29. Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Margot
Alex holds my cheeks in his hands as he places a gentle kiss on my lips. As it would turn out, I was the one who would turn ravenous for his touch. I creep up on my tippy toes and grab his neck, pulling his lips back down to mine with a force that seems to equally surprise and delight him. Alex’s hands move to my waist and he grips me tighter, pushing us impossibly closer. I can’t get enough. Alex can’t get enough. He pushes me backward against the tree-lined fence where a stray branch whips me in the arm.
“Ow,” I whine, giggling.
Alex pulls me forward away from the fence. “Ah shit, sorry,” he says, glancing toward the frat house that is steps away from our rendezvous spot.
“We should probably go inside anyway. If I get another text from Danika, I think my phone might overheat.”
Alex laughs, placing his hand on my back to guide me away from the shadowy corner and up the walkway of his house. Once coming into the light of the porch, Alex is immediately greeted by stragglers sitting on the miss-matched porch furniture. His hand drops from my back as he reaches up to grasp hands with his friends in greeting. No one acknowledges me, not that I expected them to, but also Alex doesn’t offer any introductions. I don’t let any ill thoughts about it take root in my brain, opting instead to enter the house through the front door that Alex is holding open for me.
The minute we enter, my senses are bombarded with flashing lights, alcohol stench, deafening music and mystery smoke. Beside me, Alex curses.
“These fuckers love to have their way when I’m not here,” he says, he jaw ticking as he searches the entryway for one of his frat brothers.
Pushing up on my toes, I speak in his ear over the loud music. “I’m going to find Danika and Sydney.” Alex nods but doesn’t meet my eyes as my heels hit the ground again. He’s clearly on a mission to find whoever’s to blame for this chaos.
Leaving Alex in the foyer, I walk into the busy living room, narrowly avoiding an empty cup being thrown in my direction. The way this party is playing out reminds me of the first night I met Alex in this very house when he was aggressively removing someone from his home. I still can’t believe how different he is when you actually get to know him. Gone is the rough exterior, at least around me. It’s hard to be tough when he’s admitted that his favorite movie is John Tucker Must Die.
Smiling to myself, I give a quick glance around the room and notice it’s sans Danika and Sydney. I head outside, hoping to find them sitting around the firepit or cheering on a beer pong game. After a cursory glance around the backyard, I notice they aren’t there either. There’s only one more place to check before I send one an SOS text. Heading toward the backdoor, I move to pull the knob open but my wrist is caught by a hand from behind.
“Can we please just talk?”
Ryan’s eyes pierce mine from the bottom of the steps, the overhead light making his blue eyes look like a glacier. I pull my hand out of his grasp but continue to look down at him. I have absolutely nothing to say to him. Even though Alex didn’t tell me which Delta Epsilon guys were the ones that jumped Keith, there’s a pretty high chance Ryan had something to do with it. Especially considering it happened right after he left my apartment, drunk and upset.
“Margot, please. Just one minute, that’s all I’m asking for.” His eyes are bloodshot. I can tell that he’s not going to drop this easily so rather than make a scene, I relent.
“One minute,” I say, firmly, nodding my head toward the empty fire pit, the place where we first talked. The irony is not lost on me.
Ryan lets me lead the way to the pit and I purposely pick differently chairs than the ones we previously sat in. Also, I wanted to be sure not to sit in the chairs that Alex and I sat in for some reason.
Plopping down in the seat, I watch Ryan linger slightly above me.
“Do you want a drink or something?”
I level him with a glare that answers his question, causing him to promptly sit down in the chair next to mine. We’re facing the house with the raging fire in front of us. It’s not a particularly cold night but my disdain for the person next to me is filling my veins with ice, causing me to shiver.
“Look, things got out of hand the other night. First, I want to apologize for what happened. I shouldn’t have busted into your apartment like that and I didn’t mean to blow up the way I did. I was not in my right mind,” Ryan says calmly.
I look over at him, seeing the sincerity in his eyes. “I appreciate the apology.” Ryan sighs in relief before I continue. “To be clear, I’m not saying what you did is okay and I don’t necessarily forgive you but I can acknowledge your sincerity.”
Ryan closes his mouth, clearly swallowing what he was about to say, and nods. For a moment, we’re both silent, staring into the blazing fire.
