The Complete Series Boxed Set (46 page)

“Of course he knew you had a son!” Alex said. “You told him!”

H
er mouth twisted with bitterness and she reached for her wine, draining it in an impressive feat of continuous swallows, like an Oxford student
drinking a yard of ale uninterrupted.
 

“I did. At the time. He didn’t believe me. And so when you were a teen he looked me up, saw pictures of you, and…put it all together.”

John just nodded. She’d met him right after, Alex knew, when she’d consulted a lawyer about custody and protecting Alex from becoming the rope in a tug of war that never materialized.

“You never told me?” Josie said to him, clearly disappointed.

“He…it wasn’t like that, Josie. He wasn’t trying to get custody of Alex. Didn’t even want to see him.” His mom looked at Alex closely, knowing the words hurt. “He just wanted to make sure the opposite, in fact.”

“Opposite?”

“He had a life where he didn’t want me to find him,” Alex ground out, the words hard to say. His turn to gulp his glass of wine.

“He…what?” Josie’s confusion was palpable. “
Then why did he find you?” she asked Meribeth, who shrugged.
 

“Booty call gone wrong,” John said, voice dripping with sarcasm.

Alex’s neck snapped toward his mom, who winced. “Really?”

“Sorry, Merry. I shouldn’t have said that,” John whispered in his mom’s ear. She looked like she wanted a hole to swallow her up.

Alex could use one of those too right now.

Josie just sighed in understanding.

Noi’s nose nudging his crotch at that exact moment was the most pleasant interruption he could have possibly conjured.

“
Someone needs to go for a walk,” he announced, jumping up.
 

“And so does the dog,” John said quietly. He then shouted, “OW!” and looked at Meribeth, who had quite obviously just kicked him under the table.

Alex really didn’t care.
H
e grabbed the leash off the wall and reached for Noi, whose yeti-like tail wagged so hard and covered so much territory it could trigger an avalanche.

“I’ll come with you,” Josie said, jumping up from the table then coming to a woozy stop.

“Too much wine?” Meribeth’s smile made her dimples come out, and for a brief second Alex caught a glimpse of the shy, beautiful seventeen-year-old girl she had been when his father had—

“I’m fine,” Josie insisted, coming to Alex’s side and reaching for the leash.

Noi took off with a snap that jerked Josie off her feet as he bounded for the door, quickly held open by John so the dog and woman didn’t go crashing through the glass.

“Who’s walking who?” John called out as Alex followed Josie, laughing as he jogged to catch up.

“
Whom.”
 

“Whom? When did you become Grammar Girl?” Her arm was wiggling like a wet
noodle
, but she seemed determined to hang on to the dog’s leash. Alex carefully unwound it and took over.

Noi slowed down.

“How did you do that?” Josie squeaked, clearly baffled.

“He can sense power. Dominance.” He jokingly puffed up his chest. “An alpha.”

She snorted. The dog lifted his leg and a stream of pee shot out, the sound distinct in the darkness.

“Or he just needed to pee really badly,” she noted.

“
T
hat too,” Alex grumbled.
The cool night air should have grounded him, but he felt a deep sense of unease after the conversation at the table. Generally speaking, his mom didn’t mention his biological father very often. In fact, it had been years. While he knew the story she described, he’d tucked it away into a part of his brain that he didn’t air out very often, preferring to think of the rejection as an aberration, as a flaw in his sperm donor’s personality and absolutely, positively not a reflection on Alex as a human being.
 

Because that would be emotionally unbearable.

“
I’m sorry,” Josie said, out of breath and panting to walk in double time as she struggled to keep up with the giant, overexcited dog and long-legged Alex. “You never told me that story about your bio—”
 

“I’m sure you have plenty of stories about your mom you’ve kept inside,” he answered with a little too much bitterness. Regret flushed through his pulsing veins immediately, but some part of him couldn’t apologize. It felt like weakness. Like he really was someone you push
ed
aside, like a kid you don’t want to acknowledge.

