Alex (Heartbreakers & Troublemakers Book 3)

by Hope Hitchens

  What was I doing? Trying to pack? So I could do what? Move out?

  I stopped because I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do. I hadn’t heard the whole story, but I had heard enough to know what had happened. The main problem. My sister was a bitch, and she had something to do with why Alex and I had broken up. I heard her open my door, coming inside.

  “Ollie, Ollie, you have to listen to me. Wait,” Iris was panting, she had a hand over her stomach. She probably wasn’t supposed to be moving around that fast, but I wasn’t the one who was supposed to be looking out for her fetus.

  “Listen to what Iris? I’ve heard enough.”

  “Olivia. I’m so sorry. What I did was wrong. I don’t expect you to forgive me-”

  “Then why are you still here, huh? Leave me alone. Go back downstairs to your party.”

  “Ollie, are you packing?” She looked at the clothes I had gotten out of the closet. I couldn’t pack to move out, but I could pack to get the fuck out of there. I started looking for a bag I could stuff with things for a night away.

  “Why are you packing? Stop.”

  “Why do people usually pack their clothes, Iris?” I snapped. I was mad. I was mad, and I did not feel like discussing anything in a calm, sisterly manner.

  “Where are you going to go?”

  “Anywhere but here.” I threw more clothes on my bed. I wasn’t going to be able to get packed up ready to move out right then. I hadn’t even called James to tell him that that was what I wanted to do. Most of my things were in moving boxes and suitcases already, but I wasn’t going to try and stuff it all in my car and drive downtown. Everything was a mess; I couldn’t find an overnight bag anywhere.

  My purse was still downstairs. I pushed past her and went back down. I realized I still had tears on my face and tried to wipe them away while keeping my makeup in place—whatever was left of it, anyway. There were people downstairs. I kept my face down as I looked for my purse. I grabbed it and left the house.

  I made a beeline for my car. My parent’s house was less than half an hour away. I wanted to go there. They had some explaining to do too. How much had gone on concerning my life that I just didn’t know about? My tears were making it hard to see.

  “Livvy, Livvy, wait. Where are you going?”

  I wheeled around. Alex was standing there. I didn’t remember him coming into the house after my sister and me, and I didn’t remember seeing him on my way out.

  “Alex, why are you still here?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t leave after what just happened. Are you okay?”

  “How much… how long were you keeping this from me?”

  “Livvy, calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down,” I said. This was exactly the sort of drama that the next-door neighbors were watching from their windows; that they were going to be whispering about the next day to each other. It was also what Iris’s little friends would be discussing. How her sister had a mental breakdown on the lawn outside.

  “Come to my house,” he said.

  “What? No.”

  “Olivia, stop fighting me on this. Where the hell are you going to go?”

  He had his hands around my upper arms so I would face him. Go home with him? That was the last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t want to go to his house and stay there with him. I didn’t want to walk right into my feelings and sit in them with him. Going with him would probably answer some questions, but now that Pandora’s Box was open, I just wanted someone to slam the lid down shut again.

  I didn’t… I couldn’t have anticipated feeling this upset, or this overwhelmed by the truth. I didn’t think there was a truth in the first place. I thought it was just a rejection. A cold rejection that fucked me up, but I had gotten over.

  “I have school tomorrow,” I said, reminding myself that I had to have a reasonably early night—something I would not be able to have under the same roof as Iris and Rick. Rick was just collateral damage at that point. My beef wasn’t with him. It was with my whore of a sister.

  “Then go back in the morning. Stay with me tonight.”

  Go back? Stay with him that night? Were those my options? What was number three? Was there a way I could just avoid everyone that night and wake up tomorrow like nothing happened? Could I just delete everything that had happened since I had hit Alex with my car? If I saw Iris right then, there was no telling what I would do. We had never fought physically beside when we were kids, and I was above putting hands on a pregnant woman, but I wasn’t above telling her about herself.

  I just really wanted some time to be alone first. And then there was this guy. Alex. All it came down to was really who did I want to see less.

  I didn’t even bother trying to argue with Alex about who got to drive the car. I climbed into the passenger seat and waited for him.

  “Can you give me the keys?” he said. I handed them to him.

  I sat in the passenger seat looking away from him. I just didn’t want him to see me crying. I was so mad. I must have looked insane. I pulled the shade down and looked at my face. Water-soluble makeup was better for your skin, they told me. It didn’t clog your pores like the petroleum-based stuff. I sniffed. It also didn’t stay put when you lost your shit and cried. I searched my purse for a makeup removal wipe. I started with under my eyes. This was the sort of thing I did my best to never do in front of guys. It was like talking tampons with them. It was just sort of weird.

  Alex had been with me before I had made that reform, so this wasn’t new to him. He had watched me put makeup on and take it off. He knew what my legs looked like when I hadn’t shaved them. I don’t know how he ever thought I was pretty when he saw all the upkeep looking the way I did took. Thank God I hadn’t worn lashes that day. It felt like a really personal thing to do, like taking your clothes off. He had seen that too, but it had been a long time.

