Chapter 15
JANE
Wyatt did not trust Alex. That much was crystal clear to me, even if he didn’t say it outright. After he climbed into the back seat of Alex’s car, it was all there in his posture, his narrowed eyes and crossed arms, his shoulders still tight with leftover adrenaline from the match as well.
That suspicion, however, did not extend to food.
“Where are we going?” he asked, craning forward between the seats. “I’m starving.”
“Burgers,” I said.
His glare eased by at least thirty percent. “Good ones?”
Alex didn’t miss a beat. “The kind that come wrapped in paper and make you regret your life choices.”
Wyatt nodded solemnly. “Okay. You can come.”
I hid my smile but directed Alex to the same diner I always took Wyatt to after his meets. This tradition was a big deal to him, and as it was, Alex was inserting himself into our time together. Nothing else needed to change for my brother right now.
Once we arrived, we wedged into a booth that was absolutely not built for Alex’s shoulders. He looked mildly offended by the lack of space for a second, but he got over it as soon as the server appeared with the milkshakes we’d ordered on our way in.
“I’ll take three bacon cheeseburgers,” Alex said calmly after she’d set down the milkshakes and flipped open her notepad.
Wyatt blinked hard and then his eyes nearly bugged out of his head. “Three? Just for you?”
Alex met his stare, not flinching as he shrugged one of his shoulders. “I wrestled six siblings for food growing up. Five of them brothers.”
Wyatt’s mouth twitched into a smile that seemed reluctant, but fighting it hadn’t worked. “Yeah, that’s fair.”
I picked up my milkshake and sipped it, sitting back and watching them size each other up like wary animals circling the same resource. Wyatt was suspicious, but he wasn’t rude. Alex was curious, but not condescending.
It was oddly balanced.
“So, how’s school?” Alex asked once Wyatt had ordered three meals for himself in turn and I’d ordered a measly one burger and fries.
Wyatt shrugged, swallowing half his milkshake in one gulp before he finally offered a verbal response. “It’s fine.”
“That’s a lie,” Alex said lightly, just stating a fact rather than being confrontational about it.
Wyatt paused, then snorted as he looked over at my husband. “Yeah, I guess it is.”
Alex chuckled, nodding slightly as if he’d known all along that Wyatt was going to confess to having fibbed. “What grade are you in?”
“I’m a junior.”
“Public school?”
“Yeah.” Wyatt’s eyes narrowed. “We literally just left the school I go to.”
Alex nodded again, just as slowly, as if he hadn’t wanted to assume Wyatt went to the school where the meet had taken place but had suspected. “I went private. My whole life.”
Wyatt sniffed. “Figures.”
I braced myself for tension, but Alex just leaned back and shot him a grin. “What’s public school like? I don’t know much about it, honestly. Lockers. Metal detectors. Fire drills that aren’t really about fire.”
“You didn’t have metal detectors?” Wyatt asked with a hint of disbelief in his tone. “Seriously?”
“Seriously.” Alex shook his head. “We did have lockers, though. Just not the regular type.”
My brother frowned. “What other type is there?”
“The type that come with mini-fridges and a cleaning service.” Alex winked at him, his tone self-deprecating instead of judgmental. “It’s stupid, right? I mean, who needs a mini-fridge in their locker?”
Wyatt considered the question before he grimaced. “I wouldn’t mind one.”
Alex laughed. “Fair enough, but still, it’s a little ridiculous.”
The first meals came out and both guys tucked in like they’d never seen food before. I picked at my fries as the resulting silence fell, but to my surprise, Wyatt was the one who restarted the conversation when his burger was done.
“They suck,” he said without any explanation or preamble.
Aggravation threatened to tighten my insides. He usually loved this place. Now, suddenly, the burgers sucked?
Alex, however, seemed to understand instantly that wasn’t what he’d meant. “The metal detectors or the fire drills?”
“All of it. Just school in general,” Wyatt said. “Except wrestling. Wrestling’s good.”
Alex shot Wyatt a genuinely proud grin, his eyes even lighting up with the force of it. “You’re really good at it. Honestly, watching you was a treat.”
Wyatt shrugged again, but it was a lot less defensive this time. “I’m okay.”
“Oh hush,” I said, finally chiming in because my brother needed to stop underestimating himself. “You won tonight. You’re better than okay.”
Alex raised his milkshake. “It was a great finish, man. Respect.”
Wyatt clinked his glass against Alex’s without smiling, but he didn’t shy away from it either. Their second burgers came and disappeared faster than the first, but by the third, Wyatt was talking, opening up to Alex in a way I hadn’t seen him discuss his life with anyone in a pretty long time.
He wasn’t necessarily animated or effusive, but he was answering fully, telling Alex about teachers who didn’t care, chaos with a recent substitute, and about how wrestling was the only thing that made school feel bearable some days.
A decent amount of the information he was sharing was news even to me, but I tried not to let it show.
Honestly, I just appreciated that he was sharing it at all—and that he was doing it so earnestly.
Alex just listened too, not interrupting or giving advice, but nodding and asking questions that weren’t stupid or invasive.
“You really don’t get home until what, six?” Alex asked at one point when Wyatt paused.
“Sometimes later,” he said. “It depends if the bus breaks down.”
Alex’s eyebrows rose slowly. “That happens?”
“All the time.”
He grimaced. “That’s brutal.”
Wyatt smiled in return. A real, actual smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and everything. It was a giant surprise to see said smile aimed at Alex, but by the time we got back to our house, I realized my shoulders didn’t hurt anymore.