She flinched.

He had a dual reaction, like something inside him split, the fury and pain on one side and his rational, compassionate side on the other. Cold, calculated glee formed inside him, tender shoots of an evil seed sprouting from the look of hurt on her face. For some reason, it felt good to see her have such a strong reaction to him.

It felt powerful.

T
he other side rushed in, shoving the bad away and pulling her against his chest, hundred-pound
H
usky on a leash be damned.

“
I’m
sorry.” His stomach was on fire and his legs shook slightly from a combination of suppressed rage and shocked intensity.
H
e’d really been that evil side, enjoyed it for those few seconds—and that was the most disturbing part of the whole story about his bio dad.

How little he really knew himself.

Her arms stayed motionless by her sides, and that same bitter seed that had begun to unfold inside him now tasted like poison. His breath rasped against her neck as he curled down to hold her, her palms tentative as
they
linked loosely around his waist.
That’s right
, he thought.
Trust me
.

Because God knows I’m not sure I trust myself.

On the surface, this was nothing. They’d made two sniping comments at each other, and an outsider would say he was overreacting, overly fearful that his sharp words were taken the wrong way by an overwrought woman.

Alex and Josie weren’t just anyone, though. Within the parameters of their relationship, he’d just screwed up, big time.

Worse? That damn sense of evil glory within.

Fe
e
ling powerless was a tremendous weapon. When people can make you feel powerless, it’s so tempting to turn to the darkness within to fight back. Alex had little experience with this.

Josie, he knew, was a master.

The realization struck him like a lightning bolt.

“
I would never do to a child what my father did to me,” he said softly, his breath pushing thin strands of her hair over her ear.
 

“I know,” she replied, arms
reaching out to him for comfort
.

“You’ve been that child, too,” he added. “Rejected just for being there.”

She froze.

“
Rejected for just
being
,” he said with a groan, a raw feeling in the back of his throat as the words came out.
 

Her head bobbed with a nod against his chest.

“My mom shielded me from that,” he continued. “But yours
caused
it.”

Josie took in a shaky, deep breath, still silent.

“I want you to feel so loved by me that you have enough inside you. That the empty cup is overflowing. That every day you know I loved you more than I thought I was capable of. And that when I die—”

She looked up in alarm, eyes shining with unspilled tears, Noi beginning to whine and tug at the leash l
o
oped through Alex’s hand.

“—you have so much love stored within you it lasts until the next life we live, so we can find each other.”

The tears dropped down her round cheeks now, spilling down her neckline.

“This life isn’t good enough for you? You’re staking a claim on eternity?” she asked with a loving smile.

“If I could bite you and make our love immortal, I would,” he joked, breaking the tension. Normally, Josie was the one who descended into jokes when the emotions got to be too much. This time, he was the one who broke first.

They were rubbing off on each other.

“
I draw the line at sparkles and werewolves,” she said as she pulled back and wove her fingers with his, her bones so birdlike under his grasp. Noi yanked, hard, on the leash, and he let the beast lead them to the path
where John had found them last winter, nearly, ahem…in a delicate position.
 

Josie’s eyes lit up as she recognized the path, then she frowned. “Dog,” she said.

Alex laughed. “Yeah, we won’t replicate our…
outdoor sport
from last winter. Not with Noi as an audience.”

As if he understood their words, the big white puffball stopped in his tracks and looked at Alex, cocking
its
head.

“He knows we’re talking about sex,” Josie said.

N
oi shook himself like he was wet, turned his head with a sniff, and pul
l
ed them onto the dirty path.

Alex felt completely wiped, like someone really had drained him of his blood. Explaining love was so far beyond his grasp. His understanding of how intimacy worked
was
something he invented as he went along. Josie
was so hard to figure out, and although they’d spent so much time together, and two months actually living together, he felt as if she were still a mystery. A language he couldn’t yet speak but was starting to read, single word by single word, parsing out meaning from a handful of vocabulary that he hoped was enough to gain meaning.
 

