His eyes volley between my father and me. I can feel my shop full of customers doing the same.
Bubbling feelings of inferiority surge up from my cellular memory. I get flashbacks of being shunned by those rich kids from private school, of seeing that foreclosure notice on our gaudy, over-the-top mansion in the hills, of having to pack up, tuck tail and move back to the trailer park.
It's been a long damn time since I've felt this humiliated. I'm Cinderella and my carriage just turned into a pumpkin right here on the sidewalk.
I spin to my father. His clothes are filthy, his hair is greasy and his truck is a rust bucket loaded with crap. It takes me back. Too far back to times I’d rather forget.
Lowering my voice, I speak to him with rounded shoulders as if that will give us a shred of privacy. “Daddy, I can't give you any money. The shop almost went bankrupt. I'm just starting to get back on my feet.” I soften the bite in my voice. “I can’t help you...”
His graying brows dip, matching the tired lines of his mouth. My dad shakes his head ruefully before eyeing the passersby who have slowed to witness the drama.
“I didn’t come here to take anything from you, Lex,” he says quietly and dips a hand into his pocket. "You told me you were struggling and I just sold a couple of old washing machines that I fixed up. I came by to repay some of the money I've borrowed over the past year." He tucks a wad of crumpled bills into my hand.
Head hung and shoulders caved in, he shuffles back to his truck. From behind the wheel, his gaze bounces from me to my stunned husband and back again. He shakes his head in disappointment and drives away, leaving me to drown in an ocean of shame.
My own hypocrisy strikes me in the face. I give Cannon a hard time for having a superiority complex. But I'm no better. I'm ashamed of where I come from. I got tied up in the Kingston’s shiny world and forgot about my roots. And worst of all, I just betrayed my own father, acting like I’m somehow better than the people who raised me.
My dad didn’t embarrass me.
I did that all by myself.
48
Cannon
She stands on the sidewalk, her babydoll eyes on the rusty truck as it bumps off down the road.
"Lexi, I—I had no idea that was your dad." I cup her shoulders and let my fingers slide down to link with hers.
She drops her head and wiggles her hands out of my grasp. “I have to...I have to go after him.”
I lay a palm on the small of her back an guide her toward my car. “Get in. I’ll drive.”
When I glance toward the boutique window, I see my mom and Penny standing there. Ma nods, silently telling me to go take care of my wife, she's got the shop under control.
Opening the passenger side door, I usher Alexia inside. She looks broken right now, sitting stone still in the seat next to me.
When I reach over and rest my hand on her thigh, she doesn’t respond. I squeeze, offering her a thread of assurance. “I'm sorry..." I whisper. "I had no way of knowing..."
She shakes her head slightly. "Yeah, well...your be-an-asshole-first-and-ask-questions later policy was bound to bite you in the ass someday."
Ouch! I deserved that.
She stays silent but as we draw closer to Lexi’s hometown, I ask for the address to plug into my GPS.
She shakes her head. “GPS won’t take you there.” Instead she gives me play-by-play directions, leading me straight into the jaws of hell.
Each turn takes us down a street in worse shape than the previous. Houses are missing roofs. There are '4 sale' signs spray-painted on the sides of a couple homes. I see barbed wire. Boarded-up windows. Hungry dogs rummaging through trash on the side of the street.
This is not the safest neighborhood.
“Turn here.” Alexia's voice is scratchy.
I pull into a crumbling trailer park and drive across a bumpy dirt path until I spot the rusty truck from earlier. She opens her door and tells me to stay put, but no fucking way. "I'm coming with you," I declare as I step out of the vehicle. This looks like the kind of place where she'd get mugged before she can even get across the yard.
She huffs. "Walk away from this sportscar and your rims will be gone before we make it up the front stairs."
I grab her wrist. "Zero fucks to give about the sportscar, Alexia."
"Please. This is embarrassing enough. I just need a minute to talk to my parents alone. Please?"
I pinch the bridge of my nose. I lean against the car. "I'm waiting right here."
