Page 60 of Thank you, Next
“Yup.” He’d told her he would. He had many faults, but he always did what he said he’d do. “Said I would.”
“I’m pretty sure I deserve you, but I’m not sure what you screwed up in a past life to deserve me.”
He wasn’t going to touch that. He was sure he’d purchased enough trouble in his current life to deserve an irksome woman. Especially one who made him laugh and loved his food and had wanted him since before he could grow a beard.
“This is where it happened,” Alex said, and he immediately knew what she was talking about.
They’d spent all summer together, and she’d finally kissed him a few days before she was set to go back to her mother’s house. He’d frozen at first, so shocked that she was kissing him that he couldn’t move. And then he’d pushed her away, because his first thought after realizing that she liked him like that was that he didn’t want to lose the only home he’d ever had.
“I’m really sorry about that,” Will said. “I could have been more sensitive.”
Instead of pushing her away and wiping off his mouth, he probably could have explained why he didn’t want to risk raising Lexi’s ire by kissing her back instead of saying that it was gross that they were kissing and she was like his sister.
“It would have been gross for us to hook up while your dad was married to my grandma. You were my step-uncle. And it would have gotten grosser had they stayed married.”
She had a point, but he still felt bad about hurting her. Until she’d started trying to interview her exes, he hadn’t realized how deeply his careless words had cut her. He asked, “You don’t think it’s gross now, do you?”
She looked at him up and down, and he could feel a flush creep up his neck. “Definitely not.” She paused for a moment and said, “I am a pain in the ass, and I’m not suddenly going to be the perfect girlfriend anytime soon, you know that, right?”
Will thought for a second before responding. “Well, I figure ‘You broke it, you bought it.’ ”
“You didn’t break me, Will,” Alex said. “I might be broken, but you definitely didn’t break me. And I’m not expecting you to put me back together, either.”
Will took a deep breath and sighed. She’d taken a leap in telling him that she deserved him. And now he needed to take a leap and trust that she wouldn’t run if he said the words that had been burning in his throat every time he saw her for a while now. “I love you, Alex. You can always come to me when you’re falling apart.”
She got up and came over to his pool chair. The metal creaked as she straddled him and kissed him on the mouth. It was a short kiss. A sweet kiss. A promise of more later.
“I love you, too.”
Will wrapped his arms around her and pulled her closer to him so that he could take her mouth again. He soaked up her magic, relearning her body with his hands under the blanket that she’d draped over both of them.
He didn’t know if it was because they were making out by Lexi’s pool while she was presumably inside watching a movie or something, but he felt like a teenager again. This was what he would have done if he hadn’t been so unsure of himself back then. If he’d known that his found family would love him no matter what, and that he’d find roots and his place in the world where he least expected it.
•••
Alex had no idea how long their kiss went on, but it was a movie kiss. She felt like she was floating on a cloud, except where she and Will were connected to each other. When Will grabbed her face and pulled it down to his, his hands were so sure that she felt grounded again.
If he hadn’t come for her tonight, she would have gone to him in the next few hours. After seeing Jason again, she realized that every man she’d ever been with had taught her something about herself that she’d needed to know before she could accept the kind of love that Will was offering her.
Jason had taught her that everything could be perfect on paper but still not fill her heart the way that a messed-up courtship with the right person could. She might always feel like she was getting the better part of the deal with Will. But she could tell that he felt the same, and wasn’t that ideal?
They might have kissed forever if Lexi hadn’t barged onto the patio playing a vuvuzela, with Star Sign tagging behind her.
“Finally!” Lexi cried out into the night. Alex was grateful, not for the first time, that Lexi’s neighbors couldn’t really hear anything that went on the backyard.
Will groaned into her neck, but he had a twinkle in his eye when Alex looked down at him. “We might as well get this over with,” he said.
“You know that this is only the beginning, right?” They needed to brace for what was coming. “We have to present a united front to Lexi at all times. If she suspects we’re have a problem in the bedroom, then she’s going to send over a healer for that. You know she has a crystal guy on call, and I’m not sticking any jade eggs in my hooha to release bad energy.”
Will laughed at that and Alex scrambled off his lap.
“Oh, you weren’t having sex?” Lexi sounded almost disappointed.
Will put his arm around Alex’s waist and pulled her close. She checked in with herself to make sure she wasn’t feeling any urges to run away. And she was all clear.
“We are adults, Lexi. We don’t need to utilize the back seats of cars or backyards to get our rocks off.”
Her grandmother’s reply was, “Don’t knock it until you try it.”