“Well, if that’s all,” I say, gripping the lawn chair arms to pull myself up when Ryan speaks again.
“Kai is not who you think he is.”
I’m stunned into silence. This is what he wants to talk to me about? “What does that mean? I hardly know Kai.”
“Okay, then, he’s not the guy Alex thinks he is.”
In exasperation, I run my hands down my face. “Ryan, just spit it out. This cryptic stuff is giving me a headache.” I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket but I don’t pull it out. It’s probably Danika looking for me and I know I need to get back to looking for her but not until Ryan gets to the point of his outburst. And boy does he…
“I’m sure you know that Keith was roughed up a bit by some of my guys,” Ryan looks me directly in the eyes when he speaks about how his friends hurt one of mine. I want to scream at him for his cavalier manner in speaking about it but he continues before I get the chance. “I want you to know the reason why that happened.
“Some of my guys have…problems. Gambling problems. They make bets without thinking, and they get themselves in trouble. One of my brothers, Logan, was at the horse track betting one day when he saw Kai. Logan convinced Kai to get in on some bets with him, mainly just to fuck with the Kappas. But Logan had no idea what kind of shit Kai was into.”
Ryan breathes fast and continues.
“Basically, Kai wrote more than a few checks his ass couldn’t cash. He owed some of us Deltas a lot of fucking money and Logan was tired of waiting for it. None of the promises Kai made ever came through.”
The fire flickers in front of us and my phone vibrates again but nothing could pull me from this conversation. This revelation. If it is the truth…
“Without consulting me, Logan and a few others decided to take some of the debt off Kai, by way of his brother. By the time I showed up after leaving your apartment, Keith was already pretty battered. I ripped my guys heads off and brought Keith to his front porch but the damage was already done.
“I didn’t want anyone to see me and as it is, I probably shouldn’t even be here but I knew you would be and I wanted to explain to you, relationship or not, I wanted to tell my side before it gets torn apart by Alex and his friends.”
As if on cue, the back door flies open, and Alex leads a pack of Kappas toward the fire pit. I’ve never been afraid of him before but I am suddenly, for the second time tonight, reminded of the first time I met him.
“What the fuck are you doing here, Walsh?”
As they get closer to the fire, I can see that Alex is flanked by Kai and Keith, the latter looking tired and the former looking like he could kill Ryan via telekinesis. It’s when I look at Alex that I start to sweat. He’s shooting daggers at me. Alone with the enemy. Yeah, it doesn’t look good.
To his defense, Ryan doesn’t meet fire with fire. In fact, he raises his hands in surrender, standing from the chair. “Not here for trouble, just wanted to talk to Margot.”
“You have no reason to talk to her,” Alex spits.
Ryan doesn’t fight, he doesn’t raise his voice when he nods and says, “I’m leaving now.”
“The fuck you are,” Kai mutters, launching himself toward us only to be held back by Devon.
“Margot, come here,” Alex says, his voice a command. He clearly wants to show us as a united front against Ryan, but I feel like this whole thing is ridiculous, especially because of what Ryan just told me.
“I actually think you guys should just talk to each other,” I say, motioning between Ryan and the group. Ryan looks over at me and I give him a nod of encouragement.
But it’s Kai who speaks up. “I’m not talking to the son of a bitch that tore up my brother. But you go ahead, princess, go with him if you care so much about what he has to say.”
I look over at Alex, hoping for some defense but his eyes are narrowed at me too. “I’m not leaving with him. I’m just saying, maybe you should hear him out.”
“If you trust anything that dipshit has to say, you don’t belong here.” Kai is taking over the narrative and based on what I just learned about him, I understand why. He doesn’t want the truth to come out. And I don’t want to be the one to fill in the gaps either. This has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the Deltas and the Kappas. I’ve never been interested in frat problems before and I’m not now.
But when I look over at Alex, he’s gazing at me like he’s looking at a stranger. Like he has no idea who I am. I can feel Ryan’s eyes on me from the side and Alex’s glare from the front.
“Can we go talk inside?” I ask Alex, my voice annoyingly shaky.
Alex stays quiet, looking back and forth between Ryan and me, and I know he’s already made up his mind. He’s taking this at face value rather than listening to what I have to say.
