Avoiding Temptation

by K. A. Linde

  That should have worked. It should have been okay—except his parents had decided that they were going to throw the country club holiday party on Christmas Eve after church, and Ramsey’s mother was hosting this year. So, Ramsey and Lexi wouldn’t be able to do any kind of celebrations with his family that night. Lexi had compromised and said they could go to her parents’ house on Christmas Eve even though she wouldn’t have as much time with them, and then they would spend time with his family on the big day.

  But, of course, Ramsey had been expected to be at the party on Christmas Eve as well. A big part of her had wanted Ramsey to be the rebellious man she had fallen for. She had wanted him to tell his parents no, and she had just wanted she and Ramsey to do their own thing. Christ, she would have been happy to just skip all of it, sit around in their living room, and open presents without anyone else around. They could have eaten cinnamon rolls and watched Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

  Ramsey just wasn’t that person anymore. He had signed his soul over to the devil when he had agreed to work for his father. Expectations came with that, and even if Ramsey hated the club, he wouldn’t do anything to risk the business he had created and now loved.

  They had spent Christmas Eve at the Bridges country club party. It hadn’t been too bad. Parker hadn’t shown up, and Bekah had actually left Lexi alone. She had been too busy receiving all of the sympathies for the terrible circumstances behind her divorce. Lexi had tried to avoid rolling her eyes.

  They had stayed the night at his parents’ house and opened presents with them in the morning. It had been completely different than what she was used to. An interior designer had decorated everything, and all of the packages had been perfectly put together under the tree. Her parents usually used whatever wrapping paper was around that year and hand-wrapped the packages. They liked to overdo it, too, and they would get a ton of small presents to fill the tree past capacity.

  Lexi and Ramsey hadn’t been able to escape the country club until well into the afternoon, and by the time they had arrived at her parents’ house, they had already eaten, thinking she wasn’t going to show up. Overall, it had been more stressful than it needed to be.

  Next year, she was determined to do better. Though, her mother had told her about how difficult it had been to accommodate everyone’s schedules when they first got married, and sometimes it was just better to do her own thing and see people when she can.

  Lexi had smiled and agreed. Next year.

  New Year’s had been uneventful.

  Lexi had gotten the flu and couldn’t leave the house. She had been pretty bummed because they had been planning to spend the weekend in Florida at his beach house, away from the rest of the world. Needless to say, Lexi hadn’t been able to make the trip, so they had just cozied up in front of the fireplace and watched the ball drop in the comfort of their own living room.

  Once she had gotten over her sickness, they had taken engagement pictures at a local plantation. Lexi thought they were kind of cheesy, but the wedding planner had insisted because they needed something for the save-the-date cards.

  It all seemed to be happening so fast. One day, Ramsey had proposed, and five months later, they had picked a date at the end of October. Now, they were sending out save-the-dates to their guests.

  It all felt a bit surreal.

  Lexi wandered into the small Mexican restaurant in Buckhead and took a seat in the back corner. Her new client actually wasn’t the worst thing she had ever suffered through, so she was back on a normal schedule where she actually…ate. What a luxury!

  “Hey, Lex,” Jack said as he approached the table. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “I just got here.”

  A waiter came over and brought them drinks before disappearing just as quickly.

  “How is work?” Jack asked.

  “Fine. Nothing to complain about.”

  Lexi always felt the weight of her engagement ring during these encounters. He didn’t even have to say anything. He could just look at her with those big blue eyes and know…

  “How is the apartment shopping going?” she asked, just so he would stop looking at her like that.

  “I found a place a couple days ago. It’s not as nice as what I had before…but I don’t really need much. I’ve always been more of a minimalist.”

  “Says the man who drives a BMW,” she joked.

  “You have to at Bridges.” He just shrugged, defeated.

  He didn’t even like saying the name right now. She didn’t ask him about work anymore. It was clear that it was not an ideal situation. He was pretty miserable there, dealing with Bekah.

  “I suppose so.”

  “It’s kind of strange, having my own place again. Really…quiet,” he said.

  Lexi nodded. She had never had her own place before. All through college and graduate school, she’d had roommates, and now, she lived with Ramsey. She could imagine a world without other people being very quiet, especially after living with someone like Bekah.

  “You should come see it sometime.”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said because, God, did she feel bad for him.

  This was not a feeling she was used to. Jack was supposed to be in control. She had a hard time grasping the person in front of her.

  And then, his eyes met hers, and she remembered. He was still Jack.

  “How are the divorce proceedings?” Lexi asked about the elephant in the room.

  Jack shrugged again. “Richard says that things are going smoothly. He got them to agree to mediation.”

  “That’s great! If you can settle this out of court, it will be better.”

  “I guess. That’s what he keeps telling me.”

  “When does that begin?”

  Jack laughed sardonically. “This afternoon actually. I’m supposed to meet Richard after this to go over our case and how they want to handle proceedings. Then, we’re heading straight into mediation.”

  “Well, good luck. What kind of outcome does he want?”

