Chapter 4
Lexi lives in Los Feliz. Nearly all the way across town.
“It’s just up here, on the right,” Bianca says as they pull down the familiar tree-lined street in his car, a beat-up Jeep, which definitely does not fit in with the sea of luxury vehicles parked on seemingly every driveway. “Home sweet home.”
She unbuckles her seatbelt but doesn’t get out of the car.
“Home?” He cuts the engine and turns to look at her.
“Yeah, this is the house I grew up in back when this neighborhood was affordable. Lexi and Chris bought it from my parents when they decided to retire to Arizona. No way they would have been able to live in LA otherwise.”
“I was gonna say, this is . . . really nice.”
They walk in silence up to the front door and they’re about halfway up the brick path when he reaches out and takes her hand in his.
“Can I?” he asks softly, his gaze flickering to the front door, probably to make sure they’re not overheard, which is a good instinct because if Bianca knows her sister, she’s at the window spying right now.
Her eyes follow his and they both watch the curtains in the living room shift a bit. Overheard, definitely not, but observed, for sure. “Of course. If we’re going to pull this off, we have to be comfortable touching each other . . . within reason.”
“Within reason?”
“I think I can trust you to figure out where the line is.”
“You sure about that?” he rumbles, stepping into her and raising his free hand to where the thin strap of her dress has fallen off her shoulder. He hooks the soft material around his pinky and lifts it gently back into place before running his hand down her arm to lace their fingers together.
“How’s that?” he asks.
“That’s good,” she breathes out, and has to look away because if she doesn’t she’s going to pull him closer and push up to the tips of her toes and kiss him, Lexi be damned.
He just nods, and then turns, tugging softly on her hand as he moves toward the front door.
The house – it was home for so long – is Spanish style, with the quintessential orange barrel-tiled roof and walls of stucco painted a bright white.
There’s a little bit of wildness in the landscaping, her brother-in-law a lot less inclined to worry about keeping a pristine lawn the way her dad had.
Instead, the flowers and greenery lining the edges of the house are a bit overgrown, but in a homey, lived-in kind of way.
She prefers it, not that she’ll ever tell her dad that.
Bianca’s grip on Xavier’s hand tightens and he squeezes back before she lets out a heavy breath, lifts her free hand and knocks.
The large wooden door in front of them swings open.
“Surprise!”
It’s not one voice or even two, but what sounds like at least ten, maybe a dozen.
Bianca’s hand clamps down, probably crushing Xavier’s fingers if the half-breathed-out curse he lets out is any indication.
Holy shit.
So, not an intimate dinner, but a party with literally everyone who didn’t show up last night.
Her sister did this. Her big sister decided to throw her the celebration that should have happened last night.
Her pride prickles against it because this is what she wanted, isn’t it?
Her friends and family fooled into thinking that she’s marrying the man standing at her side, holding her hand, warm and steady.
They proved her point and then some, showing up with barely a few hours’ notice, all because there’s a ring on her finger.
Bianca loathes being right sometimes.
Lexi is front and center, her brother-in-law smiling widely beside his wife, an arm around her shoulders, like he’s proud of her for pulling off the surprise.
The rest of Bianca’s friends are in a line behind them, already nursing drinks, laughing and cheering, and then they’re surrounded, being pulled in for hugs and cheek kisses and introductions to Xavier that they should know would have happened a long time ago if she had any real intentions of marrying him.
But no one says anything about it.
They just adopt him, immediately.
And that hurts too, somehow. Maybe it means they trust her judgment, that they know she wouldn’t just randomly marry the first guy that asked, but .
. . maybe it also means they don’t care enough to question it.
That they’re just ready to accept it at face value and check the boxes that go along with the things you do when your friend gets engaged.
It takes a minute and then another before she can extricate herself from the mob and she feels bad abandoning Xavier to her friends, but she needs to talk to Lexi, right now.
It’s easy enough to find her. She’s in the kitchen, plating some cheese and crackers to pass around.
“No moussaka?”
Lexi snorts, her mouth quirking up into a half grin. “Sorry, you’ll just have to go without.”
