Go Hard: A Bad Boy Sports Romance(96)
After some small talk and once their drinks had come, Nash proposed a toast. “To your daughter, Selena.” He looked at me, grinning. “The love of my life. To starting a new family.”
“Here, here,” Dad said. We clinked glasses and drank.
“So,” Mom said, “when are you two having kids?”
I nearly choked on my wine, but Nash laughed.
“Soon, I hope,” he said.
I wanted to kill him.
“Really? Does your schedule let you have kids?” Dad asked.
“No, not at all, Chris. But I’m hoping it’ll calm down soon.”
“Good,” Mom said. “I want grandchildren.”
“Oh, we’ll give you as many grandchildren as we can.”
“You want a large family?” Dad asked.
“Huge,” Nash said. He grinned at me. “I can’t help it. When I think about your daughter, I just want to have as many babies with her as possible.”
I was bright red. I couldn’t believe him, but Mom and Dad were laughing, eating it up.
“Look at her,” Nash said. “I’m embarrassing her, but it’s true. We want a big family.”
“Don’t be embarrassed, dear,” Mom said. “It’s okay. Sex is a part of marriage.”
“Mom!” I said. “Nobody was talking about sex.”
“That is how you make babies, babe,” Nash said, grinning hugely. He loved this.
“Nash makes a good point, honey,” Dad said.
I couldn’t believe him.
“How often are you two trying?” Mom asked Nash.
“Oh, every day at least,” Nash said nonchalantly. “You never know when it’ll happen.”
“Good man. Always be prepared.”
“Oh my god,” I said. “You are not talking about us having sex right now.”
The three of them laughed, and I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
But, on the bright side, Nash had clearly already won them over. It was hard not to like him when he wanted to be charming. Even my parents had been dragged into his magnetism and clearly couldn’t get away. Even to the point where they somehow thought it was okay to joke about their daughter having sex.
Soon we ordered food and fell into a comfortable conversation. Mom and Dad asked Nash about his work, about his life, and about our tour. He did the majority of talking, only pausing to let me confirm any details. Really, that was how I liked it. Of the two of us, he was the much better liar, probably because he had been trained to be a special forces guy. He had to be able to lie for his country.
But not me. I was just another regular girl, not trained to lie, not built to fight.
“Tell me, Nash,” Dad said. “How are you going to take care of our daughter?”
“Dad,” I said, “he doesn’t take care of me. I take care of myself.”
Nash smiled. “It’s okay, babe. Chris just wants to make sure that I’m not some bum.”
“He’s on television,” Mom said. “He can’t be a bum.”
Nash laughed. “You’d be surprised. But to answer your question, sir, I’m doing very well with the book sales. It’s going to be optioned into a movie soon. After all this blows over, I was thinking about going into military consulting. You’d be surprised by how well that pays and how in demand people with my kind of training are.”
Dad nodded thoughtfully. “So you have a plan.”
“Yes, sir. Get your daughter pregnant soon and then provide for my family.”
“Sounds good,” Dad said, grinning.
I was so embarrassed.
“So, Nash, tell us,” Mom said. “Is Selena just about the hardest person to live with?”
“Mom!” I said. “What the heck?”
She shrugged, smiling. “It’s true. You’re so messy.”
Nash laughed. “No, Tracey. She’s fine. I don’t cut her any slack. I’m trying to instill some military discipline into her.”
“Good man!” Dad exclaimed. “I like the sound of that.”
Nash grinned hugely. “That’s right. We drill every day. She’ll be very clean by the time I’m finished with her.”
I couldn’t believe him. There was no way my parents weren’t going to get the subtext of that comment. I was ready to stomp on his foot, but Mom just smiled and laughed.
“Well, if you can get her to clean up, it’ll be a miracle.”
“Great. Let’s just all pile up on me,” I grumbled.
“Sorry, honey,” Mom said. “You just don’t bring a lot of boyfriends around.”
