Avoiding Temptation

by K. A. Linde

  “Okay. Yeah, I’ll see you tomorrow then. Bye, Parker,” Ramsey said before hanging up. He turned back to face Lexi. “Sorry about that. Work.” He shrugged.

  “That’s all right,” Lexi said even though Parker’s name had made her wince. “Everything working out with the initial concepts?”

  “So far, so good. Jessica says we’re right on track, but I have no idea how we could be with only a year to get everything done. There’s a lot to do.”

  His shoulders tensed, and she could see all the plans circling in his mind. He was taking on a huge endeavor. Who was she to judge him for doing what he wanted?

  “Anyway, nothing much to report. How was lunch with Brandon?” Ramsey asked.

  Ramsey didn’t like Brandon—not after he had dated Parker briefly. Ramsey tolerated it though because, thus far, absolutely nothing had happened—and nothing ever would happen with Brandon. She liked him but just as a friend. As a pseudo-replacement for Chyna—although, certainly no one could replace Chyna.

  “Good. Uneventful.”

  “Sushi?” Ramsey asked knowingly.

  “Yep,” Lexi said, wringing her hands in front of her. “I’m not good at this, Ramsey.”

  “At what?” he asked cautiously.

  “Nothing bad,” she said quickly. “But Jack called me today and asked me to go to the Sienna Sexton and D-Bags concert with him. Bekah got him tickets, but since they canceled at the wedding, she doesn’t want to go. The D-Bags are my favorite band, and it’s a sold-out show, and, um…”

  “And you want to go,” Ramsey finished for her.

  “I don’t have to if you don’t want me to.”

  “Lexi, I don’t want you to feel like you have to ask me for permission,” he said, sinking back into the couch.

  “I know. I just…I know I can go if I want, but I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s not permission as much as taking your feelings into consideration.”

  Ramsey smiled at that and beckoned her over. She crawled onto his lap and rested her head against chest. He was warm and comfortable and smelled like peppermints. She just wanted to breathe him in and remember this moment. He was accepting her for who she was, even through her ridiculous mini panic attacks.

  “I’m not comfortable with Jack,” Ramsey admitted. “But I’m comfortable with you. If you want to go to the show and you think everything will be all right, then I’ll be all right, too. I might wait up all night for you to get back. And I can’t promise I won’t kill him if he touches you.”

  Lexi giggled softly. She believed him, too.

  “But I trust you, Lexi.”

  “You signed a prenup?” Lexi asked.

  She was having trouble keeping her cool. All she wanted to do was yell at Jack. She knew that from Bekah’s standpoint, it was a good idea to get a prenup drawn up. Bekah had insane assets, and anyone with money or who owned a business should get one signed. Not to mention, if either party had a history of cheating. Infidelity clauses weren’t all that common anymore because of how often they were thrown out in court, but Lexi highly doubted Bekah would push for adultery in a divorce case without knowing what she was up against.

  “What?” Jack asked.

  “You signed a fucking prenup. You know, that legal document that says if I cheat on my spouse, she gets everything!”

  Jack sighed into the phone. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “How? How can that sound like a good idea to you, Jack? You’ve cheated on Bekah with me, if not with other people—”

  “No one else,” he stated firmly.

  Christ, she wanted to believe him. If he wasn’t telling the truth, he could end up losing a large chunk of money and the house and everything else.

  “Did you have a lawyer present? Were there witnesses? Did she coerce you in any way to sign that document? How long ago did you sign? Was it rushed at all?” Lexi fired off a series of questions.

  She shouldn’t be asking him about this. She should find someone to work his case, and then she should back far, far away. There was no way she could take on this case. She didn’t work in family law, and she definitely had a conflict of interest.

  “Jesus, Lex. Slow down. Let me try to answer all your questions. I had a lawyer present, and other people were there. I signed it in January before we got married.”

  She mentally calculated the time frame—right around seven months. That would hold in court.

