Chapter 5
NASH
I’m experiencing a lot of very clear signs that I drank way too much.
I have to concentrate to keep from stumbling to my side as I walk forward. The whole world seems to spin every time I turn my head. There’s a prickly buzz dancing over my skin.
But the most worrying sign of all?
I can’t stop looking at Piper.
When we step onto the sidewalk, into the night air that’s grown cooler since I picked her up who knows how many hours ago, I turn my head to her, and it takes me way too long to look away.
She’s a fucking knockout in that dress. My better judgment was working overtime all night long to keep me from dwelling on that fact, but all the beers and shots I’ve sucked down tonight have sidelined my better judgment by this point.
Her bare shoulders make my heartbeat pick up.
Then my eyes trail along the outline of her collarbone and tick a fraction downward to the gentle swell of her perfect breasts, the tasteful but tantalizing cut of her dress allowing a brief hint of cleavage.
My heart starts to slam against my breastbone like a ping-pong ball.
My gaze inches down her figure. When my eyes land on the dip of her waist, the desire to grab her there and pull her flush against me crashes into me like a tsunami. I flex my hands and turn my head away, trying to get control of myself.
Piper lets out a loopy laugh. The sound hits my ears like gentle windchimes. “How am I getting home? Where even is home right now?”
That second question of hers has my heart sinking. But when I turn to look at her again, it jumps back up, because now she’s looking at me, too.
The stunning emerald of her green eyes paired with the light brown of her hair has my breath hitching as my heart tries to climb into my throat.
Suddenly, I can’t think about anything except what it would feel like to lift my hand and run my fingers through that hair.
It looks so soft that it actually fucking hurts to hold myself back from finding out.
The remnants of sobriety in my brain kick into gear, reminding me I have no business entertaining thoughts like that.
“I’ll get us two hotel rooms for the night,” I say. “I saw one down the block as we were driving here.”
Obviously, getting behind the wheel of my truck right now is out of the question.
I take it Piper lives with her fiancé, and that that’s the last place she wants to go back to.
Piper can figure out what her next step is in the morning.
She’ll be hungover, and so will I, but at least she’ll be sober.
At that point, whatever she does won’t be any of my business. I’ll drive back to my place with a pounding head, leaving her to sort out her own life that I don’t have any part in.
That thought suddenly makes me feel about a quarter less drunk, like I just chugged a big cup of strong, bitter coffee.
“I guess that makes the most sense,” Piper says. “But at least let me pay for my own room.”
“No.”
Piper blows an exasperated huff as I start to stride forward, toward where I remember seeing the hotel as we drove through the streets.
Piper falls into step next to me. She sways, even tipsier than I am, and her arm brushes against mine. Electricity rolls through me. My groin swells, tight heat throbbing between my legs. I clench my teeth to fight back the reaction.
“Come on, Nash,” Piper says, a coaxing tone in her voice, “you can’t tell me that your animals haven’t grown on you.”
A quiet groan rumbles in my throat. I never should have told her about my petting zoo clusterfuck.
She’s been giving me shit ever since, cooing over how funny it is for a stuck-up grump like me—her words—to be living on a ranch with a bunch of cute animals.
Despite me assuring her that it’s nothing but an aggravation.
“They’re not mine,” I grunt.
“You own them,” she says, her voice a teasing singsong.
“The staff takes care of them.”
The staff are the only reason I didn’t back out of the sale when I found out about the damn petting zoo attached to the property. The sellers didn’t mention it until the last minute.
But when I learned that if I didn’t go through with it, the whole operation was going to shut down, a dozen people were going to lose their jobs, and the animals were going to be shipped off to sanctuaries …
I shake my head at myself. I should have just told myself that none of that was my problem, because it wasn’t. Then I’d be able to enjoy the peaceful, private tract of land with no one else around for miles, like I wanted to.
Instead, I’m dealing with crowds of visitors, a manager who insists on running every decision by me no matter how many times I tell him I don’t care and that he can manage the zoo however he wants, and an over-attached capybara who wanders to my house every day and won’t leave me alone.
Piper pokes her elbow into my arm. “You should embrace it. Call it Nasty Nash’s Petting Ranch. Giant billboards advertising it around Austin with you in a cowboy hat riding an alpaca. It’d end up making you more money than your hockey contract, I bet.”
I groan, picking up the pace to get to the hotel quicker.
Piper might be cute as hell, but I’m starting to remember why she annoyed me so much in college.
But then I remember that her making fun of me is distracting her from the horrible shit that she found out tonight, and a strange warmth buzzes in my chest. Must be the alcohol.
The motel is as much of a blast from the past as the bar was. It sits on a corner lot, a dark beige three-story building with a small parking lot in front. It looks like something out of an old movie set in Vegas.
Piper looks out of place standing next to it in her jaw-dropping dress, that’s for sure. That thing must have cost a couple thousand bucks, and she looks like a couple million bucks in it. Even with a pair of New Balances on her feet.
