The Avoiding Series Boxset

by K. A. Linde

  “An excuse? Seriously?” she growled. “It’s okay for you and Parker to be out of control but not for me? I get it. This was a mistake. I guess I shouldn’t have even brought this up to you.”

  She whirled around and out the door. Rushing into their bedroom, she grabbed a change of clothes and an extra suit and stuffed them into a bag.

  Ramsey appeared in the doorway a minute later. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking control,” she spat.

  “Lexi, wait, wait, wait…you can’t leave,” he pleaded, grabbing for her bag.

  “I’m sorry—what? I can’t leave?” She held the bag to her chest and away from him.

  She turned to walk to the bathroom, but he blocked her path.

  “I don’t want you to leave. That’s not taking control. That’s leaving.”

  Lexi pushed him aside and walked into the bathroom. She dumped her makeup bag, a bottle of mousse, and her toothbrush into the bag. “That’s right. That’s leaving. I’m taking back the control in this situation. I flushed it down the drain two years ago when I let you make me think that Parker wouldn’t be an issue and that you would trust me.”

  “I do trust you,” he pleaded, his voice rising hysterically.

  “And Parker?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “Lexi, please…”

  “You’ll never let it go. If you would just let it go,” she said.

  “I’ll let it go. Just don’t leave.”

  He grabbed her around the middle and tried to get her to stay, to kiss him, to hold him, but she couldn’t. How could she stand there for another second, feeling this way? She was aching all over. Her body felt like it had been pounded into the ground from being overworked, and then when she had come home to see her fiancé, he was emotionally distraught over another woman. No, she couldn’t be in this house for another minute.

  “Lexi,” he called, following her out the bedroom door and down the stairs, “please just stop and think about this for a minute.”

  “I’ll think about it when I’m gone.”

  “Are you leaving me?” he asked, snatching her wrist and forcing her to look at him.

  “I’m leaving the house. I can’t stay here—not with the way I’m feeling right now.”

  “Lexi, I love you.”

  She sighed, her resolve breaking. This wasn’t what she wanted. This was the man she had spent more than three years loving, the man she had agreed to be with. He was perfect, absolutely perfect—except when he wasn’t, except when she saw his flaws, the flaws he never let the rest of the world see. She knew him inside and out. She knew all of his quirks. He was hurting right now, and he wanted her to make it right. She didn’t want to argue with him, but she was stubborn.

  He didn’t get to pick and choose when he was going to be the man that the rest of the world saw. Relationships were work. They were really hard work, and she had put her fair share into this one. She wanted it to work so desperately. But how could it with everything else hanging over him right now? These were the things she needed to figure out, and she wouldn’t do that while she was still around him.

  “I love you, too,” she said before standing on her tiptoes and kissing his lips tenderly. “I do. I really do.”

  Tears hit her as he held her in his arms, silently pleading for her not to do this.

  “But…I have to go,” she said, pulling away from him and walking out the front door.

  PRESENT

  Lexi sat in her car, her hands shaking. What the hell had she just done?

  She had walked out on Ramsey. She had left their apartment with a change of clothes and her toothbrush. Did that mean they were over? She looked down at her diamond engagement ring, and the tears came harder.

  No. They hadn’t broken up or broken off the engagement, but she had actually just walked out of their place.

  She didn’t know what to do. She could barely breathe.

  Through her tears, Lexi backed out of the garage and started driving aimlessly. She didn’t even know where she was going to go. She wanted to talk to Chyna, but her friend was thousands of miles away on a private island for her honeymoon. She wouldn’t be back until next week.

  How did it keep happening that Chyna was out of the country when she and Ramsey were having problems? Chyna needed to stop leaving!

  Not that Chyna would be able to do much more than talk her off of the ledge. She would have been in New York when Lexi needed her in Atlanta. Granted, her best friend had access to a private jet and could have been in Atlanta in a few hours, but Lexi needed her now. In any case, it didn’t matter because Chyna wasn’t even close to a couple of hours away.

  Pulling off the road and into a parking lot in frustration, Lexi let the tears fall until her fingers and toes tingled from hyperventilation. Her cheeks were hot and wet, no matter how many times she tried to dry them. She wanted the pain in her chest to go away. She wanted to feel human again.

  Wasn’t this supposed to be the happiest time of her life? She kept repeating that to herself, but it didn’t matter if she said the mantra a million times. She had to admit that she wasn’t happy. She was sitting on the side of the road in an abandoned parking lot, crying her eyes out. If that didn’t show how low she had sunk all over again, then nothing did.

  Her phone buzzed at her side, and she glanced down. Ramsey.

  Please come back.

  No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t do that. She wasn’t ready.

  Exiting the screen, she found another number and dialed, knowing it was the only place she could go.

  “Lex, I didn’t think I’d hear from you again today,” Jack said pleasantly into the phone.

  The sound of his voice made the tears fall harder. She didn’t even know why. Maybe it was the prospect of talking to someone else about what had happened. Maybe it was just Jack.

  “Are you okay? Why are you crying?”

