The Avoiding Series Boxset

by K. A. Linde

  This couldn’t be his decision. This was not Ramsey, not the Ramsey she knew at least. He couldn’t have changed this much in one short month. She still thought she knew who he was…or at least the man that she had gotten to know in the last year. This must have been going on for much longer than this. No way would their father have allowed Bekah to make such a momentous announcement if things hadn’t been in some form of finalization.

  How had the news media not latched onto this yet? It really must have been brand new. Otherwise this would have been everywhere. She would have already heard about it. The Bridges name was as commonplace in New York, as in Atlanta, especially if you were listening for it. She certainly would have seen a copy of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times with a spread about the Atlanta native family broadening its horizons. Yet, this was happening without it ever being leaked.

  How had Ramsey gotten involved? What was he going to do with the clubs? She never really approved of the clubs, but right now everything, anything was looking better than working side by side with his repugnant family and…that woman.

  That thought really made her eyes narrow. Who had put this thought into his head? There was no way that his father had actually worn him down. Ramsey had been arguing his case against his father for fifteen years. Nothing could break him. He and his father simply butted heads. They were too different and also too similar in so many ways. He would never give in if he thought that it was what his father wanted. Defiance kept him strong in a way. Lexi knew it even if he couldn’t openly admit it to himself. Being the one who broke away from his family gave him power that he had never been able to have when he was under their regiment.

  Bekah, maybe? She couldn’t see him giving into her either. He loved his sister. That much was obvious. They were two peas in a pod. They had grown up close and after everything with Parker; they had only stayed that way. But even her eternal nagging wouldn’t be enough to bring him back.

  That left the woman who had just made her way to stand next to him. She watched Parker fidget at the onslaught of attention directed her way. Her smile didn’t exactly reach her eyes, and she kept glancing in Ramsey’s direction uncertainly. Lexi didn’t know what they were saying to each other in that look, but she hated that they had the capability to talk to each other without uttering a word. She was jealous of it. She could admit that. Despite his lies, Lexi didn’t want to see him with her. Her chest pinched at how easily everything had crumbled with the introduction of that woman.

  Had Parker put him up to this? Had she been the cornerstone to this whole project? She was fresh out of med school, just finished up her residency and she thought that she could run a hospital? Lexi wanted to laugh at that. The girl was smart, but she wasn’t a genius. She couldn’t run a hospital alone.

  Lexi clenched her jaw. No, she wouldn’t be doing it alone. She would be doing it with Ramsey. Ramsey would be at her side. Ramsey would be the one that she would go to in her time of need. She would have him with her for everything. They would spend all their time together. She tried not to show her distaste at the thought, but she was sure it was shining through loud and clear.

  This would be a perfect set up. Bekah and their father getting Ramsey back in the business. Bekah getting her best friend back with her brother. Parker and Ramsey actually ending up back together. It was almost too good of a ploy. Lexi didn’t know how Ramsey couldn’t see through it. He was too smart not to see what they were doing to him. They were deciding his life all over again. Everything he had done up until this point would fade away into a distant memory, because they got him back. His past accomplishments would be nothing compared to opening and running the newest branch of Bridges Enterprise.

  Lexi felt sick. She suddenly felt very sick. Her stomach grumbled and she quickly covered her mouth as the taste of bile rose in her throat. She swallowed hard and gulped down the water left over from dinner. Her ah-ha moment mere hours earlier crept into her mind, but she pushed it down. She couldn’t do this. She needed to get away. She could face her problems tomorrow. She could face Ramsey tomorrow. Parker, Bekah, and Jack could all wait for her to not feel like she was going to vomit on them at any second.

  She wasn’t running away from her responsibilities…she was running away from the idiocy that was her life. How could a man that claimed to love her not tell her the truth about one fucking thing? How could he hold back something so important as a complete 180-degree career change when she had been living with him at the time? There would be time later to face up to her responsibilities. She wanted answers, but she wasn’t ready for them.

  As discreetly as she could manage, Lexi pushed back her chair, walked around the outside of the circular tables, and slipped out the back entrance. Leaving the overcrowded room filled with expectations that made her dizzy. She breathed in the restaurant air and headed quickly for the bathroom. Lexi pushed open the door and went quickly to the mirror. She stared forward at her reflection and sighed heavily. To a stranger she would appear all but flawless, but Lexi could tell that she was off. Her tan skin was too pale and if she looked too closely, had a tint of green. Her lips were pursed in distaste. Some small beading of sweat was splattered across her hairline and under her nose. She snatched a paper towel out of the dispenser and blotted her face dry. She wasn’t any more satisfied with her reflection, but it didn’t matter.

  Taking a deep breath, she did the only thing that she could think of. She picked up her phone and dialed Chyna’s number. The line was eerily quiet for a Friday night when Chyna answered. “Hey, chica,” Chyna said happily into the phone. Lexi had no idea what was going on. Last she had checked, Chyna was out partying and drinking every weekend since she had returned from Milan. Lexi couldn’t understand why she would be somewhere quiet already.

