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Chapter 15

Tenley

M usica's, the small beach bar that the team loves to claim as their own, is packed with hockey players. More than half the team came out for a quick celebration because Crew wouldn't take no for an answer. Plastic baskets with greasy paper liners are piled with desecrated chicken wing bones. Tate has Dylan on his shoulders while Mallory and Liv share a basket of deep-fried pickles beside him. Next to Liv, Crew wipes his brow with a napkin and swigs his beer, still sweating from his inferno sauce wings. Grady is at the bar getting another round with Landon. Nash is beside me, nose buried in his phone, and his half-finished basket of teriyaki wings in front of him and a non-alcoholic beer sweating puddles on the nicked wood tabletop. He keeps checking his phone for the time.

“Nash,” I say, bumping my shoulder with his. “Stop being Nash.”

“We have a curfew.”

“ You have a curfew. I could stay out until four am and dance naked on this table the whole damn time,” I say and reach for one of his untouched wings. I put it to my lips and tear into it. He watches me with an eyebrow up.

“Umm… that’s my food.”

“We’re married. It’s half mine.” I wink.

“Speaking of that, where’s your ring, Ten?” The question comes from one of the rookie defensemen’s girlfriends. I forget her name.

“I don’t wear it out,” I reply without missing a beat. “I misplace things all the time. And I would just die if I lost it. It means everything to me. Not as much as Nashy-Poo, but almost as much. It’s gorgeous.”

As soon as the nickname for him that I just magically thought up leaves my mouth, I feel him tense on the stool beside me and my smile grows. Success! I really should talk to my therapist about why I enjoy bugging him so much.

“Do you have any pictures? You must have a picture!”

“No. Sorry.” I take another of Nash’s wings. He swats at my hand with his napkin but I eat it anyway.

Crew makes a face. “You really like those putrid teriyaki wings or are you just that eager to tick him off?”

“These are the best flavor at Musica’s.”

Crew blinks and bursts out laughing, slapping the table with his wide palm. “Jesus. You two really are meant to be. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, likes that flavor.”

I look around at the empty baskets. He’s right. Not one of them has the dark brown, almost black sauce smeared on the paper inside the baskets. It’s all various shades of barbecue sauce on the other baskets. Nash and I lock eyes a minute but we’re both instantly uncomfortable—I can tell by the way he grabs his beer and turns away. I shrug. The newbie WAG is not giving up her quest to know everything about my imaginary ring.

“Is it oval or umbral cut? Or square? How many carats? White gold or old school yellow or?—”

Jesus. If I were this girl's boyfriend I would think the ring obsession is a bit of a red flag. I'm about to make something up, trying to think of the most outrageous ring I can think to describe when Nash answers for me. “It’s cushion cut with blue sapphires on the band—to match her eyes. And it’s platinum.”

That gets Crew’s attention as he freezes, his beer against his lips, but he doesn’t take a sip. I’m about to ask him what’s up but the girlfriend sighs dramatically. “You picked a ring to match her eyes? Oh my God, that’s the most romantic thing ever.”

“It sounds like it, doesn’t it?” I say, shooting Nash a dry smirk. “It’s even more romantic when you get to know him. Because he’s got the personality of?—”

Nash stands and talks over me. “Curfew is in an hour guys.”

“Plenty of time to get home,” Grady says as he comes back to the table with Landon.

“I should get going,” Tate announces. “This future Hall of Famer needs his sleep, don’t ya bud?”

He lifts Dylan off his shoulders and puts him on his hip. Dylan nods, eyes wide open, and says, “I don’t like sleep.”

Everyone laughs. I slip off my stool and walk around the table to give my nephew a hug. I kiss his cheek as he leans out of his dad’s embrace and wraps his chubby little arms around my neck, squeezing me as hard as he can. “We have sleepover, Auntie?”

“Not tonight, love bug. Maybe on the weekend? When Daddy’s away you, me, and Mama Mal can have one?” I suggest and he claps his hands as he pulls out of the hug.

“Yay!” He squeals as Mallory grabs her WAG jacket and smiles at me.

The three wave goodbye and head for the door. When I turn back to my seat Nash is staring at me with an intense gaze. “What?”

He clears his throat. “We should go too.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” I look at the ring-obsessed WAG. “Make sure you don’t accidentally marry the boring twin.”

"Oh, Rylan doesn't even have a brother."

“Cool,” I say and give her a smile. “See you at the next home game.”

Nash is already halfway to the door so I only have time to give Liv a quick hug before I have to scurry after him. God, I thought maybe all that sex talk earlier would have kept him loose and chill, but nope. He really is hopeless. I find him beside his car chatting with Tate while Mallory gets Dylan into his car seat.

“I know. It’s weird. I kind of wish he was our assistant coach so we could win together,” Tate is saying, and my feet start getting heavy, slowing my gait. “Instead we’ll have to kick his ass.”