“This is . . .” Bianca starts and stops, because with her sister looking up at her now, that half grin turning into a full-blown smile, she can’t quite bring herself to lie or to come clean, so she settles for a middle ground. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Of course I did. It’s what you did for me when I got engaged.”
And that’s true. She’d flown cross-country from New York back to LA to set up a party in this very house, back when her parents still lived here, to throw Lexi a wild blowout after Chris texted her to say he was proposing.
To hell with the fact that she had to fly back only a day later, on no sleep with a massive paper half-finished and due just a few hours after she landed.
They should be even now, not that it works that way, not that it should, but instead Bianca’s stomach twists.
She flew three thousand miles to be there to celebrate with her sister, and last night Lexi wouldn’t even drive across town.
This party?
It just . . . hurts.
“Go,” Lexi says, pressing a drink into her hands, a vodka and cranberry – not her favorite, but it’ll do – and shooing her out of the kitchen, “mingle, talk to your friends, show off that gorgeous ring and that gorgeous man.”
Bianca doesn’t know what else to say, so she takes a sip from her drink and steps back into the throng, getting swept up into it easily.
Xavier’s across the room, chatting with a tall Black man who towers over most of the crowd.
Erik, her former colleague from back before she decided to get her PhD, when she was stuck in a teaching job she hated.
He was one of the few people who didn’t call her crazy for going back to school.
A quick scan of the room and she sees Erik’s husband, Adam, just as tall as his husband, his red hair and freckles marking him out in the crowd.
He’s with Chris, her brother-in-law, phone out, definitely bombarding him with pictures of the babies.
When she looks back though, Xavier’s cheeks are flushed and Erik’s eyes are narrowed, eyebrows lifted in what could generously be called skepticism.
Shit.
She crosses the room quickly and approaches from behind him, sliding a hand over his shoulder. For a split second he freezes, but almost immediately relaxes into her touch, as her fingers run down his arm and press against his before she twines their fingers together.
“Okay, interrogation over, my friend,” she scolds Erik, who lifts his hands in mock surrender.
“We were just getting to know each other.”
Bianca scoffs her disbelief and presses closer into Xavier’s side.
He’s so warm and solid and her body reacts to the proximity, her skin prickling with awareness, her heart fluttering in her chest at the simple touch, one she’s never felt before.
Last night doesn’t count, not really. She was drunk and emotional and definitely not thinking clearly.
But she remembers one thing from before they spiraled away from each other months ago – being around him has always felt like this.
Back then she chalked it up to an academic rivalry turned friendship with a heavy dose of attraction, at least on her part.
Now? Now she doesn’t know what to call it.
All she knows is that she doesn’t want it to end.
He leans down and buries his face against her hair, pressing a kiss to her temple, and it shouldn’t affect her as much as it does, but she can’t help the way her breath catches.
It’s so much, too much. She tilts her face up toward him. His eyes flicker down to her mouth and then back up to meet hers again and for a wild second she thinks he might close the distance and kiss her.
“Ugh, y’all are kind of gross,” Erik complains, breaking the moment, and they both turn back toward him.
“Please,” she says, trying to keep her voice normal and failing, the words breathy and high-pitched as she protests, “as if I didn’t have to put up with you and Adam being disgustingly in love for years.”
“Fair enough. Friendly advice from someone who’s been there, do one more lap and then get out of here and go be gross in private instead. That newly engaged high only lasts so long, take advantage of it while you can.”
Bianca starts to protest, but he’s already gone.
“Sounds like good advice to me,” Xavier says.
“Yeah?” she asks, shifting in front of him, and he winds his arms around her waist, pulling her in closer. She smiles up at him. It would be so easy to get used to this.
“How about you, me, my couch and some pizza since my sister completely reneged on the food we were promised?”
“You really want to cut out early? They all came for you.”
“Yeah, well, serves them right if I bail after last night’s no-show.”
She says it to remind herself more than anything else. She really needs to get her head right, at least for the next little while.
“Okay, so one more circuit of the room and we go?” he suggests.
“Let’s do it.”