by S. Ann Cole
I don’t bother lying. “Yes.”
He rolls with me so we’re both on our sides, face to face. And I press myself to him, wanting to be even closer, closer than I’ve ever been, crawl inside him if possible.
He combs his fingers through my hair, his thumb brushing lightly across my cheek. “You make me happy, Alexa.”
And there it is again. Inexplicable implosions in my chest, leaving me gaping and raw with emotions.
With tiny discreet exhales through my lips, I fight to calm my galloping heart’s wild desperation for this man. I fight back the urge to tell him the truth—that he makes me happy, too. So deliriously happy.
I win against my urges.
I don’t tell him.
I can’t.
Instead, I press even closer to him, grab his face, and kiss him with every ounce of my being.
You make me happy, too, Trenton Garza.
You make me happy, too.
Chapter TWENTY-TWO
“And I wouldn’t have lost this time around.”
Trent
The conference room door opens and Guy, our head of tech, walks in.
“You wanted me, sir?”
“Yeah.” I lace my fingers behind my head and lean back. “Put me through to that motherfucker.”
“Torin, sir?”
I cock a brow at him. “You know any other motherfuckers?” As he opens his mouth to respond, I add, “Aside from me, that is.”
“It’s 3 a.m. in Russia,” he tells me. “He’s—”
“Don’t give a fuck. Put me through.”
He nods and get to it.
With the risky and sensitive nature of the job Torin’s on, extra precautions have been taken for protection. There’s only one secure, untraceable line to get to him, done via video only for visual veracity to eliminate possible subterfuge. And only Guy is authorized to make that connection, and only on the order of a Garza. Anything goes south and it’ll be his ass on the line.
After about ten minutes of puttering around with all the equipment, the connection is made and Torin’s tired face fills the flat screen ahead. We’ve woken him up.
“You have any idea what time it is here?” he grumbles groggily.
Guy looks at me then and his gaze drops to the floor. But I did this on purpose. ‘Cause fuck this motherfucker.
I glare at the screen. “Why’d you call her?”
“To get your attention. You’ve dodged all my attempts to talk to you.” He rubs his eyes with his fists. “Knew if I contacted her you’d come at me hard. Here we are.”
Manipulation is my forte. Not one I’m proud but I’m exceptionally good at. And because I’m so damn good it, people are rarely successful at manipulating me.
Except for Torin Garza.
Sonofabitch gets me every fucking time.
I should’ve known. Should’ve seen right through the play.
“Alright, you got me. Pulled my strings,” I admit defeat. “Now what is it that you so desperately want to talk to me about?”
“I didn’t cheat on Lexi.”
I clench my jaw. Why the fuck is he telling me this? What’s it supposed to mean to me? He knows Lexi is back here, with me, and all of sudden he wants to come clean? Is this supposed to be some kind of warning that he’s throwing his hat in the ring again? Are we about to go to war? Because I’m not falling back this time. I’m fighting tooth and fucking nail for her. She’s mine.
Actually, she’s always been mine.
“When I came to Redlands, it was hard for me,” he goes on, “and Lexi was the one person who made things easier, bearable. You all had a bond, moved as a unit, and I…I felt like an outsider. Like I didn’t fit.
“I connected better with Lexi since she understood what it felt like to be the outsider. Yeah, I knew you wanted her, but I didn’t care. Was maybe even a little bit spiteful with it. She was my only happiness, so I hung on to it, all while hurting you. Then dad died…”
He rubs his hand down his face. “And it all just became too much. Too much loss to process. I felt obliterated inside. Lexi was enough, but still not enough at that point. I started to crave something more than her. And I didn’t know what that was until Monica caught me having a nervous breakdown. She made me realize that what I needed was family. You, my brothers who wanted to know me but I wouldn’t let them. What I needed was the strong bond you all had, how you were there for each other, protected each other.”
He sighs and leans back against the headboard. “So, I had to make a tough decision; you or her. Let her go and have a relationship with you or keep her and don’t? The cheating rumor was all fake shit I fueled. In the end, I chose you, my brother. I gave up the girl I loved for the family I needed. And for the relationship I have with you now, I’d do it again if I had to.”
Well, fuck me. Always full of surprises, this one. Don’t even know where to begin here.
“You’re an idiot,” I tell him. “Were it the other way around, it would’ve been her for me. Always her. Not your ugly ass.”
He bellows out a hearty laugh, a rare occurrence for him. “Oh, I know. Why do you think I kept tabs on her all these years? It was hard, but I fought my feelings for her and forced myself to start seeing her as family—like a sister. ‘Cause I knew, without a doubt, that she’d be that one day. My sister-in-law, your wife.”
“Damn straight.”
I flick my gaze to Guy who’s sitting slouched with his head down, motionless, as if trying to make himself invisible. He’s the epitome of ‘see no evil, hear no evil’—the reason we have no qualms discussing things in front of him, no matter how personal. And not because he’s bound by a non-disclosure agreement, but because he understands the meaning of loyalty.
“So, yeah,” continues Torin. “Just figured you should know the truth now that she’s back. And you can stop throwing me shit every time her name comes up. She’s yours, man. We’re good?”
