The Avoiding Series Boxset

by K. A. Linde

  “How does this involve me?” Bekah asked seething.

  “We can talk about this later,” Ramsey said pleading with Bekah not to continue the conversation.

  “Hell no, we can’t. I want everything out on the table. What is this bitch talking about?” she growled.

  “That’s my girlfriend, Bek,” he said warningly the same time Lexi cried, “Hey!”

  “Well, start answering questions then,” Bekah said angrily.

  Ramsey sighed. “I know what happened with Parker,” he said hesitantly.

  “What happened with Parker?” she growled

  “That she didn’t miscarry,” he said, barely louder than a whisper.

  Bekah’s mouth popped open, and her face blanched. Even through her coat of makeup, Lexi could tell that she had lost all color in her skin. She looked shell-shocked that the conversation had come around to this topic. “She did Ramsey.”

  Ramsey shook his head. It’s like he knew that she would deny it. “She didn’t miscarry, Bek. I know she didn’t.”

  “How could you know that?” she asked her hands shaking in front of her. “You weren’t even there.”

  “I don’t want to argue about this with you. God knows I’ve argued with Parker enough about it. She’ll never admit to it and neither will you, but I know what I know,” he said with a sad shrug.

  “I can’t believe you’re bringing this up,” she said turning the full force of her anger on Lexi. “You have no right to go digging into other people’s lives.”

  “Oh, that’s rich coming from you,” Lexi said rolling her eyes. “Didn’t you ask me to Atlanta just to fuck with me?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come here. Actually, I never invited you to my wedding. I would have much preferred you stay away from me and my family,” she growled.

  “You don’t get a choice in the matter,” Lexi said looking up at Ramsey. She knew that it was probably a bad move to challenge Bekah. After all, who knew what she would resort to in order to hurt Lexi again?

  “Maybe I don’t, but Ramsey does,” Bekah said with a sinister smile that Lexi recognized. “If he knew the truth about you…”

  Ramsey shook his head, stepping between his sister and his girlfriend. “Would you both calm down? Bekah, Lexi is right. You have no say in whether or not I see Lexi. Lexi, Bekah is right, in that you had no right to bring up this kind of stuff in front of everyone. You both need to calm down. It’s your wedding day. I can’t believe you’re even here right now having this argument,” he said in disgust.

  Lexi took a step back from Bekah. She knew that she had been out of line, but she hadn’t been able to see anything other than Bekah when she was fighting with her. She was blinded to the rest of the world. Her vision went blurry. Her senses were dulled. All she could see was the bitch that was standing in front of her, and the anger that bubbled up at the very mention of her name. But she couldn’t be that person in front of Ramsey. It was, after all, his sister. He wasn’t going to completely turn his back on her, even if Lexi thought he should.

  “Sorry,” Lexi murmured, taking a few more steps back and standing next to Chyna.

  “Well, I’m not sorry,” Bekah called.

  “Bek, maybe you should calm down,” Jack intervened. He looked amazed at the showdown between the two women.

  “I should calm down?” she snarled. “She’s the one who cheated on my brother.”

  Once again the room fell silent. Everyone slowly turned to look at Lexi who looked as stunned as everyone else. Lexi had no idea how she had come to that conclusion. Then it hit her, Bekah must have thought that the phone call she had overheard at the Bridges mansion, her Mystery Man, was someone that she had been seeing while she had been dating Ramsey. But that simply wasn’t the case. She could proudly say that she had never cheated on Ramsey. She should have told him about what happened before this moment, but she hadn’t cheated on him. They had been broken up, and she hadn’t expected to get back together with him.

  “I overheard her talking to him on the phone at my luncheon,” Bekah added.

  “What is she talking about?” Ramsey asked, turning his back on Bekah and looking at Lexi. She couldn’t keep herself from blushing, even though Bekah’s comments weren’t exactly the truth. Lexi turned her eyes infinitesimally to the right and glanced at Adam. He sighed and averted his eyes.