  Lexi brushed a hand back through her hair and sat down heavily on the couch in the study. Ramsey had converted Jason’s old room into a study for her shortly after she had moved in. She didn’t spend as much time there as she wanted, but she did consider it her space, which was nice. It was sparsely decorated and immaculate with a mahogany wooden desk and chair, her diplomas framed on the walls, a blue-green-and-white patterned area rug, and a plant sitting on a stand. Ramsey had insisted that the room needed a bit of life, so she had obliged him.

  “What else did you ask me?” Jack said.

  Lexi closed her eyes and shook her head. This was such a bad situation. She curled her legs up on the couch and lay down. She knew that she didn’t need to help Jack with this. He’d had a lawyer present when he signed the prenup. He could find his own. But she felt bad for him.

  The thought of him getting taken advantage of made her chest ache and her stomach twist. Marrying Bekah had been a mistake, but it didn’t have to ruin his life. And Lexi had this terrible feeling that Bekah intended to do precisely that.

  Though Lexi couldn’t figure out why. Bekah had won. She and Jack had gotten married. They lived in a house together just outside of the Atlanta proper. She was living her fairy tale. Bekah had known Jack had cheated on her before the wedding, and she hadn’t cared about it then. So, what was the motivation behind the divorce?

  Lexi knew that if she got the answer to that question, she would finally be able to figure out Bekah. Until she knew, she would treat Bekah like an active volcano waiting to erupt.

  “Coercion,” Lexi reminded him. “Did you feel an obligation to sign? Was there ever any talk of the fact that you had to sign? Anything like that at all that you remember?”

  “No, uh…I don’t think so. It was a long time ago.”

  “Three years is not that long to remember if someone forced you to sign away your livelihood if you cheat on her,” she quipped.

  “I didn’t cheat on her.”

  “Yeah,” Lexi said.

  She had never considered Jack a liar. He had always sworn that he would tell her the truth in everything, but with their history, it did make it difficult to take this seriously, especially with Bekah claiming she had hard evidence against him.

  “So, what should I do? I can’t use the same lawyer as last time. He works for Bridges now.”

  Lexi narrowed her eyes. “Did he work for Bridges at the time?”

  “No, he got hired about a year ago.”

  Lexi cursed under her breath. A million-and-a-half scenarios ran through her head all at once. She was just going off of the information she had learned from the family law classes she had taken in law school, but those were two or three years ago at this point. He would need someone else—but who? She racked her brain to think of someone who would be good enough. She would have to ask around at work tomorrow.

  “I’ll see if I can find someone, and then you probably need to make a pretty convincing case against her, Jack. I’d tell you to settle this in mediation and just get it over with, but I have a feeling that Bekah will take this to court,” Lexi told him.

  “Okay,” he said with a heavy sigh. “This is so fucking frustrating, Lex.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  She knew how he felt about divorces, especially after his parents’ rough break while he had been in high school. A part of her felt bad for him for having to go through this, and then the other half wondered, as she always did, why he had gotten married in the first place.

  “I did everything right once we g
ot married. I so desperately didn’t want to be my parents, and I still can’t seem to get it straight. She’s still divorcing me, tearing us apart for no reason—a fake reason,” he said.

  She could hear the anger and desperation in his voice, and it made her want to go over there and hug him even if he was talking about Bekah.

  Lexi steeled herself for what she was about to do. “Have you tried…talking to her about it?” She wanted to gag at the thought of urging him to talk to Bekah about it…to even hint at encouraging him to convince her not to go through with it, but she needed to be a friend right now.

  “Of course I’ve tried to talk to her. She won’t see me. I had to move out. I’m staying with Seth and feel so…so…I don’t even know.”

  She could almost see him in that moment—his eyes closed, his hands fisted into his dark brown hair, the look of pain on his face. It made her want to do something, anything to take it away. Despite everything they had gone through, she could never make herself stop caring. It was Jack.