“No worries. Was prepared to go to war with you if I had to,” I let him know. “And I wouldn’t have lost this time around.”
Again, he laughs. “I really loved Lexi, Trent, but I’m pretty sure she was just infatuated with me, so I was never gonna win anyway. No one got under her skin more than you. So even then I knew…it would always be you.”
Chapter TWENTY-THREE
“Fire!”
Lexi
“I’m leaving next week after the housewarming party.”
Tightening Trent’s leather jacket around me, I swing my dangling legs back and forth.
After a late-night dinner at The Lobster, I bugged him to hit the Santa Monica Pier with me for a stroll. Trent is the farthest thing from a “stroll” type of man, but he indulged.
I needed this quiet, intimate time with him, as it’s our last weekend together and I want to soak up every last bit of it. Even if his being here with me, sitting with our legs dangling off the pier, is reluctant.
“For where?” His tone is casual, unbothered. Not what I expected after breaking the news that I’m leaving. Him. Us.
Renovations at the house are done. Job complete. Debt paid.
After having professional photos taken and stellar videos created to highlight all the best parts of their newly renovated investment, I brought in Trent and True for a grand tour. True was the most surprised by the results, as he openly admitted that he’d had low expectations.
To celebrate, Maggie and I are organizing a “housewarming” party with just close friends and family. After that, I’m off.
“Washington,” I answer.
“Your sister?”
“Yeah, her husband’s brother runs a real estate company. He secured me a job as a receptionist. It’s something to start with,” I say with a shrug. “I could work on getting a real estate license on the side. Maybe ease into that later on.”
“And where will you stay?”
“Isla said I can stay with them for a few months until I’ve saved up enough to get my own place. They’ve got a nice place. Better
than going back to Redlands.” I laugh with uncertainty.
“Sounds like you’ve got it all figured out,” he mumbles.
For some reason, his blasé attitude rankles me. I don’t expect him to grab my ankles and beg me not to leave, but I also wasn’t expecting him to be so nonchalant about our end either.
Surely the last couple of months meant something to him? He’d been so determined to make me his, and now he doesn’t even care that I’m leaving L.A.?
It’s my fault. I’d been so insistent on us never being anything more than a fling and having no expectations that it seems I drove out every non-sexual interest he might have had in me.
On one hand, I should be happy, because it will make leaving easier. But on the other, I don’t know…I guess I just expected…something. Anything but indifference.
Trent jumps to his feet on the pier and holds his hand out to me. Sulking on the inside, I take it and let him pull me up, then I let out a surprised squeal when he slams me up against him and presses his face in my hair.
“If this is our last weekend together, then I don’t want to spend it on the Santa Monica fucking pier.” His hands glide down my back and squeeze my ass. “I want to spend it in my bed, buried deep inside you, leaving my mark and making sure you never forget the best fuck of your life.”
Just like that I’m quaking in the knees for him. Desire blazing through me like wildfire.
Lust and sexual avarice push my irritation with him to the back burner. And now I don’t want to be here either. I want to be where he wants me. In his bed, with him inside me, doing what he’s so damn good at. Making me writhe and scream and claw my nails into his skin.
Needy, lit on fire, I push myself against him. Tip up on my toes and whisper sultrily against his lips, “Then take me there.”
~
“No, not there! In the kitchen,” I half-shout at an assistant from the catering company we hired for the party tonight.
The directive came out louder and gruffer than I intended—something that’s been happening all week. I’ve been in such a shit mood that even Maggie has been avoiding me.
The housewarming party is tonight and by noon tomorrow I’ll be on a flight to Washington. I should be ecstatic that I’m at the end of this debt repayment, but I’m not. Instead, I’m irritated with myself for getting it all done so quickly. I should have been shittier at it. Screwed it up. Not researched and made so many smart, efficient moves. Or, maybe even blown the budget.
That way I would’ve had more time with him. The man who professed to wanting me all his life. But now that he’s had his fill of me, has grown bored and could care less what I do with myself after tonight.
I don’t know what it is that I even want from him, but it’s not this…this casualness. I suppose I assumed someone who claims to have had a hard-on for me for so long would at least ask me to stay. I would’ve refused, of course. But it’s really gotten under my skin that he hasn’t.
Maybe he did have a thing for me when we were younger, but now it just feels as if he’s with me to prove something. To punish me for not choosing him back then.
Arrgh. How did I allow myself to get this attached? I’m lost in my feelings when I’m the one who insisted on “nothing serious, just fun.” How pathetic. To lay down the rules and get caught in them myself. Now it’s time to leave and it hurts.
I didn’t experience this hollow, desolate feeling inside when I left Torin. I’d left him in a whirl of rage, spite, and triumph. I’d felt the stab of his betrayal, but never hurt. No permeating burn in my chest. Trent has done nothing but good to and for me, yet the hurt I feel right now is so unbearable it transmutes to anger.
“Lexi.”
I turn from where I’m standing by the front doors of the guesthouse giving instructions with a bad attitude, and find Maggie standing three feet from me as if she’s afraid to come too close.
