Foreseen: Lex (The Four Book 2)

by Sloane Kennedy

  The driveway for Lex’s cabin came into view. I drove right past it.

  On purpose.

  Jesus, what was wrong with me?

  “So you were saying about people wanting more from you?” I prodded.

  “Yeah, so my love life basically went from nonexistent to having someone new on my arm every night. I guess… I guess I enjoyed it in the beginning,” Lex said sheepishly.

  The idea of him fucking a new woman every night irritated me beyond belief and I found myself gripping the steering wheel hard.

  “It took me a really long time to realize that they weren’t with me because… because they wanted to be. I mean, they did want to be with me, but not for the right reasons.”

  Lex sounded embarrassed and hurt. “People are assholes,” I ground out.

  There was a long beat of silence, which had me glancing in Lex’s direction. He was looking out the window. “Yeah,” he finally said.

  “So there wasn’t anyone special?” I asked. I wasn’t sure how I’d gone from wanting to know why he’d accused me of something I hadn’t done to wanting to know more about his love life.

  “I’m gay, Gideon,” Lex said.

  The statement caught me off guard and it was all I could do not to run the damn truck off the road. As it was, I took my foot off the gas even more than it already was. We were going so slow at that point that the truck might as well have been moving backwards.

  Lex must have taken my silence as a bad thing because he said, “I just wanted to get that out there because… because it’s not something I try and hide. If that’s a problem for you—”

  “No,” I practically shouted before I remembered to use my indoor voice. My throat felt tight as I added, “No, it’s not a problem.”

  It so was a problem. The butterflies that always seemed to be present in my belly when I was around Lex felt like they all took flight at once.

  Lex was gay.

  So if I put my hand on his and let it linger…

  I let out a silent curse as I reminded myself that just because he’d admitted he was gay didn’t mean I all of a sudden had a green light to use him to figure out my own sexuality.

  Lex let out a breath and then said, “No, there was no one special.”

  It took me a moment to remember that I’d asked him that question before he’d told me about his sexuality.

  “But there was one guy I thought was different…”

  Great, the green monster was back and spitting mad. Beyond the jealousy, though, was another kind of anger. Based on the sadness in Lex’s voice, I already wanted to find the faceless guy and beat the shit out of him.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Lex shook his head slightly. He was once again staring at his hands.

  "I met him a couple years ago. He pretended not to know who I was or anything about me or my company. I'd been vacationing in this little town in South Carolina. I'd been dealing with a lot of stuff at work after taking my company public… I had some investors who wanted to take the company in a different direction and so I'd been fighting with them quite a bit about that. Anyway, I rented this little beach house—nothing fancy or anything. I slept in, took long walks on the beach, read… you know the drill. A few days after getting there, I met a guy on the beach and we hit it off. I was sure I was madly in love with him by the end of our third date. So I started telling him more and more about myself. Things about my childhood, my brothers, my business. At that point, my vision had started to become affected, but I could still see pretty well. But I'd gotten the diagnosis that I’d be legally blind within a year and completely blind in two. He was the only person I told. My brothers didn't even know."

  Lex fell silent for a long time and I found myself pulling the truck over to the side of the road. Lex didn't even seem to notice that I'd stopped the vehicle. I reached out to put my hand on his shoulder, though there was so much more I wanted to do to comfort him. "What happened?"

  "I didn't even realize it at first," Lex murmured. "I was always the one to pay for dinner and stuff when we went out. If he needed to go get gas or something, he'd ask me if he could grab a few bucks from my wallet. I hadn't thought much of it, I just always said yes when he asked for money. I told him about my business, but I never told him how much I was actually worth. Maybe subconsciously I was trying to protect myself." Lex shrugged and continued with, "I ended up extending my stay by several weeks. I was devastated when I was forced to go home, but the guy, Grady, and I agreed to keep seeing each other. It was supposed to be exclusive."

  When Lex didn't continue, I asked, "You caught him cheating on you, didn't you?"