  “What did she say when she gave you the papers?”

  He gave a stilted laugh. “I want a divorce. Then, she handed me the papers and told me to get out.”

  “Just like that?” Lexi asked. Bekah was the devil.

  “Just like that.”

  “Was there any forewarning that this might happen?”

  “No.”

  “She wasn’t acting strange…erm, stranger?” Lexi asked.

  “What do you want me to say? That I knew my wife was going to divorce me? That I should have seen the signs? That I should have known better? Well, I didn’t,” he growled. “I didn’t see any of it, and yeah, that probably makes me even more of a fucking idiot. But I tried every day for the past two years with Bekah, and I was still trying up until that day she handed me the papers. Marriage isn’t easy, but I wanted my marriage to work, so I put in the effort.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” she whispered. She didn’t know what else to say to that. She wasn’t sorry about Bekah, but she was sorry for Jack.

  “Please don’t pity me, Lex,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him. “Don’t remind me that I gave you up for this.”

  Her heart seemed to hammer in her chest, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. Her throat felt swollen just for a minute as she fought back the tears threatening to spill out. Why now? Why did he have to realize this now? Too little, too late. She loved Ramsey. She was marrying Ramsey. End of the line.

  When she felt like she could speak again without her throat closing up, she said, “I’ll find you a lawyer tomorrow, okay? I should probably go.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Hopefully, this will all be as painless as possible,” she encouraged, assuming Bekah would do her worst because she always did.

  “For who? Certainly not me…”

  She hated agreeing. He had dug the hole himself, and now, he had to sit in it, six feet under—right where Bekah wanted him.

  Lexi hung up the phone and rested her head back on the couch. She sniffled and hugged her legs tight to her chest. She needed to stop this feeling.

  But she couldn’t help it.

  She felt really, really bad for Jack. It was an emotion she was so not used to. Normally, the things she felt for Jack were, ahem…a little lower on her body. When had this happened? All she felt in this moment was sympathy. She did pity him—even if he had told her not to. The thought of Jack being married to Bekah had always made her sick, but the thought of him actually hurting from the divorce…well, that was a different feeling entirely. It was like so much of her wanted him divorced…wanted him rid of Bekah finally. But at what cost?

  It was so messy.

  She sniffled again and tried to think of something else—like her engagement. She needed to tell Chyna. That was all she had left—well, Chyna and Jack, but Chyna needed to know before Jack did. That was for sure!

  Lexi sat back up and reached for her phone just as the door to the office slowly pried open.

  “Lexi?” Ramsey asked, peeking his head around the corner.

  God, she hoped she didn’t look like she had been crying.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m just about to call Chyna to tell her about the engagement.”

  He eyed her likely bloodshot eyes and red cheeks cautiously, but he broke out into a smile at the word engagement. “Let me know what she says.”

  “I will,” she said, producing her own smile for him before he retreated.

  Yeah, messy didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Lexi spent a minute straightening up her hair and sitting up properly as if Chyna could see her. It was ridiculous, but still, it made her feel better and helped her forget.

  Chyna answered on the second ring. “Chica! I miss you. Come to New York for the week,” she said.

  Lexi laughed. Oh man, she missed her best friend. “I have work this week. Maybe soon.”

  “You keep saying that, but all you do is work.”

  “We can’t all be like you, Chyna.”

  “Obviously.”

  “How was your weekend?” Lexi asked. She knew Chyna wasn’t really known for small talk, but Lexi hadn’t seen Chyna for a while. It made Lexi feel better to know what Chyna had been up to.

  “Oh, you know, same old, same old,” she said dryly. “Went to the club, got drunk, got picked up by a guy, and went home with him. So hot. He’s an architect.”

  For a second there, Chyna almost had her fooled. She had been about to freak out on her friend if she was cheating on Adam. They were so good for each other, and Lexi knew she wasn’t the person to talk about cheating, but damn, she would have lit into her friend. Adam was too good of a person for that.

