But to take matters into his own hands like that. To run to people even more dangerous and unpredictable than our father was. To turn to them for help… I can’t even begin to understand why he did it. I guess that’s one of the differences between us. When we were a lot younger, we talked about packing up, running away and trying to find our mother, but neither of us could disappear on Elle. She’s an only child, and we were like her brothers.
Hell, Cruz might as well blame Elle for everything because her being there in the same city kept us from running away. He probably does, the fucker.
“You’re thinking about your brother, aren’t you?”
Alex is floating on her back in front of me, but she swims over to me right before she asks, her gaze questioning. The dividers are reeled in for the night, and we have wide-open water all to ourselves.
“Yeah,” I admit. “How can you tell?”
She shakes her head. “Because you’re here with me and you look positively pissed off.”
I laugh, but there’s hardly any humor in it. “Sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t be thinking about him right now.”
“Can’t help what you think about. Or at least I don’t know anyone who can.”
I smile a little. “You always call it like you see it, don’t you?”
She swims up to me and rests her hands on my shoulders as I catch her by her hips.
“Maybe a little too much. My mouth gets me in a lot of trouble a lot back home,” she admits.
I stare at her lips, that beautiful mouth. “I don’t doubt that.”
“You know what I mean. Not like that.” She rolls her eyes but laughs softly, and I bring her closer. Her arms wind around my back as she wraps her long legs around my waist. My God, she’s incredible. I press my forehead to hers and close my eyes.
“Dammit. What are you doing to me?”
Her fingernails scratch through my hair and send a shiver down my back. “Giving you something better to think about.”
She says it in this throaty voice that’s sexier than hell, and my hand cups her face. I feel her melt against me as I stroke her cheek with my thumb.
“Yes, you do that. Definitely.”
Her lush lips curve into a smile. “Good.”
I lean forward and kiss her. Try to let go of everything but her, and she makes it so easy. Her arms wind around my neck, and I rub my hands over her thighs. Hell, I want her so much I might lose it. But I also want to keep holding her in my arms like this. She’s so warm and soft, and I love how close she feels to me right now. I just want to keep kissing her under the half moon.
The water is cool, but there’s enough heat between us to compensate. It’s burning slower than before, our kiss almost lazy but with a rhythm that taunts me with what I know could be, if I only ask for it.
But I don’t want to ask for it. There are dozens of women in this city that I could use to get myself off whenever I want to. I don’t want any of them, though.
Right now, I only want this.
I take the kiss deeper, my hands sliding over her body, and Alex makes a sound of pure desire. She pushes herself back from me, just enough so she can get her hand under the waistband of my boxer briefs. My eyes roll back in my head as her fingers close around me.
“Let me use you,” she whispers.
I must be fucking insane. I am insane. I take Alex’s hand and move her away from me, even though every instinct in my body wants to push her against the wall, wants to take her here in the pool and say to hell with the consequences. But I tighten my grip around her waist. Get a grip on my resolve at the same time.
Her eyes cloud with confusion, and I push her hair back from her ear and lean in, brush my lips against her earlobe as I clarify my actions.
“I want you. You don’t even know how much I want you. But not like this, not tonight.”
Not tonight. It’s basically the same thing I said to her upstairs. I know it holds a promise, and I’m willing to make it. I don’t wait for her answer before I kiss that beautifully long line of her neck. She closes her eyes and shivers, and I take her right hand in mine like we’re dancing, wind my other arm around her back and spin her around. Her eyes fly open as a laugh escapes her, and I grin at her. I dip her nice and low before bringing her back up to me again.
She smiles, and it’s just for me. “Connor Vincent, you’re crazy.”
“Your fault,” I retort.
She leans away, lifts an eyebrow. “How is this my fault?”
“Because Alexis Lin, you’re so amazing that you make me fucking crazy.”
She laughs again and shakes her head. “So what’s your plan for tomorrow? You have to work?”
“Actually, no.” I kiss her forehead, closing my eyes and breathing her in before I answer. “I sort of put myself on administrative leave for a couple of days until I’m sure Cruz won’t pop up on me when I’m with any of my clients.”
I hadn’t meant to bring him up, and I immediately regret spoiling the moment. Her forehead creases in a frown, and I wish I could kiss it away.
Less than a day of idle time and I’m feeling out of my element. If it wasn’t for Alex, I’d be alone right now. My life is normally all about work, and I can see that now that I actually have time off. Aside from Elle and maybe Neil, I don’t actually know anyone here, not really. And it might be because I’m feeling the high from being with Alex right now, but I wish I had room in my life for more. Room for her.
No. She’s here on vacation, and her answer about what she’s doing with me makes sense. She’s the perfect distraction for me, and I know I can’t be anything more than that to her. Still, everything we’ve done together (except for the night we first met) beats anything else I’ve ever had since moving to Vegas.
“I’m sorry you guys hate each other. Did you ever get along?”
I shrug. “Yeah, sure. We were close growing up. But then we drifted apart as we got older and focused on different things. Had a falling out right before I left for the military.”
“What happened? He didn’t like you leaving?”
