And his kiss.
He ended it and shared, “Tuesday, I’m grabbing El Gato and going to yours.”
“Okay,” she whispered.
“I’m spending the night.”
Her eyes got big.
“We’re not fucking.”
Her brows dropped and she rubbed her lips together.
“Taking it slow.”
She stopped rubbing her lips together and repeated, “Okay.”
“Now, you need to go home, because you smell good and your hair’s fuckin’ fantastic and that dress has been doing a number on me all night so I want you in my bed tonight. If you don’t go, I’m gonna see what it would take to get you to agree to stay.”
She bit her lip.
He watched and muttered, “Right.”
Then he did an ab curl, and in a couple more moves, they were both up.
His legs made it known it was time to remove his prosthetics.
He ignored that.
He also ignored the fact that in her bed on Tuesday, she’d see.
He never wore anything but pants and jeans.
So she’d not only see the prosthetics.
She’d see the stumps.
Yeah, he ignored that and walked her to the car.
He kissed her, closed mouth, and not for long, because if she started in, with the generosity of her little tongue, she wouldn’t be going home.
Rix held the door while she folded in.
She gave him a cute wave and a little smile before she pulled out.
He watched her go.
He watched even after she was long gone.
And then he muttered, “You’re a dick, Hendrix,” to the dark street.
He knew he was.
Because he knew it.
He knew it was over even before his father mentioned the name Elsa Cohen.
He knew it when it was a physical feeling, watching her expertly lower herself into the cockpit of her kayak.
He knew it when she gave in on the oatmeal cookies.
He knew it when she got pissed at Brian.
He knew it when she texted about him meeting her friends.
He knew it when he saw that binder.
He even knew it when he heard someone coming, and then she rounded the rocks on that trail in Cali, the sun shining on her hair, making the red come out, the startled, bashful look on her pretty face.
He knew.
He definitely knew it now, The Queen’s Gambit payoff.
The girl, quirky and bright and gifted, alone in the world.
Adrift.
No anchor.
But chess.
And then, suddenly, she realizes that she hasn’t been alone for a long time.
That precisely because she was quirky and bright and gifted, she’d earned respect and a whole lot of love along the way.
Yeah, after that, he knew it for certain.
Still, he wasn’t gonna do dick about it.
Because she was Alex.
And he was Rix.
And they might not have a lot of time together.
But he was going to give her everything he had to give.
Until it was over.
Chapter 13
The Pep Talk
Alex
“Don’t even start with me.”
I stared at Gal on my phone, because she answered my FaceTime call like that.
Therefore, for obvious reasons, I asked, “What?”
“This play of calling me instead of Kate, because you know Kate is going to encourage you to go for it with Rix tonight, rather than backing off what the two of you agreed this weekend, and you think I won’t. You think I’ll talk you out of it. And you’re grasping for reasons not to go for it.”
I was rethinking how open I was with my girls and how much I loved them in my life.
At least I was rethinking that about Gal.
“Huh” was all I could say.
“Yeah,” she agreed.
“So, that means you’re not going to talk me out of being a couple with limits with Rix?”
There you go.
I was too open with my girls.
Last night in an epic Zoom session, I told them both all about it.
Including the fact I was having second thoughts about doing it.
Because, away from the mind-muddying presence of Rix, I wasn’t certain it was that good of an idea.
“I’m going to tell you what you won’t believe,” Gal began. “And I know that, because I told you all this last night. But apparently, you refused to listen to me.”
Ugh.
She kept going.
“So this time, bitch, listen up. You’re amazing. You’re sweet and kind and together. Your sister and mother might be classic English rose beauties, but you’re a hundred times more attractive than they are, and not only because you have a fantastic personality, or any personality at all. You’re just really freaking pretty. Also, there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert, but you’ve got no reason to be shy. People like you. You’re interesting. And in a world where everyone thinks their opinion on any little thing is important, someone being quiet and listening more than they jabber is a cool change.”
I said nothing, and not only because I was listening.
Gal took that as her cue to carry on.
“So I’m going to tell you that if I see all this, Rix Hendrix is gonna see it. And obviously, he sees it. The man has been fucking everything that moves for a while now, and he wants to be a couple with you. Okay, it’s a couple with limits, but he got nowhere near that with anyone else, so that’s pretty freaking huge.”
This was something to consider, all of it (and we could just say, since Sunday, I’d been considering it…frequently).
Because Rix had been a total manwhore.
I wasn’t even very close to him before all this went down between us, and he was such a manwhore, I couldn’t escape it.
It didn’t feel good back then, but it wasn’t my place for it to feel bad.
Now, if I understood what was happening, he was offering to give that up and just be mine (if only for a time).
Which, yes, was huge.
“And you’ve been in town for a few years, Alex,” Gal continued. “But I grew up here. She was older than me, but I knew Peri Poulson in school. Everyone knew her. She’s pretty. She’s bubbly. She’s tall and looks like a Sports Illustrated model, and she knows it. But when the whispers started that she broke up with her fiancé, the firefighter who got critically injured in the Cellar Fire, not a one of us who knew her was surprised about that.”
This was news.
“Really?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” she answered. “And I’ll add that even all the guys she constantly had eating out of her hand thought that was low, because it super freaking was. She lost respect. She lost friends. And she deserved to lose both.”
She one hundred percent did.
“You didn’t share any of this last night,” I noted.
“Well I’m sharing it now because you fill your life, but babe, seriously, you take zero risks. You’re one of the coolest chicks I know with the way you go get it. But then again, there are some things, important ones, where you don’t. Now, think about what’s happening with you and this guy, because he had happen to him what happened to him, then finds out his fiancée is a puddle, not a lake. She’s about appearances. He no longer worked in the River Rain advertising spread vision of what she wanted her life to look like. He’d fuck her Insta, and I follow her. She’s all about her IG, showing the world how perfect her life is up in the Arizona Mountains. But it’s for certain they haven’t invented a filter to disguise prosthetics.”