  “Chyna, it’s so good to talk to you,” Lexi said, more exhausted and desperate than she had intended.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” Chyna asked dreamily, seeming to read her mood. Lexi filled her in on the situation at hand. She told her about Jack doubting the wedding, about the bachelorette party, about Ramsey sleeping with Maddie, about him agreeing to this company with Parker. Chyna listened the whole time without a word. Lexi didn’t know what to make of it. After she finished, Chyna sighed heavily. “You’re determined to get yourself in trouble, aren’t you?”

  Lexi paused and actually thought about what her friend was saying. She kind of was determined to get herself in trouble. Why was she always in these miserable situations? Was it more her fault than anything? “I guess so.”

  “I knew this would happen,” Chyna said with a dramatic sigh. “I told you not to go see him, not to go to this wedding.”

  “I know.”

  “You know, but you don’t listen. You never listen, Alexa,” she said exasperated.

  Lexi knew she was right, but it didn’t make it any easier to hear. “I guess.”

  “No, you know,” Chyna chided her. “You know he’s bad for you or, at least, that he lied to you on multiple occasions, just like you knew that Jack was a philandering ass. You let these guys use you up until there’s so little of you left, I can’t even find my best friend.” Lexi nodded mournfully even though she knew that Chyna couldn’t see her. “It’s worse this time because you know better. Ramsey is not Jack, and yet you allowed him to do this to you all the same.”

  “I know, Chyna,” Lexi said sadly. “I know I did.”

  “Now you can’t walk away from it all. You put yourself in this position, and you are going to get yourself out of it. Do you love him?” she asked abruptly, throwing Lexi off guard.

  “Yes,” she answered without taking the second to think about it.

  Chyna sighed again, but different this time. She seemed almost resigned to Lexi’s inflexibility, to her determination when it came to men that were bad for her, men that she allowed to hurt her. “Then you can’t run away from this, Alexa.”

  “I wasn’t…”

  “Yes, you
were! Don’t you dare lie to me!” Chyna said, barely raising her voice but somehow making it more commanding than Lexi had ever heard before. “You were calling me for a way out. Well, I don’t have one. You need to talk to him! You need to get your answers. Just don’t do it like you did with Jack last year.”

  “I wouldn’t…it’s not the same,” Lexi said meekly.

  “No, it’s not,” Chyna agreed willingly. “You’re not infatuated with Ramsey. The element of obsession is out of the picture, which might be the best thing that could happen for you. If you really love him and not the way you loved Jack, where he infects your very being, then you need to clear the air. At least then you’ll never have to wonder. You’ll never have to think about what could have been.”

  Lexi knew she was right…hated to admit that she was right. She wanted to run. She wanted to high tail it in the opposite direction and not look back. The last thing she wanted to do was face down the man that she loved to find out once and for all, why he had done this to her. Why he continued to lie to her. Why he continued to put her second best in his life. She wanted to be the strong confident woman that she knew she could be, but the thought of confronting all of her fears left her frantic.

  “I can practically hear your brain working over the line. What are you going to do?” Chyna asked.

  Lexi sighed, circling the rather clean bathroom. She knew what she wanted to do. She wanted to fly back to New York and binge on chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with her best friend for the next couple days. But she also knew what she needed to do. She needed to stay and see this thing out. Wasn’t that the whole reason she had gone through all this mess this week to begin with?

  It wasn’t going to be like the time with Jack. She couldn’t possibly imagine Ramsey doing anything as terrible as proposing to Parker or something equally as ridiculous. She didn’t trust Parker. She didn’t particularly like for them to be together, but Lexi didn’t think they were at that stage. If there were any more secrets that she didn’t know about, she wasn’t sure how she would be able to handle it. But she knew now that she had to handle it.

  “I’m going to stay,” Lexi said with a note of finality in her decision.

  Chyna let out a deep breath. “Thank God. I don’t have to cancel the airlines tickets.”

  Lexi laughed at that statement. This was the first Lexi had heard about her having airline tickets. “Where are you going?”

  “Atlanta, silly. You thought I was going to make you go through that wedding alone?” Chyna asked as if this was the most ridiculous thing she had ever considered.

  “You’re coming here?” Lexi asked loving how well her best friend knew her.

  “Yes, well, I guess I should tell you the news,” Chyna said almost hesitantly. Lexi waited anxiously for Chyna to explain. “Adam and I are talking again,” she almost whispered.

  Lexi’s stomach dropped straight out of her body. She gulped hard taken off guard by the sudden revelation from her friend. Chyna and Adam had decided to break it off once she had gone to Milan, and Lexi had more or less thought it was over between them. Chyna clearly still had a thing for him even if she hadn’t admitted it, but she hadn’t thought they had been seeing each other since she had been back. Chyna had been back to her old self of partying and random hook ups every couple nights. “Re…really?” she stammered out. “When…uh, when did you guys start talking again?”

  “I guess when you left,” Chyna said and Lexi could hear the smile in her voice.

  “Oh…uh, that’s great Chyna. I kind of thought that you and Adam were done.”

  “Me too. He’d been kind of aloof since we took our break, but this week has been better. He’s coming to Atlanta with me actually. Oh, and he said something about needing to talk to you.”