“Forget it,” I say, looking up and shaking my head. I grab my bag from the chair and move away from the group to head inside. If I don’t find Danika and Sydney on my way out, I’ll just text them that I left, not wanting to linger any longer in this house.
Alex lets me walk past him, and I don’t look back to see how the rest of the group manages their staring contest. As I enter the kitchen, looking back and forth and not finding either one of my roommates, I decide enough is enough. I’m out of here.
I don’t let the first tear drop until I’m out the front door and away from the drunken revelry. I make it to the corner before the second tear falls and that’s when I hear the pounding footsteps behind me.
Whirling around, I see Alex running up the block, and I couldn’t move from my spot even if I wanted to. And trust me, I want to. I want to avoid this fight as much as possible because I know he’s not going to believe what Ryan told me about Kai. Hell, I’m not sure I believe it. But there was something so sincere about the way he spoke, something so apologetic, that he had me listening, against my better judgment. It just made sense.
I’m not sure what I expect him to say when he finally meets up with me but it’s not: “You’re not walking home alone, it’s almost midnight.”
He barely looks me in the eye, just continues past me toward the corner. My jaw drops and I’m stunned into silence. For about three seconds.
“You’re kidding me, right? After all that?” I whip around to see him standing at the corner, still not meeting my eyes.
“What do you want me to say, Margot?”
Finally gathering up the courage, I stalk toward him. “I want you to say ‘Hey, sunshine, I’m sorry I treated you like shit back there. Won’t happen again’,” I say, standing directly in front of him. My comment finally gets his attention, and his eyes whip to mine.
“Are you serious?” He steps impossibly closer to me. There’s an intimacy to it but this is not a romantic moment. “I leave you alone for five minutes to find you cozied up by the fire with the guy that beat the shit out of my friend and you're mad at me ?”
“He didn’t beat up Keith,” I say, quietly and against my better judgment. But just as I expected, Alex laughs directly in my face.
“And you believe the lies he’s telling you! What fucking else could go wrong right now.” Alex runs his hands through his hair, spinning around in exasperation. “Keith told us that he saw Ryan’s face in the fight. It was the last face he saw before he passed out.”
“Ryan said he came up on his brothers beating up Keith and he broke it up. He brought Keith to the house.” I know everything I’m saying is falling on deaf ears but I have to say it. The more I retell Ryan’s side, the more I believe it. There’s no way he could’ve beat up Keith, hardly ten minutes had passed since he had stormed out of my apartment and then Alex got that phone call.
Alex crosses the street, continuing the walk to my apartment even though he clearly wants nothing to do with me right now. “You are un-fucking-believable, sunshine.” His voice is like venom, but he still calls me sunshine and that fact has hope blossoming in my stomach.
I follow behind him a few paces, mostly because he’s walking too fast for me to keep up. When I see my apartment complex come into view, I know I only have a few more seconds to say my piece before he disappears.
Running up a few steps, I grab Alex’s arm, whipping him around. “You need to talk to Kai. He’s been keeping something from you.”
“Keeping what from me?”
I sigh. “Just…talk to him.”
Alex blinks a few times and then nods. Once.
I take my hand off his arm, but he grabs my wrist before it drops to my side. Clutching it tightly, he uses the contact to pull me closer to him, chest to chest. My breath catches at the sudden contact and my heart contracts as he snakes his free hand to the back of my neck, pulling my hair slightly to bring my eyes to his.
“I’m really fucking pissed at you,” he says, his words saying one thing but his eyes and touch say another.
“I’m not too fond of you either at the moment,” I mutter, trying and failing to hold onto my resolve from just moments ago.
Without another word, Alex reaches down and connects our lips in a scathing kiss. It’s not nice, it’s not loving. It’s hard and needy. It’s desperate and addictive. I reach up on my toes to match his fervor and he deepens the kiss, our hands clutching each other even closer.
After what felt like an eternity of this intimate torture, Alex pulls away, leaving me breathless and bereft.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says curtly, reminding me that we still need to film our podcast tomorrow. After all this.
I nod, shutting my mouth and lowering my heels to the ground. Alex lets me go and I feel every inch of untouched skin.
I don’t say anything as I walk around his tall frame and into the building. I don’t look back as the door closes and I walk up the stairs and into the apartment. But, the first thing I do is walk across the living room to peer out the window to see Alex still standing outside, just as I knew he would be.