  “Ramsey,” she said. It was the only word she got out.

  “Do you need me to come get you?”

  “No,” she said, hiccuping through her tears. “I’m parked somewhere.”

  “You shouldn’t drive like this,” he said, concerned. “I can be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Can I just come to your place?” Lexi asked weakly.

  “Of course you can. Are you sure you don’t want me to get you?”

  He paused, and she could feel the tension in his stillness.

  “I don’t want anything to happen to you,” he said.

  “I’ll survive.”

  She hung up the phone, dried her eyes, and set back out on the road. She knew it was probably stupid to go see Jack when she was so emotionally messed-up, but where else would she go? A hotel probably would be the better option, but the last thing she wanted was to be alone tonight.

  Jack would take care of her.

  The drive over to his place happened in what felt like a matter of seconds, or it could have been a couple of hours. She didn’t remember any of it. All she remembered was walking out of her place, leaving with a bag of clothes…leaving Ramsey behind.

  She parked the car in front of Jack’s place and walked deliriously through the entrance. No one was waiting around in the lobby, and she was thankful that she didn’t have to face anyone else in her condition. The elevator dinged open, and then she was standing in front of Jack’s door.

  What was she going to say to him? How could she begin to explain what she had just done? Jack wouldn’t judge her, of course. He had never judged her, but it didn’t change how she was feeling in that moment.

  “Lex,” Jack whispered when he answered the door.

  His brow furrowed when he saw her face swollen and red from tears that she hadn’t been able to hold back. And when she looked up into his handsome face—his hair, dark and shaggy, his eyes, her favorite color of blue, that jawline so well-defined—she started crying all over again.

  He sighed and pulled her into his arms. She grabbed the T-shirt he was wearing betw
een her fingers and buried her face in his shoulder. His hand came down on her back, holding her securely against him as he toed the door closed.

  “Shh,” he said softly.

  He ran his hand through her hair over and over again, stroking it soothingly, until she settled against him. The tears were still flowing, but the hysterics subsided, and she felt like she was able to breathe again.

  “You know,” she said against his T-shirt, “that I don’t hate you, right?”

  He chuckled softly and kissed the crown of her head lightly. The gesture seemed so perfectly in tune with what she needed in the moment that it didn’t even make her freak-out.

  “I know you don’t.”

  “I kind of hate myself though.”

  “If you don’t hate me, you can’t hate yourself,” Jack said, holding her at arm’s length with a smirk.

  Lexi grinned and shook her head. “You don’t know the kind of person I am.”

  “Oh, believe me…I do.”

  “I was a total bitch.”

  “Yeah?” he asked. “And no one deserved it.”

  Lexi sighed and looked away. “I walked out on Ramsey.”

  Jack sputtered and then coughed to try to cover it up, but he did a terrible job at it. For someone usually so collected, he was anything but in that moment. She didn’t know how to read him then, and all she wanted was to curl into a ball on the floor and feel bad for herself. She deserved that at least.

  “You guys broke up?”

  “Well…no,” she said, twirling the ring on her finger. “I mean…I don’t think so.”

  Jack put his hand on the small of her back and guided her to the couch. “I think you should sit down and start from the beginning. Do you want something to drink? I think I only have Jack Daniels and water, but—”

  “I’m fine. I think drinking is a bad idea. I’m too much of a lightweight,” she said, plopping onto the couch and pressing her head back into the cushion.

  Jack took a seat next to her, mirroring her pose before speaking. “I never thought y’all would break up.”

  “Me either.”

  The very thought made her throat constrict and her head dizzy. She couldn’t break up with Ramsey. She loved him. He was her fiancé. They were going to get married. But did she want that? Wasn’t that what Chyna had been getting at from the beginning? Lexi needed to determine what she wanted, not what someone else said she should want. And she couldn’t stick with this just because she had told herself she would no matter what.

  “What caused this? There had to be something, right? Most people don’t just wake up from an engagement…even when they should,” he all but whispered the last part. Surely, he was reflecting on the idiocy of his own marriage.

  Lexi shook her head and pressed her palms over her eyes. She didn’t want to cry anymore.

  Tears were the words she had left unspoken.

  They spoke volumes about her pain, her grief, her despair for a relationship that she had put all of herself into. They broke a seal on the emotions she so tightly contained to the point where she could literally feel the pain in her chest, in her lungs, in her very being. And yet, she hated the vulnerability of it all. Knowing that once invested in her tears, she couldn’t take them back. They consumed her.

  As another tear rolled down her cheek, she realized then how much she really needed them though. They were her heart’s way of speaking of that pain.

  So, she let herself feel.

  Tucking her feet up onto the couch, she hugged her knees to her chest and wept openly. Jack wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. His comfort was all that she needed.

  After a few minutes, she found her voice again. “Do you remember that night on the beach last summer?”

  “How could I ever forget?”

  His hand trailed circles into her muscles, and she bit back the sigh that threatened to escape as he physically massaged the tension out of her back.

