Shit.
Fuck.
“Leave me out of it,” he surrendered.
Her smile lit her face, even wearing the sunglasses.
“I mean it,” he pressed. “If the shit hits the fan, I wanna tell Rix I had nothing to do with it.” It was his turn to lean into her. “This goes south, baby, I’m throwing you right under the bus.”
“Have you met my glorious mother and her fabulous fiancé, who I made certain did not let the past interfere with their future?” she queried.
He sighed.
She kept smiling. “This is going to be marvelous.”
“It’s going to be hell.”
“It is not,” she stated haughtily. “You’ll have fun, I promise.”
“Did you miss me telling you to keep me out of it?”
“I won’t involve you, of course. But that doesn’t mean I won’t keep you informed.”
He sat back in the chair and looked to the sky.
He then felt her lips press against his jaw before she said into his ear, “Darling, I’m hungry. You need to feed me.”
To make her pay for the hell she was imminently going to put him through, he made her wait for him to acquiesce to her demand.
He managed a whole five seconds before he was out of his chair, pulling her out of hers and holding her hand as they moved in to the house.
Incidentally, he opened the door for her.
The one to the house. The one to the garage.
And the one to his truck.
Before he drove her to town, fed her…and picked up the check.
Chapter 5
The Ride
Rix
Jesus, he needed her to start talking.
It was Tuesday, mid-morning.
They were in their rental, on their way to Camp Trail Blazer, and Alex had probably spoken only fifty words to him since they’d strapped into the plane three hours ago.
Not unusual for Alex.
And he never in his life thought he’d want a woman to babble, but right then, he not only wanted a babbling woman, he needed one.
Especially if that one was Alex and her voice.
He looked down at the phone he held in his hand, and he knew he shouldn’t do it, but he did.
He pulled up the text that had landed while they were up in the air.
It was the last of over a dozen he’d gotten from Peri since he’d seen her at Scooter’s.
All of the previous ones were invites to drinks, dinner, anywhere he felt comfortable so they could talk, with a few scattered Just thinking of you thrown in.
He’d replied to none of them.
But the last one, the one that came in less than two hours ago, read, Okay, with your silence, message received. But I can’t, and won’t, let us go without telling you what I wanted to tell you face to face. I love you. I loved you then, I love you now, I never stopped loving you, and I WILL never stop loving you. You’re the best man I’ve ever known, Rix. You made me happy. I think we can have that again, if you give us a shot. But if you can’t, I understand. Just know…you’ll always be in my heart.
He wanted to be pissed.
He wanted to remember how it felt. How his first thought when she told him they were over, was Christ, this hurts worse than both my feet being crushed.
He was not pissed.
All that was in his head was her words, I think we can have that again.
He didn’t agree.
He didn’t because Peri could have lost her legs. Or been diagnosed with cancer and had to have a double mastectomy. Or got diagnosed with MS and he’d have to watch her suffer over years.
And no doubt in his mind…
He would have stuck.
He would have because he’d loved her. He’d loved her smile. He’d loved that she read Crichton-style thrillers, even though they scared the shit out of her. He loved she could look at the flight of a bird and tell him if it was an eagle, hawk, falcon, owl, whatever. He loved it that she’d complain about her feet being cold, but even as active as she was, she was too lazy to go get a pair of socks.
Or maybe she knew Rix got off on doing stupid little shit like that for her.
Peri could take on the world.
But when she was feeling lazy, he’d get her some socks.
In the end, though, Peri couldn’t take on the world.
Because she wasn’t strong enough to take on a him that was not top to toe him.
But he wasn’t angry about it.
He’d been that for a long time. He’d been that when they faced off in Scooter’s parking lot.
Though for some reason, he couldn’t find that now.
So he was just confused as to what he did feel, since it wasn’t pissed, and it wasn’t Rix taking a beat to consider it possible they could work shit out.
But the bottom line in that moment was, like he’d managed to do for a couple of years now, he didn’t want to think of Peri at all.
He’d spent months after she’d left him giving her all of his headspace.
He didn’t have the energy to give her more.
“What’s on your mind?” he grunted into the cab of their rented SUV.
He felt Alex jerk beside him, like she forgot he was even there.
That almost made him laugh, it being so Alex, her being self-contained, if not at ease in the world, seeming at ease in her head, her world.
Case in point, she didn’t chat with him on the plane because she was nervous around him.
She’d told him she was into a podcast, was close to the end, and asked if he’d be offended if she finished it up.
He had a book, and when you had a book, you were always good, so he’d told her to go for it.
They sat in seats beside each other in that plane that had a variety of options of where to sit, him with his book, her with her eyes closed or staring out the window, her ear buds in, perfectly cool each of them in their own thing.
Though her surprise at the reminder he was sitting beside her made him want to laugh, he didn’t laugh.
He wasn’t in the mood to laugh.
“What?” she asked.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked in return, figuring she’d say something about their schedule, what she expected of CTB, thoughts about meeting Frank, or practically anything about their trip or their work.
She didn’t say anything about any of that.
She asked, “How do you decide between chair and prosthetics?”
At her question, Rix went completely still.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it.
The funny sensation in his gut and chest.
Fuck, it seemed he could even hear it.
Like a tear. The beginning of a fissure forming. Straggling upward, from gut to throat, a warning that soon, that break would fracture and he’d be laid wide open.
He felt it, but he didn’t fight it.
There was tension there, on the surface and buried deep.
It was solid, like granite. Packed there, tight, with over two years of heavier and heavier stuff landing on it, and then Rix would bury it, making it unbreakable.
Unbearable.
But with her question, that fissure was forming.
And it was like he had to hold still, waiting, even hoping, that what he was experiencing was what he thought it was going to be.
Because he needed the goddamn release.