by Hope Jones
But relief flooded through me. I wouldn’t be watched when I was in bed or in the bathroom. I had places I could hide from the cameras. Places of peace and reprieve.
“I still don’t like the idea of you watching me whenever you want,” I told him, stupidly hoping he would call this whole thing off.
“I won’t be watching your cameras, baby. I’ve got men who will be covering that. The only time I’ll be looking at them is if someone who shouldn’t be there comes onto your property and my guys call me.”
I let out a whoosh of breath as the next wave of relief hit me. I wasn’t sure why, but I was a lot more comfortable with strangers watching me than I was Huxley. Probably because after this whole ordeal was over, I would never have to see them again. I would likely never meet them either.
I was cool with that.
I could do that.
“Okay, show me how this system works,” I said, waiting for him to move from the passenger side door so I could get this over with and finally be alone.
“You okay, babe?” he asked, concern lacing his tone.
I gave him a dazzling smile, hoping it conveyed I was hunky dory. I was better than I was a few minutes ago, but I wasn’t “okay.” “Perfectly fine. I just need to get some work done.”
Apparently, my smile and answer reassured him, because he moved and offered his hand to me.
I ignored his hand, and we walked up my driveway. Hux gave his guys a manly chin lift before showing me the security panel by my front door. He did a run-through of how it worked—which, by the way, was extremely confusing—and then ushered me up the stairs to my bedroom to show me the panic panel. By the time he was done, I had to remember two different codes—one for disarming and re-arming, the second for a panic code. If anyone got in the house, there was a panic code for the front alarm, one for my bedroom, and I had a red panic button in my kitchen drawer with the silverware.
To say I was overwhelmed would be an understatement.
After we were done, I walked him downstairs to see him out so I could shove all thoughts of danger, cameras, panic buttons, and alarm systems as far from my mind as I could get.
Hux guided me by hand to the front door but didn’t open it. Yanking our linked palms, he pulled me close and then framed my face.
“Gotta run,” he said, rubbing his thumb over the apple of my cheek.
What I wouldn’t give to be the kind of woman who could lean into his touch and relish it.
“I know,” I whispered.
“I’m taking you out tonight.”
My eyes widened. There was no way in hell I was going out with him tonight. Nuh-uh. Not happening.
I shook my head but remained silent. I wasn’t going to argue with him. I was perfectly fine with letting him think it was going to happen.
“Pick you up at seven,” he said.
“Hux, I can’t. I have work to do.”
“You’ve got time for a break,” he insisted.
“No, I don’t,” I said. “I’ve got to find another story, since you forced me to stop working on this one.” I glared at him.
“How ‘bout this? When all this is taken care of and you aren’t a danger to yourself, I’ll sit down with you and give you an exclusive interview about myself, my FBI career, and how I brought down the Disciples.”
Oh hell yeah!
That would be fucking amazing. That would be the interview of the year. To the people of East Haven, Huxley Carson was a mystery. Not many people were close to him, and if they were, they weren’t speaking. My boss would flip his lid if I could get an exclusive interview with the ex-FBI turned PI, Huxley Carson.
“You’re serious?” I would die for that interview.
“If it means you’ll stop digging into the election and the cartel and sit tight for a couple weeks to let me get this straightened out before you get yourself killed,” he told me.
I mulled it over in my head.
Could I sit tight for a couple weeks to get that interview? I knew I could... mostly, but I would have to clear it with John, my boss, first. I was sure he would go for it, but I still couldn’t agree.
“I’d have to talk to my boss,” I said, shrugging nonchalantly, trying to go for aloof, but on the inside, I was doing a huge-ass happy dance.
“I can work with that. Now, give me a kiss so I can leave and go to work.”
Oh no. Nope.
His lips could not touch mine again.
I would go into a Hux Fog, and I couldn’t do that. I seemed to lose every bit of my brain and senses when he got intimately close to me.
I started struggling against him, but he was having none of it.
One of his hands slid through my hair and gripped the back of my neck, while his other worked its way down to my waist and wrapped around me. He pulled me tighter against him, his head starting toward me, his mouth getting closer and closer. I tried to shake my head, but he had a good hold on my neck and kept me still.
His lips touched mine and I melted. When he kissed me, it was like the entire world fell away and it was just the two of us. The tingles started at the top of my head and worked their way down my body. A shiver slid up my spine and it was hands-down the best kiss I ever had... and he didn’t even use tongue.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck.
I was so screwed. If he could do that with just an intense peck, I wondered what he could do with his hands, his body, all of him.
I was in trouble.
He tore his lips from me like it caused him pain to do so then rested his forehead against mine.
“Seven o’clock,” he whispered.
“‘Kay” was all I could manage. I closed my eyes and inhaled sharply, my nose drawing his scent in and making me lightheaded. Fuck, but I loved the way he smelled. Before I could get ahold of myself and decline dinner again, he was out the door and gone.
Poof.
It was like he was never even here.
Sly son of a bitch just disappeared after somehow convincing me to go to dinner with him, even though I was adamant I wasn’t going just two minutes previously.
I was seriously screwed.
