Page 84 of The Love Dare
“Sorry.” Alex tries to shake the giddy grin off his lips, but he can’t. Tyler knows the exact moment he gives up. He loves gossip. He always has. And this is juicy as hell. So even though Tyler wants to walk over there and slap a hand over his best friend’s mouth to shut him up before he says anything stupid, he can’t really blame Alex for what happens next. “Holy shit. Sorry, Dad, but seriously. Holy shit! You guys are finally together for real, aren’t you? Are you? You are!”
“Together?” Alexandru repeats, his gaze finally dropping to the spot where Tyler and Winnie are holding hands. His dark brown eyes narrow.
“For real?” Yetta asks, glancing at her son. “What are you talking about?”
“Them.” Alex gestures their way. “The two of them. They’ve been hooking up since high school, but I didn’t think they’d ever make it official.”
“WHAT?” Alexandru snaps his face toward Tyler, expression thunderous. “You’ve been what?”
“No, we haven’t.” Tyler jumps behind Winnie, holding on to her like a human shield because if there’s one thing he knows about Alexandru, it’s that he would never hurt a hair on his daughter’s head. Tyler’s odds, on the other hand, aren’t looking so hot. There’s steam swirling from the man’s ears. “I swear to god, I didn’t touch her in high school.”
Alex snorts, a bit of ire flashing in his eyes.
Tyler glares at his friend.What the fuck, man?
“Alex, shut up!” Winnie beats him to the punch, then looks back to her father. “Tyler’s telling the truth. We never even kissed until a month ago.”
“Come on,” Alex says gruffly, some clearly pent-up frustration flashing in his gaze. “We’re not idiots. You don’t need to cover it up. Hell, you didn’t need to cover it up back then either.”
“We’re not covering anything up,” Winnie insists.
“We have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tyler adds.
Wrong move, he immediately realizes, wishing he could snatch the words out of the air and stuff them back in his stupid, good-for-nothing mouth. A competitive gleam lights Alex’s eyes. He’s never been able to back down from a challenge. And he’s never been able to admit when he’s wrong either. It’s a truly horrendous combination.
“No idea?” Alex scoffs. His brows rise. “No idea!”
“No,” Winnie doubles down, because she and Tyler obviously have the truth on their side, but he winces anyway. She sees the mistake a second too late. “Alex, don’t?—”
“Every time I had a party in this house, where did Tyler spend it?”
They glance at each other guiltily, but it’s not what Alex thinks.
“We weren’t—” Tyler tries, but his friend cuts him off.
“Inyourroom.” He points at Winnie. “And whose jersey did you wear to every single one of our games? Because it sure as hell wasn’t mine.”
“Ty’s,” she admits begrudgingly. “But it wasn’t?—”
“And who designed the tattoo around your wrist?”
Oh, he’s clearly just getting started. Tyler groans. “We all know it was Winnie. But?—”
“And that Shakespeare class in college? Did you sign up for that before or after we visited her dorm room that day?”
Tyler winces.Does he know everything?“After, but?—”
“And how often did you go up to Ty’s room tostudy?”
She pulls her lower lip between her teeth before slowly admitting, “A few times.”
“Try every day. For two months. You’re idiots if you don’t think I had the rest of the team on my ass about that one. Fucking McKinny moaned,Oh, Tylerin my ear every time you walked by, Win. Why do you think I almost got suspended for punching him in the face?”
“Because he was an asshole,” Tyler rushes to say, sensing that his friend’s mood has shifted. Honestly, Tyler can’t blame him. Even the most laid-back human on Earth would be pissed the hell off at this level of gaslighting, except they aren’t gaslighting him. Until a month ago, they never went behind Alex’s back, and it’s important to Tyler that his friend understands that. He can be angry all he wants—hell, he has every right to be pissed that his best friend is dating his sister—but he can’t be angry at a lie. He needs to understand they’re telling the truth. “I can see how it looks. Really, I can. But whatever you’re reading into all of that, you’re wrong. Dead wrong. Nothing ever happened between us, not until a month ago when Winnie turned up on the show.”
Alex narrows his eyes, disbelief ripe. “If you weren’t hooking up, whatwereyou doing?”
“Watching movies,” Tyler answers honestly.
