“Sit,” he said, nodding toward the table. “You want something to drink?”
“Whatever you’re having.”
He stuck a couple of slices of pizza in the microwave and then pulled two pumpkin ales from the fridge. The sleeves of his T-shirt stretched over the bulge of his biceps as he twisted the top off each bottle. Heat raced up her neck as her mind immediately returned to the image of him without a shirt.
She scarfed down the soggy reheated pizza as she filled him in on what had happened. With every new revelation, his expression alternated between rage and sympathy.
“I should have listened to you,” she said.
Noah lowered his bottle to the table. “Don’t do that.”
“But you were right.”
“I could have just as easily been wrong. You had to see it for yourself.”
“You’re a better judge of character than me.”
“No, I’m not. I’m a cynical asshole who thinks everyone has an agenda, and you’re a goddamned ray of sunshine who automatically assumes the best intentions.”
Alexis laughed. “A goddamned ray of sunshine?”
He gave her a half-hearted smile. “All this wedding stuff is starting to rub off on me.”
“Anyway,” she breathed, leaning back in her chair. “I guess that’s that. I get to keep my organs, after all.”
Noah carried her plate to the sink, rinsed it off, and loaded it in the dishwasher.
“Thanks for feeding me.”
“What are friends for?” He returned to the table and held out his hand. “Let’s start a fire outside.”
She folded her fingers in his and let him pull her to her feet. But as she followed him outside, the fire she was most concerned with was the one that had ignited inside her.
After lighting the fire in the firepit, Noah went back inside for two fresh beers and a blanket. He returned, handed her one of the beers, and then sat down next to her on the cushioned patio sectional that she’d helped him pick out last spring. It cut a ninety-degree angle around the corner of the covered patio where she’d helped him hang string lights and decorate with a row of hanging baskets. The flowers had long since died, but the baskets were still there.
How many nights had she sat here just like this with him? And why now, all of a sudden, did the space seem smaller, more intimate? Her hands shook as she spread the blanket over their laps, and when he slung an arm over the back of the couch, her lungs stopped working at the innocent brush of his fingertips against the nape of her neck.
If he was equally affected, it didn’t show. He stared quietly into the flames, his face cutting a hard angle in the dancing, flickering shadows as he raised the bottle to his mouth. The strong, long lines of his throat worked against a swallow.
He looked over. “Talk to me.”
He’d said those same words to her countless times, but tonight, she understood the simple gift of them. He never prodded, never pushed. He was just there, willing to listen, always. Expecting nothing in return.
“About what?” she asked, breathless.
“About whatever has you staring at me so hard.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. How was she supposed to tell her best friend that she was suddenly overcome with a need to kiss him?
Alexis tore her gaze to the fire. “He didn’t . . . He didn’t even ask about her.”
His fingers brushed her neck again. “Your mom?”
“To not even . . . to not even acknowledge her as anything more than just some woman he’d had a summer fling with.” A tear stung the corner of her eye. “She deserved better than that.”
“You both deserved better.”
“I’m not sure he even cared about her.”
“Would it matter if he had?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Noah set his beer on a table next to the couch and shifted in his seat so he could face her more directly. Under the blanket, Alexis curled one leg under her to make room for him.
“Why does it matter?”
The tear swelled and blurred her vision. “Because she deserved to be loved.”
“You loved her.”
“I know, but it’s not the same. She deserved a true love.”
“Tell me about her,” he said, voice tight.
Alexis leaned her head against his arm. “She loved squirrels. Other people would try to keep squirrels off their bird feeders, but her bird feeders were for the squirrels.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
“She loved Fleetwood Mac. And Stephen King novels. She let me read It when I was in middle school, and I didn’t sleep for a year.”
Noah smiled. “Is that why you hate clowns?”
Pain struck her in the chest. “No.”
He didn’t prod. Just waited for her to explain.
“I wanted a clown for my birthday party one year. We couldn’t . . . We couldn’t afford it. So my mom dressed up like one for me.”
“Why did that make you hate them?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe because even as a kid, I knew it was wrong. That she felt bad about it. Like she had failed me somehow. And that wasn’t fair to her. I wish I’d never asked for it.”
The burn of resentment that she’d felt at Elliott’s house once again scorched her throat. “I bet Candi had clowns at her birthday parties. I bet Lauren didn’t have to pick up extra shifts to pay for it either.”
“It’s unfair. All of it.”
Alexis sat up and took a drink of her beer. “You know what’s really unfair? I remember that the doctor was wearing a red tie the day we found out my mom had cancer. But I can’t remember what she wore that day. I don’t want to remember his tie.”
Noah let out a pained breath and leaned toward her. “Honey—”
“Memories are unfair, you know? They don’t tell us until it’s too late that this one, this detail, is the thing you need to hang on to. Why do we remember the weird little stuff but not the big things?”