  “Jesus, Chyna, you about gave me a heart attack,” Lexi groaned.

  Chyna laughed wickedly. “So, I let Adam pick me up from the club and take me home. This time though, I wasn’t passed out from getting roofied, and he fucked me.”

  “Y’all are ridiculous!” Lexi couldn’t stop shaking her head. Only Chyna.

  “We just know how to have fun. How are you and Ramsey? I swear, for a man who used to manage strip clubs, he is a lot less fun than he could be, Alexa. I mean, sure, he can throw a party, but all I’ve heard you talk about is the medical wing. Work, work, work. Don’t you do anything but work?” Chyna asked.

  “Well, he proposed,” Lexi said offhand, staring off across the room while waiting for Chyna’s reaction.

  “What?” Chyna cried. A crashing sound blasted through the phone and then a series of curse words before Chyna came back. “Fuck! I dropped the phone. Are you fucking serious? Did you tell him yes?”

  “No, Chyna. I told him, why the hell did I spend three years of my life with you when I have no intention of marrying you?” Lexi drawled sarcastically.

  “You’re a bitch. I hope he smacked you.”

  Lexi giggled. “Of course I said yes!”

  “Oh my God! This is so fucking exciting. When should I come down? This weekend? We need drinks! Shots! Hookers! Whatever you want, that’s what we need,” Chyna yelled into the phone.

  Lexi could practically see her bouncing around her apartment.

  “You want to come down this weekend?”

  “Yes! Are you kidding me? My best friend is getting married. I need to be there to celebrate with you, chica.”

  Lexi smiled brightly. Now, this was what it was supposed to feel like to be engaged. It had only taken her a week to get the giddy feeling back. She had been so happy when Ramsey had asked her. She had been shocked beyond words. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t seen it coming, but then when it had been right in front of her, she couldn’t believe it had happened to her.

  Ramsey had worked so hard to make the night perfect, to make it memorable, and it had worked. She knew she would never forget what it had felt like, walking through the park, the candles, the picnic.

  “Yes, come down! We’ll party here to celebrate,” Lexi said after a few seconds
.

  “So, how did he ask you? Tell me everything. Did it happen today, over lunch, or what? Come on, dish!” Chyna said enthusiastically.

  “Um…” Lexi said awkwardly. She had forgotten about this part—the part where she hadn’t called Chyna for four days when she should have called her right away.

  “Oh no,” Chyna groaned. “What’s wrong?”

  “He asked me on Thursday.”

  “Thursday? Why did you wait so long to call me?” Chyna asked, sounding hurt.

  “I, uh…well, I had a freak-out about it.”

  “Already? I thought you were excited about this.”

  “I am excited! Ramsey wanted to tell his parents in person, so we told them over brunch today.”

  “In front of Jack and Bekah?” Chyna gasped.

  “Um…well, not exactly. Jack wasn’t there.”

  “Why not? Aren’t they, like, white-picket-fences and shit now? Oh my God, does Jack not know, Alexa?” Chyna asked. “Please, please, please tell me that Jack knows.”

  “They’re getting a divorce,” Lexi said quickly, releasing the breath she had been holding.

  Chyna was struck silent on the other end.

  “That’s why he was calling to talk to me earlier during the week.”

  “No,” Chyna murmured.

  “I know.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Lexi sighed. She wished she could explain, but even she didn’t really understand any of it. Jack and Bekah had been married for two years with no problems as far as Lexi could tell. Jack was still Jack, but things had changed.

  She didn’t even know if she could articulate it clearly. How could someone be the same person he had always been and yet so different? Then, this…she had never seen the divorce coming. With the Bridges’ abhorrence for divorce and Jack’s personal feelings toward the matter, she had thought their marriage would have been a one-and-done deal.

  Now with him back—nope, she wasn’t thinking about that.