“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she entreated, needing some time to process.
There was a pause and she could hear him slide down the door and sit on the floor.
“Listen, I know yesterday was a lot, but I’m scared, too, Alexa. I mean, fuck, I’m the one who laid it all out there. And yeah, I thought going to San Francisco would give me a chance to get over you, but it wasn’t because I was embarrassed.”
“Okay.” Her heart clenched at how defeated he sounded. He wanted her to say she’d wanted him all this time, too, but she wasn’t ready. She didn’t know if she’d ever be ready. That was the problem.
Her phone rang, her Uncle John again. The urge to let it go to voice mail was strong because she was exhausted and didn’t want to talk business. But she had a responsibility so she pressed the green button.
“Alexa, you’ll never believe what has happened!” Uncle John boomed in her ear.
She held the phone away and turned it on speaker to save her hearing. “I got a huge deal on Halcyon!”
Alexa’s pulse was frantic. “But the deal was that I was going to buy you out.”
“Of course, you can say no,” he stressed, “but it’s customary to bring all offers to the table. Now that the news is out that we’re looking for buyers, we got a lot more than we needed!”
The excitement in his voice was electric as he rattled off an insane purchase price from a British corporation.
It was almost too good to refuse. But Halcyon was her raison d’être, and without it, what would she do? Live off her money and tan by the pool every day? That wasn’t who she was. She loved her job.
She took a deep breath to try to settle herself and focus, but the pain in her chest was relentless, like she was seriously about to lose part of herself. She’d never even allowed herself to consider losing Halcyon for real, so the possibility of it was insane. It was her last link to a life that had been slipping through her fingers for the past month. She couldn’t get a grasp of anything solid. Not even Carter.
“When do they want an answer?” she asked.
“It’s up to you, Alexa. Give it all the time you need.”
She nodded even though her uncle couldn’t see. Disconnecting the call, she opened the door for Carter.
“That’s a shit-ton of money.”
She managed a laugh, but the sound that came out was wan and anemic.
“You don’t have to take it.”
“I know,” she said, “but not taking it would be stupid.”
Carter took her by the shoulders and locked eyes with her. “You’re allowed to make decisions based on what you want for yourself, Alexa. You never know how those people will treat the employees you care about. Just because it makes the most financial sense doesn’t necessarily mean it makes the most sense completely.”
Her head fell forward onto his chest. “Why are you being so reasonable?”
“Because that’s who I am.”
“I know,” she sighed. “I just hate it.”
Carter laughed and drew her into his arms.
“I’m sorry I ignored you,” she said against his chest, which was smooshing her face, so the words came out in a garbled mess.
“It’s okay. I know why you did it. It’s been fast. I hate to pile on, but with all that stuff going on with the code leak, opening the new branch is going to happen sooner than I thought. I’ve got to leave for San Francisco this weekend and I wanted to make sure we were okay.”
Alexa’s stomach dropped. “You’re leaving now?”
He nodded.
“For good?”
“Yeah, for the year.”
Tears sprang to Alexa’s eyes and she buried her head harder into his chest, not wanting him to see. “Do you have to?”
He ran a gentle hand over her hair. “Yeah, I have to.”
“But your wife doesn’t want you to,” she complained. “And neither does your best friend.”
“You could always sell Halcyon and come with me.”
“Or you could stay and we could try to make this marriage work,” she tried with a hopeful expression, knowing it was a cheap move because she wasn’t at all ready. He needed to go and she should let him. She should be as good a friend to him as he was to her.
Carter touched his forehead to hers. “If I thought you meant that, I would stay without a second thought, Lex. But I’m not the consolation prize for having to sell your casinos.”
“You’re the most important person in my life, Carter,” she told him, touching her lips softly to his. “You’d never be a consolation.”
He pulled back to meet her eyes, his thumb drawing lightly over her cheek. “You’ll be fine, Alexa. You’re the strongest, bravest and smartest woman I know. Within a week, you won’t even know I’m gone. Plus, in a month or so the office should be up and running and we can get the annulment. We can both get back to our regularly scheduled lives.”
“But this weekend is so soon.” Tears threatened. Ruthlessly pushing them back, she met his eyes. If he felt like he needed to go, she wasn’t going to stop him regardless of how it was ripping her apart. Her whole Carter-less life was stretching out in front of her like a laughterless black void.
He took her hand in his, the calluses so familiar that it made her heart ache to know it might be the last time. “Why don’t you come back to my house at least? Until I go?”
She shook her head. “The casinos are selling,” she said. “My reputation is good. You’ve done me a favor and then some, but now that you’re leaving I can’t keep pretending that we’re married.” It hurts too much was what she needed to say, but couldn’t. Couldn’t say the words that might make him stay because friends didn’t manipulate each other like that. He wanted her physically, but he hadn’t said he was in love with her and she knew better than anyone that physical attraction and love were two completely separate entities.
“So that’s it then?”