After Huxley left, I went into panic mode. I flitted around my house, trying to straighten shit up, which led into doing laundry, which then led into rearranging my bedroom furniture. Even when I was finished, I still hadn’t calmed down about going out with Hux, so I ran.
Yes, I was a coward.
But he wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I got into my car, thankful his band of merry men were done with my outside cameras and didn’t immediately call Huxley to tell him I had left. Even though I knew he would find out I was gone, I still had a head start.
And that was how I ended up at Millie’s house with a couple bottles of wine and my shitty attitude in tow.
_______________
“Honey, you really need to get past this ‘I’m going to be alone forever’ thing. You have to know somewhere deep down that it isn’t going to work,” Millie told me before taking a sip of red wine.
Millie was my best friend and the only person in my life. Literally. I had no one else except Millie, besides her family, my bosses, and my sources, if those counted. We met in college and she was my roommate. We were pretty much polar opposites. I was blonde and blue-eyed, she was brownish-red-haired with brown eyes that sometimes turned green. I was always outgoing and took risks, and she was calculated and thought through every possible scenario before making decisions. I chose not to have a love life, and all she could think about was finding the perfect man. Which is why, at 29, she has two ex-husbands. Her first husband was a good man, but Millie said there was no spark. They tried working it out, but in the end, Millie wanted to find that fire more than she wanted Brian. Now, her second husband, Tidus, was a freakin’ douche canoe. If I could find the fucker, I’d rip his face off. Millie found the fire she was looking for, but after the marriage certificate was signed, he changed. Slowly, I watched my best friend turn from happy-go-lucky into someone sh
e wasn’t. She withdrew into herself and just wasn’t my Millie anymore. A few months after their wedding, I discovered he was mentally abusing her, which turned into physical abuse. As soon as I found out, Millie’s brother Carter and I took her to their place when he was at work, packed all her stuff, and moved her in with me.
Eventually, her asshole ex-husband backed off with the help of intimidation from Carter, and Millie moved on.
“How can you still be so optimistic after everything you’ve gone through?” I asked genuinely, realizing Millie had lost a lot as well. Tidus had taken a chunk of her, and she could have become jaded, become more like me. Someone closed off to the idea of love. But Millie wasn’t like that. It didn’t matter what Tidus took, she still had hope someone could fill that void in her heart.
“Because I know my guy is out there. I can feel it in my bones, Phoebe. Tidus may have put his hands on me and screwed with my mind for a little bit, but I grew up knowing that someday I would meet the man of my dreams. I would be swept off my feet, and it would be amazing, and I refuse to let him take that away from me. Tidus took his pound of flesh, but he isn’t going to take my dreams,” she told me, looking off in the distance, a dreamy look in her eyes.
I sighed.
I wished I had the same hopeful dreams Millie did. I wished I could have the same outlook as Millie. I wished I could forgive death for taking so much from me. But I couldn’t. I had too much scar tissue around my heart. I wasn’t looking to add any more.
“Enough about me; I wanna hear about your night with him,” she bossed suggestively, wagging her eyebrows.
I rolled my eyes and took a sip of my own wine. “There’s nothing to talk about. I fell asleep in the car, he took me to his place, changed my clothes, and I don’t remember a thing of it,” I told her, hoping fruitlessly that she would drop it.
“Okay, so what about this morning?” she inquired, which was the opposite of dropping it.
“Nothing happened. I woke up, and he fixed me toast and then took me home,” I told her, grabbing both our empty wineglasses off the coffee table and heading to the kitchen for a refill.
“If that’s all it was, then why did you head over here like a bat out of hell?” she asked, trailing behind me.
I rubbed the spot between my eyes that was slowly starting to throb, knowing it was going to turn into a migraine soon.
“Why can’t you ever let things go? You are so damn stubborn,” I snapped, immediately feeling guilty, because she only wanted what was best for me, but it was hard to fight the aggravation that was crawling up my spine and settling around my shoulders like a boulder.
“You would think sleeping in a bed with a man as hot as Hux would relieve some of your tension,” she joked, rubbing said tension out of my shoulders.
One of the best things about having a massage therapist for a best friend is the free, random massages. She kneaded the muscles around my shoulders and neck, relieving more stress than she realized.
I moaned, “Holy shit, your hands were carved by God himself.”
“I know someone’s hands that would feel better,” she whispered in my ear.
I didn’t say anything, but I would have to agree. Hux’s hands would probably feel freaking amazing. Having seen the way the muscles in his arms worked and the sheer power he exuded, I knew his hands would be magical.
“You’re incorrigible.” I laughed, pulling away from her and refilling our glasses before moving back to her living room.
“So?” she encouraged.
“He kissed me,” I said, although I knew telling her would ensure she wouldn’t let the idea of Huxley and me go. She was so flippin’ persistent. She would get her way, badgering me until I told her everything. And right now, her way was Huxley with me. A couple.
“Mm-hm,” she mumbled, “what was it like?”
“Holy fuck, Millie. I’ve never felt a kiss throughout my entire body like I did yesterday.” I felt tingles down in my happy place just thinking about it.
Fuckity, fuck, fuck.
