Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3)

by Hope Hitchens

  “Why didn’t you tell me that Alexander Kilgariff was back in town?” I demanded.

  “Oh… sweetie, I-”

  “Did you not know? You’re married to his brother; I think you of all people would know.”

  “Neither of us wanted to tell you anything,” she said.

  “Why the hell not? Sactown is only so big; we would have run into each other again, eventually.”

  “How’s your car doing?” she asked.

  “My what? How did you know there was… have you been talking to him?”

  “He asked about you. He came to the house Saturday evening. He was pretty upset.”

  What the hell did he have to be mad about? Did he forget what had happened before he had left? Because if memory served, I was the one who had been left. I was the one who had been rejected. He had walked away from me, and then, because that wasn’t enough, flown away too, and never looked back.

  It was like salt on the wound, him talking to me like he had something to be upset about. Yes, I had damaged his bike, but that was not irreparable. What he did to me was cold, and I had tried so hard to forget it, but I hadn’t.

  Robbi and I had talked about him. She knew that we had a past. He had come up because she was married to Colin, but we had never really gotten into the bullshit of what had happened too much. Was I overreacting? She was acting like she understood why I was mad, but she still hadn’t answered my question.

  “You still haven’t told me why you didn’t tell me when he got back.”

  “What would you have done with information like that? Would you have gone to talk to him? Would you have tried to convince yourself that you and he could be friends after what happened between you?”

  You weren’t there, I wanted to tell her, but I held my tongue. She and I had met because of her kids. We didn’t go way back the way Alex and I did, but that didn’t mean I got to be a bitch to her. Colin—her husband, and Alex’s brother—most likely had filled her in, at least a little bit. I didn’t think they sat around talking about me like I was a real topic of interest, but I did think it had come up.

  “Do you know why he came back?”

  My voice was steady when I had asked her, and I hoped she didn’t hear the hope and desperation in it.

  “He came back because of their mom,” she said.

  She had mentioned once or twice that her mother-in-law was sick, but she had never gotten into it.

  “Is she okay?”

  “Olivia, I really have to go,” she said. I apologized and hung up the phone. I was going to all the wrong places for answers. Alex was back. That meant I could just ask him. I didn’t have his contacts, but he did have mine. Talking to him at the scene of the accident had been excruciating. I had been trying so hard not to cry. I was mad, but I wanted him near me. I had loved when he would hold me, and we would cuddle, and it was a mind fuck feeling so much resentment towards him at the same time.

  I had wanted to call my insurance company immediately to let them know that I had been in a road accident, but chances were they wouldn’t be able to help me till Monday. Monday was school. I wouldn’t be able to skip school to go and try to get them to give me money for nearly killing someone on the road.

  I could see this dragging itself out and didn’t want it to be a situation where Alex had a reason to stay in contact with me for a long time. I didn’t want that. I wanted him out of my life as violently as he had popped back into it. Didn’t he know how much I had loved him? I couldn’t think about what had happened between us without feeling a foot tall. It was awful. This needed to end. The Alexander Kilgariff chapter of my life had been closed for five years and needed to remain that way.

  If I called on Monday and they told me it would take a long time to sort out the claim, I would just… I don’t know. I would try and convince Alex to take a check and leave me alone. He could just take it to wherever motorcycles are fixed, get it fixed and send me the bill. That was all he wanted. His bike fixed. Even if that wasn’t all he wanted, it was going to be all he got.

  I had given him my card, and by Sunday night I hadn’t heard anything from him. That was good. Maybe at some point, he would stop caring completely, or forget, or something like that, and I would be off the hook.

  Monday felt like a wreck from the word go. I had gotten to school and as soon as I had sat down at my desk, managed to spill my coffee down the front of my top. There wasn’t any milk in it, and it had cooled significantly since I had bought it, but it was still going to leave a stain on that white blouse. I tried not to panic. I had a sweater that I could wear instead. I carried it with me every day because I taught preschool. Spills were an everyday occurrence.

  It was still early. None of the kids or their parents would be around for at least another half hour. I stood and carefully peeled the wet top off of my body. I was rifling through my bag for the sweater when I saw James walk into the room. I instinctively covered my chest. He stopped when he noticed my top was off, but didn’t do anything. I turned around so my back was to him. Was that better? It wasn’t better.

  “Oh my God, I should have knocked or something,” I heard him say.

  “No. No, it’s my fault. I spilled coffee, and I thought I could get away with changing right here before the kids started coming in,” I said, pulling the sweater over my head. My face felt like it was beet red. I turned around, fully dressed.

  “Good thing you had a spare,” he said, looking at the sweater. It was… was it tight? It wasn’t tight. It fit. It was navy and had a reasonable scoop neck front.

  “Yeah. Hey, James. I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

  “What is it?”

  “Are you still looking for a roommate?” I asked.

  He smiled.

  “I am, actually. Do you know someone who is clean, quiet and can reliably pay half the rent?”

  “Uhm, yeah. Youngish girl. Teaches preschool. You might have seen her in her bra this morning.”

