He’d been horrified. There was no other word for it.
Maybe that’s what stung the worst. He’d looked suddenly like a stranger to her.
Jessica hovered nearby as Alexis grabbed her apron and looped it over her head. “Are you sure—”
“I’m fine, Jessica. Let’s just go to work.”
Jessica reacted as if Alexis had yelled at her.
“I’m sorry,” Alexis said, reaching over to squeeze her arm. “I’m not fine, to be honest, but I can’t talk about it right now. Okay?”
Jessica nodded, her features relaxing again. “I’m here if you need to, though.”
“I appreciate it.”
Alexis wished she’d thought to grab a ball cap to wear today. Maybe it would shade the worst of her dark circles and red eyes.
Jessica gave her one last look before nodding and heading out of the kitchen. Alexis tried to lose herself in the routine of opening the café, but just when she’d finally settled in, Jessica walked back in. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Alexis’s head snapped up. “Noah?”
Her tone managed to convey both hope and dread, a combination that sent Jessica’s eyebrows up.
“No. It’s some old guy.”
That could be anyone over the age of thirty. Jessica’s gauge for what was old was a lot different than Alexis’s.
“I lied and told him you wouldn’t be in until ten,” Jessica said. “He said he’d just wait.”
Alexis pushed open the kitchen door and followed Jessica’s point to the tables outside. Her breath lodged in her throat.
Elliott.
He sat on a bench in front of the café, leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees, staring at the small fountain that decorated the middle of the sidewalk welcoming visitors to East Nashville. The sunrise glinted off the gold band on his left hand and turned the gray in his hair into white sprinkles.
“I’m sorry,” Jessica said. “I tried to get rid of him. I know you’re probably not up for talking to anyone.”
“It’s okay. I’ll take care of it.”
“It’s not another reporter, is it?” Jessica worried her bottom lip.
“No,” Alexis said. “It’s my father.”
“What?”
But Alexis had already started to walk away. Her footsteps echoed on the floor of the empty café. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door. The jingle of the bell drew his head up. His lips parted, but no words came out.
She stopped in front of him. “Hello, Dad.”
“I—” He cleared his throat.
Alexis couldn’t help herself. She cocked an eyebrow. “It’s Alexis. Did you forget already?”
He let out a loud breath and ran his fingers through his hair. “I’m sorry. I just—you look so much like your mother. It . . . It catches me off guard.”
“Wow, and to think the last time we met, you threw me out.”
“I’m sorry. It was just such a surprise. Candi didn’t give us any warning about you. I—”
Alexis waved her hands to ward off anymore of his bullshit. “What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping we could talk.”
“Gee, hard to believe there’s much left to be said after yesterday.”
“There is. A lot.” He stood. Slowly. “Can we . . . Can we go somewhere?”
“I’m pretty busy right now. I have a business to run.”
“Please, Alexis.”
The pleading tone of his voice reminded her too much of how Noah sounded last night as he chased her down the sidewalk. Noah’s voice had broken a part of her. Elliott’s was close to finishing her off.
“I don’t owe you anything. Not my time. Not my kidney. Not my compassion.” The harsh words felt like pure cayenne pepper on her tongue.
“I know that.”
Alexis turned around to look through the café windows. Jessica wasn’t even bothering to hide the fact that she was staring. She was surprised Jessica hadn’t pulled out a bucket of popcorn. There was no way they’d get any privacy in there, but Alexis was too damn tired to even think of going somewhere else. And it was too damn cold to talk outside.
“We can talk in my office.”
His features melted in relief. “Thank you.”
The bell jingled again as Alexis opened the door. He reached over her head to hold it open for her, the kind of casually polite thing that older men did for women, and it made her skin crawl. Alexis darted inside, her footsteps clipped and frantic on the tiled floor. His were soft and resigned behind her. Avoiding Jessica’s gaze, she pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen and office area.
Her office was the size of a closet, and she regretted inviting him in as soon as he sat down across from her desk. She would have preferred the lack of privacy in the dining area over the claustrophobic sensation of being in a room alone with the man who’d just yesterday acted like she was about as welcome in his life as a stomach bug.
He rubbed his hands on his jeans. “Your café is really nice.”
“Thank you.” Her tone was more like Fuck you, and she wished not for the first time in her life that she had more of the fire of Liv.
“You’ve been open a year?”
“Almost two.”
“The cat thing . . .”
She raised his eyebrows at his pause.
“So you . . . you bring in rescue kittens for adoption?”
“I like finding homes for abandoned creatures.”
He smiled in a sad sort of way. Like he caught her meaning and understood he deserved it. Sadly, it didn’t give her the satisfaction she’d hoped for. Excessive empathy was her personal cross to bear.