  “This is so gross, I’m sorry,” I said, wiping the sheet over my cheek. “I cried most of it off, anyway. It just looks crazy.”

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. I sighed and took the rest of it off, happy that he wasn’t judging me. It was when he was being like this that I thought maybe being friends again would be nice. The way he responded was making lewd comments and starting fights. He was flirtatious and coarse, and he clearly had other ideas. Other ideas that were not on the table to be discussed.

  Even though that was the case, he was reaching out, and I wasn’t going to turn away that gesture. It was friendly, and I needed that right then. We got to his house, and he handed my keys back to me. He wasn’t talking or anything, which was considerate, I suppose. He had some good sense left over from when we were teenagers.

  “Come on,” he said, taking my hand and leading me into the kitchen. I stood against the counter as he searched the pantry for something. The kitchen was the same as I remembered it from the past, but there was always fresh fruit in the middle of the dining table when I had used to visit, and a lot of times fresh flowers in a vase somewhere.

  “Sit,” he said. His hands closed around my waist, and he lifted me onto the countertop. His mom used to hate that. On the counter next to me he peeled the lid off of a can of peaches and handed it to me with a fork. “Here, eat something.”

  “You hate canned peaches,” I said, spearing a slice of the fruit on my fork and eating it out of the can. He remained standing in front of me.

  “Yeah, but you don’t.” I ate another piece of the fruit. There was likely zero nutritional value left in it after going through the canning process. That was probably why I liked them. It was basically candy at that point. Something sweet and non-nutritive. Alex used to say they looked like fingers in the can, and he hated the texture. He also couldn’t stand Nutella, and preferred mustard to ketchup, so he obviously just had terrible taste all round.

  “Why do you have them in the house?”

  “Honestly, they’re probably left over from when we were both in high school.”

>   I laughed. He had eaten pretty well for a teenager when we were in high school because of his training. There was a lot of chicken and a lot of brown rice involved. Not even fun chicken like hot wings, just plain chicken. When his mom would cook it, it was fine, but when he did, he would just microwave it till it wasn’t pink in the middle anymore. Then there were the eggs. He would sometimes blend raw egg whites into his protein shakes. I knew my palate wasn’t exactly the most refined, but the shit was vile. It was a miracle he hadn’t poisoned himself.

  He wasn’t eating anything. He was just watching me eat the peaches. I couldn’t imagine what he had in the house if five-year-old peaches were what he had offered his guest.

  “What did your sister tell you when you guys went in the house?” he asked.

  “Not a lot. She just tried to cover her ass and apologized a lot. Asked me not to leave.”

  “Are you mad at her?”

  “I’m mad at everyone,” I said. “I’m mad at you. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “How much did you know?” he asked.

  “Only what my parents said and what you ended up telling me. They didn’t give me any reason or anything like that. They just tried to say that it was no use and that you were leaving, and you were a bad kid.”

  “I only ended up leaving because we weren’t together anymore. I didn’t want to go to Maine. I wanted to stay somewhere here, where you were going, or at least somewhere closer.”

  I thought about all the plans that we had made when we were younger. He had offers from a bunch of schools to play football, one of them being UC Davis, where I had applied and ended up going. He had said that he would go to Davis if I was, but that didn’t end up happening. I got my parents telling me I had to break up with my boyfriend, and then I got him telling me that he had chosen to go to Maine for school and we would have to break up.

  He was QB, and I was the girl who he had inexplicably chosen over the legions of beautiful athletic cheerleaders.

  “Why aren’t you playing football anymore?” I asked.

  “Who told you I wasn’t?”

  “You did when you came back here. What happened?”

  “We can talk about that some other time, babe. You should go to sleep.”

  Why did guys usually stop playing football? Everyone knew the answer to that.

  “Did you get hurt?”

  “Come on,” he said, taking the peaches and putting them back down on the counter. He pulled me off. “You can use my mom’s room,” he said.

  “Why won’t you tell me?” I called after him. He walked up the stairs silently, making me follow him. He pulled a towel out of the airing closet and gave it to me, pulling me along to his mother’s room. I knew the way. He didn’t have to show me.

  “What happened to you-?”

  “Turn around,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  I turned slowly. I froze, feeling his finger on my skin at the top of my spine. He ran it down the column to the curve of my lower back.

  “Two herniated disks and two shattered vertebrae,” he said. I turned around.

  “You… you broke your back?”

  “Didn’t break it. Just fucked it up enough to make it dangerous for me to ever play again. If you need anything, you know where to find me,” he said. He kissed my forehead before turning to go.

  I touched his arm, making him stop. He turned around. I leaned up and kissed him on the lips softly, innocently. It didn’t mean anything. Every kiss meant something, but it wasn’t loaded. It was a kiss I would give anyone else. I wanted to say thank you because I was grateful, and that I wasn’t mad, and that I was sorry about his back. His face was confused. He held my face between his hands and kissed me again, not so innocently.