  “I took Ramsey back that night because he told me he wanted to prove to me that everything I was freaking out about with Parker was nothing. And it wasn’t.”

  Jack’s hand stilled as her words sank in. “Did he…do something with Parker?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so…but I came home, and she had found paperwork that said she had been discharged from an abortion clinic without anything happening. She proved what she had been saying all along…that she’d had a miscarriage.”

  “That’s kind of huge for them, isn’t it?” Jack asked softly.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I probably wouldn’t have cared as much if it hadn’t all been handled behind my back and if he hadn’t freaked out about the whole thing. I mean, if he’s still so hung up on this thing with Parker,” she said, turning to face Jack, “then how can he even want to marry me?”

  “I know why he wants to marry you. And I know why, despite the red flags, he can’t see anything but you,” Jack said.

  “Why? Because I sure don’t see it. I mean, I’m not crazy. How he is acting about Parker is a huge red flag, right?”

  She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear and stared into his blue eyes.

  “You’re not crazy. He’s the guy who realized your worth and put you first. He gave you what you deserved. And he’s a complete fucking idiot to do anything to jeopardize that.”

  Lexi stared down at the floor as his words sank in. She had given Ramsey everything, and he had risked their relationship with whatever was going on with Parker. Something that had happened between them years ago, which should have been put to rest years ago, was cropping up and suffocating everything she had invested in.

  “He should have learned from my mistakes,” Jack said.

  And then, she saw it in those crystal-clear blue eyes she had missed more than she cared to admit.

  He wanted her. And it was a terrible idea to even let him see that she might want him, too. But it was Jack. She licked her lips and felt her pulse racing. She was too exhausted from work, too run-down, too emotionally distraught over the collapse of her life. She needed to back out of this situation and deal with it another night.

  Jack’s hand slid down her cheek and down the curve of her neck, and then he pulled her head forward toward him. She breathed in sharply as he met her halfway, their faces no more than an inch apart. She could close her eyes and practically feel his lips on hers. This was a bad idea, but her brain and her heart weren’t listening to her. She wanted to forget everything. Jack had always been the easiest escape.

  But no…

  She couldn’t.

  Her ring sat heavily on her finger.

  Jack tilted his head forward, and instead of kissing her as she had expected, he rested his forehead against hers and dropped his hands to her shoulders.

  “Losing you was the biggest mistake of my life. I don’t think another person deserves to feel that loss at my expense.”

  And he pulled back, and she was left there, gasping.

  Jack had…stopped. She didn’t know how to respond. Was she supposed to be relieved?

  Because she wasn’t. She had expected him to kiss her. Her relationship was in shambles, and the thought of returning to her house left her feeling nauseated.

  And now…through her haze, she heard the words that Jack had just said to her.

  Losing you was the biggest mistake of my life.

  Oh God!

  After all this time…

  Lexi pulled away sharply and stared forward at the far wall. She wasn’t sure if she was breathing properly. Her heart felt ready to burst. It was too much, all at one time.

  “I think…I think I need to get some sleep,” she said, standing.

  She couldn’t address what had just happened. She couldn’t let herself think about his words and the consequences in his meaning. She couldn’t think about how much she had wanted him to kiss her, to feel his lips pressed against her, to taste him.

  “Yeah,�
�� he murmured. “You can take the bed.”

  “Okay,” she said, not wanting to argue with him.

  She trudged down the short hall after him to the only bedroom in the place. He opened the door for her and flipped on a light. The minimalist décor continued into the bedroom. There was a queen-sized bed sitting in the corner and a small dresser. The closet was open on the opposite wall, and she could see that it, at least, was mostly full. It seemed the only real thing he had moved over to the place was his clothing.

  “Bathroom is across the hall. Let me know if you need anything,” he told her. “I’ll just grab a pillow. I only have the ones on the bed.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said.

  He took a pillow and walked back out of his own room. “Good night.” He smiled forlornly, and then he disappeared back down the hall to where he would be sleeping…on the couch.

  What was the world coming to?

  Lexi padded into the bathroom where she changed into sleeping clothes and brushed her teeth. She stared at her reflection and wondered how anyone could want her at all. She looked run-down because she was run-down. She hadn’t exercised since last week, and that wasn’t helping anything. When her job put her on benders like this, she didn’t get to do much of anything—sleep, eat, work out. Circles were under her puffy red eyes, and her complexion was seriously missing the beach. At least her hair was still long and glossy.

  Ever the optimist.

  Lexi rolled her eyes and walked back across the hall and into the bedroom. She shut the door with a sigh and then hesitantly curled up into Jack’s bed. She groaned when she took in her first breath and buried her nose into the pillow.

  Christ! The whole bed smelled like him—musky sexy cologne and sex. It made her entire body curl in on itself in pleasure from the heady feeling of intoxication that washed over her and the joyous aftereffect of an adrenaline boost pumping endorphins through her body.

  There was no way that she was going to be able to sleep in this. All she could think about was all the times she had been pressed into his body in college after marathons tucked away in his bed…and the sound of his voice telling her that losing her had been the worst mistake of his life.