Page 40 of Thank you, Next

Alex looked up at him, seemingly startled by the confession, because her eyes got wide. “I would have thought you’d run screaming after what Ace said at the club.”

“Was any of it true?” He probably shouldn’t have asked that question, but he had to know for some reason.

Alex looked down. “Sort of. I’d put any feelings I had for you out of my mind for so long before the wedding that I didn’t realize that I’d care about seeing you promise to spend the rest of your life with someone right in front of me.” She put down her wine and fully turned toward him, resting her head on her arm over the back of the couch. She looked sweet and vulnerable like that, and it didn’t help his growing desire to kiss her, to strip her out of her clothes and explore every crevice and curve with his mouth. He wanted to bathe in the scent of her. It was a jarring thing to go from trying to tolerate someone to wanting to be inside them. “And yeah, I got super drunk after the ceremony and spent the evening sending my regrets through the plumbing system.”

“I wish I would have known before I met April.” He’d always thought that Alex had regretted trying to kiss him as much as he’d regretted rejecting her. They’d been so young back then. And she’d always acted like she didn’t care at all about him. So he’d moved on with April.

“I wish I’d known, too.” Alex shook her head and her hair fell over her face. “I wouldn’t have gone to the wedding.”

Will pulled her hair back from her face again. Now that they’d broken the seal on touching each other, he wanted to touch her all the time.

“What are we going to do about this?” He had to give Alex credit. She always had a plan for everything. Even if it was totally cockamamie like her mission to talk to all her exes.

Too bad this was the kind of thing that was hard to plan for.

•••

Will sitting on her couch, drinking wine, talking about feelings. This was like a Bigfoot sighting, only rarer. It felt like a first date, but it wasn’t a first date. Was it?

“I put you out of my mind after that.” Alex probably needed to clarify. “I don’t fuck with married men.” In her line of work, she saw that married men were usually too complicated to consider. And Will assuming that she was in Andrew’s office for prurient purposes was still a fresh wound.

Will started touching the inside of her wrist with the tip of his finger, tracing lazy patterns. She suppressed a shiver. “I know that.”

“So?” In a role reversal, it was Alex who couldn’t get the words out.

“Are we going to give this thing a try?” He leaned over, close enough for her to move a few inches and catch his mouth with hers. It was clear what he wanted her answer to be. “It doesn’t have to be anything serious until we want it to be. Lexi doesn’t even need to know.”

Alex sat up and moved back on the couch.

Will looked confused. “What?”

“You want to keep me a secret?” If Will only wanted to have a few secret hookups, then she wasn’t interested at all. She wasn’t going to be his booty call. She might have been that for a few guys on her list, but she wouldn’t do it with Will. He’d meant too much to her for too long. She’d loved him, hated him, lusted after him, for half her life.

“I can’t do that with you.” She fought to keep her voice calm, even though there was a lump in her throat the size of the Hope Diamond. “I think you’d better go.”

Alex stood up and found Will’s shoes and coat. She opened the door and set them carefully on the ground outside the door.

“Wait. I’m not trying to keep you a secret. I know how I feel about you.” Alex turned toward Will but kept the door open. Because he might know how he felt about her, but she wasn’t sure what they were even doing. After talking to her exes, she wasn’t sure that she could even be in a relationship, but what she felt for him felt so much bigger than what she’d felt for anyone else. Could she even be what he needed her to be?

When Alex was silent for a long moment, Will’s face and posture hardened. “We’re not even going to talk about this?”

“You know what?” she said, motioning for him to take his exit. “I think I’m all talked out for the night. I need a break from talking.”

“Don’t push me away.” It was wild how he knew exactly what she was trying to do. “I’m not like those other guys. I care about you, and I know you. I see you.”

That punched her in the gut. He did see her, and that was terrifying. “I know. I care about you, too,” Alex heard the emotion in her own voice and paused. “I just need a little more time. Tonight was a lot.”

He stepped up to her, and she was enveloped by his smell again. She almost changed her mind when he cupped her face with his hand. “I’ll give you all the time you need. Just don’t need too much.”

SEVENTEEN

Alex was lucky. For the next few weeks, she was busy negotiating a divorce settlement for a repeat client. That always made things more complicated, because she had to consider the terms of their previous divorces when drafting the new settlement. Sort of like nesting dolls, and people got antsy as the settlements inside the nesting dolls got smaller.

The only good thing—other than all the hours she’d billed—about working a hundred hours a week was that it left little time to think about the fact that not only did Will want to have a physical relationship with her, he also wanted more of her. That was everything she’d wanted when she’d thrown herself at him. And maybe she wouldn’t have been so afraid when he’d gotten married. But the older she got, the more she had to lose from risking her heart. She wished she was still as openhearted as she had been when she’d first met Will. But her job and her life experiences made it too hard. She already hurt thinking about how awful she would feel if things ended with Will.

It sucked. And Alex wasn’t sure how to proceed.

By the final day of mediation, which felt more like a Monday than a Friday, all she wanted to do was wash her face and get into bed with a big glass of wine and an SVU marathon. She was halfway through an episode in which the sexual tension between Stabler and Benson was at its juiciest—her favorite time period of the show—when her bed started shaking.