  I felt his tongue press against my closed lips and parted them, letting him in. I had wanted to talk. I had wanted answers, but I was probably not getting them today, and that…

  … that was fine.

  11

  Olivia

  He was awake before I was the next morning.

  I had to go to school that day, and on top of that had to make it back home so I could get changed, but he was downstairs making coffee when I came down just after six in the morning. I wasn’t trying to sneak away without thanking him or saying bye; I just wanted to leave without bothering him. Why was he up at the crack of dawn, anyway? He wasn’t a baker or delivery man or whatever… what was his job?

  When I saw him, he didn’t have a shirt or pants on. He was standing there in his underwear. One of his arms, the left one was covered in tattoos. They continued down one side of his back, so one side of his spine had absolutely nothing on it. I wondered whether that was on purpose or whether he was planning on doing the rest of his back.

  “Hey, coffee?” he asked me. He walked towards me and held the back of my neck, kissing me.

  Oh, so we weren’t going to acknowledge the five years that had passed since we were together. I had kissed him the night before, but that was different. Maybe it wasn’t that different, but it was, as far as he and I and this were concerned. I still let him do it, though. Why not? I mean, if he really wanted to…

  Was this the way to start a new friendship? No, but maybe the friendship plans were better shelved for the time being. He, especially as undressed as he was right then, did not make me feel camaraderie. I didn’t want him to stop. I wouldn’t stop him if he did it again. I couldn’t have him as a friend and want to have sex with him. That sounded too much like a boyfriend which was not a slot that was open for him to take.

  The last five years and all the words we had exchanged since seeing each other again might as well have not happened. How could he just kiss me like that after everything that had happened after yesterday evening too? Maybe that was the catalyst he had needed. Since the cat was out of the bag, he didn’t have to restrain himself anymore. I was a little sore that he apparently didn’t care to ask me whether I wanted him.

  Nope, Olivia. You pretty much let him know that last night when you let him kiss you like that.

  Like this.

  “Hi. I usually pick coffee up on the way to school. Thanks for letting me stay here.”

  “You don’t want to eat anything?”

  “I have to go,” I said trying very hard to look at his face instead of the point on his body my eyes hit when my head wasn’t tilted back, which was his chest. His chest which had hair on it. That wasn’t there five years ago. It was dark, the same color as the rest of the hair on his body, and wasn’t out of control or all over the place. It thinned as it went down his chest to a trail that disappeared into his underwear.

  He was a man now, in a way that made me feel a lot more feminine and small. Also, aroused. Yeah. That too.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll be fine… I still have a lot of questions,” I said.

  “Well, we are going to see Mom again. We can talk then.”

  I nodded and smiled up at him.

  “Yeah. See you then,” I said quickly, walking out of the kitchen. This was… this was too familiar. How often had we been in that position when his mother and Colin had been in the house, trying to act natural? Like we hadn’t been in his room or his car together going at it. I was a mess. I was hot, but I was embarrassed, and I was upset, but I was also about to be late.

  I grabbed my purse and made sure my keys were in there. He was opening up the front door. Why did I feel so embarrassed leaving a guy’s house in the same clothes I had been in the day before? We hadn’t done anything. I had nothing to be embarrassed about. It was just one… two kisses. Three?

  I had to get out of there.

  “Okay. Bye,” I said, leaving. He pulled me back and held my waist, pressing our bodies together. He kissed me again. He had always been a good kisser. He had a nice mouth; his lips were nice. He knew how to use them… not just when it came to kissing.

  My face felt hot and must have
been cherry red walking back to my car. I didn’t even want to look at myself in the mirror because I was so embarrassed. I moved my seat back up and forwards so I could drive. This was so dumb. Why was I blushing so hard thinking about him? He’d kissed me loads of times. Loads. A lot of the time a lot steamier than that.

  We’d figure it out the next time we talked. No. We’d just not kiss again the next time we talked. We’d talk the next time we talked. I couldn’t just let him do that to me anymore. All that stuff about maybe letting him have sex with me? We had to strike that from the record.

  This was just waiting to blow up in my face and become too intense. Before anything could happen, we had to talk about what had already happened. All the shit that everyone apparently knew about but me. After that… after that I would make up a lie about a fake boyfriend, and Alex would leave me alone out of respect. Speaking of fake boyfriends, Patrick from Iris’s failed attempt to set me up and I had still been texting.

  Getting to the house, I felt that if I had done any good deed in my life, I would be blessed when I opened that door. I would find everyone who lived there asleep, and I would be able to have a shower, get changed and book it. If not, then Iris would at least have the decency to leave me alone and not try to talk to me.

  I would have to eventually. She still had things to tell me, but right then, I just wanted to be mad. I couldn’t stand to see her just then. The ground floor was quiet when I walked in. I hurried upstairs, but the bathroom was occupied. I waited and saw Hayden walking out of it in his pajamas.

  “Hi, Aunt Olivia,” he said sleepily.

  “Hey, Hayden,” I said sliding into the bathroom.