He could see the smile on her face, and he heard it in her voice when she asked, “What competition?”
“You toss candy to the kids. It got to be about who could toss the most candy. Swear, they had someone take off and hit a Walgreens to refill their load.”
“So they won,” she deduced.
“Only because they cheated,” he informed her.
Her lips remained tipped up.
Rix gave up the goodness of her skin and bones to pull his hand out of her shirt so he could press his thumb against her dimple.
When he did, he got a reward, since she rested both tits on his chest, which meant her face was closer to his.
Now stroking her cheek and jaw, he picked up the story.
“After the parade, Judge and I got to talking. Could tell right away he was good people. The guys were getting together for burgers and dogs at a bud’s house who had a pool. We were all on call. People do stupid shit all the time, but holidays, that jacks up in a huge way. But we were going to enjoy the holiday as long as we could. Asked Judge if he wanted to come. He was relatively new to Prescott back then, didn’t know a lot of people, so he accepted. Miraculously, we didn’t get a call out. That meant all night, he and me talked. It was weird. Like brothers reunited. We just got on and it seemed we were tight from the minute we met. I had close buds on the crew, but Judge and I went from calling shit to each other during a parade to being best buds in a blink.”
And Peri, he didn’t share, had hated it.
Rix making a friend that close, them going out for runs, hikes, on bro camping trips, it pissed her off.
She’d liked Judge because you couldn’t not like the man.
But she’d been jealous of him.
Fuck, how he had he been so blind about her?
“I love your relationship with him,” Alex said softly, and Rix was grateful she brought him back to her, but he wasn’t surprised the words she uttered to bring him back.
“I love it too,” he stated the obvious.
Her felt her dimple return.
“So…Lady Sharp,” he teased.
She rolled her eyes to the heavens.
He kept at her.
“Babe, seriously, where’s that fluffy white dress you wore in that one picture? Totally gotta fuck you in that.”
She committed a miracle by shoving at him without moving even half an inch away from him.
Something that made him grin.
But it faded before he asked, “Probably not weird, it being your life.”
“Okay, yes, there were polo matches,” she admitted.
His grin came back.
Alex kept talking.
“And there were events with fancy dresses. And some of them were fluffy.”
His grin got bigger.
She kept going.
“But mostly, my life was Dad’s brownstone. Reading in a corner of the library. When I was old enough, escaping out to the city. Making certain I got in a dorm my freshman and sophomore years at Columbia so I could get out of the house. By the end, Dad was used to me being gone, so when I came back, because, obviously, juniors and seniors didn’t stay in dorms.”
“Obviously,” he concurred with mock gravity.
And again, he felt her lips twitch.
“So I came home and pretty much had my own life. He had his. And once I graduated, I took off.”
“Columbia?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered.
“Impressive.”
“With my last name, Rix, I could go anywhere. Harvard. Princeton. Oxford. Cambridge. It isn’t that impressive.”
He moved his hand to cup her behind her ear.
“Your last name didn’t get a degree at Columbia,” he stated resolutely. “You did.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“What’d you study?”
“Nonprofit management.”
That was his girl.
“’Course you did,” he murmured.
She pushed up and touched her lips to his.
She settled back and asked, “You okay?”
“Gonna take my babe into the tent and fuck her in a minute. Zenned out from sitting in the springs. Only bad part is we gotta leave tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” she repeated.
And she sounded disappointed that they had to leave.
But there was something else in that word.
He shot her the same question. “You okay?”
“I’m great.”
“Something’s up,” he pushed.
She gave it a beat before she said, “You seemed…” She was looking for words, he knew it when she found them. “Not as agile tonight.”
“I get pain,” he muttered.
She tensed. “I thought you—”
“Baby, you know,” he started gently. “I told you, it takes effort to walk normal. It just takes effort. All the time. It’s part of my life. I don’t think about it. But sometimes it catches up to me. Don’t know why. I’ve had way more active days than this. Whole weekends. There’s no rhyme or reason for it. It’s just what it is, and it’s gonna be a part of my life for the rest of it in one way or another.”
“Okay,” she replied, but she didn’t sound like she was happy with that word.