  “Fifty-fifty split,” he told her.

  But something in his posture showed her that he was thinking something else. She just wanted to reach out to him, but she didn’t dare move.

  “What do you want?” she whispered.

  “I thought I wanted my wife back,” Jack answered honestly.

  Lexi couldn’t help but cringe. Bekah and the word wife had never sat well with Lexi. It certainly didn’t now when the Bitch was working so hard against him.

  “You thought?”

  “I feel kind of like an idiot that I didn’t see it before.”

  “What?” Lexi asked.

  “Bekah is kind of a bitch.”

  “Kind of?” Lexi asked, laughing.

  “Am I late to the game on that one?” he asked sheepishly.

  “Way late.”

  “I’m not sure how I missed it. When we were dating…” Jack trailed off, shaking his head. “You probably don’t want to hear this.”

  Lexi sighed softly. Jack needed her. He didn’t have anyone else, and if he needed to rant about Bekah, Lexi could oblige him. She didn’t even like to think about Bekah. At least if she got to add a jab in there every now and again, then it might be worth it.

  She forced herself to continue. “You can talk to me.”

  “You know that you’re something wonderful, right?” he asked, staring up at her, from across the table.

  Her heart jumped out of her chest, and she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. Looking at her like that should be outlawed. It wasn’t fair that he still had that much control over her body.

  “Um…thanks.”

  “You and your obsession with your hair…”

  “It has a calming effect!”

  Jack laughed. “I’m just messing with you. I like it. It tells me what you’re thinking without having to ask.”

  “You know what I’m thinking anyway.” At least, it always felt like that.

  “I’m pretty sure if I knew what you w
ere thinking without asking, I wouldn’t have been such a fuck-up,” he said.

  Silence lingered between them as Lexi stared back at him. He was not making this easy. Part of being around Jack was so easy. He just got her. They had been around each other so long that she didn’t have to explain herself. In the past, he had known exactly when and where to touch her. He had known her. But then, there were things about Jack that were so difficult, such as his need to always pick someone else, the heavy weight of their history, the hint of desire that always sprang up between them, unbidden, at the most inopportune moments. So much was there between them, swirling around, that at times, it felt suffocating. And Lexi just wished she could see past those emotions.

  The waiter interrupted them by dropping off drinks and taking their orders. Lexi wasn’t that hungry to begin with, and the turn of the conversation didn’t seem to help.

  When the waiter disappeared, Jack started talking again. “We got off track. What I was saying before is that when Bekah and I were dating, she was a really different person, to me at least. She was sweet and sincere and acted like she loved me. We were together all the time. I was hesitant about marrying her. I was worried that she was into me a bit more than I was into her.”

  Lexi ground her teeth together. She wanted to shake him. She wanted to reach over the table and slap some sense into him. Didn’t he know what he had done by being so stupid? Argh! It just made her blood boil.

  “Then, we got married, and things were all right for a while. We both had to adjust to living together and our new life. I guess you could call it the honeymoon effect, but then something happened. It changed. She stopped caring about me, about anything. I don’t know what happened. Maybe she just decided that she had made a mistake. In any case, she wasn’t the same person that I’d met. And she’s even worse than that now.”

  “Then, I guess this divorce is for the better,” Lexi said softly.

  Lexi knew that it was. She had known that he shouldn’t have ever married Bekah, but Lexi couldn’t change the past any more than he could.

  “Lexi, the worst part about it all is that I really tried to make it work.”

  “I know, Jack,” she whispered.

  “How do you know?”

  “I was there through it,” she reminded him.

  “But there’s something more to that statement.” He pointed at her, like he was trying to figure out what she was hiding behind her big brown eyes. “Isn’t there?”

  “It’s just…Jack, you would try to make a marriage work even if it was all wrong.”

  “Why would you say that?” he asked, his eyes icing over.

  He didn’t want to hear what she was dishing out.

  “Because you did it with all of your other girlfriends.”

  Jack’s eyes hardened. “There’s nothing wrong with trying to make things work with someone.”

  “There is when they’re all wrong for you,” Lexi couldn’t help but shoot back.

  “It’s better than running away from every relationship as soon as things get rocky.”

  “I’m pretty sure the only thing that kept getting in the way of my relationships was your dick,” she said, not able to hold her anger down.

  “Oh, come on, Lex, give me some credit. Sometimes my tongue, too.”

  Lexi stood abruptly. “Why? Why didn’t you try with me? Why every other person but not me? Why am I still the only one here, Jack?”

  “I did try with you,” he said, not breaking eye contact. “We tried it out in New York.”

  “Bullshit! You slept with someone else in New York. Tell me the truth.”

  “Lex, I did try—”

  “You know I talked to Stella?”

  “What?” Jack asked. He looked seriously confused in that moment.

  “I saw her at the D-Bags show,” Lexi said, taking a seat when the couple across the room started staring at her.

  “That was more than two years ago.” He didn’t look pleased that this was coming up. “What did she say?”

