Chapter Two #3
He nods, brows slowly rising, and I guess I have to explain my weird answer. “I’m about six months out of a long-term relationship. Rough breakup, and he took most of our friends with him.”
“Ah.” He sips his whiskey again. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Fidgeting, I pull my hair up and he watches my fingers quickly twirl it and tuck it into a bun. My hair is stick straight and dry now, and I feel a few strands escape and brush against my neck. He tracks that movement, too. “It really should have ended sooner.”
Alec watches me, his gaze unswerving. “What happened?”
We stare at each other for a few wordless moments before my smile breaks free.
“Are we really doing this?” I ask. “The below-the-surface catch-up?”
“Why not?” His answering smile is sly and playful. “We’ve covered work and family. Will we ever see each other again?” He’s talking about sharing our stories, but I sense another dare below the surface—a heated one.
“He fucked up,” I say baldly.
Alec’s expression shifts. “With you?”
I like the way he says this. Disbelieving, like he can’t fathom it.
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” I tell him.
I’ve only really talked about this with three people: my parents and my best friend, Eden.
Not only because our mutual friends all decided I was overreacting and should give Spence another chance, but also because it’s deeply mortifying to realize that I’m a journalist whose boyfriend buried the lede every day for nearly a year.
It seems weird to launch into the story with a near-stranger.
But I am. Because I’m here with Alec—whom it oddly feels like I know, even though I don’t, and I’ve seen, even though I haven’t—and I’m tired but don’t want to go to sleep yet now that he and I are talking about something real.
“He lost his job because he got caught stealing company clients for his own freelance business and undercutting his firm’s rates.
But he never told me. He kept leaving every morning, dressed for work, and coming home every night feigning exhaustion.
He made up stories about drama between coworkers, gripes and promotions that I totally believed.
Slowly drained his savings until he had nothing, then started dipping into mine. ”
Alec goes still. “And your friends took his side?”
“He’s very charismatic,” I explain. Spence’s eye-crinkling smile appears in my thoughts, his infectious laugh echoes in my ears, and I feel the familiar urge to climb out of my own skin.
“The quintessential good guy, you know? I’m sure he gave them a bunch of shiny half-truths, made himself out to be the victim.
I cut him out completely; they didn’t. But they weren’t living with him.
He wasn’t lying to their faces every morning and every night.
I guess it was easier for them to find sympathy. ”
“How did you find out?”
“I realized something was off when my bank statements seemed low. I followed him to work. He was going to the park and sleeping. At home, while I slept, he was up all night gambling, trying to make money.”
Alec laughs incredulously. “Is that a thing?”
“Not the way Spencer was doing it.”
He laughs again, but this time it turns sympathetic at the tail end. “I’m sorry, Georgia.”
“Yeah.” I finish my wine and nod when he signals for another round. “It sucked.”
I watch his neck when he downs the last sip of his whiskey. His throat is long, his jaw so sharp I want to sink my teeth into the pulse point just below it. “What about you?”
“Not married.” He scratches his cheek. “Not dating anyone at the moment.”
“That seems…” I’m not sure how to finish the sentence. What I want to say is that it seems like a goddamn tragedy for women. Or men. Or all of humankind. Balance in the world seems like it should depend on people who look like Alec Kim getting laid regularly. “Hm.”
“What’s ‘hm’?”
“A bummer,” I say as wine and fatigue suddenly settle like a narcotic in my blood. “You’re a hot guy. You should be dating.”
“You’re a beautiful woman. You shouldn’t be lied to.”
Thank God it’s dark in here, because I’m sure I’m blushing like a maniac. “Thanks.”
“And anyway, it’s hard for me to date.” He pauses, going still like he’s taken an impulsive step down a hallway he isn’t sure he’s supposed to explore. “I’m under a lot of”—he stops again before settling on—“professional pressure.”
“That sounds deeply intriguing, Alec.”
“It’s not. Or maybe it is.” He waves this away. “But for once I don’t feel like talking about work. It’s all I’ll be doing for the next two weeks.”
“Fair enough.” I raise my glass when the fresh ones are delivered. “No work talk then.”
He nods firmly. “No work talk.”
“No ex talk, either.”
Alec laughs. “Agreed, no more ex talk.” He stares at me. “And what else is there?”
“Hobbies?”
“Hobbies. Sure.”
“Do you still skateboard?” I joke.
His face goes flat in disbelief. “Really?”
Laughing, I say, “Remember, you used to skateboard all the time down your street?” I definitely remember.
I would sit on the sofa by their front window, ostensibly doing my homework with Sunny but really watching Alec and his trio of friends do ollies and kick flips and pop shoves over, and over, and over.
“Oh, I remember.” He laughs again and shakes his head. I feel like I’m missing something. “You’re a trip.”
And then Alec studies me in that gentle calculating way of his.
“What?” I ask after a long ten seconds of hyperaware silence.
“I think it’s because I’m tired,” he says, blinking to clear his trance. “And have had a drink—now another—on an empty stomach.”
I wait for the rest of it. “You think what is because you’re tired?” I finally ask.
“I remember you as this sweet, scrawny kid. Not this…” He gestures to my body, and I don’t miss the way his eyes trip over my breasts. “Woman.”
