He was not pissed.
All that was in his head was her words, I think we can have that again.
He didn’t agree.
He didn’t because Peri could have lost her legs. Or been diagnosed with cancer and had to have a double mastectomy. Or got diagnosed with MS and he’d have to watch her suffer over years.
And no doubt in his mind…
He would have stuck.
He would have because he’d loved her. He’d loved her smile. He’d loved that she read Crichton-style thrillers, even though they scared the shit out of her. He loved she could look at the flight of a bird and tell him if it was an eagle, hawk, falcon, owl, whatever. He loved it that she’d complain about her feet being cold, but even as active as she was, she was too lazy to go get a pair of socks.
Or maybe she knew Rix got off on doing stupid little shit like that for her.
Peri could take on the world.
But when she was feeling lazy, he’d get her some socks.
In the end, though, Peri couldn’t take on the world.
Because she wasn’t strong enough to take on a him that was not top to toe him.
But he wasn’t angry about it.
He’d been that for a long time. He’d been that when they faced off in Scooter’s parking lot.
Though for some reason, he couldn’t find that now.
So he was just confused as to what he did feel, since it wasn’t pissed, and it wasn’t Rix taking a beat to consider it possible they could work shit out.
But the bottom line in that moment was, like he’d managed to do for a couple of years now, he didn’t want to think of Peri at all.
He’d spent months after she’d left him giving her all of his headspace.
He didn’t have the energy to give her more.
“What’s on your mind?” he grunted into the cab of their rented SUV.
He felt Alex jerk beside him, like she forgot he was even there.
That almost made him laugh, it being so Alex, her being self-contained, if not at ease in the world, seeming at ease in her head, her world.
Case in point, she didn’t chat with him on the plane because she was nervous around him.
She’d told him she was into a podcast, was close to the end, and asked if he’d be offended if she finished it up.
He had a book, and when you had a book, you were always good, so he’d told her to go for it.
They sat in seats beside each other in that plane that had a variety of options of where to sit, him with his book, her with her eyes closed or staring out the window, her ear buds in, perfectly cool each of them in their own thing.
Though her surprise at the reminder he was sitting beside her made him want to laugh, he didn’t laugh.
He wasn’t in the mood to laugh.
“What?” she asked.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked in return, figuring she’d say something about their schedule, what she expected of CTB, thoughts about meeting Frank, or practically anything about their trip or their work.
She didn’t say anything about any of that.
She asked, “How do you decide between chair and prosthetics?”
At her question, Rix went completely still.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel it.
The funny sensation in his gut and chest.
Fuck, it seemed he could even hear it.
Like a tear. The beginning of a fissure forming. Straggling upward, from gut to throat, a warning that soon, that break would fracture and he’d be laid wide open.
He felt it, but he didn’t fight it.
There was tension there, on the surface and buried deep.
It was solid, like granite. Packed there, tight, with over two years of heavier and heavier stuff landing on it, and then Rix would bury it, making it unbreakable.
Unbearable.
But with her question, that fissure was forming.
And it was like he had to hold still, waiting, even hoping, that what he was experiencing was what he thought it was going to be.
Because he needed the goddamn release.
His entire concentration was devoted to that, so he was startled when Alex’s next words came fast.
And tortured.
“God, I’m sorry. That was inappropriate. It’s none of my business. I’m so, so sorry. It just came out.”
“Alex—”
“Forget I asked, if you can. You probably can’t. It was that rude. God. I’m so sorry.”
“Okay, but lis—”
“I’m sure you’ve noticed, I can be socially awkward. It’s that. It’s not about your disability. It’s not like I…obsess about it, or anything. I’ve had, like, a bunch of stuff on my mind since we left. I mean, just, like, thirty seconds ago, I was wondering if we could change the radio station. That was just what was in my head when you asked what was, well…in my head. And so, it just came out.”
“Right, but—”
She cut him off again, still talking in a hurry.