I hadn’t even noticed when I’d stopped being on edge, but somehow, it had happened. Alex had won my brother over and, in doing so, lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. Plus, I realized when Alex parked and cut the engine that by some miracle, I had even had fun with him tonight.
Wyatt was out of the car, hopping up the steps two at a time and already unlocking the door when Alex and I finally caught up. He looked at us over his shoulder, gaze skipping from Alex’s to mine.
“Night, Jane,” he said, then hesitated and glanced back at Alex. “Thanks for the food, man.”
“Anytime,” Alex said easily. “Good night, Wyatt. It was great to meet you. Congratulations again on the win.”
Wyatt grinned, giving him a bro-ish, chin lift of a nod before he disappeared inside and shut the door behind him. Suddenly it was just the two of us on the stoop, cold air settling into the quiet space Wyatt had left behind.
I crossed my arms, my nerves flaring up now that there was nothing else to focus on. “I should explain why I called you a friend.”
Alex leaned against the railing, his thumbs hooked casually into his pockets, but the rest of his hands were out. Unlike me, he was wearing his ring, the gold catching the porch light unapologetically.
“I hope I didn’t offend you,” I started, but before I could offer another word of the explanation I felt the need to offer, he shot me an easy smile and shook his head.
“I get it, Jane,” he said gently. “I meant that when I said it before. Don’t sweat it. Really.”
A long, slow exhale worked its way out of me. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “It’s only our three-day anniversary.”
Despite myself, I laughed. Relief trickled through me that he wasn’t making a bigger deal of this than it needed to be. “Now that’s a romantic milestone right there.”
“Truly,” he deadpanned. “Paper gifts, right?”
I glanced down at my bare finger, heat creeping into my cheeks. I looked back up at him. “I wasn’t trying to hide you. I just—”
“You’re protecting him,” Alex said. “And yourself.”
It shouldn’t have mattered so much that he really did seem to understand, but it did. As I averted my gaze to hide the sincerity of the emotions sliding through me, he chuckled. “Thanks for allowing me to crash your night.”
I offered him a slight nod, peering up at him through a few tendrils of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail throughout the evening. “You did good tonight. With Wyatt, I mean. He doesn’t usually open up like that.”
“I have practice,” Alex said. “When you have as many siblings as we do, you either learn or you kill them, right?”
“True.” I laughed, finally really looking back up into his eyes. “Thank you for coming, Alex. And for not making it weird.”
His gaze held mine, steady but unreadable. “I think weird is kind of our baseline.”
I laughed again, the sound softer this time and slipping out before I could stop it. Alex smiled back at me, but it wasn’t his usual controlled, polished version.
Instead, it was slower, like it’d caught him off guard too, but then his gaze dropped to my mouth. Almost like his eyes had acted of their own accord. It was subtle. Barely a shift. But I felt it like a hand at my back or a pause in gravity.
His focus lingered there longer than was polite or safe, and for one suspended moment in time, neither of us seemed to remember how to move.
I wasn’t sure, but I might’ve stopped breathing.
Meanwhile, Alex looked dazed, like a thought had crossed his mind fully formed and entirely inconvenient, but he didn’t know what to do with it.
His jaw tightened and his shoulders squared, then he swallowed and I wondered just briefly what it would feel like if I leaned forward instead of back. If I closed the distance and let the question answer itself.
What would it feel like to kiss my husband?
My heart started galloping as the air between us thickened, charged with an arc of electricity so real, it was like it was begging for one of us to just do it.
Almost at the point where I didn’t care if it would be a bad idea, I shifted my weight and seriously considered taking a step closer, but then he stepped away.
It was just one small step, but it was enough to break the moment clean in half, like snapping a thread pulled too tight. I blinked hard, back to my senses, but unsure of where to look now.
“Goodnight, Jane,” he said quietly. “Sleep well. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Goodnight,” I replied, hoping he couldn’t hear the shift in my breathing—or slight lack thereof.
If he had noticed it, he didn’t give anything away, simply shooting me a tight smile before I watched him walk down the path, his back broad and familiar now in a way that unsettled me. When his car disappeared down the street, I finally exhaled and went inside.
Wyatt had already vanished to his room, no doubt with his headphones already on, the world effectively shut out. Nora’s door was closed, the absence of a thin line of light beneath it telling me she was already asleep.
Good. I don’t have the energy for questions tonight.
When I reached my own bedroom, I kicked off my shoes and leaned my forehead briefly against the wall. Get it together, Jane. Tomorrow matters.
The gala loomed large in my mind as I went about the motions of getting ready for bed.
I hadn’t worn a gown in years. I’d stopped needing them when spectacle had turned into survival, but now, I would be stepping back into that world.
Alex’s world that used to be mine but I never thought I’d belong to again.
As I brushed my teeth, I pictured Alex beside me in a fancy ballroom, his hand at my back and his voice in my ear, looking as dapper as he undoubtedly would.
The thought sent a ripple of warmth through me and I shook my head at myself, trying my best to remember that feeling this way wasn’t part of the deal. What he and I had was a business arrangement. At most, it was a convergence of interests that happened to involve rings.
Yet the way he’d looked at my lips had said that in that moment, he’d wanted to forget every rule he’d ever lived by.
It was inconvenient as all hell, but I couldn’t deny that I was looking forward to the gala tomorrow. Looking forward to stepping into that room beside him and seeing how the world reacted to us as a couple. Maybe even looking forward to spending an entire evening with my husband.
The thought startled me with its honesty, but there it was. I, Jane Thayer who was now technically a Westwood, was excited to spend time with the man who’d vowed to spend the rest of his life with me—and who I’d promised to stay beside for just as long.