Page 85 of Hold Me Today

“You can trust her,” he says, still playing with my loose ponytail. “I do.”

I do.

Two little words with so much meaning behind them.

Our server comes around to take our drink and appetizer order. Once she leaves, Dom palms the edge of the table and exhales roughly. “Living in L.A. comes with its merits. Good weather, a quick ride to work. Except that means I’m in the cesspool of vultures.” He drums his fingers on the table. “I went to see Savannah Rose after the show ended.”

Nick curses beneath his breath.

I reach for my glass of water and pretend I don’t exist.

“It was . . . a bad idea.”

“DaSilva, man.” Nick’s free hand motions frantically through the air like he’s trying to find the right words. “Why the hell would you goto her after she turned you down?”

“Because I liked her.” He says it so simply, so easily, that I nod along with him, like I’ve known him for years and not just ten minutes. “I wanted to know why she rejected me, without all the cameras and shit in our faces. I’m not going to go into detail about what went down—clearly, I’m sure you can put two and two together—but someone caught me leaving her hotel room at almost four in the morning.”

“Gamóto.”

I reach for Nick’s thigh under the table. “There’s good news!” I tilt my head toward the scenery out the window. “You’re in Boston, which is great! And, oh yeah, no one’s reported anything about you and Savannah being in some hotel. I’ve been”—I slide my gaze over to Nick—“checking the gossip sites daily after the first time we ended up on one.”

Dom shifts his weight, elbows moving to the table so he can drop his head into his upturned hands. “I paid the asshole off,” he mutters, so low that I almost can’t hear him. Like honey, misery coats every syllable. “Ten-grand just to make sure he didn’t go blabbing to his boss. Savannah didn’t ask for me to go over there. I did it. And even though all we did was sit and talk, I couldn’t let him run his smear campaign in the press.”

I home in on his choice of words:likednotloved.

“Have either of you talked to her since?” I ask.

Both men shake their heads, Nick looking unperturbed by the thought, even as Dom grimaces in what I imagine is embarrassment for throwing his heart on the line and being rejected—twice.

“Jeez, reality TV sounds absolutely insane.”

“You havenoidea,” Dom says, a trace of a smile finally ticking up one corner of his mouth. “There was this one night, the producers asked us all to come outside in nothing but our boxers. How many of us were there at that point, Stamos? Ten?”

“Thirteen, I think.” Nick laughs. “It wasn’t even raining, but they wanted to host a wet abs contest.”

“They hooked up hoses to this tram type thing,” Dom tells me, his hands referencing the build of it for me. “It was taller than all of us, and we stood beneath it, waiting for that moment where weallknew what was coming . . . dick shrinkage.”

I can’t stop myself from cringing, or from mumbling, “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes.” Nick’s arm leaves my back as he reaches for his glass. “We were wet. No one was packing any heat south of the equator, if you catch my drift. And then they brought out Savannah Rose and told her the challenge would be with her blindfolded. The first person she could correctly identify from their abs would win a date the next day.”

“That’s . . .” Two pairs of eyes fix on me. Oh, boy. “Is this where I plead the fifth?” When neither of them say anything, I place one hand down on the table, the other up, palm facing Dom, and open my mouth. “I solemnly swear that I would have correctly identified each one of you. No man would be left behind, and that’s a promise.”

Dom barely lasts a second before he’s clutching his stomach and laughing hard enough that the glasses shimmy on the table.

I turn to Nick and mock-whisper, “I’m banking on the fact that you’d be first in the lineup.”

His gray eyes glitter with laughter. “I was first that night too. Savannah didnotmatch me correctly.”

“Who did she think you were?”

It’s Dom who answers, and he does so with a wry grin. “This body builder from Miami. Butnothingbeats this guy, Josh, an accountant from Idaho.”

“An accountant. He sounds . . . sweet.”

“Until it turned R-rated,” Nick says, leaning back in his chair. “We were on full display, total shit storm in the making with fake rain pelting our backs, and Savannah went to touch his abs and miscalculated his height.”

My shoulders hunch and I bracket my mouth with my hands because I alreadyknowwhere this is going. “Please,” I whisper, trying not to laugh, “please tell me she didn’t.”

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