Total pages in book: 83
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 393(@200wpm)___ 315(@250wpm)___ 262(@300wpm)
Meaning he should go drink it before everyone decided he was a heartbroken sap who didn’t understand that even a silent no was still no. “I’m going to need something stronger.”
His buddy leaned in and dropped his voice. “There’s no rule that says you have to stay. This is a party. If you’re not feeling it…”
Screw that. He wasn’t letting her derail his night. “Laila has been planning this for weeks. She never gets an evening away from the kids. Haisley’s return was a surprise, but I’m fine.”
Matt shook his head. “You’re full of shit.”
“Fuck off and go be with your wife.”
“All right. But…maybe it would be good if you and Haisley talked things out.”
Not here. And not unless she showed a willingness to take a verbal deep-dive into their past. “Eating fucking beets every day is supposed to be good for me, too. You don’t see me scarfing down that crap.”
Matt laughed. “Ten-four.”
As he watched his buddy adjust his cowboy hat and retreat to the far side of the bar, Nash scowled and headed toward Trees and Laila, who had miraculously found a table. A cocktail waitress recited drink orders back to them as he approached. “Give me half a dozen tequila shots.”
The woman craned her neck up, up, up to look at him. Since he was six-foot-seven, he got that a lot.
“You want six tequila shots?”
He nodded. “With salt and lime. There’s an extra twenty bucks for you if I have them in the next five minutes.”
“Done.” She jotted his order on her notepad, snapped it closed, and made a mad dash for the bartender.
“You looking to start the new year with a hangover?” his brother asked.
“Looking to have a good time. It’s a party, isn’t it?” Nash ignored Trees’s skeptical glance.
“How you doing?” Zy asked, his arm loosely around his wife, Tessa, who despite having two kids, looked amazing.
The pair of them were sublimely fucking happy. So were his brother and Laila. Matt and Madison, too, for that matter. Nash knew none of them had reached their bliss without serious strife, and more than once it looked as if happily ever after wouldn’t be in their cards. But they’d fought for their women and emerged victorious against all odds. Then again, each of those women had been madly in love with the man they now called husband.
Which meant he had zero hope with Haisley.
“Peachy,” he quipped. “You?”
Zy raised a brow. “You’re a shitty liar.”
“Fuck off.”
“Listen, Trees will tell you… I was an asshole and a half when I thought I’d lost Tessa forever—”
“I’m going to stop you right there. I don’t need a pep talk. I just need booze. And maybe a horny female willing to come home with me.”
But he couldn’t imagine fucking another woman right now. He’d only think of Haisley. Hell, just like he had more often than not over the last two years.
The cocktail waitress returned and offloaded Zy’s and Trees’s beers, along with Laila’s piña colada and Tessa’s glass of red. Then she lined up his shots on the crowded table, settled a saltshaker in front of him, and handed him a ramekin of limes. “Made it back in less than four minutes. Anything else?”
He handed her his credit card. “Check back with me in fifteen.”
The waitress nodded as she inserted his plastic in her handheld device. When she presented him the screen, Nash gave her the promised tip plus more, then signed with his finger. She double-checked the transaction with a nod. “You got it.”
“What are we drinking to?” Zy asked once she’d gone.
Besides drowning my sorrows? “Whatever.”
Trees eyed the row of shot glasses. “Not being able to walk out of here? Puking half the night?”
Nash licked his hand, sprinkled some salt, then lifted a glass in salute. “We’re about to start a new year. How about we drink to leaving the past behind?”
No one replied, and he didn’t much care. He just licked the salt away, downed the first of his shots, sucked down a lime wedge…then repeated the process until he’d gulped down every drop from each shot glass.
With one last sigh, he slammed down the final one and closed his eyes, enjoying the hot, woozy rush through his veins. He hadn’t meant to skip dinner tonight, but that sure as hell aided in the buzz he had going.
“Hey.” Ethan Garrison suddenly sidled up to him. “Happy New Year.”
Nash just grunted. What was his housemate so fucking happy about?
Ethan looked poised to say something when he began scowling at his phone. “Son of a bitch.”
“What?” Maybe the kid had something work-related he could sink his teeth into. Nash prayed that would keep him from fixating on Haisley…
“I work out with one of the local cops at the gym around the corner from my apartment. We’ve been talking about the disappearances around that new mall…”