Chapter Twenty-One
Remi
“You okay, Rem? You look rough.” Nora paused in her filing to consider me.
I rolled my neck to loosen the tension in my shoulders.
I’d slept like shit the past few nights.
It’d been five nights since I heard Alicia through our wall.
Ever since, I lay awake with my ears tuned into her as if she were a frequency they could pick up on like broadcast radio.
Every creak of her mattress was torture, and my dreams were sweaty and hungry.
God, that sound.
Her sharp intake of breath before she cried out, the sound half caught in her throat mixed with the memory of her body taut in my arms, before slowly releasing and falling heavy to the bed.
“Hey.” Nora set her paperwork down on the desk. “Are you good?”
Blinking, I realized I was glaring into space. I ran my palm down my face. “Yeah, just tired.”
“You sure? Because if you’re sick I can see if Brooks can come in. There’s a nasty bug going around, and I’m already playing chicken with it by throwing a party tomorrow.”
I only had the energy for a crooked smile. “Not sick, promise.”
“Good.” She gave one decisive nod as if everything was resolved. “You’re still planning on being there, right? Elijah’s annoying friend Seb will be there, and I fully intend to use you as a buffer between him and me.”
“Seb is a good guy.”
She only lifted an irritated eyebrow. “Olivia will be there with Anton too, and . . . Anyway, it’d be great if you were there.”
She didn’t need to elaborate. During our fundraiser in October, Brooks had taken his clothes off—not all of them, just his shirt—in front of the whole town.
All because Olivia, Nora’s twin sister, had flirted with him during the bachelor auction.
And now, the town ran wild with speculations, even after she’d gotten engaged to Anton in December.
It was a bit of a wild night, and Brooks could have just been feeding into the fun of it .
. . or, and more probable, he had been motivated by something different.
Not that he was talking to me about it. I’d tried back when the engagement had happened, but he’d just grunted and walked away.
He could be very perceptive about other peoples’ lives; less so about his own.
“I’ll be there,” I promised.
“Good.” Nora considered her blood-red polished nails. “You really don’t mind that Alicia will be there too?”
I snorted. “Nora, she’s my neighbor. What difference does it make if she’s at the party?”
I sounded confident and unaffected. Internally, just the mention of her name made my heartrate spike.
She was an ache I couldn’t relieve. I was desperate for any sign of her.
Her clove smell had faded from my pillows, but from time-to-time I heard the whisper of her music through our wall or saw her red hair under a white stocking cap as she took Furgie for a walk.
She was everywhere, and it still wasn’t enough.
No matter how I looked at the situation, I couldn’t find a clear way forward. It was probably best that I didn’t tell her how she haunted me, that I couldn’t imagine just letting her leave and never being with her. Wasn’t that the right thing to do? To not hurt her, again.
Every time I found resolve to keep my feelings to myself, I’d see her or think of her and my chest would feel too small to hold all the affection I had for her. There were three voices yelling in my head simultaneously.
I love her.
Let her live her life.
But the worst one was the quietest, What if she still loves me too?
Add on the obscene amount of jerking-off it took just to get through my day . . .
So, I had no idea what to do.
Nora narrowed her eyes at me. “If you change your mind and you need to bail tomorrow, it’s cool.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Just fucking fine.
My body knew Alicia was home before my brain did.
The rush of adrenaline in my veins, and the tightening of my abdominals all in preparation of seeing her.
I turned into my driveway, and she came into view walking up to her front door with Furgie on the leash lazily sniffing the mounds of snow, a little white clump stuck to the top of her nose.
And walking by Alicia’s side in a Carhartt coat was Emmett.
I didn’t want to hate it, but I did.
The handle to my side door was cold against my fingers when Alicia called my name from the front porch.
I gave myself a second to press my forehead against the thin wooden door and close my eyes.
I was so close to avoiding the blooming relationship between the woman I breathed for and another man.
While simultaneously, relief washed over me to hear my name from her lips—to have an excuse to talk to her.
My brain was in a prison of my emotions.
With a deep breath, I straightened and moved around the corner of the building with a wave.
I jerked my chin up in greeting to Emmett before letting my eyes fall on Alicia.
She had a scarf wrapped around her neck and her bulky coat hid every single one of her curves, but my heart still skipped a beat and all the blood rushed out of my brain.
I shoved my hands in the pockets of my scrubs hoping to disguise the semi I was suddenly sporting.
“Hey, what’s up?” I asked.
“Give me just a second.” She held up a gloved finger toward me before turning to Emmett. “Thank you so much for dropping those petitions off.”
“Of course. I’ll pick you up tomorrow for the party?”
My stomach twisted, and I grit my teeth.
“See you then.”
He waved goodbye to me, pet Furgie, and took easy strides toward his pickup truck parked in Alicia’s driveway.
She unlocked her door with the keys she pulled from her coat pocket. Rushing inside, Furgie shook off the cold and snow just inside the threshold. Alicia narrowed her eyes at the dog. “Gee, thanks, Furg.”
I had enough good humor to muster half a smile, but there was no denying that I was in knots.
Retreating to my apartment couldn’t happen soon enough.
At least seeing her and Emmett was enough to quiet two of the three voices in my head.
It whispered a quiet guidance that I was finally ready to listen to.
It was time that I let go of all the baggage I carried around for her. The angst that sat heavy in my chest. The longing, like a magnet under my skin, urging me to hold her. The love that would have to find somewhere else to go.
“I have your shirt,” she said over her shoulder as she kicked her boots off and headed for the laundry by the side door. “I washed it.”
On the counter and table sat stacks of paper stapled together. On each page were line after line of signatures. “Are these the petitions you have all over town?”
I heard the dryer door slam. “Yeah,” she said.
With automatic movements she folded the garment as she walked toward me.
“Now, I have the great task of checking them to be sure that we don’t have any duplicate signatures, and there will be.
But at least I’ll know how close I am to getting an emergency vote. ”
“Do you think you’ll have enough?”
She gave a lopsided shrug. “That depends on how many duplicates there are.”
I wanted to offer to help, not because I was a good person fighting for the cause, but because I wanted to be around her. But there was that voice.
Let her live her life.
When I lifted my eyes to her face, she stood there chewing her lower lip. Her eyes darted from the papers, to me, to the refrigerator. But she didn’t seem to have any intention of giving me my shirt with how she worked it between her fingers—pinching and rolling the fabric gently.
Her cheeks burned a soft pink before she asked, “Do you—would you like to hang out with me while I do it?”
A smile tightened the muscles of my cheeks—I only barely swallowed it back.
Energy coursed through me, and I tried to reason with myself that it wasn’t exactly the declaration of love I’d like to hear.
But it was something. It was an excuse to stay.
To hear her laugh. To watch her work. To be near her.
The place she took up in my chest grew too big again. I wanted to tilt her chin up, draw her eyes up to mine. Instead, I unzipped my coat. “That depends, what’s the chip situation?”
The smile I’d been fighting spread across her face and finally she looked up at me. “Well in hand. Also, I have cupcakes.”
“You’re a way better host than I am.”
She nodded. “I grabbed them hoping you’d hang out.”
My stomach dropped out of my body as if I had stepped off a cliff. My pupils might as well have become heart shaped. I was a total sucker for her, an absolute sap. And all it took was her thinking about me even a little bit.
“Let me change out of these scrubs, and I’ll be right back.”