  “What was that?” Chyna asked pointing between them. “Does Adam know something about this, but not me?”

  “Uh…” Lexi said licking her lips and tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I didn’t cheat on you,” she said carefully.

  “Then what is she talking about?” he repeated.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Chyna said. “Did you cheat on him with Adam?” Lexi saw the pieces falling together in Chyna’s mind at the accusation. Adam was the only person Chyna had ever really fallen for. Adam had always been extremely friendly with Lexi, but still Adam was friendly with everyone. However, it had to look worse with the look that had passed between them coupled with the fact that Chyna knew that she and Adam needed to discuss something.

  “With Adam?” Ramsey asked stunned.

  “That must have been who she was talking to on the phone,” Bekah said triumphantly. “She was practically having phone sex in the bathroom of my parent’s house.”

  “Hold on,” Lexi said raising her hands. “You guys are getting out of control.”

  “Then tell me you didn’t sleep with Adam,” Chyna said pulling her friend around to face her.

  Lexi glanced at Adam. This was not good. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. Adam wasn’t supposed to show up with Chyna, and she should have already told Ramsey about this. She hadn’t wanted Ramsey to find out like this. It wasn’t fair to him after the hell she had put him through for lying.

  Not that she had lied to him. She really hadn’t, but now it looked like she was hiding things. Shit! She hated this!

  Adam just shrugged. “You might as well tell them.”

  Chyna turned to face him as if she had forgotten he was in the room. Her eyes watered considerably as she stared at him in disbelief.

  “Ramsey, I was going to tell you this morning,” she began.

  “This is what you were going to tell me?” he asked his mouth dropping open. “And I had to hear it from Bekah after everything we went through the past month?”

  “No, no…it’s not what you think. She has her facts wrong,” Lexi quickly amended.

  “Are you kidding me with this, Alexa?” Chyna asked. “You’re my best friend.”

  “Adam and I did not sleep together!” Lexi cried, looking back and forth between Chyna and Ramsey. They both were eyeing her skeptically. The evidence seemed pretty damning against them, but she couldn’t let that continue.

  “What?” Chyna asked glancing from Lexi and back to Adam. “Then how are you involved?”

  “She slept with John…right?” he asked, alluding to his illustrious brother. John had come onto Chyna over spring break, and had resulted in her messy break up with Adam.

  Lexi’s eyes dropped to the ground. Everything was out in the open now. “Yeah…I slept with John.”

  PRESENT

  No one spoke for a while after Lexi’s declaration. She had slept with Adam’s brother, John, when she and Ramsey had been broken up. She had been talking to him for weeks, and hiding it from everyone. But she hadn’t expected her and Ramsey to have another chance. When she realized how wrong that was, she had cut it off and told him that she needed more time to think about it.

  But no one else knew those things. They just knew that this was the same brother that had put the moves on Chyna, forcing her untimely break up with Adam. Chyna despised John—hated him. There was no way she had wanted Chyna to find out like this, but that was certainly better than her thinking she had slept with Adam! That would be the ultimate betrayal, and Lexi wouldn’t have blamed Chyna if she never spoke to her again. Adam was handsome and wonderful. She had an uncanny connecti
on with him, but it wasn’t like that.

  Not to mention Ramsey. She hadn’t cheated on him, but the pain was still evident in his bright green eyes. He was completely taken aback. This seemed to be the last thing he had expected her to say. Bekah’s statement claiming she had cheated on Ramsey wasn’t true, but with her past it still had to leave doubts in his once unclouded mind. She wanted to tell him that things would be all right between them, but how could she know what he would do with this news?