“I love you,” he called out to her as Noi raced ahead, chasing some smaller animal.

“I love you, too!” she cried.

Marry me
, he nearly shouted back, then dug his heels in as his body came to a reeling halt from the thought that slammed against his skull.

Marry.

Me.

The surreal sense of the two selves receded, his stronger si
d
e emerging. Love always
won
,
didn’t
it?

It ha
d
to.

The alternative was just too painful.

Formalizing a life with Josie—an entire lifetime, measured in years, not months. Decades, not years. He could imagine it so easily that the life he lived before meeting her seemed more washed out. Faded. As if it were real but in sepia tones, a little less shiny. A lot less loving.

If he asked her to marry him, right here, right now, as she ran behind him to catch up, he could imagine her reaction. Surprise. Horror. Withdrawal. She wasn’t ready, even if he was.

And he was.

Like birth, though, timing was everything. Allow life to unfold on its own timeline and the result was always better. Rush anything and complications could emerge.

Complications were something they could do without. More than enough of those already.

Noi’s nose was buried deep in a bush as he rustled some tiny creatures out of the foliage, the furry bodies a blur as they scampered up a pine tree, needles splintering down like poking rain on Alex’s head. Illuminated by streetlights above him, on the road, he could see the white dog, could feel his muscled pull against the tether of the leash. Josie’s cold hands wrapped around his waist from behind, her frozen little ice-cube fingers sneaking under his shirt to tickle him like a cadaver’s bones in motion.

He made a sound like a teenage girl squealing.
I
t was so abrupt that Noi’s neck snapped up and he sniffed, looking at Alex with curious wonder.

“That cold?” Josie asked. Even in the mild late-spring weather, on the verge of summer, she managed to be cold most nights. Fingers and toes, mostly.

“It’s like you’re stroking me with a
P
opsicle,” he said with a shiver. Noi made a huffing bark sound.
That’s right, boy
, Alex though
t
.
Defend me from the Icicle Fingers of Doom
.

“I suppose that means,” she said teasingly, her fingers at his jeans button, “you would prefer I not put them—ah, you’re so warm,” she groaned as her tentacles of cold wrapped around his soft penis, sending a rapid chill from feet to thighs, up his spine, making him convulse.

“By all that is holy, what in the hell? That’s torture!” he said through gritted teeth. “
I can’t believe I ever thought about marrying a woman who would be so cruel!”
 

The words were out before he could think. Her hand paused.

Her hand paused for a
long
time.

And then she touched him, stroked him with her small, skillful fist, the heat and blood flowing where his body needed it most in that moment. Noi tugged on the leash and Alex’s grip slackened as he was distracted. The dog shot off into the bushes.

Alex was about to shoot something off, too.

A distant part of his brain told him to chase Noi, that he wasn’t smart around the road above, that he would jump in the murky spring waters of the recently melted lake and get filthy.

Josie was getting filthy, too, in an entirely different—and achingly better—way.

He turned around, facing her, instinct overcoming his pleasure. She looked down, hand determined to finish
its
task.

Knees bent slightly, he braced himself as her other hand slowly lowered his zipper, unclasped the button, and then she spoke with perfectly articulated words:

“Just don’t ask me to obey.”

Josie held Noi’s leash like it was a rabid skunk. “I cannot believe he got into the lake,” she
tsked
.

“I knew this would happen,” Alex muttered, giving her a disapproving side-eye. “It’s all your fault.”

“My fault?” They trudged up the steps to Meribeth and John’s house. Alex opened the front door for her, Noi walking slowly, as if he knew he were about to be chastened.

Or worse—bathed.

“I should never have let go of the leash.”

“
T
hat’s right—
your
fault.”

“You had me by the balls, Josie. Literally.”

She turned bright red and looked at a spot over his shoulder. He turned around.