  Lexi gulped. “Did he mention what it was about?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said, waving away the statement. “Didn’t seem that important at the time.”

  “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she murmured into the phone, thankful that Chyna wasn’t listening too clearly to her tone.

  “Well, we’ll be in tomorrow before the wedding. Call me and let me know how things go with Ramsey. Love ya, chica,” she said before ending the call.

  Lexi leaned back against the cold marble counter top and allowed her vision to go hazy and her breathing to slow. That conversation had done less to prepare her for her conversation with Ramsey than she had thought. It suddenly felt like everything was starting to catch up with her. She hadn’t wanted to think about anything else when she was mentally preparing herself to deal with Ramsey. Yet here she was lost in her own world. She had so much going through her mind that she would have to steel herself for what was about to happen over the next day.

  The door creaked open and an elderly woman walked in. She waddled over to a stall keeping her eyes downcast, as if she didn’t want to know why Lexi could possibly be leaning against the counter, glassy-eyed, and unmoving. Lexi was sort of grateful that social propriety dictated that people stay out of each other’s business. The woman washed her hands and made a hasty exit. As the door was swinging closed, Lexi heard a voice that she had been anticipating.

  “Yes, a woman in the restroom fits that description,” the woman said in a high-pitched voice as she teetered past Ramsey.

  Lexi took a deep breath before following the woman out of the room. “I’m right here.” She was surprised to find that her voice was calm and strong. “We need to talk,” she said arching one eyebrow at Ramsey as he stood in front of the bathroom door. She nearly smiled at the irony of seeing him in front of a bathroom since their first “real” meeting had been in the same location.

  He ran his hand back through his hair and looked down at her sheepishly. “Yeah, we do. Can we go somewhere?” he breathed out.

  “Where?” she asked staring up into his face. She could tell that he was worried about how this conversation was going to affect their relationship. She wondered if he had noticed her slip out the back immediately, or if it had taken a minute to notice her departure. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of him and Parker standing so comfortably next to each other, but she had no way of knowing his reaction or his thoughts. She had no idea what he was thinking about at all.

  “My place,” he said immediately. “I want to get out of here.”

  “Should we bring Parker along to verify your story?” she asked maliciously. She couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t hold it back. Who knew if, he was even going to tell her the truth? Could she trust that he wasn’t going to lie to make himself look good or to hide what actually happened? He had done that before. Clearly, he had done it sometime recently to keep her from knowing about this job.

  “No, we don’t need Parker to have a legitimate conversation. I’ve been wanting to talk to you all week, but you kept postponing this moment. And I had no idea Bekah…” he paused midsentence and released a sigh. “You know what? Let’s talk about this at my place. I’ll pull the car around,” he said with a note of finality and walked toward the door without looking to see if she was following.

  She was a little surprised that he was so determined to talk to her about this. She had been avoiding the much needed conversation.

  Lexi glanced back at the rehearsal dinner. Someone had left one of the doors propped open and she could see people milling around inside, talking, and carrying on. Parker’s body appeared at the entrance and somehow even though the room was dim, Parker turned and looked her full on in the face. There was that damn sympathetic look again. Lexi couldn’t place why she kept getting that look from Parker. She was part of the reason that Lexi was in this mess to begin with. There should be no sympathy from her. Yet there she was, her head lightly cocked to the side, eyes open wide, brows slightly furrowed, mouth popped open, and wearing that expression like she felt every ounce of Lexi’s pain.

  Shaking off the similarities between them, Lexi turned from Parker and sauntered across the busy restaurant, out the doo
r, and to Ramsey waiting patiently in his Mercedes. The drive back to his place was surprisingly short even with the dead quiet in the car. Lexi took a seat on his comfortable leather sofa when they arrived back at his place, waited for him to take a seat in an opposing chair, and then stared intently into his face.

  “Are you going to tell me about this new business venture?” she questioned him, clasping her hands together to keep from tucking her hair behind her ear habitually.

  “I...yeah,” he said leaning forward in the chair and resting his elbows on his knees. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about from the beginning? Or with the truth,” she muttered, her gaze piercing through him.

  “The truth, right,” he said nodding to himself. “Well, the medical wing of Bridges Enterprise has been something that I’ve been hearing about since I was in diapers.”

  Lexi’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Since you were a kid?”

  “Yes,” he told her. “It’s my father’s dream. It’s the one thing he’s always wanted to do with the company, but has never been able to.” He paused before continuing.

  “He seems to be getting his wish now, doesn’t he?”

  “Let me tell the whole story,” he cut in quickly. Lexi sat back further against the couch and waited. “My grandfather had four daughters and one son, and all he wanted was boys. It was really hushed up, but he left his daughters with nothing when he died. He gave them a small sum to live on, but my grandfather was old school,” Ramsey grumbled. “He thought that a woman’s worth came from her husband, and once she had a husband, she was no longer her father’s problem,” he said the word like it was the most disgustingly archaic thing he had ever discussed. Lexi listened, absorbed, unsure of how this all fit together.

  “Anyway, my father inherited practically everything including the business, and it’s been his obsession ever since. In his eyes, he is still the son struggling to please his father by building up the business. And I swore I would never be like that.”