  “She said that she was sorry for what she had done to me. What did she do to me, Jack?”

  “Why is this just now coming up?”

  “Because she told me that you said no like five thousand times. She said that you didn’t want to sleep with her that night and that she seduced your drunk ass. She said you had an excuse for being a total moron that night, but you didn’t even tell me that! You said there was no excuse for what you did, and then you pulled out a fucking diamond ring, and poof! You vanished into thin air.”

  “I told you I had no excuse for what I did with Stella because there was no excuse for what I did. I couldn’t come crawling back to you, begging you to see me as the total moron,” he said, spitting her own words back at her, “who had slept with someone else, groveling for you to take me back.”

  “But I would have!” she snapped.

  “Lexi, whether or not Stella seduced me and I told her no five million times did not matter to me because I let you down that night. You were right. We were different. And then I slept with her. No matter what happened to get me there…that was still the outcome. I didn’t deserve you.”

  Lexi just stared at him. All this time, and it came down to that one statement. He didn’t deserve her. It hurt worse than she had ever thought it would. Other people had said it to her, but she always ignored them.

  “I had to own up to what I’d done in New York and take responsibility for my actions. I gave in that night. The thousand times I’d said no didn’t matter because of the one time I said yes.”

  “It would have mattered to me.”

  “Well, we can’t change what happened,” Jack said, leaning back in the booth. His eyes were distant. “No matter what we might want…we have to live with our mistakes and live with our past.”

  “That’s all I’ve been doing…living with my mistakes,” Lexi said.

  “Yeah. A lot of the time, it just feels more like dying from my mistakes rather than living.”

  Lexi sighed and nodded. “I know what you mean.”

  “If anyone does,” he said, staring up at her again, “you do.”

  Food arrived, and they ate together in silence. Jack’s mediation was swiftly approaching, and she had to get back to work. But she found it difficult to rush back to their obligations. Even when they argued, even in the silence, even when it felt like they were just milliseconds away from ripping each other’s clothes off—things with Jack always felt natural and normal. She had never gotten over that feeling of being around him. It was an indescribable feeling that, even through their friendship, they had never gotten rid of.

  Things had just changed. But one thing never changed—Jack was always the person she turned to when things went wrong in her life.

  Jack paid even though Lexi had insisted that it was a terrible idea with the divorce proceedings. But he had just laughed it off and told her that he wasn’t going to end up penniless. He could pay for lunch.

  “Good luck at the mediation. I hope she takes it seriously,” Lexi said.

  “Thanks. Did you want to come over after? I can tell you about how it went, and you can see the new place.”

  Lexi bit her lip and looked down. “I don’t know, Jack.”

  Memories flashed through her mind of him asking her to come over to his place, him making it up to her, him promising not to cross a line. Her face heated, and she felt like every dirty thought was written clear across her forehead.

  Jack chuckled softly at her. “Come here, you,” he said as he drew her into a hug.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and tried not to feel completely embarrassed. She breathed in that old familiar scent, reminding her body not to react to the association she had with the smell. When he released her, his blue eyes were still laughing at her. She dropped her arms quickly and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.

  “You know I’m still married, right?”

  Lexi smacked him on the arm. “Of course I know. I’m engaged
, remember?” she said, flashing him the diamond rock on her finger.

  The humor left his face, and he nodded. “You don’t have to remind me. I know.”

  “Yeah…”

  “I was just suggesting you come see my place—nothing more than that. It’s what friends do. If you’re not comfortable though…” he said, trailing off.

  Lexi sighed. “We’ll see, Jack.”

  “All right.” He didn’t seem to want to push his luck.

  “Remember to listen to your attorney, and don’t give in to her baiting. Because, Jack,” she said, “she’s going to try to bait you. Just…just try not to let her win, okay? That’s all she wants. If you’ve done nothing wrong, then you’ve nothing to hide. You’ll do great.”

  “Thanks, Lex,” Jack said, even as the color drained from his face.

  Lexi paced back and forth across the living room, a legal pad tucked under her arm. She had work that needed to get done, but she was having the hardest time concentrating. There was just too much to do. Besides work, she had so much wedding stuff to do that she was ready to go cross-eyed. Plus, Jack was currently in his mediation with Bekah. Lexi was anxious to hear how about it and if she had been right about Bekah baiting him.

  Ramsey was upstairs, working in his office. He had been working from home more frequently lately. She didn’t know if he got more work done here or if he just liked being away from the hospital. She suspected he would tell her that it was because he liked being close to her. The thought made her smile.

  “Sherri called,” Ramsey said, appearing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Why does she always call you?” Lexi demanded. She stopped mid-stride.

  “Because you never answer your phone.”

  Lexi marched over to her phone and pressed the button to light it up. “She didn’t call me.”

  “Almost four months of you not answering her phone calls when she calls has led her to call me first,” Ramsey explained.

  “I don’t avoid her calls or anything.”

  “No one said you did, dear.”

  “Well, what did she want?” Lexi asked.