I don’t do this dare thing with anyone else. I don’t know why I insist on doing it with him but at this point it feels like a security blanket. A way for us to open up to each other but stay adversarial.
“That’s an impossible dare.” He turns away from me, grabs his suit jacket and pants off the bed, and walks into his closet. He leaves the door ajar but not so much that I can see anything, unfortunately. “It changes depending on my mood or whatever. And it’s Tragically Hip.”
“Your current favorite. In this second. Or I win the dare.”
He lets out an annoyed growl as he emerges from the closet. I have to put my chin on my tucked-up knees to keep my jaw from hitting the floor. He's still shirtless and now he has joggers hanging low—so mesmerizingly low—on his hips. His rippled stomach, beveled chest, and that cut of V-shaped muscles that make smart women do stupid things are front and center in my vision as he walks over and stands in front of me. "Right now it's 'Boots and Hearts'."
I tuck my lips in and wet them before exhaling. “Alexa! Play ‘Boots and Hearts’.”
Alexa ignores me completely, the bitch. Nash sinks down in front of me, all cocky and half-naked, which is my weakness. "She only responds to my voice."
“You live alone and you locked her down? Jesus. Control freak much?”
“Very much,” he agrees easily and moves away from me to scoop up his shirt and dump it in the laundry basket under one of the windows. “Plus before I locked it down, Crew came over and when I wasn’t paying attention he commanded it to play the Halloween theme song at three in the morning.”
"Oh, crap. You can do that?" I laugh. "I wish I knew that before Tate had Dylan. I will keep that in my back pocket for my cousins though."
“Do not tell them I gave you the idea.” Nash drops back onto his bed. “I do not need your cousin Theo or Conner cross-checking me in a game as payback.”
He bends one arm and tucks it under his head as he reclines on his pillows. Gray sheets and gray striped duvet. But he is the pop the room needs at the moment, as much as I hate to admit it. We eye each other and something grows between us. His gaze can be so intense, with those eyes that slide between copper and moss and amber and milk chocolate. “My turn. I dare you to tell me what your favorite band is.”
“I don’t have a favorite band,” I admit. “I love soulful female solo artists though. Gracie Abrams, Lexi Jayde, Tate McRae, Devon Cole, Faith Wolfe, The Queen Tay Tay, Beth Hart, the list goes on.”
“Favorite current song?”
“‘L.A. Song by Beth Hart,” I say. “It reflects my love-hate relationship with this town in a nutshell.”
“I’ll have to listen to it.”
“My turn,” I say when the silence between us starts feeling charged. “Tell me something that makes you seem less robotic. Less… gray.”
He rolls his eyes but seems to be genuinely thinking about the question. “Well, keeping with the music theme of the evening…” He smiles but it’s sheepish and deep. Nash’s smiles rarely make his eyes crinkle. This one does and butterflies launch themselves around my belly. Damnit. “The lead singer, Gord Downey, of The Hip died of brain cancer.”
“Oh fuck.”
“Yeah. But before he passed he insisted the band go on a farewell tour across Canada. The last show was in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario, outside, and it was broadcast on national television.”
“Did you watch it?”
He shakes his head. “I went. Whole family did. It was… life-defining at an almost Stanley Cup level. Only time I’ve seen my dad cry was when Gord took his last bow.”
“Did you cry?” I ask.
“Like a fucking baby.”
We stare at each other. I grin. “Holy shit. You’re human.”
“And there’s the girl I know and loathe,” Nash quips, and I demurely lie my middle finger toward him, which makes him laugh.
“Okay, my turn,” he replies. “Were you serious in the parking garage?”
Uh oh. “That’s not a dare.”
“Come on, we both know we’re playing truth, not dare, right now.” He has a point, damn him. “So, were you serious about letting me fuck my wife?”
What stupid clump of DNA insists on getting all mushy and warm when the word ‘wife’ comes out of his mouth and how do I kill it? I inhale and reposition myself in the chair, pushing my hair back over my shoulders. “Do you want to?”
“I don’t not want to,” Nash says casually.