  Lexi wished with everything she was, that she could stop everyone from looking at her right then. Her brain was aching from the swell of emotions going through her, and their reactions weren’t helping. Chyna appeared shell-shocked, if not a bit disgusted. No doubt she was thinking about the last time she had encountered John. Adam looked sympathetic, but like he had somehow known this would blow up in her face. Jack’s smirk had returned to his face. And Bekah—Bekah was the worst of all. She wore smug like a new pair of Jimmy Choos. If Lexi could wipe that murderously arrogant look off her face, she swore she would die a happy woman.

  “I really wanted to tell you, Ramsey. I know what we’ve been through,” Lexi said pausing to fully look him in the face. She needed to stand up for herself. She couldn’t cower and hide behind her actions. She needed to take responsibility for what she had done. “No, I just, I can’t apologize for it happening…”

  Ramsey’s eyes narrowed. Out of the corner of her eye, Lexi could see Chyna’s mouth drop open. She knew this was a do or die moment. The two people she cared about most were waiting for an answer that she couldn’t give them. She couldn’t grovel and apologize for what she had done. She had been that person before, but she wasn’t sorry that she had slept with John or even that she had rebounded with John. He was what she had needed at the time, when she had returned to New York broken once again. She wouldn’t regret her time with him. She was tired of regrets.

  And it’s not as if she had asked for a break from Ramsey, they had broken up. She had told him not to call her, and he hadn’t. She thought it was over. The fact that she was even in Atlanta with him was completely unanticipated.

  But she didn’t want Ramsey to get the wrong idea. She loved him, and she hadn’t meant for him to think that she was lying. She just hadn’t gotten around to telling him, and now she needed to make him understand.

  Lexi sighed before continuing. “No, I’m sorry that it hurts you. I really am, but I’m not sorry that I slept with someone else,” Lexi said amazed that she could even get the words out. “I wasn’t dating you at the time. We were two consenting adults. In fact, I hadn’t anticipated getting back together with you. Things have changed since then, and it’s not going to ever happen again, but it did happen. I can’t change it.

  “So, either you have to accept that fact along with me, or you don’t. We’re at that point,” Lexi said standing tall and fighting the urge to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. She was more nervous about Ramsey’s reaction than anything before this moment, and also completely confident in her decision to finally stand up for herself. Ramsey looked as if he wasn’t sure exactly what he wanted to say.

  Before he got the chance, Chyna butted in, “But you still slept with John knowing the kind of person he is. You still did it. Just because you say these things doesn’t make it better. Think about what you did with him,” Chyna said with a shudder. Adam reached out for her, but she didn’t stop talking. “How can you even go on with your life? I’m sorry, Adam, but your brother is kind of disgusting,” she said with an easy shrug.

  “Can we really drop this line of conversation?” he asked. Adam was fiercely loyal to his brother nearly to a fault. “I know how you feel about him, and it made us do stupid things once before. Let’s just avoid it all together.”

  Chyna batted him away from her, and turned back toward Lexi. “I’m sorry. I can’t ignore this fact. My best friend slept with your brother. Not to mention, you knew about it and didn’t tell me. You guys were keeping it secret together. Alexa has never kept a secret from me before and now this. How could you?” Chyna asked a hitch in her voice.

  “Chyna…” Lexi stammered, looking at her friend sympathetically. She honestly hadn’t meant for it to be a secret forever. Before that phone call from Ramsey, she had intended on telling Chyna…one day. She just hadn’t been ready when she had left New York, and hadn’t seen Chyna since she decided to cut it off.

  “Do you really blame her for not telling you, especially with how you’re overreacting?” Adam asked attempting to talk some sense into her.

  “Overreacting?” she squeaked. “You haven’t seen overreacting!”

  “And we don’t want to,” he said shaking his head at her.

  “The fact that she slept with your brother doesn’t bother you?”

  “No,” he stated simply with a shrug. “It really doesn’t, and it shouldn’t bother you. It’s not like I think something happened between you and John. I wouldn’t be okay with that, but my brother isn’t a bad guy, Chyna. And, as she said, they were two consenting adults…”

  “You’re brother isn’t a bad guy?” Chyna groaned rolling her eyes dramatically. “I wouldn’t wish him on someone I like a lot less than Alexa.”