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“My mom . . . she told me once that the hardest part about being a parent is that you never know when it’s going to be the last time you do something for your child. The last time you will wash their hair. Fix their lunch for school. Help them tie their shoes. It’s true as a child, too, though. When you watch your parent die. No one tells you this, warns you. That you need to hang on to every detail because it could be the last time you go to a movie together or go shopping together. I remember our last Christmas together but not what she said when she opened my presents to her. Why can’t I remember those things? I want to remember so badly.”
“Come here.” Noah opened his arms to her, and she went into them willingly. It was an awkward embrace, hindered by the way they sat and the tangle of the blanket around their legs, but it was perfect. He was perfect.
“I learned to pretend when she was sick,” Alexis said. “That it wasn’t really happening. You know? Maybe if I just went on with life, just acted like everything was normal, that she wasn’t dying, then maybe she wouldn’t. But then she just got worse and worse, and then came this day and I knew it was over. And I just kept rubbing her hand and saying it was okay. She could go. I’d be okay. I’d be just fine when she was gone. But I’m not fine.”
“I’m sorry,” he said against her hair, one hand cupping the back of her head to hold her against his shoulder. “For all of it.”
“I feel selfish. Making it all about me.”
“Grief doesn’t make you selfish, Lexa.” His mouth was on her hair. “Does it make me selfish that I wanted to tear down the entire U.S. government to get back at them for taking my father away?”
“You were a child. I’m an adult.”
“So am I, and I still hate them for it. So if you’re selfish for bei
ng pissed off at Elliott fucking Vanderpool, then so am I. And so what? We both lost our parents when we were far too young.”
“You know what I used to hate?”
He nuzzled her hair with his lips. “Hmmm?”
“Navigating other people’s emotions about my mother’s death. People either have no idea what to say, or they think they do and end up saying something entirely stupid and you feel sorry for them, so you say something to cover for them. It’s exhausting.”
He laughed, but there was no joy in it. Only understanding. “After my dad died, I got to a point where I thought I would punch the next person who tried to tell me how sorry they were.”
“Or ask if there is anything they can do.”
“Everything happens for a reason . . .”
She groaned. “They’re here for you.”
“You’re so strong.”
“As if there is any alternative but to just keep getting up every day and going about your life.”
“Exactly.”
She sucked in a shuddered breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t think I could do this without you.”
“I promise you won’t have to find out.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You don’t have to be so strong all the time, Lexa. Not with me.”
Alexis pressed her face into his neck and breathed in. He smelled like his laundry detergent, and it wasn’t until this moment that she realized it was her favorite scent. It smelled like safety and security.
And desire. Hot, burning need. For him and him alone. And she was sick and tired of fighting it.
* * *
* * *
The first brush of her lips against Noah’s throat felt like an accident. A mere coincidence as she moved in his arms to get more comfortable.
But then it happened again.
He stopped breathing as her lips touched the pounding pulse in his throat and lingered there, hot and soft. And even then, Noah might have convinced himself it wasn’t intentional if she didn’t splay her fingers wide across his chest. If she didn’t nuzzle his jaw with her nose. And if she didn’t lift her head and whisper his name in a voice laced with a tone he’d know anywhere but had never heard from her.
Desire.
Everything inside him burst into a flurry of frenzied activity—heart pounded, blood raced, stomach clenched—but then it all froze in the next breath. He wanted to move, to say something, but couldn’t because he was afraid to break the spell. If he so much as blinked, she might disappear. Or he’d wake up and realize the past thirty minutes had been a dream, that he’d just fallen asleep on the couch after reading that damn book. He’d had dreams of her like this before and awakened disappointed many times.
But it couldn’t be a dream, because his sleepy imagination had never captured the pure sweetness of the way she was touching him now.
“Lexa,” he rasped.
The tip of her nose brushed his in response. And even though they were now so close that her features blurred in his vision, he didn’t need to see clearly to understand what was happening. His senses chronicled the moment by touch, by sound, by smell.
Her trembling fingers as they slid down the front of his shirt.
Her labored breaths as their mouths inched closer.
Her heated cinnamon scent as he breathed her in.
Warnings sounded in the back of his mind. Go slow. She’s vulnerable. Once you cross this bridge, you can’t go back. But even the most noble man would struggle to listen when the woman who held his entire heart was finally opening her own.
There were so few times in life when a man was faced with a decision of such stark consequences, but this was one of them. This was the moment when Noah had to choose.
Desire or restraint.
Passion or friendship.
Lexa or loneliness.
His brain knew the right answers, but his brain wasn’t in charge. His heart was. With Alexis, it always would be.
So it was his heart that pulled her to straddle his lap. His heart that wove his fingers in her hair. And when her lips nudged his—once, twice, not so much a kiss as a question—it was his heart that answered.
At long last, yes.
He molded his lips to hers, and every doubt evaporated into a certainty that this is what they had been moving toward all along.