Lexi’s already climbing some rickety steps and banging on the door with her tiny fist. I'm on edge but she moves with confidence. Like she knows how to take care of herself here. Still, I don’t like it. I'm not taking my eyes off that trailer until she comes back to me in one piece.
Her father joins her on the built-on porch. A tiny, wild-haired woman comes out after him, in a sequined mini-dress, bare feet on the wooden stairs and a cigarette pinched between her brightly-polished mauve lips. She’s got big hair and frosty blue eye shadow all the way up to her penciled-in eyebrows.
One glare from the little woman and instantly, I know she's Lexi's mom. Also, I know exactly where my wife got her crazy hair and her saucy attitude from.
Arms folded tight across my chest, I watch from a distance. I can’t make out what’s being said but based on Alexia's body language, I assume she’s apologizing to her father, making sure he's okay.
Look at the mess I've made. Fuck, I'm such an asshole. I wish I hadn't blown up on the man like that. At this point, the dent in my ride seems inconsequential.
I glance around and see two pale, shirtless teenagers with tattoo sleeves eyeing my car. Those scrawny cocksuckers look sketchy-as-fuck, but I'm way too pissed at this situation to be intimidated.
I casually roll my sleeves up to my elbows, revealing some tattoos of my own, and make eye contact. I have five years of jiu jitsu training under my belt and if those asshole kids come closer, I'm liable to put those martial arts classes to use. I stare them down until they move far enough away that I can breathe.
Christ. How did Alexia grow up in this shithole? I struggle even imagining her here. Suddenly, all of the rough, beautiful pieces of her personality seem to fit. Of course she'd need a spine of steel to survive in a place like this.
I watch as she and her father share a tight embrace. Fuck—I'm still beating myself up for the way I treated the man. I don’t know a thing about him—except that he's a damn shitty driver—but if Alexia gets even a shred of her decency from him, then I have to think he’s an all right human being.
She and her parents walk down the path in my direction. I straighten my posture.
Stormy digs the toe of her shoe into the dirt. “Mom, Dad, this is Cannon, my...my husband.”
Jesus, who the hell meets their parents-in-law like this? I know the beginning of our relationship was far from conventional, but boy, my wife and I certainly deserve some sort of Nobel prize for fucked-up-ness.
"Great to meet you, Mr. Robson, Mrs. Robson."
"Hmm," the woman huffs out.
She gives me a bored expression when I offer her my hand. Instead, she looks me up and down. She focuses on my clothes, my shoes, my face, her blue eyes full of disdain, like none of what I have to offer her daughter is good enough.
Right about now, I'm tempted to agree with her assessment. After the way I acted, I feel an inch tall.
Alexia's mom wanders off, circling my car.
When she's finished with her assessment, she plants a hand on her hip, waves over her shoulder and sashays back toward her mobile home. "I guess I see why I didn't get an invite to the wedding, Mr. and Mrs. Rich Stuff. Good thing I wasn't holding my breath."
I turn my attention to my new father-in-law. “I’m very sorry about how we met and what I said." Heat climbs my tight throat. "I apologize for disrespecting you, Mr. Robson.”
He heaves a breath, not bothering to accept or reject my apology outright. "Son, you may have a 'bankful' of m
oney but what does it matter if you make the woman who loves you feel like trash? The way you've made my baby girl feel?"
My eyes sweep momentarily to Alexia and the pain on her face makes me chafe. Dammit.
I shouldn’t have let my temper get the better of me back there. I just never thought I’d be going head-to-head with my in-laws like an idiot. And this shame I feel is not a feeling I can buy my way out of.
My fingers cup the back of my neck. "I...I..." I stare at the man, completely at a loss for how to fix this.
“We should get going.” Lexi breaks the staredown, moving back toward the passenger side of the car.
Her father walks her to her door. He presses a kiss to the top of her scalp. “Don’t be a stranger,” he tells her.
"I...I love you, dad." She hugs the man again.
