piper’s question interrupts my train of thought before I can find the appropriate word to finish that sentence.
Maybe that’s for the best.
“You’ll have to remind me,” I answer, hands on the wheel and eyes on the long dark road.
“We’d been neighbors for two long years.
Emphasis on long,” she says, and my lips tick as I bite back a smile I have no business donning around Piper.
“After sharing such a significant portion of our formative years together, the very last thing you said to me when we happened to be coming home at the same time, the day before move-out day, was, you put your trash out too early yesterday.”
She lowers her voice in a pathetic attempt to imitate me.
“I don’t sound like that.”
“That’s what everyone says when they hear a perfect impression of themselves.”
I grunt. “You did put your trash out too early. Not just that week, but every week. It looks bad. And can attract rodents.”
She blows a raspberry. “I’d make another comment about that stick up your ass, but I’m sure you’d hold it against me again.”
“No matter how much you beg, Piper, I’m never holding my ass against you.”
Several beats of dead silence pass, and worry sneaks up on me that maybe I crossed a line with that little joke.
Speaking of my ass, Piper might have been a pain in it with her loud parties and living her generally chaotic lifestyle right next to me, but I don’t want her to feel uncomfortable while I’m giving her a ride.
Should I apologize? Should I make a safer joke to break the tension? Should I …
Then, Piper starts to laugh.
It starts with an awkward guffaw. Then a steady chuckle. Then, suddenly, she’s cracking up. Peals of laughter leap from her, filling the cabin of my truck. It almost sounds like sobs are mixed in. I glance to my side to see tears streaming down her cheeks.
I have no idea if those are normal tears of laughter or if she’s actually crying. I also have no idea if I should be driving to the nearest hospital instead of dropping her off wherever she lives. Is she okay?
“Sorry,” she says once she gathers some composure. She wipes her eyes with her palms. “I guess I really, really needed a laugh.” There’s a rueful, almost sorrowful, note in her voice.
The sound makes something pull in my chest. My face twists in concern.
“I guess I haven’t gotten any better at navigating the adult world, huh?” she asks, sounding more like she’s talking to herself. “Couldn’t put my trash out at the right time in college, and now I’m finding myself stranded on the side of the road and needing to be rescued by Nash Miller.”
The deprecating way she practically spits my name finally makes me lose the battle against my lips. A smirk tilts my mouth.
“What happened, anyway?” I ask.
She takes a deep breath. Her voice gently cracks right at the exhale, and another pang of worry strikes in my chest.
“Can I plead the fifth?” she asks.
I shrug. The motion feels stiff, though, because now I really do want to know what happened. “You can do whatever you want.”
Silence settles as the truck’s tires eat up the empty road in front of us, bringing us closer to Austin. A couple minutes tick by.
“I found out that my fiancé’s been cheating on me.”
My jaw clenches, teeth pressing together. My grip on the steering wheel tightens, my knuckles turning vivid white. Tension tightens the muscles around my shoulders and neck.
“Who?” I ask. The word is a harsh growl from somewhere deep in my throat.
“Huh?”
“Who is he?” The question comes out automatically. In my mind, I imagine dropping Piper off somewhere safe, then finding this guy and teaching him a much-needed lesson or two.
“You wouldn’t know him.”
I take a long, deep breath, trying to calm myself down. Why the hell am I feeling this surge of protectiveness? Why are my knuckles itching to connect with the jaw of this fucker who cheated on Piper—and then left her on the side of the damn road? What the hell is that?
We’re not talking about a man, that’s for sure. This is a boy, who’d leave his damn fiancée to walk on the side of the road by herself after doing her wrong like that.
“And that’s why you were stranded out here?” I ask.
“I saw the evidence on his phone, so I smashed it up with the heel of my shoe and then got out of the limo and insisted on walking myself home.”
My smirk turns into a full smile. I don’t want to smile at Piper—at anyone—being cheated on, but I approve of the way she handled it.
“The piece of shit just let you walk away? Alone?”
“I didn’t give him a choice.”
If I ever did wrong to a woman I loved like that—not that I ever fucking would—I’d crawl on my hands and knees behind her before I’d even think of driving away and leaving her alone on a road in the middle of the night.
“What’s his name?” I ask. I’m no longer entertaining plans of committing a felony against him tonight, but I’d like a name to pin the anger I’m feeling onto.
