And they robbed me of my ability to think about anything but Alex, let alone the ability to say anything back to him.
“To answer your question, no, there wasn’t cake. We all acted like we were drunk out of our minds, got married, then did the ‘honorable good guy, no regrets, let’s try to make a go of this’ in the morning.”
I knew from things he’d said before that he’d hardly dated after his wife died, hadn’t even wanted to, so being in that situation must have been emotionally breaking on so many levels.
“You felt guilty, didn’t you?” He looked surprised by my question. “Because you felt unfaithful to Lisa going through with it.”
The surprise faded to sadness as he nodded. “Yeah. Lisa was something special, and I felt dirty having to call Luli my wife.”
Here’s where maturity comes into play. See, if you were insecure or immature, you might feel hurt by what Alex had just said, but I got it. I’d seen my parents have a happy marriage where they were both something unique to each other.
Granted, mine hadn’t been like that, but I knew what it was like to place someone on a pedestal the way Alex did with Lisa and Dad did with Mom.
So, I wasn’t even close to jealous or hurt by it. On the contrary, I actually ached for his loss, even though it’d been over twenty-five years ago. And I felt sick for him that he’d been in the position he’d been in with Luli afterward.
Could he have said no to the case? Absolutely. But his job was to serve and protect, and people were dying because of them.
“You wouldn’t have done it if Dave had still been living at home, would you?” Again with the rhetorical questions, but maybe if I asked ones like this, he’d stop blaming himself for being a shitty dad taking on the case. Stop blaming himself for all of it.
“I wouldn’t even have considered it.”
Fiddling with a fold in the material of his t-shirt, I nodded as I considered it all.
“Here’s what I’m thinking. You helped to stop the group from targeting more people. Who knows how many more of them would have committed suicide because of it, and how many more kids would now have mental and emotional scars for the rest of their lives.
“Ideally, you would have continued living life with Lisa as your wife, but would Dave have moved here if you hadn’t survived the heartbreak and challenges you both went through? Would he have met Tabby and had Sheena? Would you now be a detective, solving crimes and busting bad guy’s asses?”
His hands had been continuously moving over my back, but they stopped when I raised my head to look at him.
“Our decisions affect not just our futures, but the ones of those close to us. If I’d left Neil all those years ago, I probably wouldn’t have Delicious Divas. Jacinda and Sayla might be on different paths right now. My parents might not have stayed in Palmerstown. Cody may not have had someone to take him to the hospital before I got there, and if it’d been a twisted testicle, he might have lost it.”
Leaning close to him again, I whispered, “There are so many what-ifs in life, but your actions helped more people than you realize—not just mine and Dave’s. Stop being so hard on yourself and accept you did what was best at the time, and that it was something not many people in your shoes would have done.”
The second the last word was out of my mouth, he was pulling me into him and kissing me with a hunger I’m not sure I’d ever experienced before.
“To answer your question, yes, I’m sure I want this with you,” he growled against my mouth, and then began kissing me again.
Chapter Seventeen
Evie
I don’t know what came over me because I wasn’t an aggressive woman, but I reached down and began tugging his t-shirt up, desperate to feel him skin-to-skin.
He only allowed me seconds to get it over his head before he was kissing me again.
I’d been hoping he’d copy my move and take my tank top off, but when he only skimmed his hands under the material and rested them on my ribs, not taking it any further, I took the job into my own hands.
This time when I pulled away from him to get it over my head, he leaned back and took his time scanning his eyes over the skin that’d been bared to him, stopping on my bra.
“Fucking beautiful.”
He was lying. I didn’t have self-esteem or feel overly self-conscious about my body, but I saw what he was looking at right now every day in the mirror before I got in the shower. I knew what imperfections I had just as well as I knew what I had going for me.