His smile is crooked and cigarette-stained but genuine as hell. "I love you, too, baby girl." He hands me his wrinkled business card. "Sorry about your car. Here's my number if you want to take me up on that offer to fix it."
Then he limps off toward the cluttered workshop beside his mobile home.
49
Cannon
Once we're both inside, I start the car, making sure to lock the doors. We pull out of the trailer park, back onto the main road. Miles pass by. Lexi stares out the window in silence.
Something itchy crawls beneath my skin. I fucked up and I want to fix it.
“I'm sorry," I say again, watching her face to try and gauge what she's feeling.
“Yeah...” She bites on the nail of her thumb.
My anger mounts with each silent mile of highway we cruise along. The silence is excruciating. I'm uncomfortable. My own skin doesn't seem to fit right.
She continues to chew on her nail and I can tell she's sifting through painful memories. I want to help her but how am I supposed to do that when she won't let me in?
"Talk to me, Alexia." There's a domineering edge to my voice.
A full minute passes before she says, "Can you drop me off at my place, please?"
"Alexia, I fucked up. I get it. But I'm try—"
She cuts me off. "Please..." Her watery eyes tell me she doesn't have the energy to fight.
My throat is tight and hard like concrete. I can't push an answer through. Lexi doesn't speak, either.
Not until we enter Crescent Harbor and I take a left on Elgin, heading to my house, instead of the right turn that would take us toward hers.
"Cannon—I said to take me home!" She repeats in a low, firm voice. "Take. Me. Home."
I ignore her searing glare on my face and I keep on driving toward my house. Our house. Because she's my wife and we belong together and I'm not letting her stubborn ass walk away from me just because I made a stupid mistake.
She huffs through her nose. "Abduction? That's what you're going with? Should have known you weren't above that."
"You're my wife. We have a home together. That's where we're going." I know I sound like a crabby child but I don't give a damn.
"Cannon..." She growls my name. The uncompromising determination on her beautiful face makes me pause.
And then, without warning, I swerve.
My tires screech as I clip across the left lane and grind to a rough stop on the shoulder of the road. She braces her palms against the glove box and yelps.
"So, what? You're just done with me? Just like that? We're not going to have a conversation about this?" I hate the desperation in my voice.
"What's there to talk about? You're the owner of Kingston Realties now. That was your whole objective in the first place, the whole reason we got married. You got what you wanted. You don't need me anymore."
That's where she's fucking wrong. I need her more than anything.
My fingers cup the back of her skull, tangling in her disastrous hair. My thumb slowly strokes the line of her cheekbone, brushing aside the tears that come pouring down her face.
"So you're telling me you're just walking away?" I can feel my panic rising with each word. This woman has carved out a place for herself in my life and at this point, I can't imagine going back to a world without her.
"What I'm telling you is I can't spend my life with a man who looks at me like something he rescued out of the gutter. I can't go on living in the fear that you could dispose of me at any moment. I can't be with a man who's only tolerating me out of the kindness of his heart. Because I've never felt like your equal and I don't want to feel like I'm at the mercy of the man I love."
She loves me.
I know she loves me.
But she doesn't want to.
She doesn't say it like it's something worth celebrating. She says it like her feelings for me are a problem urgently in need of fixing. And that fucking hurts.
"You? At my mercy?" I question bitterly. "I think it's the other way around, Stormy. I'm all in for you. I'm all the way committed. I'd do anything for you. And I know you love me, too. But you've been looking for a way to run from your feelings from the very beginning."
She recoils from me as if my words are radioactive. "We weren't supposed to fall in love."
"Well, newsflash—we did. So now what? Are you gonna walk away like a coward or are we gonna step up and do this thing?"
She takes a quiet moment and twists her fingers in her lap. Heart suspended between beats, I wait for her next words. It feels like everything depends on her next words.
"I love you, Cannon, but I'm tired of feeling like I don't measure up. I feel inferior when I'm with you. I can't live my life like that. That's why I can't be with you."
I wince.
The sky darkens above us. Blinding headlights pour into the cabin of the car each time a vehicle passes by.