I was so screwed.
“Then what’s the issue? Why can’t you just let go and do something for you for once? I can’t remember the last time you dated anyone seriously. Whenever anything starts getting serious, you bail out and don’t look back. You’re kind of a heartbreaker,” she said, looking into her glass.
“Mimi.” I sighed in frustration, using the nickname I gave her back in college. “You know exactly why I can’t. I don’t want to get hurt again,” I whispered.
“I know a lot of people have left you, intentionally and not, but that doesn’t mean you need to close yourself off. What would your mama think? Or Nanny and Papa? They wouldn’t want this for you. They’d want you to open yourself up to someone—”
“I have opened myself up! I’m in your living room, aren’t I?”
“I don’t count, Phoebe. As hot as you are, we both don’t swing that way. You know what I mean. They’d want you to find someone to spend the rest of your life with. Someone to settle down with. Someone to fall into bed with every night and unload to. Your person,” she said, spinning me by my shoulders so she could look me in the eye. This wasn’t the first time she implored me to find ‘my person,’ and it likely wouldn’t be the last.
“Why would anyone willingly open themselves up to heartbreak? I truly don’t understand. My mama thought she found her person with my daddy, but he left us without a backward glance. And I won’t forget the look on my papa’s face when the doctors told us my nanny didn’t make it. I watched that loss eat at his soul, Millie. He wore that look until he died. There’s less risk of pain by keeping to myself and not having anyone to go home to at night. Besides, my vibrator is good enough in that department, and you’re my person, so I don’t need anyone else.”
I shrugged and swirled my wine, shutting down the thoughts of having a ‘person’ again.
“There’s also less reward, Phoebe,” Millie implored.
“Give it up. It isn’t gonna happen,” I said grumpily.
She sighed loudly but thankfully let it go.
Millie and I had this discussion a lot over the years we had known each other. She ought to have known by now that my mind wasn’t going to change.
“Fine. I’ll let it go if you tell me why you ran over here like the devil was chasing you.”
See? Persistent, I tell you.
“Uh, ‘cause he kinda is,” I said, sliding my eyes to the side, trying to ignore her, but not before I saw her narrow her eyes.
“Jesus, Phoebe, did you run from Huxley?”
“No?” I said, but it came out like a question.
I gave Millie the short version of everything, and all she could say was “Wow.”
“Right? Oh my God, he’s so freakin’ overbearing and frustrating!” I hollered unnecessarily, since she was only a few feet away from me on the other couch.
“That is definitely not what I was going to say.” She laughed.
“If that’s the case, then I don’t want your opinion,” I told her and stuck my tongue out at her.
I was being petty, mostly because I was drunk, but also because she sucked.
“Whose side are you on anyway?” I asked snottily.
“Yours. I’m always on yours,” she said, coming to sit next to me and resting her head on my shoulder.
We sat like that for a few minutes. I loved my best friend. She may have been a butthole sometimes, but from the moment we met, she’d always been on my side. She’d always been there for me. We got even closer after I told her my past, and we’d been inseparable since. She was the jelly to my peanut butter.
A knock on her front door ended our silent show of affection and returned us back to the here and now.
“Did you order a pizza?” I questioned, taking our glasses to the kitchen while Millie headed for the door.
As I hand-washed the glasses before sitting them in the dish drainer, I heard the hushed voices of Millie and someone male as indicated by th
e deepness of his voice. I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and prayed to God that whoever she was into this time was actually a good guy and they had a spark. Millie deserved everything she wanted and nothing but the best.
I decided to go back to the couch to give her some privacy, but I had to pass through her foyer and felt like an ass that I had to intrude. I started to rush through and kept my eyes averted, but Millie stopped me by saying in her motherly “You did something you shouldn’t have and now you are in big trouble” tone, “Phoebe.”
I paused, confused by her pitch, then spun around and narrowed my eyes at the man standing in her foyer. If looks could kill, Huxley would surely be dead because of the daggers coming from my eyes, and I was sure I would be dead by Millie’s glared daggers.
“What are you doing here?” I snapped at the man of the last few hours.
“Dinner was supposed to be at seven,” he stated, and for the first time, I noticed his jaw was clenched tight. His thick arms were crossed over his massive chest and he was pissed.
Oops.
Well, I did tell him I wasn’t going out with him.
“I suggest you go get some food then. Wouldn’t want you to be hangry,” I told him and stupidly laughed at my own joke.
Really, that was a bad idea.
I shouldn’t have laughed.
Millie drunkenly giggled beside Hux, and his eyes cut to her sharply, but she couldn’t control it just as much as I couldn’t.
“Are y’all drunk?” he asked.
“Millie, are we drunk?” I hissed to my best friend.
“I think those two bottles of wine you brought are gone, so I’d say yes, we are!” she exclaimed then giggled until she was doubled over.
Huxley’s face lost a little bit of the hardness, and he shook his head, looking at his boots. I thought he was trying to hide a smile, but I’d have to squint one eye to figure it out, and I didn’t want to get dizzy.
“You good or you need me to call someone to stay with you?” he asked Millie, who had finally gotten control of her giggle fit.