  Lex swallowed hard and I saw him reach up to wipe at his eye. "I flew to South Carolina to surprise him for Valentine's Day." Lex let out a rough laugh and said, "He'd made other plans… with his ex."

  I dropped my hand and closed it over Lex's. When he gripped my fingers firmly, I figured I hadn't overstepped any bounds.

  "Turned out the ‘ex’ wasn't actually an ex. Grady's boyfriend worked for the company that handled the rental of the beach house I'd stayed in. The whole thing had been a setup. Grady admitted as much when I confronted him about it. He actually laughed when he said I'd made it easier on him by finding out like I had. He said…"

  "He said what?" I asked gently.

  "It doesn't matter. I was heartbroken because I really did love him. The whole thing should've been over at that point. But—"

  "Lex," I interrupted, squeezing his fingers in the process. "Tell me what he said." I didn't know why it mattered to me so much what his asshole of an ex had said to him, but it did. It absolutely mattered.

  "Gideon," Lex whispered, his voice thick with tears. None had actually fallen, but it still hurt like a motherfucker to know how much pain the whole episode had caused him.

  "Okay, I'm sorry," I said to him. "I'm sorry," I repeated. I began rubbing my thumb over his in the hopes that it would somehow comfort him. Lex looked my way. His eyes were glistening from the unshed tears.

  Lex let out a few sniffles before he said, "He said he was glad he no longer had to pretend that touching me turned him on and that he’d had to think about his boyfriend to even get it up."

  It was all I could do not to pull Lex across the console of my truck and into my arms. I wanted to beat the shit out of the man who'd hurt Lex so cruelly. It was clear from how deeply the episode still affected him that Lex had really and truly cared for Grady.

  "I'm sorry, Lex," I whispered and then I ignored all protocol and, despite the console between us, I pulled him against my chest. Lex was stiff for a moment, then he let out a soft sob and relaxed into me as his arms wound around my neck. I cradled the back of his head with one of my hands and whispered nonsensical things into his ear. I wasn't sure how long I held him for before he pulled back and wiped at his face.

  "Sorry," he mumbled as he tried to right himself. I almost told him he had nothing to be sorry for because I was the one who’d pulled him into my arms. But I held my tongue when Lex continued with his story.

  "I tried to leave Grady's apartment, but he and his boyfriend wouldn’t let me go. They wanted money. Grady called it a small business loan and said I owed him for all the time he'd spent with me. I just… I wanted to get out of there more than anything in the world, so I gave him all the cash I had. I wrote him a check too. He warned me not to stop payment on the check after I left. But that was exactly what I did as soon as they let me leave."

  Lex pulled in a few breaths to steady himself. "Grady followed me back to LA when I refused to answer his calls or respond to his texts. I thought if I just ignored him, he'd go away. But then he confronted me in the parking garage outside my office one night."

  "Did he hurt you?" I asked. My hands were already fisting in anticipation of his response.

  Lex shook his head. "He didn't have to. He had all the ammunition he needed against me. He just needed to figure out how to use it."

  "What do you mean?"


  "He knew about the power struggle I was going through with the board of my company. He used that to his advantage. He threatened to go to them and tell them I was losing my vision unless I paid him a hundred grand to go away."

  "How would the board knowing that information change anything?" I asked. "Blind people run companies every day. They may need some accommodations here and there, but just because they can't see doesn't mean that they can't run a business."

  "A lot of companies have clauses about their executives being healthy enough to run the business. It has to do with not risking the loss of profits if the head of the company has some kind of mental or physical limitation. Since I hadn't yet started to lose my sight, I wasn't obligated to tell anyone. I was going to use the time to buy back more of the company so I could maintain control of it. If the board had found out I was going blind, they could've invoked that clause and tried to force me out. My company designs video games. A CEO who can't see the games that their company is putting out is a hard sell to other organizations that might be interested in a merger or even a buyout."

  Lex's explanation made sense. I'd never been in the business world myself, but it was like any other reality… there was always someone waiting in line to grab power wherever and however they could get it. I considered what Lex had told me and said, "Grady didn't go away, did he?"

