Chapter 11 #3
Taking a deep breath, I toyed with one of the rips in my jeans. “So, are we taking this trip to clear the air for last night, or do you want to talk about what happened at the party?” The words felt thick in my throat.
“Nothing happened at the party. Cash puffed his chest out, and I told him how it is. I just want to talk to you, Ok?” Phoenix stated, giving off that arrogant vibe.
I released a frustrated exhale. “OK. But couldn’t we have talked at the house?”
“No. Because the walls there are as thin a fuck, believe me, I know.”
So, did I. The sounds of my brothers screwing were noises I wanted bleached from my brain.
I couldn’t stop myself from shifting in my seat so I could watch Nix as he drove the car.
The way his large, strong hands flexed against the wheel reminded me of how they’d felt as he’d held me close.
Panty melting stuff. His musky scent kept tickling my nose, conjuring up memories of what happened in his room.
“Phoenix?”
“Yeah?”
“Why did you touch me last night?”
The question hung heavily between us; my heart was pounding so loudly that I was surprised you couldn’t hear it. His touch had set me on fire, like an arsonist, which was rich considering what my father had done.
Nix cast me a glance, his tongue darting out to lick his lips, and a crack of electricity ran up my spine. Was he reliving it? His reply gave me goosebumps. “As I said, I wanted to, and because I’ve thought of nothing else for days, Harper. And that’s the truth.”
Pleasure pumped through me, and I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the headrest. That felt nice. Phoenix was admitting something to me.
As he roughly changed gear, I turned my head and looked at his side profile. God, he was good-looking. “So, we should talk about it then. About what’s going on here?”
He caught me clearly checking him out, and his jaw clenched.
“Yes, we should. But not—not right now. For now, I’d like us to be friends again.
Turn back the clock, and start again. I think anything happening between us whilst we live together at Ma’s isn’t a good idea.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.
You know I do. For the time being, we need to put the brakes on.
Can you do that?” His voice dipped at the end.
I thought about what he was saying. I didn’t like it, but understood.
It wasn’t the best feeling, sneaking about behind everyone’s back.
And no matter what I said, Nix was stubborn.
If he decided that we needed to calm shit down, then that is what would happen.
I was just pleased that he was talking to me again, and in a normal, non-bossy way.
“OK, I can do that. If that’s what you want.”
“It’s not about what I want, it’s about what’s right. Can we start again, please?” And there it was, Phoenix Carter turning on the charm. He could probably melt the polar ice caps with that, please, alone.
My insides start to shrink like a deflated balloon.
Chewing the inside of my lip, I nodded my agreement.
“Yes, I’d like that. Friends.” Although I did feel disappointed, there was a level of relief, considering I had shit to deal with.
The thought of Phoenix finding out about my nasty habits was mortifying; the one man I cared about the most seeing me as a freak would probably finish me off.
I needed to take his offer of a timeout and sort my shit out ASAP.
If you stop stealing shit, he never needs to know.
“So, we’re friends again,” I began, casting a glance over his perfectly chiseled features, fuck, he was hot. How would I keep someone as sexy as Nix at arm's length?
“Yes, friends, and so, you need to stop looking at me like that,” Phoenix said with an arched brow.
“Like what?” I replied with feigned innocence.
“Like you want to be fucked.”
Every muscle below my waist clenched, the directness of his comment causing my stomach to flutter. I blinked back at him.
Nix’s mouth split into a sexy grin. “The way you flinch when I drop the F-bomb is so fricking cute.”
I huffed out a sigh, shaking my head. “You’re incorrigible.” One minute, he was friend-zoning me, and the next, he was being as flirtatious as fuck.
“You love it, baby,” he replied with a wink.
Fine. I could play his game, for now.
I rolled my eyes at his cockiness. Shuffling back in my seat.
“So now we’re down with the pleasantries. You can tell me where we’re going.”
My question altered the mood in the car to one that felt more serious.
I faced forward again, dragging my gaze off that infamous vein that pulsed in Phoenix’s neck when he was tense.
The air between us was anything but clear, with so many things left unsaid, but it was apparent at that moment that Nix had other things on his mind.
I wondered when he was going to tell me what the fuck was going on.
He cast me a glance before refocusing on the road.
“You said last night that I had been distant, and you’re right. But there was a good reason for that?
“And that is?”
“I haven’t got my own head around it yet.”
“Head around what?” I questioned before hastily adding. “Your agency file?”
I welcomed the dart of relief as he replied. “Yeah.”
Anticipation swirled around my head at the thought of Phoenix talking to me about what he had found out about his past. “OK.”
Stress lines decorated his forehead. I recognized stress well. During that part of my life when Nix and I were ripped apart, I had lived with it daily. To the point that it came as natural to me as breathing. I pushed away thoughts of Dalton and his cruel face.
And then he revealed the reason for his anxiety. “I know where my mother is, Harper.”
Fuck!
That admission made me sit up in my seat. “Really?” My brain was swamped with a thousand questions, all battling to get to the top and make their way to my mouth. A muscle that was currently hung wide open.
Nodding, he replied. “Yeah.”
After a moment’s pause, he explained. “And that’s where we’re going now.”
More questions fell onto the pile. “To meet your mom?”
Nix’s fingers had tightened on the wheel so much that his busted-up knuckles were white. The fact that one was badly grazed didn’t go unnoticed, but I knew it wasn’t the time to ask about that.
I stared at him in disbelief as he said. “Yeah. She’s agreed to meet with me.”
A surge of fuck knew what bubbled through my gut. I knew Nix and his mother were categorized as unfinished business in his head. He wanted to know why she had stopped the visits and walked away.
My chest had grown tight, and I dragged my fingers through my hair, needing something to do with my hands. I wanted to climb onto his lap and hug him. Not a good idea, considering we were now on the freeway doing sixty.
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Huge?”
Nix shot me a shy smile. It was cute and something you rarely saw, even the dimples he used to have reappeared. Blowing out a harsh breath, he answered. “Yep. It’s about as huge as it gets.”
He then filled me in on everything he had learned from his file about how his mother had left him and remarried.
She now had a family of her own, a husband and a child, a boy who would be Phoenix’s half-brother.
They lived in a fancy house upstate in a rural area of Barrington.
He leaned across me and opened the glove box, pulling out the manila file and handing it to me.
I scanned my eyes over the papers, noting the address, Maple Avenue.
That sexual tension between us was put on hold, for the time being, and it felt like old times again as we spoke about what he could expect when he met his mother for the first time in years.
Nix said he wanted to know more about who his father had been.
I asked if he had any intention of reaching out to his mother with a view to a future relationship with her, and he said no.
He was firm about that, his tone suggesting that she was dead to him.
He just wanted to know why she left. Phoenix believed that if there was a reason and it was valid, he could feel some closure and move on. I wasn’t so sure.
For me, it was so different. I couldn’t ask my father why he did what he did, as he was dead.
As Phoenix took the exit, I pushed back in my seat and prepared myself for the unexpected.
Whatever happened, I needed to be there for the boy I cared about the most in the entire world. A boy who was also the man I was falling for.
But most importantly, in that moment, he was my best friend and needed my support without any romantic strings to cloud the waters.