“No. That wasn’t it.” I stiffen without meaning to, but Alex remains relaxed in my arms. She waits while I deliberate.
“There was a girl…” I briefly shut my eyes. “Her name was Laura, and she was the only girl I ever loved.” The words feel uneasy on my tongue as I say it, especially while I’m holding Alex. “We were together for two years.” I stop, not sure I can say the rest. Besides Elle, I’ve never told anyone any of this.
“When was this?” she asks softly.
“We started dating when I was sixteen.” Sixteen. Nine years ago. I can’t even totally swallow it as I hear myself say it. It had felt real back then, but really, what the hell does a sixteen year old know about love? It probably sounds stupid to Alex, but if it does, she doesn’t say anything.
“I’d already started training for the SEALs.” I look at her, wondering how much detail to give. She’s listening, so I go on. “You don’t have to be enlisted in the Navy to become one, but if you’re a civilian, you have to work toward what’s called a challenge contract. You have to prove yourself physically, psychologically, mentally. Elle’s dad knew a guy who’s a former SEAL. He was willing to train me, and I worked my ass off to get to where I needed to be.”
I take a breath and release it. “Laura acted like she was supportive of it. But we were young, and in retrospect I think maybe she wasn’t that cool with it. And I took her support for granted. Even before we graduated high school, I threw myself into training big time. Hardly saw her. I was living with Cruz in an apartment he was paying for with gang money, but I didn’t know it at the time.” I grit my teeth, shaking my head at my own stupidity. “Believed him when he came home beat up so bad he couldn’t see straight and told me it was a school fight. Didn’t see what was going on with him because I was so stuck on myself.”
“You were trying to do something with your life. You shouldn’t be ashamed of that,” Alex says qui
etly.
I don’t respond. I can’t defend myself for what I’m about to say, and now that I’ve said as much as I have, I have to keep going. “The three of us would go to parties sometimes, and whenever I bailed, Cruz and Laura would go without me.”
“Oh…” Alex breathes it out like she gets it, and I know what she’s thinking. But she doesn’t, and now I feel like I really need to get to the punchline.
“I came home one night, was something ridiculous like three hours late for a date with Laura.” I swallow hard, suddenly feeling like there’s a fucking fire in my chest burning me from the inside out. “Found her passed out cold in his bedroom. Cruz dropped some shit in her drink, and he took full advantage of her.”
A little strangled sound comes from Alex’s throat, and I plead at her with my eyes and pray she’ll understand.
“Roofied?” she whispers.
“Yeah. She got really messed up from it, never spoke to either of us again. Not that I can blame her.” I run my hand over Alex’s shoulder, down her arm to take her hand. “That’s why I suspected what was going on with you at the club that night.”
She grips my hand, her eyes brimming with empathy. “Oh, God. Connor. I don’t even know what to say –”
I can’t make myself stop talking. It’s like some valve opened in me that was shut tight for seven years and needs to let everything out.
“You don’t have to say anything.” I raise our hands out of the water, stare at our interlaced fingers as the realization strikes. “Believe it or not, I think helping you out at the bar, even being with you now, is letting me make up for it. Like I can finally move past all of that.”
She releases her breath in a rush as she takes her hand out of mine, the other one slowly sliding off from my shoulder. I stare at her in surprise as she untangles herself from me, as her expression shuts down.
She floats away from me in the water, and I reach for her. “Alex…”
She kicks over to the wall and climbs out. Turns to face me with a smile that belongs to someone else. “Good night, Connor. I’m tired and going up to my room now. Thanks for the swim.”
I frown at the switch in her. It’s like she totally shut me out. “Can I see you tomorrow?”
“If you want to,” she throws over her shoulder without looking back. “You know how to find me.”
I don’t know exactly why what I said made her upset, what made invisible walls come up. I thought I’d shown her a good time tonight.
Fuck. I was just thinking about this. She’s only here through the month, and we were just having fun. She seemed cool with me talking to her about things, even that stuff about Laura. But it looks like I might have misjudged that. I don’t know.
All I know right now is I hate watching her walk away from me.
20
Alex
Winning means knowing when to walk away. Those had been Dad’s words as applied to gambling at the tables. But it doesn’t just apply to the tables. What I’ve been doing with Connor is gambling too, and it may come with bigger stakes than playing with that stack of cash that’s in my vault.
I avoid the pool for the rest of the week. Even though I hate every second of the gambling, I suck it up and spend more time with my dad on the floor. I convince my mom to hit the spa and go shopping with me instead of going to the pool. A few times, I catch her looking at me like she wants to ask what happened with Connor and me, but she doesn’t. Elle comes over once to catch a movie with me and another time to do lunch, but she also needs to work and put in some hours for her social work internship this week.
Besides that, I spend time moping in my room and thinking about why I’m moping. It had shaken me to hear Connor tell me that he was basically using me to get over his ex-girlfriend. And after he said he didn’t want to use me.
Yeah, it doesn’t feel good, knowing that stuff about Laura. That was too heavy for me. I don’t want to be held responsible for that, for wiping Connor’s conscience clean.