  Lex shook his head. "He was back within a few weeks. I paid him again, then again a couple months later. Each time, he swore it would be the last, but he kept coming back. I think part of me still didn't want to believe he'd intentionally used me. I started doing some digging on him and found out that his boyfriend had a sister who worked for one of my competitors. That company had been trying to acquire mine for years, but for pennies on the dollar. When I realized the whole thing had been a setup from the get-go, I cut Grady off for good. I didn't care what he said he’d do."

  "But it didn't end there," I observed.

  "No, it didn't. Grady showed up at my house one night. He was enraged and demanding money. When I told him no, he hit me. I told him to get out, but he just hit me again. And again. He said I was ruining everything. I was sure he was going to kill me."

  "What happened?" I asked. I felt sick to my stomach as I envisioned Lex lying on the ground and some guy on top of him battering him with his fists.

  "My brother King happened. He was in town visiting me and had left to get us some dinner. He got back a few minutes after Grady arrived at my house." Lex's voice dropped off as he spoke. He got choked up when he added, "I thought King was going to kill him."

  "But he didn't," I offered.

  Lex shook his head. "I managed to stop him. Grady ended up in a coma and King was arrested for assault. The cops didn't care that he'd just been defending me. They said it was too much force… that he'd gone too far. They said he should've stopped when Grady was no longer a threat to me or him or anyone else. Grady ultimately recovered but King spent six months in jail."

  "And Grady?" I asked.

  "He sued me. Wanted me to pay him ten million for the injuries he sustained."

  "Tell me you didn't pay him," I said.

  "No, I didn't. I was too busy trying to get King out of jail. I spent every free minute I had trying to find lawyers who could figure out a way to get King's charges overturned. I eventually found one who spotted a technicality in the trial transcripts, so King was released and the charges were dismissed."

  "Did Grady tell the board about your vision?"

  Another shake of his head and then Lex said, "No. One day I just got a call from his attorneys saying he'd dropped his lawsuit. They politely asked me not to contact their client again."

  "I don't understand," I admitted.

  Lex turned to me and said, "I mentioned I have brothers, right? Plural. And they’re all older. I’m not sure which one had the ‘talk’ with Grady but none of them besides King know about my blindness, so I guess Grady didn’t tell them. I’m sure by then he was just eager to forget he’d ever met me."

  I found myself smiling. I automatically lifted Lex's hand and placed his fingers against my mouth so he could feel what I was doing. "Remind me to thank them," I said before I realized how my words sounded. Luckily, Lex didn't respond to the comment. He seemed too busy tracing the corner of my mouth. The contact had the blood in my veins sizzling. I was leaning across the console, so it would've been easy to just reach out and grab the back of Lex's head and pull his mouth to mine.

  "I have no excuse, Gideon, for what I did yesterday. I honestly didn't remember telling you I was from LA, so when you said it, I thought about Grady and how easily I'd fallen into that trap and I just…"

  "Lex—" I said at the same time that he said, "I just can't go through that again."

  Hearing the words was like ice water being dumped on my head. I'd been about to tell him that I would never hurt him the way Grady had, but hearing him say he couldn't go through something like that again, I realized what a fine line I was walking. Even if I was interested in exploring my sexuality, which I wasn’t really sure I was, it wouldn't have been fair to do it with someone as vulnerable as Lex.

  "It's not even about the business anymore," Lex continued. "I have control of it again. It's just, there are a lot of kids who look up to me. Both because of my success, considering how I grew up, and because I'm gay. The idea of them finding out about what I almost did in that one brief moment of weakness… I couldn't live with myself knowing I was in some way responsible for some kid hurting himself. You know what I mean?"

  I nodded and said, "I do. Absolutely, Lex. And I swear to you, even if I knew who the fuck you were, I wouldn't tell anyone you were here, let alone anything else related to your private business."

  To my surprise, Lex chuckled. It wasn't until he pulled his hand free of mine that I realized I'd still been holding his. While he was still facing me, Lex stuck his hand out in front of him and said, "Lexington Parker. It's nice to meet you."