Tate laughs. Nash smiles. "I played under him for two years in the minors. Damn, good coach."

The wings I ate tonight start to turn to acid in my gut. Mallory pops her head up from the back door. “Who are we talking about?”

“Bryce Achilles. He played when our dads played,” Tate explains. “He’s a coach with the Comets now.”

Mallory scrunches up her nose as she thinks. “Um… I don’t know if my dad has mentioned him.”

“He’s great. Never really found his footing though and spent more of his career in the minors,” Nash says. “He stopped me tonight after the presser to ask about my marriage.”

Nash rolls his eyes. I want to puke. He must see something is wrong when he glances at me because the annoyed look on his face, whenever he talks about our fake marital bliss, disappears. "You okay?"

I nod. “Yeah. Fine. Can we get going? If we hit one too many red lights, you’ll get home after curfew and Coach will have to spank you,” I say, trying to be my light, sarcastic self, but it comes out a little tight and tense.

“You sure you’re okay?” Mallory asks, her women’s intuition is probably lighting up like a five alarm fire right now.

“Yeah. I’m just tired all of a sudden and I have a meeting about the documentary tomorrow.” I open the passenger door to Nash’s car and he moves to the driver’s side. But before Tate gets in his own car to drive away my brother wants to take one more walk down memory lane.

“Hey, did you ever come to my uncle Luc’s summer charity games? In Silver Bay?” Tate asks and I want to throttle him. I do not want to relive this. I can’t. Please let something or someone shut him up. “Achilles came to one, once. And the poor bastard?—”

“Daddy! Home! Hooooommmmeee!” Dylan hollers in a piercing pitch only a toddler can hit.

Tate stops talking instantly. "Okay, Dylan. No yelling. We'll go home."

I love you forever, Dyllie Bear , I think as relief washes over me.

Mallory blows us air kisses and Tate mutters something about finishing the conversation at practice and gets in his car. I’m already belted in and ready to leave by the time Nash slides into the driver’s seat. He starts the car, clicks his own seatbelt, and slowly, like a cautious senior citizen, makes his way out of the parking lot and toward the loft.

It’s a short drive and I’m silent the whole time. A normal person would feel my energy has shifted. That I’m in a dark place, but I don’t expect that from Nash because he really isn’t normal.

“What’s wrong? Did I do something?”

Or… is he?

He pulls into the parking lot. “You didn’t.”

I can’t blame him for talking about the one man on the planet who I truly, fully, and completely loathe. He has no idea. No one does and I intend to keep it that way. We both get out of the car and walk toward the back entrance to the building.

“You’re close to the coach on the Comets, huh?”

“He’s a family friend and he coached me a few years in juniors,” Nash says. “Won my first championship with him.”

“Brought him to that Casino night,” I add. “Tate’s rookie season. The one I met you at.”

“Oh.” Nash seems to be trying to remember. “God you were a bitch that night. You barely said two words to me. And when Bryce, Crew, Nash, and I went to play craps at the table you were at, I jokingly asked you to blow on my dice for luck and you walked away without acknowledging my existence.”

“Why did you ask me to do that?”

"I told you then, it was Bryce's idea. He was just trying to give me an icebreaker."

"An icebreaker?"

"Yeah, something funny to break the ice with a teammate's frigid sister." Nash thinks he's funny and in any other situation, he would be. But not this situation.

“Anyway, hope you know better than to hang with him now,” I reply. “TMZ Sports would love to make it look like you’re fucking with games, hanging with opposing teams’ coaching staff.”

“I know the rules Tenley and I love following them, remember?”

I just nod, suddenly eager to have this conversation end.

It’s a warm, breezeless night. The smell of salt hangs in the air because of the proximity of the ocean. The sky appears star-less because of the light pollution, and just plain old regular pollution, which is depressing. I like how I can see the stars just about any night in Silver Bay. Suddenly, I’m a little homesick. For the old rickety house that Tate and I share in the off-season. For my mom’s homemade chili. For Aunt Callie’s gossip sessions over tea. All of it.

“Do you ever get homesick?” I ask as we wait for the elevator in the lobby.

“All the time,” Nash says and smiles. He’s even more handsome when he smiles. The crinkles by his eyes, the lilt to those straight stern eyebrows, the way his wide mouth softens. He looks… downright kissable. I mean, not by me. “I miss hearing the ocean hit the rocks outside my bedroom window. I miss the creak of the floorboards on my back porch. I miss the taste of S’mores ice cream from the stand near the beach. On a sugar cone with sprinkles.”

I gasp and put a hand on my chest. “You eat ice cream?”

“In the off-season,” he admits and rolls his eyes at my drama. The elevator doors open and he holds out his hand to keep them open as I enter. It’s a gentlemanly gesture he does without even thinking about it and… well, it’s not his most grating trait.

“Jimmies.”

“Who is Jimmy?’

I smile up at him. “Sprinkles on ice cream are called Jimmies.”

