“I’m so sorry,” she says, tears starting to mist her eyes.
“Hey, hey.” I cup her face in my hands, my thumb wiping away her tears as soon as they flow over her lashes and land on the top of her cheeks. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“There is—”
“No.” I shake my head. “There isn’t, I promise.”
She stutters a breath, letting her head drop to my chest and I wrap my arms around her, holding her to me.
I kiss the top of her head before my eyes wander over to the door.
“Wow,” Kay whispers. “I never realized you two were—”
“Sweetheart?” Ty interrupts, a smile on his face. “Not right now.”
“Right.” She chuckles. “Sorry.”
Lexi pulls away at the sound of her voice, her eyes widening. “Shit, I…” Her gaze flits back to mine. “I look so stupid right now.”
“No you don’t,” I tell her, conveying with my eyes how much I mean it.
“I erm…” Both of our gazes flit to Kitty. “I think you need to get more milk.” She holds up an empty milk carton and chuckles. “It kind of broke when you ran away.”
Lexi laughs, the tinkling sound wrapping around us all as she lets herself go. I can still feel and see the pain that she’s trying to push back, but now that she’s let me see it, there’s no way that I’ll let it go.
I want to know what has caused the anguish that she holds onto, and I’ll stop at nothing to find out because she means more to me than anyone ever has. It boggles my mind how I can feel like this when I’ve known her for such a short amount of time, but I can’t control it. Not that I’d even want to.
I wrap my arm around Lexi, walking her outside of the center and locking up as all the guys leave.
“I’ll take you home,” I tell her, taking the bags off the bench and walking down to my car.
“You don’t have—”
“Yeah,” I say. “I do. I want to.” I pop the trunk and put the bags inside before closing it and turning back to her where she stands next to my car.
“I…” Her eyes flit behind me, and when I spin around, I see Geena standing at the precinct doors, staring at us.
“Come on,” I say, walking toward Lexi and opening the door for her.
Once she’s inside, I walk around to the driver’s side, not taking my eyes off Geena. She still sees me as the man she can control, the one who always did and said what she wanted. I was never myself with her, and now that I know what it feels like to be me, there’s no way I’ll be going back to what I used to be.
I smirk at her even though she probably can’t see me. She may think she has power, but she has no idea the kind that I have.
A swarm of butterflies take flight in my stomach as I sit on my bed, preparing to get ready for this date. After yesterday, I was sure that I would have pushed him away. Showing him some of my crazy was a foolproof way of him losing interest in me, but it didn’t work like that. If anything, I felt closer to him because of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still so embarrassed at having a meltdown like that and having people there that I barely know to see it. But it doesn’t matter, because when he brought me home after getting more milk from the grocery store, he said he’d pick me up at eight tonight.
And now, at seven fifteen, I’m still not even close to being ready. My eyes flit to the small clock that lives on my nightstand, the hands tick faster and faster, taunting me.
I’ll never be ready at this rate.
“Lexi?”
I swallow at the sound of Livvy’s voice coming from the open door and lift my eyes, staring into her blue ones.
“Hey,” I say, my voice a mere whisper.
She smiles and steps forward, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You look nervous.”