The Avoiding Series Boxset

by K. A. Linde

  All she knew was that she had to talk to Ramsey, and she had to talk to him now. Waiting around for over a week had been a terrible mistake. All her emotions were like a shaken up bottle of coke ready to explode once opened. The confirmation of the facts from Brandon had solidified her determination, which she had been lacking before. She hadn’t been able to face him, because she wasn’t sure if she could believe Parker’s tale. Even though Lexi knew it was impossible to truly fake the kind of emotions Parker displayed, she still hadn’t wanted to believe her. Then Brandon had said, albeit in a more concise fashion, the exact same story. Now she knew she had to talk to him. But it didn’t mean that she was dreading it any less.

  She wished, not for the first or last time that summer that Chyna was still in the country. She would know what to do and say in that moment. She would know how to calm Lexi down and how to approach the situation. But she didn’t have her best friend there for her now. She still had a couple weeks before she returned from Milan. So Lexi was on her own, and would have to face down her demons alone.

  Taking a deep breath, Lexi punched in the code to the back entrance that Ramsey had given her and stepped through the large black door. She trudged down the long hallway and stood in front of his closed office door. Staring at the big door for a while didn’t give her any more motivation to push through it. She knew she needed answers, but her stomach was in knots at the prospect of what was to come. Pushing back her hair a few times to calm her nerves, Lexi knocked twice and then opened the door to Ramsey’s office.

  Ramsey turned around sharply at the interruption. His eyes were narrowed and he looked furious at the distraction until he realized who was standing before him. “Lexi!” he said, jumping to his feet. “What a surprise! I didn’t think you would be here until after work.”

  “Honestly, I hadn’t planned on coming at all,” she told him, stepping into the room and pushing the heavy door closed behind her.

  Her hands were shaking at her sides, the black circles under her eyes were more pronounced, and she couldn’t stop biting her bottom lip. “Why not? What’s wrong?”

  Lexi’s eyes dropped to the floor. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Are you breaking up with me?” he whispered into the room. Those words alone sounded like heartbreak coming out of his mouth. It was almost too much for Lexi to bear to hear.

  “No,” she said quickly. “Well, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” he asked sitting down heavily on the corner of his desk. “Tell me what’s wrong. How could you not know something like that?”

  “It…it all depends on how you answer my next question,” she whispered letting her eyes drag upwards and meet his very confused green-gold eyes.

  “I’ll answer anything,” he said desperately.

  Lexi took a deep breath to calm her hammering heart. “What is your relationship with Parker?”

  “What?” he asked, standing at the mention of Parker’s name.

  “You heard me,” Lexi whispered.

  “Parker?” Lexi nodded. “We’ve already had this discussion. I told you over spring break what my relationship is with Parker.”

  “Let me rephrase. What was your relationship with Parker?” she asked directing his attention to the past tense.

  Ramsey ran his hand back through his hair and a small blush crept up onto his cheeks. “What are you driving at, Lexi?”

  “Just the truth. That’s all I want,” she told him resting her hands against the chair in front of her to steady herself.

  “The truth?” he asked hesitantly. “We slept together. I told you that, but there’s nothing going on between us now. I promise.”

  Lexi hung her head. “I believe you. I don’t think anything is going on now.”

  “Then what’s the problem?” he asked moving toward her and grabbing her hands from the top of the chair. “I’m not cheating on you, Lexi, if that’s what you think.”

  “I didn’t accuse you of cheating me,” she said angrily, pulling her hands from his.

  “All right,” he said miffed. “What are you accusing me of?” He threw his hands up in the air and walked back to his desk.

  “Isn’t it quite obvious?” she demanded.

  “If it was, wouldn’t I have already guessed it.”

  “You’re lying to me!” she yelled, more forcefully than she had even realized she was going to say it. She had bottled all of her emotions up so much that she could feel everything begin to explode out of her. She was furious with him. How dare he stand there and even try and tell her that nothing happened with Parker…that they had just slept together. It was obvious to everyone that there had been something more, and now she had been told by two people that was the case…three, if she included Jessie. He didn’t even have the balls to tell her the truth about it.

  “What am I lying about?” he asked her, snapping his head around to look at her.

  “You and Parker dated! You were together for years—high school and college sweethearts. You were in love with her. You were going to marry her,” Lexi said letting the truth spill out of her. Ramsey remained silent waiting for whatever else she was going to say. “Parker told me herself. How could you think that you could keep that from me? All of that time you’ve told me that you never dated anyone, that you never loved anyone, but it was all a lie. I’m not special to you. She was special to you.

  “You couldn’t even tell me that to my face. You had to hide it. I don’t know why you thought I wouldn’t find out. Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Ramsey hung his head; his breathing coming out in short bursts. “She told you all of this?” he demanded.

  “Yes, she did.”

  “I can’t believe she would do that,” he murmured.

  “Why?” Lexi gasped. “You can’t believe she would tell the truth? Did you date her for that long?” Lexi waited for an answer. “Well?”

  “Yes,” he mumbled.