“I already said I’d sleep upstairs; you don’t have to seduce me.” I expect him to laugh or backtrack, explain in his polite way that no, no, he only meant it’s surreal to see someone after so long. But he doesn’t say that. He gazes at me patiently.
I blink down at my glass, bringing it to my lips. “But seriously, Alec. If I’m going to your room, I insist on using the pullout.” My eyes go wide. “The sofa bed, I mean.” I bark out a laugh. “Oh my God.”
Alec fights a smile. “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“Strike it from the record.”
“I can’t.” He grins. “It’s already out there.”
I bend, burying my face in my arms.
“It’s great.” Alec laughs. “Honestly, it’s refreshing.”
Sitting up, I gulp my wine. “In my defense, I haven’t slept in…” I calculate. “Well over thirty hours. You have no idea the stuff that’s reeling through here.” I press my index finger to my temple. “I really should just go to bed.”
He glances over my shoulder and then pulls his sleeve back to check the time. “Try me.”
“You’re asking to be scandalized.”
He laughs, a round, open-mouthed sound. “I promise, you can’t shock me.”
Is that right? I grin at him. “Are you daring me?”
“Absolutely.”
Swirling my wine, I stare at him over the rim of the glass. There’s a dark, playful gleam in his eye, and I’m tempted by it but also wary of it. What if I’m thinking this is a flirtatious moment, but he actually thinks I’m just going to tell him about an oddball scrapbooking hobby?
“Georgia, hello,” he whispers, and points to his chest. “I’m waiting to be scandalized.”
So I blurt it out, “Sitting this close to you, I am intensely conscious of the fact that I’m not wearing any underwear.”
He nods slowly, gaze heating but—to my surprise—not showing any sign at all of being scandalized. “I am also intensely conscious of this.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew.” He sips his drink again. “You took only a carry-on for a weeklong international trip that extended for another week and were planning to be home tonight.” He leans back and adds in a quiet rumble, “Besides, Gigi, I’ve studied every inch of you in that dress.”
My skin is engulfed in heat. His frank, unruffled reactions throw me. Alec isn’t nervous in the slightest. I have to bite my lip to keep from letting an embarrassed laugh burst free.
“Pervert,” I whisper, grinning and secretly loving that he called me by my familiar nickname.
It tunnels me back almost a decade and a half to watching him, shirtless, throw a football to his friend jogging away down the middle of the street.
But now—here—it rolls out of him differently, like a filthy promise.
Laughing, he leans forward to set his glass down. “Pervert? Says the one who can’t stop staring at my hands.”
I open my mouth to protest, but his eyes shine with amusement. “True,” I say instead. “But they are indecent, Alec.”
“Indecent?” He smiles around the word. How many women must he get into his bed this way, simply by being sweetly playful and forthright?
He lifts a hand, holds it palm up, and slowly turns it, wiggling those long, graceful fingers. “How is this indecent?”
“Watching you play a piano would be like watching porn.”
This makes him smirk. “Is that what you’d like to watch me do?”
“Frankly I’d watch those hands flip through an encyclopedia if it was my only option.”
“It’s not your only option.” These words land seductively between us. “But sure.” He lifts a finger, pretending to flag down the waitress. “They probably have a book behind the bar somewhere.”
I lean over, smacking his shoulder, and he quickly catches my hand.
Leaning forward, Alec props his elbows on his thighs and turns my hand over in both of his, trailing a fingertip along the inside of my wrist. I swear my heartbeat is centered right there, being dragged like a magnet beneath my skin wherever his touch goes.
He loosely grips each of my fingers, squeezing down the length of them in turn before pressing both thumbs to the center of my palm, massaging in firm circles.
With just this touch, he’s coaxing nearly six months of tension from my entire body.
I don’t think I realized how much I needed physical contact until he did this, but suddenly I’m starved for it.
It’s all I can do to not scoot around the U-shaped couch and climb into Alec’s lap.
I feel him look up and take in my reaction as he rubs my hand, but I can’t stop looking at what he’s doing.
His fingers are strong, his touch firm. His hands are huge around mine, but he’s not treating me as delicate. He’s giving a goddamn amazing massage.
“Do you by chance work for the massage office at the BBC?” I mumble.
“No.” He laughs. “Give me your other one.”
Without hesitation I offer my left hand up and he takes it, repeating the actions almost identically.
I imagine those fingers kneading the tense muscles of my shoulders, walking down the ridges of my spine, gripping my hips.
It’s impossible to not extrapolate this feeling and imagine it on my breasts, my neck, between my legs.
“Is that nice?” he asks quietly.
“You have no idea.”
“I have some idea,” he says, “going off your expression.”
I look up, meeting his eyes. “What are we doing, Alec?”
A few seconds pass before he answers, “Whatever you want.”
He turns his face back down, watching what he’s doing to my hand. I want to suck on his fingers.
“Do you do this every time you go on a business trip?”
He laughs again. His dimples are genuinely obscene. “Absolutely not. I’m never alone like this on a trip.”
I try to decipher this as his hand moves up my forearm, squeezing, massaging. “What does that mean?”
“It means I usually travel with a number of people who are very nosy.”
“Right.” I am in a trance. “You mentioned that already, sorry. Your team came early.”
He’s watching me again, waiting, I presume, for me to tell him what it is I want.
So I do. “I think we should go upstairs now.”