She offers her phone. “It’s Trent.”
When I shoot her a glare, she just shrugs, not leaving me alone like I want her to. Maggie might have been giving me a wide berth of late, but she isn’t someone who can be bullied, so my glare doesn’t phase her.
As I grab the phone from her, I yank and squeeze her fingers on purpose.
“Ow!”
I smile sweetly at her.
She scowls and mouths “bitch” at me before stomping off.
With a fortifying breath, I lift the phone to my ear. “Yes?”
“Are we fighting?” His deep, smooth voice spills over me like warm oil and my heart starts dancing giddily like a puppy whose owner finally came home.
And this is why I’ve been ignoring his calls.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The last time you took one of my calls or answered a text was three days ago.”
“Sorry about that,” I say, while sounding anything but. “I’ve been a little caught up, packing and all.”
I’ve ignored his texts because none of them were personal. They’re all related to the house, or just a general, “You good?” His calls were of the same nature, asking me to clarify something regarding a payment or a company I’d hired. Every time I picked up the phone expecting to hear or read something sexy or teasing and it wasn’t, it stroked my ire, so I just stopped picking up altogether.
To top it all off, I’ve had to make my own lunch all week because he sent me nothing. Just like that, special delivery lunches were no more. No longer am I being wined and dined and flirted with. I’m chopped liver now. I feel so freaking played.
He probably has a date scheduled this weekend, someone else to pick up right where I left off.
“Well, sorry for being such a bother, Busy Bee,” he says, a touch of amusement in his voice. “I’m headed to the bank and just wanted to know if you’re good on cash for Washington.”
Cash for Washington. How eager is he for me to leave? Throwing me cash is a surefire way to make certain I get on that plane. Asshole.
My throat tightens. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“You sure? I can get you—”
“I said I’m good,” I snap at him. “I don’t need anything else from you, alright? This is it. We’re here, at the end. I owe you nothing now, and neither do you. We’re square.”
A long pause, then, “Okay.”
I hang up and resist the urge to throw the phone, seeing as it isn’t mine. When my eyes start to burn, I curse myself, feeling like an idiot. What the hell am I even crying about? It was a fling that barely lasted three months. This is all so pathetic.
Irritated with myself, I go in search of Maggie and hand her back her phone. “Can you take over with the caterers for me?” I ask her. “I need to go get the booze before the traffic starts.”
“Sure, that’s fine.”
We head out to the front, and I eye the SUV Trent loaned me with malice. “Can I borrow your car?” I ask Maggie. “It’s faster.”
“Of course.” She tosses her keys to me. “But it’s low on gas, so you might have to make a stop at the station.”
“Maybe if you started filling more than a quarter tank of gas you wouldn’t be ‘low on gas’ all the damn time, you stingy wretch.”
“Economical,” she calls after me as I jog down the steps to her car. “Thrifty! Frugal!”
“Dumb!”
~
The gas light glares at me from the dashboard as I peel out of the parking lot of the liquor store with the trunk of Maggie’s small car loaded with booze. There’s another order I need to pick up before the traffic gets crazy, but with the needle dead on E, I figure being stuck in traffic is more favorable to breaking down in traffic.
Cursing under my breath, I navigate in the opposite direction toward the gas station. Freaking Maggie. Who tries to be stingy with gas? Straight up nonsense.
At the station, I pay for the gas inside then drive up to the pump and get out to fill the tank. As I unscrew the cap and fit the pump inside, a black SUV with pitch dark windows pulls up behind
me, at the same time an identical SUV drives around the row of pump stations before it reverses in front of Maggie’s car.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickles. Something doesn’t feel right. I pat my pockets for my phone but it’s not on me. It’s in the car. Shit.
I try to remain calm, act normal. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that two identical pitch-black SUVs drove in at the same time for gas.
Yet even as I try to convince myself of this, I know I’m right to be suspicious. Something bad is about to happen, I can feel it.
Simultaneously, doors from both SUVs crack open.
Dammit.
Though the tank is barely half-full, I yank out the pump and hastily and try to screw the cap on, all while debating whether I should attempt to dive through the window the car, lock myself in—assuming I make it—and call Trent, or try to make a run for it screaming at the top of my lungs.
I glance around. There are multiple other vehicles at pump stations, some waiting in line, everyone minding their own business. People scrolling or talking on their phones, one woman in a silver Prius is shouting at her toddlers in the backseat.
It’s broad daylight with people all around me. Maybe I’m freaking out for nothing. No one would try to—
Two bulking, tattooed men emerge, both moving determinedly toward me from either direction.
Shit.
I’m trapped by the pump, Maggie’s car, and the men. But I still have to try. There’s no way in hell I’ll make it through the car window in time to shut myself in, so I whirl in the direction of the pump and try to squeeze through the sliver of space between the pump station and the column. “Fire!” I scream. “Fire!”
Hands like steel grip me and haul me back. When I open my mouth to scream again, it’s immediately covered by a rough, calloused hand. Determined to not make it easy for them, I kick and wail and claw. But I’m no match for these hulks.
“Hey, hey, what’s happening there?” someone shouts.