She shrugged, pulling away from him because his touch was clouding her judgment. “You said you were leaving, what else do you want me to say?”
“Come on, Alexa. Don’t do it this way.”
She met his eyes. He stood in the middle of her bedroom, the dim light of her lamp burnishing his hair in melted gold. He looked so lovely and dear and he was exiting her life for what may as well be forever.
He brushed a piece of hair behind her ear and she shivered with awareness. The moment was fraught with all the things she wanted to say, but couldn’t get past her cowardly lips.
“You know this is our last night for the foreseeable future,” he said, his voice low and tinged with the same sadness that was swallowing her up.
“I guess we’ll have to make it count,” she whispered, then touched her lips to his.
Alexa didn’t hold anything back. She put all her cards on the table, taking over the kiss, holding his head just where she wanted it. She poured all of her pent-up anxiety and need and want into the kiss, as if it were their last one.
He lifted her off the ground and to the bed, her heart beating fast in her chest. She didn’t know how she’d live without being in his arms again.
He climbed on top of her and she pulled him down for another kiss. It was gentler this time, sweeter, an homage to all they meant to each other and would always mean to each other.
He pulled back and his eyes never left hers as he drew a thumb across the corner of her eyebrow. There was no fight for dominance here, no need to show the other one up; this wasn’t even fucking anymore. It was them, for once, just the two of them together. Pinpricks of desire alighted on her skin as he traced a line up her side. Reverently, he kissed the top of each breast, his hands caressing them as if she would break under the weight of him.
He left her then to pull off his brown-and-coral paisley tie and his white button-down, then went for his
pants. Leaning over her, he drew a finger across the bared skin of her belly, making her shiver.
“I’ve seen you shiver a thousand times,” he whispered, right before he gave her a soft kiss on the side of her belly button. “But I’ve never gotten to be the one to cause it.”
“You’re wrong about that,” she murmured, her hand running over the coarse patch of hair on his chest. “You’ve made me shiver a lot over the years. Especially once you found a good tailor.”
“Too bad you didn’t tell me,” he said, nuzzling her ear. “We could have been doing this a long time ago.”
He took her mouth again and her hands buried in his thick hair as his arms, the muscles chiseled out, bracketed her head to support himself. The kiss went on forever, the mingling tastes of scotch and mint on Carter’s breath, the alcoholic zing on his tongue, the mellow and salty scent of his bare skin, all of it was hers tonight. Maybe he’d get some tech girlfriend after he left and this would just be the thing they pushed under the carpet in the future, but for now he was hers alone.
“It’s never been like this for me,” she admitted quietly, not being able to hold in the words and also wanting him to know. Despite the fact that their physical relationship was ending, it had meant something to her. It had meant a lot.
His head lifted, their eyes joined like they had so many times before, but she felt it in her bones. Over the past month, their relationship had shifted forever, but it wasn’t anything they hadn’t anticipated. Where she thought they’d fight or they’d lose their friendship, something else entirely was happening. Their old friendship paled in comparison to what it had become. They’d worked as a team to build their businesses, been true roommates and lovers.
“Me neither,” he said, kissing her lightly on the forehead, then going lower, dropping sweet kisses on her neck, across her collarbone, down the middle of her chest to her belly button. “I’m going to miss you like crazy, Alexa.”
“Me, too,” she managed, a lump in her throat forming around the words.
She reached over to her nightstand and pulled out a condom, handing it to him. It was a cop-out, ending the moment where she could have truly asked him to stay or he could have asked her to come to San Francisco, or just admitted that, yes, this was a real relationship and real future he was leaving behind. But she didn’t say any of that.
He took the foil from her and ripped it open, deftly rolling the latex over his straining erection. His hand moved down to her center, swiping deliciously slowly over her slit, finding the wetness there.
“Alexa,” he said, placing himself at her entrance, “you mean everything to me.”
Then he slid home. Gasping at the luscious stretching, she dug her hands into his back, wanting more already. The moment was too intense. Her body was saying too much without words, just trying to hold back the desperation she felt that he was leaving. And part of her knew that it might be forever, that he might find someone else to start a life with. A life that she’d never be part of.
He drove into her again, fighting against her inner muscles for space and completion. Arching against him, she came in a rush of hot and cold, their eyes locked on each other. She was still coming when he let go, spasming inside her as she milked him for everything.
Hours later, she lay there in the dark, with Carter wrapped around her, able to admit to herself that after all these years, she’d fallen in love with her best friend.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ALEXA DIDN’T HATE MONACO, but she thought she should like it more than she did. She was in Monte Carlo, one of the most romantic places on the globe, and all she could think about was eating at the shitty diner she and Carter used to go to on Fremont Street. Instead of flirting with the hot casino dealers or suave hoteliers or handsome bankers, she ate crepes in her hotel room. Instead of enjoying a day at the Grand Prix or going out on a truffle hunt, she sat outside at a bistro, texting back and forth with Carter about television shows.