  “We’ve been through this,” he grumbled clearly annoyed, “but you can’t change it. All you can do is accept the fact that it happened and move on. She’s your best friend after all. You two have been through a lot together…”

  Chyna turned back to Lexi as if she were considering Adam’s point, then shook her head. “That’s exactly the reason that this doesn’t make any sense. You’ve never been that person with me. Yet, you hid things from me…your best friend. I know you hide things from everyone else, but me? I thought you sleeping with Jack before their engagement was an all time low…but this…” Chyna stammered out in anger.

  Lexi’s hand went to her mouth instantly. She couldn’t believe that Chyna would blurt out the secret she had been trying to keep from revealing all along. You could have heard a pin drop in the room, the silence was all encompassing.

  When Lexi had thought that everything was out on the table after her confession about John, she hadn’t actually anticipated everything being out on the table. She hadn’t thought that Chyna would ever tell anyone, let alone a room full of people, that she had slept with Jack prior to his engagement to Bekah. She hadn’t told anyone else so she hadn’t been expecting anyone else to blurt out the news.

  There was only one real reason why she hadn’t told Bekah about her and Jack fucking during his birthday party a year ago. It certainly wasn’t her regard for the woman. She couldn’t think of a person she liked less and yet she had held back that one fact. She had held back the one thing that would have seriously turned Bekah away from Jack.

  It was what she had always wanted. But after all that, she still hadn’t told her the terrible thing that they had done in the hallway. She couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not only was it humiliating that she had been desperate enough to actually sleep with him; he had kept his distance as if the only thing he had been after, was sex. She had never felt so low…so used. And she didn’t want anyone other than Chyna to know that.

  Even after that, when she had finally begun to recover, she hadn’t blurted the news to Bekah. When Bekah had pulled out that big honking diamond…Lexi’s diamond, she had still kept quiet. After she even told Bekah that she was wearing a fake ring…for Christ’s sake, the woman was wearing a fake diamond ring. Even after all that, Lexi had still kept the truth from her.

  Only one reason remained for that.

  Lexi knew it…deep down. Even if she hated admitting it to herself, she knew the reason for keeping the secret from a person she despised.

  She didn’t want them to break up because Jack had cheated with her. She had wanted Jack to break up with Bekah for her, and see Bekah’s sniveling little face when she realized she had lost…that she had actually lost in her own web of games. More than ever, she wanted to be the reason for the br
eak up on Jack’s end, not Bekah’s. But now that reason was morphing into something she liked even better. She no longer wanted to see the wedding canceled so she could finally claim Jack for her own.

  No.

  So that when Jack came crawling back to her, as he always did, she could tell him no. She could be the one to turn him down, the one to leave him hanging, the one to choose.

  Lexi knew that it was sinister to even harbor those thoughts, and keep a secret so revealing to Bekah and Jack’s relationship, but she couldn’t help it. At first, she had done it to have Jack for the right reasons, whatever those were, and now she wanted to keep the secret in hopes that one day she would be able to turn the tables on him.

  But how could she explain that to anyone? Clearly, Chyna had blurted it out because she was pissed off with Lexi. She hadn’t thought of the consequences of revealing that piece of information.

  Within a few hours, Jack and Bekah were supposed to be getting married. If she had been in Bekah’s position, she would have wanted to know everything about the person she was marrying. But would she ever really want to know this? Could you ever really be prepared for such deceit?

  She had been on the wrong end of Jack’s cheating before, and she knew what it felt like. She had been depressed for months…years. She hadn’t been the same person until she had finally allowed herself to begin to move on. And they hadn’t even been officially together…they certainly hadn’t been engaged and about to be married. Lexi had no idea what could possibly be going on in Bekah’s head at the moment. How could you move on from that moment?

  “Is that true?” Bekah whispered turning to Lexi for confirmation.