An image rushes into my mind: Piper still wearing those New Balance sneakers, but not wearing her dress.
Not wearing anything else at all. Heat blasts in my cheeks.
There must be something wrong with me to conjure up that thought.
I shake my head back and forth, hoping it flies out and doesn’t return.
“Let’s get our rooms,” I say, hoping my voice isn’t really as thick as it sounds to me right now.
We step into the office. It’s cramped, and the rumble of the old air conditioner is deafening. Behind the desk sits a man reading … a newspaper?
A real newspaper, with the rough grey paper and small black print and everything, held in his hands as he leans back in a chair.
Okay, now I really feel like I’m in a time warp.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hating. We’re neck-deep in a literacy crisis, so I take my hat off to anyone who reads, especially physical media.
It’s just that between the bar and the old discount motel with the desk guy’s nose stuck in a newspaper, I didn’t expect to be transported back to the seventies or eighties tonight.
I clear my throat to get his attention.
“One second, ya’ll,” he drawls in a Texas accent even stronger than mine.
A couple beats later—I guess when he gets to the end of the paragraph he was reading—he flattens the newspaper on his desk and looks up.
“I take it ya’ll want a room?”
“Two rooms,” I say.
He shrugs. “The honeymoon phase stops for everyone, eventually.”
I roll my eyes, thinking better of expending energy to set him straight about my and Piper’s relationship.
My and Piper’s relationship. That string of words does something funny to my insides.
The man opens a drawer underneath his desk, ruffles around in it for a moment, then looks back up.
“Bad news. I just got one room left.”
My stomach drops. At the same time, my balls feel tighter.
“It’s fine,” Piper says. “I don’t want to walk around and look for another hotel.”
Her voice sounds tired, and that’s confirmed when she slumps against me to keep herself upright. The warmth of her body pressed against my side does absolutely nothing to loosen the tightness in my pants.
“Two beds?” I ask.
A wry gleam sparks in the desk guy’s eyes. He shakes his head. “Nope. One bed.”
My stomach drops even lower, and my balls get a lot tighter.
I worry my bottom lip between my teeth, hesitant. I can’t sleep in a one-bed hotel room with an engaged woman.
“That’s fine, we’ll take it,” Piper says. Her voice is dreamy and wispy. Add that to the list of things sending too much blood flow below my belt line.
I glance at Piper next to me. Her eyes are closed, fluttering like she’s already dreaming. She has so much of her weight resting against me that if I step forward, she’d fall.
So, I do something I absolutely shouldn’t. I loop my arm around her waist and guide her to the desk with me to pay and collect the key.
Piper feels way too fucking good in the crook of my arm. The strangest mix of excitement and calm rushes through my veins, endorphins flooding my brain as my heart skips. She’s so warm next to me. The fabric of her dress so soft. I bet she feels even softer underneath the dress.
Our room is on the second floor. I have to hold her even tighter against me to help her up the stairs.
In the process, her brown hair feathers against the side of my face and neck.
It’s even softer than I imagined earlier, and my cock is instantly so hard that I’m surprised it doesn’t burst through the zipper of my jeans.
“You know, I’ve read a lot of books like this,” Piper says as we reach the second-floor balcony.
“Huh?”
“With the one bed trope.”
My jaw ticks. I wish I could pretend that I don’t know what she’s talking about, but I don’t have my head deep enough in the sand to not know what a trope is.
“I read this amazing enemies-to-lovers book recently,” she continues. “They had to share a room with one bed, and both were so stubborn about who would sleep on the bed or the floor, that they both slept on the floor. They still ended up fucking on the floor and never even touching the bed.”
“Don’t get your hopes up.” Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. It was just a joke, but it still treads too close to a dangerous line.
Laughter sputters from Piper. “You should get drunk more often. Your dry sense of humor is halfway funny.”
Being called halfway funny isn’t exactly the most glowing compliment, but it brings me a disproportionate feeling of satisfaction.
“Don’t tell me you don’t have a favorite one-bed trope scene, Nash,” Piper says teasingly.
“’Fraid I don’t,” I answer.
Although I do remember last year, when we played against Seattle. I got dragged along to go out with them after the game, since several of my teammates were friendly with some of the guys on their team.
One of the Seattle players, Tuck McCoy, mentioned that being accidentally booked in a one-bed hotel room with a girl who previously couldn’t stand him but who he was obsessed with was a major turning point in their relationship.
“I’ll sleep on the floor,” I say.
“Deal.”
I blow out a laugh. “That was easy. I thought you might make some big show of insisting I take the bed.”
“No way. I deserve a comfortable sleep tonight. I’m the one who got cheated on, not you.”
My chest suddenly feels heavy. The irony of Piper’s statement douses the arousal that was coursing through me from feeling her so close. I guess I should be grateful for that.
We get to our door. I stick in the key—yes, this hotel still has actual keys instead of keycards—and push the door open. We step in and close the door behind us.
Then I’m alone with Piper, in a tiny hotel room, with only one bed.