Another night at the Casino Monte Carlo and she was one step closer to opening a casino right on the blue Mediterranean Sea in the playground of the world’s rich and famous. It was what she’d thought she’d wanted when she’d sold Halcyon—a fresh start, a chance to make something all on her own. But she wasn’t so sure what she wanted anymore. She understood why her uncle hadn’t been as sad about selling the casinos as she had. They were just buildings. What she really needed was a purpose.
Her phone lit up, another text from Carter.
It was a picture of the fog rolling in over the San Francisco Bay, his hand in the corner of the frame obviously in mid-wave.
She sighed. She’d royally fucked up. Not as much as he had, of course, since he’d been the one to actually leave and go to San Francisco first, but they were both idiots. So Alexa had packed up and gone to Monaco. Except now that she was there, it wasn’t exactly working out the way she’d thought. She missed Las Vegas too much. And she missed Carter too much.
Dialing her uncle’s number, she held her breath until he answered.
When he did, the words rushed out of her mouth. “I don’t want to build a casino here.”
Her uncle chuckled. “There’s no reason why you can’t do it here in Vegas, darling. I’ll stay in town for a while yet and I miss you.”
“I miss you, too.”
For the first time in the past two weeks, Alexa felt like she could breathe again. She was going to go home. Even if Carter wasn’t there, Vegas was still home to her. But she really wanted him there, too, and maybe she should explain to him just how much she needed him around.
“Why don’t you take a vacation?” Uncle John advised. “Take your mind completely off business for a while. And off Carter. Then when you come back, you’ll be full of ideas and ready to build what you want.”
Alexa didn’t even bother to deny the fact that her current ennui was a result of missing Carter.
“I didn’t think he really meant it,” she admitted quietly. “I didn’t think he’d really go.” Even as they stood saying goodbye outside her house the day he left, she hadn’t believed it. He was always, always there for her.
“He didn’t leave you, Alexa,” Uncle John told her. “He just left Las Vegas for a little while.”
A tear threatened and she blinked it back. She knew, rationally, that Carter hadn’t left her, but it still felt like there was a hole in her chest. Part of her believed she’d never see him again. She knew it was a crazy part of her, but her parents had disappeared in a matter of seconds as if they’d never existed at all. On some level, she’d been waiting for Carter to do the same. And now he had and she was wrecked.
The decision made not to open a casino, the hours stretched even more slowly in front of her on what was now a vacation. She went out with a fellow casino friend a couple of times, but dancing on tabletops wasn’t really interesting to her anymore.
Today was the anniversary of her parents’ death, and she knew exactly the time they’d died, dreaded every minute up to the one where they’d finally left the world. She’d had an early dinner with a friend and drunk far too much, but went back to her hotel early so she could observe the day on her own. Last year, she and Carter had gone to Chicago together and it felt weird to not have him by her side now.
Another friend called, probably to go to a bar for the night, but she ignored it as the elevator slowly climbed up to her floor. All she wanted to do was to crawl into bed, eat Thai food, feel sorry for herself and then go to sleep not caring that there would be cupcake crumbs inside the bra she was too lazy to remove. Was that too much to ask?
When she got back to her room, a bouquet that dwarfed the round table in her living area had been delivered. It was the same arrangement of flowers she always had in her office at Halcyon, delicate cream roses, peach peonies and blue hydrangeas. She didn’t need to read the card to know they were from Carter, but his message was equally comfort
ing. Here for you. Tears she’d been holding back seeped out and they weren’t even about her parents anymore; they were about the fact that she’d pushed Carter away and she hadn’t really understood what that meant when she’d done it. She hadn’t expected it to hurt this much once he was really gone.
It’d been sixteen years since her parents’ death, which meant she’d officially been alive just as long without them as she’d been with them, which on top of losing Carter was crippling. But it also reminded her that life was short, and she’d wasted so much time pushing away the best, most thoughtful person in her life. The one person she should be holding on to forever and never letting go because she was stupidly in love with him.
She’d been in love with Carter for so long, she wasn’t sure she remembered a time when she hadn’t been. It had just been her default state since high school that she’d talked herself out of acknowledging because she was an idiot and a coward. She’d been afraid to allow herself to be happy because she knew all too well how it felt to have that happiness ripped away without reason or warning.
But accepting the risk felt like claiming a destiny she’d ignored instead of jumping off the cliff like she’d feared. She planned to text Carter as much and also thank him for the flowers, but she looked crazy from crying and needed a nap before tackling that mountain. Unfortunately, she’d had a lot of alcohol fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
The next day, she woke up with a pounding headache and a video message from him. He’d donned the Jon Snow costume he’d worn for Halloween the previous year and was pretending to ride a dragon. For the first time since she’d been in Monaco, she laughed.
She might be hungover, but she knew what last night’s revelations meant. The time had come for her to go home and get her life back together. She’d allowed herself to wallow long enough; she was ready to build the future she’d been stupidly denying herself.
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