Alexis sank into him and let him take the lead. His lips nibbled and massaged, cherished and explored. She kissed him like he’d known she would. Tenderly, passionately. One hot hand pressed against his back while the other clung to his bicep. When he changed the angle and went deeper, when his tongue swept inside her mouth, he heard a moan and realized belatedly it had come from him. Suddenly, she slipped her hand inside the front of his T-shirt. The next moan he heard was hers, and a thrill raced through him as she rasped his name, as if the mere acting of touching him was enough to drive her senseless. It was for him. Her fingers crept higher and higher until she spread them wide across his hardened nipple.
Oh, God. He shuddered, groaned, whispered urgently for her to do it again.
So she did.
In the next instant, he rolled her onto her back.
That’s all it took. The touch of her fingers against his nipples, and suddenly he was a man possessed. He dove deeper into her mouth and settled between her thighs. She tangled with him, opened for him, wrapped one leg around him.
Alexis let out another one of those moans that sent a surge of lust to his groin, and his body acted of its own accord. He tilted his hips, ground into her, and she gasped in his mouth, so he did it again. And again. And again. She lifted both her legs and wrapped them around his waist. Scorching heat and sweet tenderness blended in his chest, filling his lungs with a dizzying cocktail as she arched against him, panting and moaning for him to touch her.
So he did.
He slid his hand along her side until his fingers brushed the swell of her breast.
“Noah,” she breathed, tilting her head back. Then she tangled her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth back to hers.
He could have kissed her forever. Languidly. Passionately. Any way she wanted. But when her fingers left his hair and began to fumble with the button of his jeans, the voice of reason began to walk around banging pots and pans in his brain, like a morning wake-up call that drowned out the urgent beat of his heart and the throbbing swell in his pants.
Forever screeched to a painful, remorseful halt.
What. The Fuck. Was he doing?
He couldn’t . . . They couldn’t. Not now. Not like this. Not yet.
With a strength he didn’t know he possessed, Noah wrenched his mouth from hers, rose above her on all fours, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Honey, wait.”
* * *
* * *
Suddenly, it was over.
One moment she was working the button of his jeans, desperate to touch him and feel him inside her. And in the next, he let out an agonized noise and told her to stop.
Her whole body went cold at the sight of his closed eyes. “Wh-What’s wrong?”
Noah straightened and sat back on his haunches. He covered his face with his hands. “This . . . We can’t.”
“Why not? What’s wrong?”
Noah turned and sank against the other arm of the couch. With a tortured noise, he dropped his head and breathed in and out through his nose as if trying not to puke.
The final, lingering hum of desire evaporated like the last puff of mist from her essential oils diffuser. He . . . He was rejecting her. Oh, God. What had she done? Alexis scooted to sit up and brushed her wild hair from her face. Noah opened his eyes and looked up with an expression that could only be described as abject horror. As if he’d just woken up from a blackout to find a stranger naked in bed with him.
She was the naked stranger.
Naked and exposed a
nd totally, one hundred percent regretted.
Alexis tried to scramble off the couch but got caught in the blanket and only managed to roll onto the floor. She fell ungracefully on her knees.
Noah shot up straight. “Are you okay?”
Alexis scrambled to her feet. “I’m sorry.”
“Lexa, what are you doing?”
“I’m sorry. I—I shouldn’t have . . .” She turned away from him—from that look on his face—and walked as fast as she could without full-out running.
Behind her, Noah stood so quickly that a bottle fell over and began to glub-glub-glub its contents onto the floor. “Lexa, wait.”
She felt sick. Alexis wrenched open the back door. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I have to go.”
Noah managed to grab her hand and tug her back. “Don’t. Not like this. Alexis, please. Listen to me. This isn’t—”
She yanked free and began to run through the house so she wouldn’t have to hear the end of that sentence. Isn’t what you think. Isn’t what you want. Isn’t what I want.
Noah chased after her. Through the hallway. Out the door. Down the porch steps. Pleading the entire way for her to stop. “Alexis, wait.”
“I have to go. I’m sorry, Noah. I shouldn’t have done this.” She got in her car and started it without looking at him. Seconds later, she left him standing in the driveway, hands stacked on top of his head.
She made it all of two blocks before her phone rang on the passenger seat.
It was two a.m. before the ringing finally stopped.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Wow. Are you okay?”
Alexis averted her gaze from Jessica’s when she walked into the café the next morning a half hour late. She set down Beefcake’s cat carrier, let him out, and then hung up her coat. “Fine.”
“You look like you’ve been crying.”
“Allergies,” Alexis lied.
Because, yes, she’d been crying. She’d cried all night. Big, fat sobs into her pillow and sometimes her cat. It probably wasn’t fair to ignore Noah’s calls and texts, but fairness wasn’t going to wash away the dark stain of shame and humiliation that colored every memory of last night in her mind. And did it even matter what he said? She’d thrown herself at him, and he’d rejected her. Just like she’d feared he would. She couldn’t talk to him. Couldn’t face him. No matter what he said, the truth had been written all over his face when he pulled away from her last night.
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