Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43512 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Way.
“Y’all dating?” she blurts, because tact never really got a foothold in this zip code.
I open my mouth.
Nash beats me to it. “Yeah,” he says, no hesitation. “We are.”
The word lands inside my chest like a stone in deep water. The ripples keep going.
Brooke squeals again, clutching my forearm. “I knew it. We all knew it, back in high school, that you two were endgame. I owe Ariana twenty bucks.”
I groan internally. Ariana Allen has been betting on my love life since we were fifteen.
“Small towns,” I mutter as Brooke flits away to inform the rest of the bar.
“You wanted believable,” Nash says.
“I wanted subtle.”
“Wrong town for that.” He orders us drinks. I settle on a beer because anything stronger seems unwise. We claim a spot at the edge of the dance floor.
The DJ spins a fast line dance song and people flood the floor, bodies moving in synchronized chaos. The Eager Beaver is good for exactly two things—getting drunk and pretending your life is simple as long as your boots hit the right beat.
“You remember this one?” Nash asks, nodding at the dancers.
“Yes. I also remember you refusing to do it because you said choreography was ‘an affront to free will.’”
“It is.”
“And yet you make your bed like a military manual.”
“Structure in the bedroom. Anarchy on the dance floor.”
The words leave his mouth.
We both hear them at the same time.
My face heats.
His ears do, too.
“We are not acknowledging that sentence,” I say.
“Agreed,” he says immediately.
We drink. We watch people we used to know. Some of them have children now. Some of them have divorces. Some of them are exactly the same, just with more laugh lines.
It’s… a lot.
I’m halfway through my beer when the tempo shifts. The first notes of a slow song slide through the speakers, syrupy and familiar.
“Uh-uh,” I say. “Nope. Not happening.”
Nash sets his bottle down. “Laney.”
“No.”
“We kind of have to.”
“Why?”
“Because half this bar has been waiting ten years to see what we look like slow dancing.”
“Then let them wait twenty.”
His eyes soften, but there’s a stubborn glint there, too. “Come on,” he says, holding out his hand. “Duty calls.”
“This is not duty.”
“It is if it sells the story.”
The worst part is that he’s right. The second worst part is that I want to say yes.
“Don’t step on my boots,” I mutter, putting my hand in his.
He leads me onto the floor. Around us, couples sway—a mix of pressed-against-each-other and polite-hand-on-shoulder.
Nash pulls me in slow. Not too close. Close enough. One hand finds my waist, warm and firm through my shirt. The other holds my hand at chest level, fingers laced. He smells like soap and sweat and the faintest hint of smoke from the grill back at the ranch.
My body remembers this—this shape, this height, this way of fitting together. Even though we’ve never actually done this before.
We were supposed to.
Once.
At a school dance where things did not go according to plan.
My stomach flutters with the ghost of that night, but I shove it down. That story has teeth. I’m not ready to let it bite.
“You’re tense,” he murmurs, leaning in enough that his breath grazes my ear.
“I’m at the Eager Beaver slow dancing with my fake boyfriend in front of half the town. Why on earth would I be tense?”
His chest moves against mine in a low chuckle I feel more than hear. “Relax,” he says. “It’s just a song.”
“That’s the problem,” I whisper. “Songs end. Secrets don’t.”
His fingers tighten slightly at my waist. “We’ll handle the secrets.”
That “we” tugs at something tender.
We sway. The music settles into a rhythm and so do we. My body betrays me and slowly stops fighting. My cheek brushes his shoulder once when the crowd shifts and I forget to keep distance.
His thumb strokes the back of my hand, slow, absentminded. Each pass sends a little jolt up my arm. My heart is doing a tap dance in my ribcage and my brain has decided to observe instead of intervene.
“You’re doing that thing,” I say quietly.
“What thing?”
“Being gentle.”
His jaw works. “Would you prefer rough?”
I swallow.
He notices. His gaze drops to my mouth and back up again.
“This is dangerous,” I breathe.
“Dancing?”
“You.”
His lips tilt. “You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” He spins me in a lazy circle, not for show, just because he can. When he pulls me back in, our bodies align hip to hip. The world goes a little fuzzy at the edges.
“You ever think about it?” he asks softly. “Back then. If things had gone different.”
“Yes,” I say, too fast.
His throat works. “Me too.”
We’re close enough now that if I tipped my chin up two inches, my mouth would meet his.
It’s just a dance, I tell myself. It’s not just a dance, my heart argues.
The song ends before we find out who’s right. The applause and whoops break the spell. We step apart, hands falling reluctantly.