  “Have you lived with a roommate before?” he asked.

  “I live with my sister and her fiancé. I need to get the hell out of there.”

  “Can you come by to see the space?”

  “I probably can only make Friday evening or Saturday.”

  “That’s fine. If you want, Friday evening we can go together after school.”

  “That sounds great,” I said.

  Would it be weird living with James? It wasn’t like I had a lot of choices. I wanted anything other than living with Iris and Rick. I was mad at Iris too. Why hadn’t she told me that Alex had come back?

  I’d talk to her when I got back to the house. Work that day… that was the thing about my job, it never really felt like work. Something different happened every day, and the kids were full of surprises. Esme was relatively calm, waking from her nap quietly and Frankie managed to stay still at naptime for four minutes before coming up to my desk and asking to have some of the nectarine that I had been eating.

  Once again, I watched the joyful reunion between parents and children when school ended. After school, I was heading right home, so I wasn’t in a hurry to leave school grounds, even as the crowd of kids started to thin out. They weren’t young enough that they were still doing things like eating dirt, but you had to watch them to make sure no one fell over or was being bullied.

  I saw a man walking over who I had never seen on school grounds before. Glancing at him, I stopped. I had to do a double-take.

  He looked so similar, but so different too. He was taller than I remembered him being. His hair was messy, a little shorter than he used to wear it, but still the same dark brown. His face had a five o’clock shadow the same color as his hair.

  The shirt he wore had long sleeves, but he had them pushed up to his elbows; one of his arms was tattooed with colorful ink. The five years of time had suctioned all the puppy fat out of his face and made his face rugged, and hard. Still beautiful, though. His skin was darker too, more tanned, but I was sure th
at if he got close enough, I’d be able to see his freckles. I always thought they were cute, but he had hated when I would point them out.

  He looked out of place at the school because he walked like a guy who had no kids. Some of the dads… they didn’t look like him, but they were hip too—some of them. I had spotted some tattoos, and there were men who had obviously lived hard before they had settled down and had kids.

  He was paying no attention to the kids whatsoever; the first clue. He had his hands in his pockets, and none of the kids were running up to him, happy to see their dad.

  He was walking up to me, which was something I wished he wasn’t doing. I wanted to move, go somewhere, but I wasn’t about to break into a run like a crazy woman at work. The sooner he said what he had to say, the sooner he would leave. He wouldn’t try anything; we were surrounded by kids and their parents. He would have to behave.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

  “My nephew is in your class.”

  “He is. The only people cleared to pick him up and drop him off are his parents. You’re a single, childless man hanging around a preschool… I don’t have to tell you the impression that gives, do I?”

  “We have unfinished business, Liv.”

  “It’s hardly that.”

  “Did you or did you not nearly kill me in East Sac the other day?”

  “So you came to harass me at work? I gave you my phone number.”

  “I came because I don’t have weeks to wait for your insurance to fix my bike.”

  “Is it even broken? You didn’t walk here.”

  “I got a ride here. I can’t use the bike until I get it fixed. Until you help me fix it.”

  “Just forward me the invoice your repair guy gives you, and you’ll have your money.”

  “Great,” he said. He stood there. He looked around a bit but didn’t do the thing I wanted him to do, which was leave.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Oh. You’re giving me a ride,” he said easily.

  “Ride to where?”

  “You fucked my bike up. Now, I ride with you.”

  “I’m not driving you anywhere.”

  “You’re right. I’ve seen your driving. You probably shouldn’t. I’ll drive.”

  7

  Alexander

  She looked at me like I was joking with her.

  I was serious.

  Deadass.

  “You’re not driving my car,” she said to me.

  “Then neither of us is getting anywhere today, babe.”

  “I don’t want you driving my car.”

  “I don’t want you driving your car either,” I told her. “Give me the keys.”

  She crossed her arms and looked at me. She had on a blue sweater that was a lot lower cut than I thought preschool teachers would be allowed to wear. Crossing her arms like that pushed her tits together. Either I just didn’t remember what size they were, or they had gotten bigger.

  “No. I can’t drive you around. I have places I have to go.”

  “So do I, babe. And you are the reason that has become a hell of a lot harder for me.”

  She sighed and opened her mouth to say something, but she was interrupted by someone, a guy, calling her name. He was walking towards her. He looked like… like whatever. He looked like a fucking guy. He looked like the guy who played lacrosse in college. There wasn’t a kid with him, so he wasn’t anyone’s dad. He looked a little young, not too young to be a dad, that could happen as soon as your balls dropped, but like, he didn’t look like being someone’s dad would be something he would be good at. He walked up to her and started talking like I wasn’t there.

  “Hey, Olivia I just wanted to ask, on Friday, do you want to come directly to the house after school with me or do you want to follow me there in your car?”

  “I’d have to leave my car somewhere if we went together. I could just follow you there,” she said.

  I frowned. What was she going to do with the lacrosse player, and at which house? At his house? Why? For what?

  “Awesome, I’ll see you then… and tomorrow. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She said bye to him and paused until he was out of earshot.