“Crew Bentley,” Piper answers.
Are you kidding me? “Crew Bentley?”
“Yeah. Why? Do you know him?”
I scoff. “No, it’s just that’s the douchiest name I’ve ever heard in my damn life.”
Piper breathes a small laugh. Fuck, I know how much she’s going through right now. I just hope any tiny laugh I can give her makes her feel a little better.
“Don’t tell me you were gonna be Piper Bentley.”
She huffs. “What’s wrong with that name? As if Piper Miller sounds any better?”
I’m not gonna ask myself why my cock is twitching so hard behind my jeans at the sound of that.
After a long beat of silence, I slide my gaze over to Piper.
The look on her face is blank. She’s resting her head against the window, cushioned by her hair. There’s not enough light coming from the dashboard to tell, but I still know exactly the shade of light brown it is. I wouldn’t be able to forget it even if I tried.
I’m sure of that, because sometimes I did try, when it would pop into my mind too much during hockey practices in college.
Yeah, Piper inconvenienced me a whole lot back then. With her parties, her other loud get-togethers, her inability to adhere to the trash schedule, and making me think about her too damn much.
She’s holding up pretty well for just finding out that her fiancé is cheating on her.
She’s holding up a lot better than I did when I found out the same thing.
Memories of Bridgett flood my mind, and I grit my teeth to push them away.
Is she falling apart on the inside? Is everything that happened to her tonight, including ending up in my truck, just so bizarre that she doesn’t know how to respond to it yet?
Her phone starts to ring.
“It’s him,” she says, looking at it. The tone of her voice is flat, unreadable.
My nostrils flare. “Want me to answer it?” Protectiveness floods my veins. Piper shouldn’t have to hear that fucker’s voice right now. And I wouldn’t mind letting him know exactly how much of a piece of shit he is for what he’s done.
The road ahead of us is still empty. We haven’t passed a single car since I picked her up. So, I turn my head to get a good look at her, to try and assess where she’s at mentally and emotionally right now.
To my surprise, there’s a smile curling on her full lips. It has that edge of mischievousness I remember so well from our college days.
“You know, working as a baker has its pluses and minuses.”
“Oh?” I don’t know where she’s going with this. The phone still rings in her hand. I can read the name Crew on her screen.
“The pay isn’t great, and work starts early in the morning,” she continues. “But a big plus? I don’t really get contacted outside working hours. I can step away from my phone for as long as I want. Especially if someone I have no interest in talking to keeps trying to call me.”
Then she rolls down the window—and tosses her phone out of it.
My jaw drops. I’m not sure if everything she’s experienced tonight has cracked her sanity, or if she’s just being the same impulsive Piper I always knew her to be. Tossing her phone out the window just because she’s avoiding someone trying to get in touch with her isn’t entirely off brand.
She takes a deep breath and lets it out with a loud, “Wow! That felt great. Fuck him and fuck his stupid phone that he used to cheat on me and fuck my phone too because I used it to tell him I love him even while he was fucking some other girl.”
A hard ball of concern weighs down my gut. “Piper, are you okay? Seriously.”
“Of course I’m not okay,” she says. “But that felt good. Empowering, actually, to toss him right out the damn window while he’s trying to call me.”
I know exactly how un-empowering getting cheated on feels. It makes you feel small. Insignificant.
As bad as you want to take back some feeling of control when you’re in that situation, it never crossed my mind to get a hit of it by throwing my phone out the window of a moving truck. Then again, I’m not Piper Dashwood.
A couple more moments of silence pass by. During which, I ease my foot off the accelerator, decreasing our speed, because I’m pretty sure …
“Uh, hey, Nash?”
My lips are twitching again, even though I’m fighting back a groan. “Yeah?”
“Can we go back and find my phone?”
I sigh, exasperation mixed with sympathy mixed with annoyance mixed with more amusement than I should be feeling right now.
When I found out Bridgett had been cheating on me for years, only using me for the money I was about to be making when I signed with the Alligators … even though I’m a natural loner, I wished I had someone there for me. Someone by my side so I didn’t have to go through it alone.
“Sure,” I sigh. I roll to a stop and pull a U-turn, ready to try to find a needle in a haystack with hardly any moonlight to help us.
Piper might be a pain, but with what she’s going through right now … whatever she needs me to do for her tonight, I’ll do it.