“Nah. That’s some backwoods Maine thing.”

“It’s fact,” I insist.

He laughs. The doors open and he lets me out first. I try not to let my ovaries notice his chivalry. Our little sexy flirtation from the arena parking garage feels like it happened eons ago now. The moment is definitely over.

"You tired?" he asks as I pull back the curtain I installed on the opening to his office slash my bedroom. It's the same color as the yellow wall, and easily removable with a tension rod for when I'm out of here.

I drop my purse and jacket on the convertible sofa, which I didn’t bother to make back into a couch today because we weren’t filming, and I like the scowl on Nash’s face when he sees it not put back together. “Not tired. Just… gonna chill in here. Give you your space.”

He looks around the room, and there’s a flicker of disappointment. “Okay. If that’s what you want.”

He walks down the hall. I sigh and drop onto my unmade bed. What I want is for Bryce Achilles to disintegrate into dust. What I want is to not be trapped in a fake marriage. What I want is…

The entire loft starts to fill with guitar riffs I don't recognize. I look up in the corner of my room and see the speaker sitting on top of one of the bookcases. Of course, he has surround sound. I get up off the bed, listening. I don't exactly have a choice. It's super loud. It's not bad… Although the lead singer's voice is weird and the drums are intense. The lyrics are rambling and yet poetic. I slip out of my sandals and wander barefoot down the long hall. Nash is not in the living room or the kitchen. I start up the stairs.

I find him at the foot of the bed, his back to me. He’s bopping a little to the song. His suit jacket is lying on the pristinely made bed, the blue tie he wore tonight in a little pile beside it. His elbows are out and I realize he’s undoing his dress shirt. He shrugs out of the shirt and lets it fall to the floor.

Two things hit me about Nash in this moment. He doesn’t have a single, solitary tattoo. And he has a really decent voice. Good, even. He bends to pick up the shirt and notices me at the top of the stairs. He stiffens and swears. “Jesus. You scared me.”

“Who is this?”

“The band?” I nod. “The Hip.”

I stare blankly. He stares back in fascination. “You don’t know The Hip? The Tragically Hip?”

“No.”

He picks up his shirt and tosses it on the bed. “Your uncle Luc is Canadian, right? And close to my dad’s age?”

“French Canadian,” I verify. “But he basically grew up in Maine. He was raised by the Garrisons, essentially. Now back to the band. And the fact that you have a singing voice.”

He looks suddenly and completely sheepish. “I don’t. I just really dig The Hip. I can’t not sing along.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Canadian icons.”

I watch him but he’s stopped undressing, even though he’s got his hand on his belt. His eyes are on me. I feel studied, but also admired. It’s equal parts nice and disconcerting coming from Nash. This attraction to him is really unexpected. I drop into the metal and leather chair off to the side of the foot of his bed. “So I dare you to tell me your favorite Tragic Hip song.”

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.

I unravel myself and get out of the chair. I move toward the staircase. “Where are you going?”

I turn and look at him over my shoulder. “Look, Nash, I get it. I’m not your favorite person. We don’t have much in common. We’re stuck in a temporary situation, but…”

I sigh and decide not to finish explaining myself. I just start down the stairs. It doesn’t take more than two seconds before the sound of his bare feet behind me hits my ears. When I get to the living room he is right behind me, reaching for my arm. When he snags it, I yank it away. “What did I do?”

“I don’t not want to,” I repeat in a thick, deep voice which sounds dumb, on purpose. He frowns. I continue speaking in a normal voice as I walk to the kitchen. “Do you only fuck puck bunnies?”

“No. I exclusively do not fuck puck bunnies,” he says, making his way to stand beside the kitchen island. “I fuck smart, beautiful women who are independent and?—”

“And think ‘I don’t not want to fuck you’ is a sexy, motivating response to ‘hey Nash, wanna have sex so that maybe we can get something worthwhile out of this forced union?’” I blurt out, cutting him off. I grab a bottle of flavored sparkling water from the fridge. “Because smart, independent women usually know their worth and therefore need a little bit more than that, you fucking robot.”

I try to walk right by him but as soon as I'm beside him his hands are on my shoulders and he pushes me back into the wall beside the fridge, leaning his entire, half-naked body into mine as he does. His lips trail across my jawbone. "Shut the fuck up, Tenley. For once, just shut up."

I shiver at the raspy growl of his voice that is in complete contrast with the soft, gentle feel of his lips making their way toward my ear. “How can I want to smack you and fuck you in the same goddamn moment.”

“So do both.”

He pulls his lips off my skin, and his eyes lock with mine, so close he’s blurry. And then he leans in. I pull up a hand and wedge it between us, palm on his chest. He makes an annoyed noise somewhere in the back of his throat. “Tenley, you gorgeous, impossibly vexing wife of mine, I want to fuck the hell out of you.”

I drop my hand and his lips crash down on mine.