  “Were you in love with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  Ramsey’s head shot back up to look at her. “No. I love you, Lexi. I told you that.”

  “How can I know that?” she asked angrily, openly glaring at him.

  “Lexi, I do love you. You have to believe me about that at least,” he told her.

  She couldn’t really argue that point. It wasn’t what she was angry about anyway. “But why would you lie about everything else? Why lie about her? Don’t you think I could have gotten over all of this, if you had just told me?” she begged the question.

  “I don’t tell anyone that story, Lexi,” he said in frustration, though it sounded like a lame attempt to save himself.

  “I’m not just anyone,” she spat back angrily.

  “I know that. It’s a stupid habit. I don’t talk about it. She doesn’t talk about it. It’s like it never happened,” he said awkwardly.

  “But it did happen. It did!” she yelled back at him, feeling her emotions break again. “You’re a liar. You just lie all the time. You lied about Parker, about having a girlfriend, about being in love…the beach house…everything. How can I ever trust you again? Can I ever really know if everything else coming out of your mouth isn’t a lie? I trusted you with my whole heart. I can honestly say that I’ve never done that before.”

  “Jack…” he murmured before being cut off with a sinister glare.

  “I had known Jack only a month or two before realizing that I could never fully trust him. I hadn’t given him my heart at that point, and I hadn’t fallen in love with him. None of this I hid from you. What would be the point of hiding it from you? You would find out, sooner or later, the history between us,” she growled. “Did you never think I’d hear the real story from anyone about Parker? And I mean the real story, Ramsey.”

  “What do you mean the real story?” he asked, his eyes narrowing at the connotations behind the statement.

  “Oh, don’t give me t
hat,” Lexi said rolling her eyes. “You know what you did.”

  Ramsey strode back over to Lexi and slammed his hands down on the chair in front of her. “What else did she tell you?” he growled.

  “Why are you getting so worked up?” Lexi asked eyeing him carefully. He had been so controlled before, but now he really looked angry that there was more to the story. She couldn’t believe that after everything she had just said that he couldn’t even own up to the rest of it.

  “Because she told you more than that, and I want to know what else she said.”

  “She told me everything,” Lexi informed him. “She told me how she was sick and instead of taking care of her, you were whoring around with other women. She told me that she was pregnant. She told me that she miscarried the baby. She told me that she came to see you and you were horrible to her. She told me that you yelled and screamed at her and called her all of these terrible things. Then when you realized how wrong you were, you tried to crawl back to her, but you had done too much damage. Is that what you were planning to do to me? Or were you just going to lie about it?” Lexi asked, being purposefully mean.

  “She told you that she miscarried?” he asked, grunting angrily. It’s like he hadn’t even heard the rest of the things that she had said. It was as if he had stopped listening after that one word. His nostrils were flared and his face was beat red with anger. Lexi had never seen him this furious. Even that one time on New Year’s when he had completely lost his temper, he had never looked like this. “Of course, she would tell her side that way.”

  “What are you getting at Ramsey?” she asked, her pent up anger so forceful she could practically see red spots in front of her eyes.

  “She had an abortion!” he cried unable to hold back. “You think she had a miscarriage? She was nineteen years old. Her family has money. My family has money. It was a stupid accident that should have never happened, so she got rid of it. The likelihood of her really having a miscarriage is slim to none. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Well, she hadn’t gone to a doctor,” Lexi said repeating what Parker had told her. “That’s the most likely cause of a miscarriage after the first eight to ten weeks.” Lexi had done her research after leaving the hospital.

  “Don’t let that girl fool you,” he grumbled. “She had a life and a future ahead of her, and a baby never fit in with that, especially after she walked out on me. So she got rid of it,” he told her fiercely.

  Lexi sank back into the chair, taking in everything Ramsey had told her. She didn’t even know what to think. Could Parker have lied about the miscarriage? She knew it was possible and that many women got abortions, but she couldn’t even think about it. She didn’t care what another woman did with her own body, but the thought of doing that to herself…Lexi shuddered. She wasn’t sure she would have the strength for it, to actually put herself through it. Could Parker have had that strength? Lexi just didn’t know. She didn’t even want to think about it. There were too many sides to this one story. How could she ever decipher what had really happened between them?

  And in the end did it really matter to Lexi? Whatever Parker had done with her body was part of their past. It was not Lexi’s past. All she cared about was the fact that he had lied…that he had hid an entire relationship from her. That he had expected her never to find out.

  “Look, I don’t care about that. What I care about is you lying to me,” she told him.

  “I’m sorry, Lexi. I don’t have an excuse. It was just…what I always did,” he told her some of his anger leaving his body.

  Lexi sat there for a minute longer, trying to collect her thoughts. She was still angry. There was something more that she needed to say. She wasn’t sure how to articulate it to him. After a second she finally gasped out, “Am I just making up for all your mistakes with Parker?”

  “What?” he breathed sitting across from her and staring up through his sad eyes.

  “Is this what this is all about? You found someone who looked like her and thought you could recreate your past…fix all of the horrible things that you did?” she asked, hating that these thoughts were even passing through her mind. But she needed to ask him. She needed these things out in the open.