“Look,” she said, taking mercy on him because this was painful. “Let’s just stop with this small-talk crap, okay? I assume you’re here because you realized at some point last night that you’d just let a perfectly good kidney go walking out the door. Let’s just focus on that.”
That seemed to shake him out of his stupor. “That’s not why I’m here.”
“If you expect me to believe you drove two hours at the crack of dawn just to get to know me, then you’re an idiot.”
“I drove two hours to apologize.”
“Yeah, don’t believe that either.”
“Either way, thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”
“Can’t have your death on my conscience. I have enough to feel guilty about in my life.”
“If you’re talking about that situation with Royce Preston, you have nothing to feel guilty about with that.”
Alexis snorted. “Thanks, Dad.”
Jessica suddenly knocked and poked her head in. “I, um, brought you guys some water.” Her eyes darted to Elliott with unmasked curiosity. “Can I get you anything else?”
Alexis was dying for her daily chai latte, but her stomach was already nearing a revolt from an overdose of suppressed rage and betrayal. Caffeine would simply send her darting for the bathroom. “The water is fine. Thank you.”
Jessica set both bottles on the desk, took another quick glance at Elliott, and then backed out.
Elliott twisted off the top of his bottle and took a long drink with an aggressiveness that suggested he wished for something stronger.
His fingers tightened on his water bottle. “I think it’s really great what you’re doing here, opening up your café for other survivors.”
Alexis crossed her arms over her chest. “The transplant team gave me a bunch of information yesterday about how this all works. I haven’t had a chance to absorb it all yet, but we should find out soon if I’m an initial match.”
He held up a hand. “Please. I really don’t care about that right now.”
“Well, I really don’t want to talk to you about anything else.” She stood. “So you just was
ted a trip. Do I need to walk you out or—”
“Just wait. I have things I need to tell you. Things I need you to understand about what happened back then between your mother and me.”
The words your mother sliced through her. “Is this the part where you feed me some bullshit story about how you cared about my mom and never forgot her and—”
“I did. And I didn’t.”
Alexis rolled her eyes. Yet she stood there. Silently begging him to say more. Wishing it could possibly be true. That her mom hadn’t just been that woman, because dear God, what would that make her?
Elliott must have sensed her weakening because he surged forward. “I need you to know she wasn’t just some summer fling back then.”
“Really? Because it sounded like you were just on a brief break from your wife.”
“It’s true. When I met her, I—” He squirmed as if this was embarrassing to talk about. And it was. Alexis wanted him to shut up more than she’d ever wanted anything.
“When I met your mom,” he started again, “I was in a weird place in my life. Lauren and I had been together for four years, but she broke up with me just before I moved to San Francisco for a summer internship. She was pressing to get married, and I wasn’t ready yet.”
Alexis almost felt sorry for Lauren. Almost.
“Your mom was . . .” He exhaled with a nostalgic smile that Alexis might have found endearing if it wasn’t obvious bullshit.
“I fell hard for her,” Elliott said. “I cared about her.”
Alexis snorted. “Oh, please.”
“It’s true. She was vibrant and funny and—”
“I get it. She was the manic pixie dream girl to your stuffed suit, and your feelings for her caught you entirely by surprise and made you question everything you thought you wanted out of life.”
“Yes,” he breathed without a hint of irony.
“So why did you leave her?” The question was out before she could stop it. She didn’t want him to think she cared, that his abandonment meant anything or mattered.
“I had to go back to Pasadena. The summer was over.”
“Why did she call you? Was it to tell you that she was pregnant?”
“No. I swear.”
“Then why?”
“She wanted to know if it was true that I . . . had a girlfriend. When I told her I did, she said she never wanted to talk to me again.” He leaned forward, a beseeching look in his eyes. “Alexis, please, you have to believe me. If I’d known about you, I would have—”
“What? Married her instead of Lauren? Or maybe you would have married Lauren and just sent me money and birthday cards?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what I would’ve done, but I would not have just abandoned you.”
His words mattered more than they should have, which meant they hurt more than they should have. And that meant she was careening toward a dangerous waterfall, the kind where she would open her mouth and let words spill out until she slipped over the edge. But he wasn’t worth the emotional risk. Not after yesterday. She’d tested the waters—first by agreeing to meet the Vanderpools and then when she threw herself at Noah—and look at how both of those turned out.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she finally said, forcing her voice into a calm, steady cadence, the one she used with Karen. “It was a long time ago. I survived without you then, and I will survive without you again. This is a transaction. Nothing more. And once it’s over, you can go back to your life and I’ll go back to mine. Deal?”
A pained expression tightened his features. “What do I have to do to prove how sorry I am, Alexis? Just tell me, and I’ll do it.”