I wake up for the day, not even knowing what day it is, and press my face into my pillow to stifle my groan. This is why I don’t do this. This is why I don’t let people get too close to me. When I do, something like this happens.
I’m already way too close to Connor. What happened between us – in my room, at the pool – stirred up too many emotions in me. Way more than any other time I’ve messed around with a guy. And there’s no way I can let myself get attached to him like that. June will be over before I know it. I’ll go back to my normal life where I’m focused on school, work, and the few friends I have back home. And he’ll move on to someone else. For the short term, I told Connor I’d help think of a way to deal with Cruz (and I’m doing a crappy job of that by avoiding him), but even if I do, then what? And what happens when he goes back to work?
I think I know the answer to that. Bottom line is that I already lost too much of myself to Connor without meaning to. I don’t like feeling this way. It makes me too vulnerable, sets me up to get hurt, and I need to distance myself before I lose anything more.
But the problem is, I already like him. I like Connor.
Mom hasn’t been bugging me to get up at any particularly time for the past few days, but she knocks on my door pretty early, and I moan as I drag my ass out of bed. I only got about five hours of actual sleep earlier this morning after lying awake and… Okay, so I might be a huge hypocrite because I made that statement before about it being pointless trying not to think about things, but I watched random crap on TV for hours while doing just that – trying to not think about things. Finally gave in and thought about all of this until I passed out from sheer exhaustion at six in the morning.
The knock comes again, and I frown as I shuffle across the room. Must purge all of these thoughts before I see Mom.
I give her a big smile when I open my door, grimacing inwardly when I see she’s dressed for the pool.
“Hi, Mom. You feel up for some shopping? Spa? Early lunch?”
“Pool?” she says hopefully. “I really need to get back into my exercise routine. I’ve been so dreadfully lazy.” She lingers in the doorway to my room as I half-heartedly comb through my top drawers for a clean swimsuit. “Unless Connor’s coming and you’d rather not have your mum around?”
“Oh, Mom.” I pluck out a navy blue halter-top bikini, kind of wishing I had something that would cover me a little better. “First of all, you’re not lazy. You’re on vacation and have the right to relax a bit. And second, if Connor’s coming, so what?” We’re about an hour later than we usually go down to the pool, anyway.
I don’t mean to sound snappish about it, but that’s how it comes out. Mom gives me a shrewd look and glides into my room, perching on the one of my chairs. I look away, try to forget about how Connor looked sitting in that same chair the other night.
“All right. I haven’t said anything for several days now because I wanted to see if you’d snap out of it, but you haven’t. What happened between you two? And don’t tell me ‘nothing,’ because I can tell when my baby girl’s upset.”
I’m running a pick through my hair, but I put it down with a sigh. “Honestly, nothing really. I’m not upset, Mom. I just don’t want this summer to be all about him. I want to keep my options open, you know?”
“Alexis.” Her voice is uncharacteristically sharp. “You don’t let yourself have options. You make it impossible for anyone to get close to you.”
I whirl around, my jaw almost to the floor. She looks back at me, her expression totally solemn. Mom never says stuff like this to me. If she does give me a hard time about guys, it’s to the extent that she has so far with Connor – encouragement but nothing heavy.
She lifts her hands, palms out in an attempt to placate me. Maybe because I look like I feel right now. Defensive.
“I’m not saying it has to be Connor,” she adds quickly. “You’re young, and I know how intent you are on your studies right now. But I worry about you sometimes, baby girl. That you never se
e a boy more than a couple of times before you decide he’s not worth it. That you won’t know what love is when it comes your way.”
“Mom…”
I look away, my face burning, but it’s too late because she’s already seen it. Seen more than I’ve been willing to admit to myself. When Connor told me about that girl Laura, he said he’d loved her, but he didn’t even have to tell me. I could see the agony in his eyes that spoke for him. I was just thinking about this, and it’s true – I’ve never felt that strongly about anyone before, and I can’t deny anything my mom’s saying about me now.
“Remember when I told you I used to sing in a club?” Her voice is raw with some of her own pain.
“Yes.” I nod, my face still averted.
“It was more of a pub, and it was when I lived in England. What I didn’t tell you is that I did it because of the first boy that I ever loved.”
I stare down at my hands, my fingers knotting in the straps of my bikini. I don’t look at her, but I listen.
“Your Gran sent me to a boarding school in England. You know that.” She draws in a shaky breath. “We used to have arranged social functions, chaperoned dances, that sort of thing. I met him at one of those when I was fifteen. His name was Ian, and we saved all of our dances for each other.”
I look over at her, and she’s smiling gently at some distant memory. “Mum and Dad had already moved over here by then, but I stayed in England. Ian and I went to university together. His family owned a pub, and I would sing there every night while he played piano.” She rests her gaze on me, and it’s mostly happy but there’s sorrow in it, too. “When I was up there on stage, I thought I could have done that for my entire life, Alexis. Be with him.”
“Why didn’t you stay with him?” I whisper.
“Because your grandad died, and my mum was all alone over here. She needed me.” Mom lifts her shoulders delicately before dropping them.
Losing Enough Page 18