  “Lexi, no,” he whispered earnestly into the darkness. “You are nothing like that.”

  “Then what was I?” she challenged. “You can’t deny that we look alike. My mother even said that we look alike.”

  “I know you look alike,” he responded softly.

  “Then that’s it. You saw me at the club and wanted to fuck me because I looked like your ex-girlfriend,” she said the words so matter of fact that she actually believed what she was saying. What kind of person could possibly sink so low?

  Ramsey sighed heavily. Maybe he was finally seeing for the first time what a terrible thing he had done in keeping a secret from her. “Yes.”

  “What?” Lexi snapped facing him wearily.

  “That night at the club…that was my intention,” he told her honestly. “I wanted to sleep with you because you looked like her because even then, years later, I still missed her.”

  Lexi’s mouth hung open at the admission. She hadn’t thought that he would really say it out loud to her. She had hated herself endlessly for the suspicions that Ramsey had only gotten with her because she looked like his old fling. Hearing the words out of his mouth though was a thousand times worse.

  “That’s why you said you knew me again at the Country Club,” she filled in.

  “Of course, I would recognize you anywhere,” he mumbled. He looked like he felt entirely worthless.

  “And that’s why you pursued me.”

  “Initially,” he said barely audible, “but you were more than that.”

  “Of course,” she said, shaking her head and tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “You’re disgusting.”

  “Lexi, please,” he begged, reaching out for her. She shook him off and wandered over to the window to stare out in horror.

  “You are so much different than Parker. Besides your looks, you two are nothing alike,” he said trying to reassure her. “You made me forget her. You made me able to move on.”

  “How can I believe you?” she asked her tone dead, lifeless.

  “Our relationship is real whether you choose to believe it or not,” he intoned. “I did and still do love you as much as when I first told you that night at the beach. You are the only woman I could think of being with from now until eternity. Please try and believe me when I say it.”

  Lexi shook her head again forlornly. She was having trouble believing anything anyone was telling her. First was Parker with her sad tale of loss of both Ramsey and their unborn child. Now, the tale twisted on its head and gruesome stories of an abortion. Neither side could possibly have the whole truth. There might be glimpses of it, but reality was different to different people. No one story held the truth about everything, and she knew all too well that listening too intently to either one was a misgiving on her part. Both likely believed their story and would carry the truth to their grave, but that didn’t mean that either story was what had actually happened. This only made her decisions about Ramsey more difficult.

  “Ramsey, I just…” Lexi began, turning to face him as the door burst open.

  “Ramsey, I really need to talk to you,” Parker cried, panting a little as if she had just sprinted down the hallway. She was still in scrubs like she had come straight from the hospital.

  He stood shakily and stared between the two women in his office. “About what you told Lexi?” he growled.

  Parker’s lips parted as she realized she had just walked in on Lexi and Ramsey. She nodded. “Uh, yeah…I told her.”

  PRESENT

  “Now you all know my dear brother,” Bekah said a little too cheerfully. “He’s been off running his own business and being a star. But we’re thrilled to announce that he is finally coming home and taking on as the position as vice president for Bridges Enterprise�
�s newest company.” After a short pause, she continued, “I’m pleased to announce along with this new development that the new wing of the company is going to be a full-time medical wing, and to head up our medical center with my brother is none other than our own, Parker Mackenson. Parker, come up here!” Bekah shrieked excitedly.

  Lexi sat completely still. She wasn’t even sure if she was breathing properly. She watched as Parker eased out of her own chair. She glanced in Lexi’s direction and gave her a sympathetic look. Lexi didn’t even know what that could mean. Clearly they had been planning this whole thing from the beginning. How could Parker feel any sympathy for what she had done?

  A round of applause followed the newest development for Bridges Enterprise. Lexi had always thought that Ramsey had no desire to be affiliated with the company that his father ran. He had made it clear that what he wanted in life didn’t have to come from the wealth that he had grown up with. The reason that he owned the night clubs, the bars, and even the strip clubs; the reason that he stayed out late at work every night, the reason that he put so much effort into doing something completely against his upbringing was because he never wanted to be a part of his family’s lifestyle.

  He was his own man. He had his own dreams and aspirations. He may look the picture perfect boy that she had met a year ago at the Country Club, but he was so much more. He was defiant. He was strong willed and hard working. He didn’t need them. And that’s what really ate them up. Ramsey did fine all on his own. He made a living. He owned his own townhouse. He owned his own beach house and the cars and all the glitz. This was all his in his own right. His family couldn’t hold it over his head that they were supporting him. They couldn’t make him feel bad for giving him a job and owing his livelihood to them. He was a Bridges Man at heart, but he had never been able to be controlled by them. Their money, their prestige, it wasn’t him.

  He had scorned every push and shove from them to join the company. He had a trust fund with so many digits that it made Lexi’s head spin, and yet he hadn’t used it! He chose to do his own thing and to start his own business. And yet, here he was standing in front of his bitch sister as she proudly announced the prodigal son’s return to their empire.