  I laughed and took his hand in mine and gave it a firm shake. "Gideon Callahan. The pleasure’s mine."

  When I went to pull my hand back, it was Lex who tightened his grip just a little. "Gideon, I'm so very sorry. I wish I could go back and redo our conversation."

  "It's okay, Lex—"

  "No, it's not. That's not who I am. And I'm not that guy who dismissed you when you came in to bring me the firewood. My behavior was… it was unacceptable." Lex seemed confused by his own words. Like he was struggling to figure out what it was he wanted to say. So I held my tongue. And I kept holding his hand.

  "I'm sorry," he repeated. "And thank you for what you did for me. It was more than I deserved."

  "You're welcome," I said. “You're also forgiven, but I never want to hear you say shit like that again, do you hear me?"

  Lex was clearly confused by my statement, so I added, "You deserved it and more. You deserve everything, Lex."

  A heavy silence fell between us and I found myself leaning even farther across the console, my eyes shifting from Lex's beautiful gray ones to his full, parted mouth. Nervous energy buzzed beneath my skin as I accepted that this was what I wanted, what I needed.

  A taste of Lex.

  My lips were just inches from an unknowing Lex's when Brewer let out a loud bark. I jerked back, hitting the steering wheel with my arm in the process. I bit back a curse as I straightened in my seat and looked around. There was a car coming up behind us. I’d pulled off to the side of the road, so the vehicle went around us. I recognized the driver as Mrs. Goldfinch, one of the town’s biggest gossips. Not surprisingly, she pulled her old Buick sedan to a stop next to my truck so I was forced to roll down the window.

  "Is that you, Mouse?"

  "Good afternoon, Mrs. Goldfinch," I stammered. My adrenaline was rushing through my blood as I tried to come down from the rush of nearly kissing Lex.

  "Mr. Goldfinch said he saw you in aisle seven down at Merv's." The woman raised her eyebrows at me. As hard as I'd worked to get the
people of Fisher Cove to stay out of my business, there were a handful of older residents who’d never quite gotten the message and still saw me as the little kid they'd watched grow up so many years earlier.

  "I'm sure he was mistaken," I responded. I began rolling up the window in hopes of sending her a hint. She didn't get it.

  "Who have you got there with you?" she asked.

  Thankfully, a car pulling up behind us was all the distraction I needed. "Looks like we better get moving. Don't want to block traffic."

  Of course, Mrs. Goldfinch did nothing more than glance in her rearview mirror before saying, "Oh no, dear, that's just Edna. She'll keep. Now who'd you say you had with you, Mouse?"

  "Okay, gotta go, bye," I said in a rush as I rolled the window up and put the truck back into gear. I pulled ahead of Mrs. Goldfinch’s sedan and then glanced in my rearview mirror. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Goldfinch was already out of her car and walking toward the vehicle behind hers. No doubt to update Edna Wingate about my trip to aisle seven as well as to share the gossip about the mysterious stranger in my truck.

  I glanced at Lex, intending to apologize for not having introduced him to the old biddy, but when I saw him looking at me with a huge grin on his face, I forgot what I wanted to say. He looked so light and free and downright happy that I just wanted to take a mental picture and hang on to it for as long as I could.

  "What?" I finally said to him when he continued to grin like a fool.

  "So what's in aisle seven… Mouse?”

  Chapter Nine

  Lex

  What I wouldn't have given to be able to see his face when I called him Mouse. As I waited for him to respond, I belatedly realized that I probably wasn't in any position to make fun of what I assumed was a nickname. Admittedly, I would have gladly grabbed onto anything that could have potentially changed the mood in the cab of the truck, but maybe I was going too far. I was beyond humiliated to have admitted what Grady had done to me and how stupid I’d been for having fallen for it in the first place. I hadn't meant to go into so much detail, but when Gideon had pressed me, I’d found it surprisingly easy to tell him about the first and only time I'd given my heart to someone.