  “You weren’t going to introduce me, Livvy? Who was that?”

  She shot me this look like she was exhausted. Tired to death of my shit. Oh, little did she know, I was just getting started.

  “Colleague,” she said. Whose colleague? Hers?

  “He teaches preschool too?”

  “He does. Why?”

  Alright. Maybe I judged him too quick. No, not too quick, just wrong. I knew guys like him. He was like the guys who were theater majors in college. Not because they loved to act; because that was where the girls were. It was like making yourself the only rooster in the henhouse. Like an absolute guarantee, front to back that you were going to smash most if not every one of those girls before graduation.

  Maybe you attracted more flies with honey than vinegar… but you didn’t have to wear tights when you used vinegar.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “No, why?” she pressed.

  “I’m sure it’s because he loves kids, and not because girls like you teach preschool,” I said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You sure? You don’t have anyone fooled in that sweater, babe.”

  She looked like she was about to say something but she stopped and took a deep breath.

  “If I take you to your house, will you leave me alone?”

  “Did you forget, babe? I’m driving.”

  We weren’t about to rock-paper-scissors it out right there in a preschool parking lot. Nope. This was non-negotiable.

  “You are not getting my keys, Lex,” she said. I smirked. There it was. I was waiting for when she would call me that again. She was the only person who ever had.

  “You used to love it when I picked you up in my car.”

  “Ancient history, Lex,” she said. She opened the car on the driver’s side and threw her purse across onto the passenger side. I opened the door and leaned into the car, unzipping her purse. There was so much shit in there. Glasses, a tiny umbrella, her phone, tampons. I grabbed her wallet hoping she was the kind of person who kept her license in there. She was. I had it out of its slot by the time she had gotten around the car to try and stop me.

  “Alex, what the hell are you doing?” she demanded. I was on the opposite side of the car, talking to her from across the trunk.

  “You don’t drive without this,” I said, holding the card up. “Keys. You can’t get behind the wheel.”

  “I can’t believe you went in my purse,” she said, coming after me. I closed the door on the passenger side as I went back around past it. She chased me around the whole car till I was back on the driver’s side. I got into the car and grabbed her purse again, digging around in there till I found her keys.

  I stuck them in the ignition and started the car. She scrambled to get the passenger side open, leaning in to look at me.

  “You’re fucking kidding me, I swear,” she said. The way she was leaning, I got a good look at her cleavage. Were tits something that never stopped growing your whole life? There was definitely more there than the last time I had checked.

  “Hop in, babe,” I said, jerking the car forward an inch. The look on her face was priceless. Her mouth was open in shock, and her brow creased, her blue eyes round. Her angry face; it was adorable. I wanted to laugh, but that would have made her even madder. She picked her purse up, zipping it shut before tossing it in the back seat and sitting herself.

  “I’m not going to fight with you about this,” she said haughtily.

  “Good. It wasn’t a discussion, to begin with,” I said.

  “Don’t move my-” she cut herself off like she remembered she wasn’t going to fight with me about it anymore. I moved her seat down and back. She was short; her seat
was way too close to the steering wheel for me to be able to drive. I moved her mirrors next and caught just the seething anger in her face as she watched me. She was taking these long slow breaths like she was getting ready to give birth or something. I lowered the window all the way down.

  “Ready?” I asked her.

  “Buckle your safety belt,” she said stiffly before she looked the other way.

  She was quiet in her seat. Loudly quiet. The kind of quiet that was so quiet it felt loud like you couldn’t help but be aware of it. She was so mad.

  I reached my hand out to turn the radio on.

  “Don’t,” she said. Heh. So she was watching me. Sitting there trying to act slick. I wanted to turn it on then just because she didn’t want me to.

  “What’s the matter? Embarrassed by what’ll start playing if I turn this on?”

  “Don’t make yourself at home, Alex. This arrangement is temporary.”

  I smirked but didn’t push her. I didn’t need to. I had won. This round, at least, was mine. It wasn’t the sort of wholehearted, eager submission I wanted from her, but it was something. It was something; that was better than nothing, and likely all she was really going to give me. She was silent for the car ride. She didn’t say anything again until we pulled up to the house.

  “You moved back in with your mom?” she asked.

  “Nope. Mom doesn’t live here anymore,” I said. “We’re going to go see her.”

  “See her where?”

  I climbed out of the car and closed the driver’s side. She was still in there, just sitting with her arms crossed. I walked around to the passenger side and pulled it open.

  “You aren’t coming out?”

  “Why do I need to? You need help in there or something?”

  “Come on,” I said.

  “I’m fine right here,” she said.

  “I’m not leaving you in there, at least come inside and have a drink or something.”

  She looked at me like here, with me, was the last place on earth she wanted to be. She looked at me like me asking her to come out of the car was such a lofty, steep-ass request. I still had her keys, so it wasn’t like she could make a getaway or anything. She sighed and came out of the car. We walked up to the house, and I unlocked it, letting her in first, like a gentleman.