She lowers her voice and her eyes grow softer. "I'm powerless. I'm a junk yard princess and you're a king." She sucks in a breath. "Now, our arrangement is over. You can go back to your billion-dollar empire and I'll crawl back into the hole I crawled out of. Just like my parents."
This conversation is frustrating as hell. "You're twisting my fucking words, Alexia. Stop playing games."
She drops her head, defeated. "Just...just take me home."
"Fine. If this is how you want it..."
My tires scream when I make a quick U-turn on the quiet road, heading back for her house. If this is what she wants, I won't keep beating this dead horse into the ground.
When I park my car outside of Alexia's house, I feel like I'm coming out of my fucking skin. She sits next to me wordlessly, staring out into the dark night.
She doesn't look up when she speaks. "Your mom saw you arguing with my father outside of the boutique. She saw me intervene. Tell her we couldn't patch things up. You couldn't get me to listen to you and that's why we broke up. She'd find that believable. Blame it all on me."
I have to close my eyes for a second. "Shit. Here I am, hanging onto the hope that you'll change your mind and give us a chance. Meanwhile, you've got your exit strategy all mapped out."
She rears back with tears heavy on her lower lids. "This is our way out of this fake relationship, Cannon."
"Except there's nothing fake about this relationship anymore and you know it."
She pulls on her messy hair. Frustration bleeds out in her words. "Why won’t you just leave me alone? Why won’t you just give up on me? What do you want from me?”
My lips hover recklessly close to hers. The words coming out of my mouth are words I've never uttered before. “Everything. I want everything with you, Alexia. I want a family. I want a future. I want forever.”
Lexi's palm clasps over her mouth to hold back a sob. But she doesn't answer me. She doesn't tell me she wants all the things I want.
My stubborn pride kicks in. Stormy and I have a good thing going. She's the one walking away. All because I made a stupid mistake. Why am I the one groveling? Fuck this shit.
I'm done. I'm done trying to force her to love me because obviously we're not on the same page.
I lean acros
s the middle console and shove her door open. If she wants to leave, I won't be the one holding her back.
She gives me a pained look through tired eyes. Under the spotlight of that glare, I feel like the world's biggest asshole.
But I'm done caring, done needing, done loving her.
Reverently, she sets her diamond ring on the dashboard. She walks up the path and disappears inside her house. I drive away with a giant pothole in my chest. Right where my heart used to be.
50
Lexi
Iris comes through the back door with a basket of freshly-picked sweet peppers. She pulls off her gardening gloves and dumps her mini harvest under the running water in the sink.
"You feel like leftover pasta tonight, Lex?" She throws me a concerned look from over by her fridge.
My shoulder pops up before it falls in defeat. "Sure," I croak out and pull the quilt up to my chin. I really don't care what I eat. I've lost track of how many hours I've been stretched out on this couch, stomach tense, heart sore. The same thoughts on repeat in my brain.
I shut him down, I pushed him away.
That's the last thing I want.
What I want more than anything is to be with him. I want to see him. I want to hear him. I want to smell him. Taste him. Touch him. Drown my five senses in the ocean of Cannon Kingston.
But I'd just cause myself more pain.
He and I are two mismatched shards of broken glass, trying to join together. We just don't fit.
It's time we both move on.
A long beep fills the room, alerting us that my spaghetti is sufficiently nuked. Iris brings the steaming bowl across the room and sets it on her coffee table in front of me. "How ya feeling?" she asks softly, brushing back the hair curtaining my eyes.
I purse my lips and exhale hard. "Pretty fucking crap."
It's been a week since I walked away from Cannon. A week of sleeping alone without his breath fluttering against my neck. A week of stealing glances of him from my boutique's front window as he comes and goes in the Kingston Realties building across the street. A week of missing him. And it hasn't been getting easier as the days tick by. The pain is still like razors stabbing at my soul.
Mister Billions: A Small Town Enemies-to-Lovers Fake Marriage Billionaire Romance (Bad Boys in Love Book 1) Page 22