There was no going back. He didn’t want to live with a stick up his ass again. The real world was messy and filled with burning cakes and frantic parents and best friends who nut kicked you because they were full of hot air and rage, but it was also full of a beautiful amber eyed woman who, despite everything, wanted him.
He wanted her too. He wanted them. He wanted to figure out, with Alix, what the heck that even meant.
So, he went on kissing her. Kissing away the doubt. Kissing away the pain. Kissing her breathless just so he could breathe new life into her.
And. She. Kissed. Him. Back.
CHAPTER 14
Alix
In the end they took her car, not Ross’s but he drove. She’d already nearly burnt down the house with her cake. She didn’t feel like taking their lives into her hands a second time that night, even though Ross promised her he’d behave.
She had to admit, she also had ulterior motives for not wanting to take his two-seater sports car.
Her car was a big, old, eighties station wagon that she’d named Bertha when she was sixteen. Her dad got it from a friend for fifty bucks. Literally. She didn’t complain. Chance’s first car barely ran either. Her parents had enough money to get them a decent car, but they always said they wanted to teach them the value of hard work and buying them something expensive just so they could wreck it with touch and feel driving or have their friends puke all over it after a party wasn’t their idea of teaching responsibility.
So, they bought them junk and let them learn their touch and feel driving on it instead. Let their friends puke all over the interior of it all the same.
At least Chance’s friends did, and his car had high pill carpet on the bottom. He’d nearly tossed his cookies having to clean it out the next day, though he blamed it on the hangover from hell he had.
She’d never gone to many parties. She never would have let Bertha get puked in.
Secretly, though she’d never admit it, Bertha was her baby. She was never going to give up her ugly, ratty, junky old station wagon with the cool back seat that faced backwards. She was literally the coolest kid in her class growing up because she had something vintage and unique, even if it guzzled gas by the boatload.
She hadn’t driven Bertha in all the years she’d been away, but she’d plated her when she’d got back and a new battery later and she was right back to running as rough as ever.
Alix pulled up at the base of the tower in total silence. Her headlights cut through the darkness, illuminating the ancient flour factory in all its dilapidated glory. The white block letters painted at the very top of the brick monolith were nearly illuminated in the moon’s glow and the light pollution from the brighter parts of the city a few miles away.
She killed the ignition and pushed the light switch in on the dash, plunging them into darkness. Most people would think she was crazy for thinking that the old water tower, with its slight lilt, and the old, worn out parts of the city were beautiful. She kind of thought of it as her place, even though she’d followed Chance and Ross that night to discover it.
Her parents would have shit bricks if they ever found out that she or Chance weren’t out with friends having a good time at a movie or the mall or somewhere clichéd and stupid- that they were actually sitting on top of a tower that looked like it wouldn’t hold up an ant’s weight, forty odd feet in the air, overlooking the entire city.
“Ross-”
“Al-”
They turned towards each other and spoke at the same time. She let out a nervous giggle. He just smiled. It was dark in the car, but not so dark that she couldn’t see him. The light filtering in from the moon defined the sharp, masculine plains and edges of his face and as always, he took her breath away, like she was seeing him for the first time.
No matter how many times she looked at him, it was like seeing him for the first time and her heart swelled and skittered. The rest of her body followed suit, her pulse hammering, her palms soaking, the heat welling up right below her belly button, the tingles pooling lower, in her thighs.
Ross sighed. She let him go first, since his eyes were burning and he was grinding his teeth, making his jaw clench and click like he did when he had something important he wanted to say, but wasn’t quite sure how to say it.
She waited. She gave him time. She’d given him her entire life. She could wait a few minutes more.