Alexis shook her head, tried to say the safe thing, which was nothing at all. But when she opened her mouth, a question came out. “If you found out about me three years ago, why didn’t you reach out then?”
A tall shadow darkened the doorway. “Because he didn’t need your kidney then.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Noah couldn’t believe it. What the hell was that asshole doing here?
Elliott maintained an expressionless calm and extended his hand. “Elliott Vanderpool. You are?”
“The man who is going to throw your ass out of here.”
Alexis splayed her hand in the center of his chest. “Noah, don’t.”
He looked down at her and cataloged her appearance. Puffy red eyes. Dark circles. He wanted to believe the cause of her suffering was the man sitting in her office, but Noah wasn’t stupid. He was equally responsible, and it gutted him.
Elliott slowly stood. “Is this—are you her boyfriend?”
At that, Alexis made an indecipherable noise that caused a small eruption in his heart.
“It doesn’t matter who I am. Stay away from her.”
Elliott looked at Alexis. “It’s not true. I’m not here because I need a kidney. I’m here because I am your father—”
Noah’s hands curled into fists. “You dare to call yourself that after you threw her out of your house?”
Elliott raised his hands in a truce. “I came to apologize for that.”
There was a lot of that going around today. “You need to leave.”
“Noah,” Alexis sighed, hand pressing into his chest. “Can you wait outside?”
He locked eyes with her. Beneath the naked pain was a detachment that scared him even more than when she’d driven away from him yesterday. More than the agonizing hours while he waited for her to call him back or respond to a single text. Even with her fingers against his chest, she was removed from him. Yesterday, there’d been nothing but heat in her touch. Today, it was ice-cold.
“It’s okay,” Elliott said, maybe because he was catching on to the tension between them or maybe because he was a fucking coward. “I was just leaving. I-I’ve said what I need to say.”
Alexis faced the bastard. “Wait.” She looked back at Noah. “Can you please wait outside?” This time she pointed, and the dismissal felt like a warning as much as a punishment.
Noah forced his feet to move, and she shut the door behind him. He paused to listen but then felt guilty. She didn’t want him in the conversation. He could at least respect her wishes that much. Noah trudged to a tall chair next to one of the stainless-steel counters and sat down. Behind him, the kitchen door swung open, and frantic steps approached. He turned around just in time to see Jessica.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“Hell if I know,” he grumbled.
“Is that really her father?”
“Looks that way.”
“Is that why she was crying this morning? Because of him?”
His head snapped up. “She was crying?”
“She tried to tell me it was just allergies. I tried to get her to tell me what’s going on, but she wouldn’t.”
Her office door opened. Noah shot to his feet, and Jessica squeaked and ran.
Alexis came out first, looked at him briefly, and then turned back as Elliott emerged. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do,” she said.
“Know what?” Noah asked.
She looked at the floor as she answered. “If I’m an initial match.”
A blood vessel burst in his brain. “Are you kidding me? You’re going through with this?”
Alexis pressed her fingers to her temple. “Stop, Noah.”
A buzzing noise in his ears drowned out Elliott’s response. Noah watched through hazy eyes as the man said goodbye to Alexis, nodded in Noah’s direction, and then shuffled out of the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back,” Noah said.
Alexis pinched the bridge of her nose. “Noah—”
He followed Elliott out. “You’ve got some fucking nerve.”
Elliott turned around in the center of the café with a blank expression, as if he’d been wa
iting for exactly this and had been practicing how he’d respond. “Would you like to go somewhere private and talk?”
“No. What I have to say won’t take long.”
“I can see that you care about Alexis a great deal. And it probably doesn’t matter much, but I’m glad she has you to support her during this.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need your fucking approval.”
“No, you don’t. And you probably won’t believe this, but I care about what happens to her.”
Noah snorted.
“Just because I wasn’t part of her life until now doesn’t mean I don’t already think of her as my daughter. I’m sure your father would tell you that . . .”
“He would, if he were alive.”
Elliott swallowed. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Why should you be sorry? You made money off his death.”
Elliott shook his head, face paling. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”
“You work for a defense contractor. My father died in Iraq when his improperly equipped Humvee ran over an IED.”
“I’m sorry. Truly. And not just for your father. For everything Alexis is going through too.”
“Really? Then prove it. Stay the fuck away from her.”
The kitchen door swung open. “Noah,” Alexis said quietly behind him. Her tone turned his name into an admonishment.
“I’m done,” he said, stepping back.
Elliott cast one last look at Alexis and then turned away. The bell above the café door was a melancholy soundtrack to his retreat, followed by the ominous return of the thwap of the kitchen door. Alexis had gone back inside. Noah found her waiting for him in her office, standing by her desk.
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