“Really?” Nash asked. “How many before me?”
“Oh,” Dad said. “One, back in high school.”
“She doesn’t date much,” Mom said. “Well, didn’t at least.”
“Really?” Nash asked. “I would have pegged her for a girl with lots of boys.”
“That’s not true,” I said quickly. “I had boyfriends. I just never brought them around for obvious reasons.”
“I don’t know, honey,” Dad said. “You’ve always been more interested in studying hard than meeting boys.”
“Studying hard, huh?” Nash asked. “Sounds about right. Your daughter is a regular old bookworm.”
“She used to spend hours in her bedroom reading romance novels,” Mom said, laughing. “She was such a moody teenager.”
“Romance novels?” Nash grinned at me. “The steamy kind?”
“No!” I said quickly. “No. Just regular books. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
“They were steamy all right!” Dad said, and I turned bright red. “What? They were.”
Nash laughed loudly along with Dad, and Mom gave me a well, what can you do look.
The waitress came soon after with our meals. Without a doubt, so far it had been the weirdest dinner of my life. Nash was charming, clearly winning over my parents, and they seemed so willing to make jokes about my sex life, not to mention to air my embarrassing past life. As if anybody was cool when they were a teenager?
We ate for a few minutes, but about ten minutes after the meals came, Dad gave Mom a look. She nodded and turned back to us.
“What?” I asked her. “I saw that look.”
“Your father isn’t feeling well. We should get going.”
Nash frowned. “Are you sure? I’m having a great time.”
“Nash, it was good to meet you,” Dad said. “Sorry about this.” He stood up.
Mom stood too. “Honey, I’ll call you soon. Nash, lovely meeting you.”
“Same to you, Tracey, Chris. Please, we’ll do this again soon.”
“Of course.”
Mom smiled and they left quickly.
We sat back down and Nash looked at me. “Your dad okay?”
“Cancer,” I said.
“Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“The chemo makes him sick. I guess he just hit his limit.”
I hated that the meal had ended like that. Nash and I sat there in silence, picking at our food, Nash finishing off his third whisky. For all their jokes, it had still felt really good to see my parents and to forget for one second that I was lying to them. Dad had looked pretty bad, and seeing him that way had only solidified my resolve to see this whole thing through.
“So that’s why you’re doing this,” Nash said. “I figured it was something like that.”
“Yeah,” I said softly. “I guess so. The money is for them.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything else. We finished our food, he paid, and we left.
We didn’t talk much in the car ride back to the hotel. I was distracted thinking about my parents, and I had no clue what was going on with him.
Seeing Dad had made everything real. Sure, Nash was an asshole, and getting involved with him was so clearly an awful idea. But my parents needed that money, and they loved me enough to fly out to Providence, even with Dad was so sick.
I was going to finish this. Regardless of what happened, I had to do it for my parents.
I caught Nash looking at me, and a thrill ran through me.
26
Nash
“This is hard.”
I looked at her and shrugged. “Never said it would be easy.
“Seriously, Nash,” she said, frowning. We were sitting back in our hotel room, sipping drinks from room service. Some crappy reality TV show was playing but we weren’t paying attention.
“You saw how sick my dad looked,” she said. “He couldn’t even make it through the meal.”
“He did look bad,” I said, frowning.
“I hate that I have to lie to him.” She stretched out, and I could tell she was a little drunk. “You know what I mean?”
“Sure,” I said, sipping my whisky.
“Ugh. This sucks.” She finished her drink. “Can I get another one of these?”
“Sure,” I said, grinning. I called up room service and asked for a bottle of gin, some tonic water, ice, and a glass. I also ordered another whisky for myself.
“You can be so nice sometimes,” Selena said. “When you’re not being a jerk.”
I grinned at her and sat down on the couch. She scooted closer to me. “You think I’m a jerk?”
“Uh, yeah, obviously,” she said. “You’re a huge ass.”