Chapter 36
ALEX
Iwoke up early with Jane still fast asleep beside me, tucked into my side with one hand curled loosely on my chest. Pale, wintry light shone in through the windows, and for once, my phone wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Neither was work.
Instead, I just lay there with my wife in my arms, feeling like I was cheating the universe somehow. Like if I moved too fast or breathed too loud, someone would come knocking to remind me this wasn’t how our relationship was supposed to work.
We were both still naked under the covers, sharing a bed now more often than not, and I was still fucking in awe of the fact that she’d ever stayed over at all. She’d seemed so dead set against anything like this back at the beginning, yet neither of us had fought it very hard.
Inevitably, my gaze skipped down to her, my gorgeous wife sleeping beside me on a Saturday morning. She shifted, murmured something unintelligible, and her fingers flexed against my skin.
In a wicked twist of fate, that was all it took to turn me on these days. These days, I was in a near-constant state of intense desire. Back in my early days as CEO after my father had retired, I’d rarely had time for anything that even vaguely resembled sex, even with myself.
Hell, I’d barely had time to eat, let alone worry about my social life—or lack thereof. But with Jane by my side, I really couldn’t get enough.
It was absolutely ridiculous and utterly awesome. Newly married life, man. Gotta love it.
As she curled further into me, any ideas I’d had about letting her sleep evaporated. Bending my head closer to hers, I kissed her temple, then her cheek, and then, because I had the impulse control of a man who’d very recently discovered happiness, I moved my lips to the corner of her mouth.
She smiled before she even fully woke up, her eyes still closed as she mumbled, “If you’re trying to wake me up…”
“I am, but only a little.”
One of her beautiful eyes cracked open, the gray light and silvery this morning. “You’re terrible.”
“Only for you.” I kissed her again, slow and lazy, nothing urgent about it.
Her hand slid up my arm, her nails dragging lightly over my skin. She rolled toward me with a sigh that felt like a reward. Since it was Saturday, we didn’t rush. There was no clock ticking in my head, no schedule pressing down on either of us, and no disaster waiting to happen on our desks.
She moaned into my mouth when I slid my hand between her legs, holding me tighter and moving with me when I finally sank inside her. Tangled up together and content after, she rested her chin on my chest and traced idle shapes over my skin.
“What do you want to do today?” I asked as words re-entered the equation. “Any plans?”
She groaned softly. “You’re ruining the vibe.”
“I’m planning ahead. It’s a skill.”
“My brothers are flying in,” she reminded me, her eyes half-lidded and sleepy. “We’re having dinner with them tonight.”
Right. Reality. Welcome back. I nodded, even though I’d rather pretend we could stay in bed until the world forgot all about us.
“We have hours, though,” she said like she knew exactly where my head had gone. “That’s plenty of time before we have to start getting ready.”
I dropped a kiss on top of her head. “Good. I might need that long to recover.”
She let out a lazy chuckle and we ended up staying in bed longer than we should have, eventually just talking about random things to avoid having to get up. She told me stories about her brothers and I told her about the first apartment I’d ever lived in after college.
“Let me guess,” she said, smiling up at me. “You had exactly one chair and a mattress on the floor?”
I scoffed. “No. What do you take me for, a heathen? I hired an interior designer a month before I moved in and had him furnish the place for me. It did take me about a week to figure out how to work the coffee machine, though.”
She let out a soft but disbelieving chuckle. “Of course. The mighty Alex Westwood would never live like any other young, single guy who’s just graduated college and only knows how to make ramen.”
“How do you make ramen?” I asked, stone-faced.
Her eyes widened. “Are you serious?”
When I couldn’t keep the straight face anymore, I burst out laughing. “Come on, obviously, I know how to make ramen. Like you said, I was a young, single guy. It’s a rite of passage, learning how to cook that stuff.”
Her nose scrunched up a little. “A rite of passage? I thought it was just kind of common knowledge.”
I shrugged. “Same thing.”
She chuckled, then told me about the first time she’d shown her brothers how to make their own noodles. At some point during the story, however, when she looked at me again, her expression became thoughtful.
“You paid for their flights,” she said, not a question or an accusation. A simple fact.
I didn’t bother pretending otherwise. “Yeah.”
She lifted her head to look at me more directly. “Why?”
“Because I asked how soon they could come,” I said easily. “It wouldn’t have been fair to expect them to fly in and have someone else pay for it, now would it?”
Her mouth curved, but there was something softer underneath it. Relief, maybe. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t hiding it,” I said. “I just didn’t want it to become a thing. It’s logistics, Killer. Not leverage.”
She studied me for a long moment, then nodded once and tucked herself back against my side, obviously deciding to believe me.
I hadn’t been lying about why I hadn’t told her, but it was still a good feeling to know that she trusted me and that she wasn’t so independent that every little thing would become an issue.
We finally got up, showered, dressed, and went downstairs for coffee. Jane rolled her eyes at me from behind the counter housing the machine when I suggested we could just buy some.
“Caffeine before we leave is non-negotiable,” she said like she was laying down the law. “Besides, why spend money on something when you’ve got a state-of-the-art appliance that can give you that same thing right here?”
I frowned, but the God’s honest truth was that I didn’t have an answer to that, so I didn’t argue. Coffee at home had the added benefit of getting to drink it with her in my arms on the couch too, so that definitely counted in its favor.
Once we were sufficiently caffeinated, we walked down the street bundled up against the cold, sharing a pastry and people-watching like tourists in our own city.
I hadn’t done anything like it for a long time, and since it seemed that happiness made me incapable of subtlety, I found myself making a suggestion as soon as the thought occurred.
“Hey, while we’re out together, do you want to pick up a few things to keep at my place?”
“Like what?” she asked, looking up at me from where she was tucked under my arm, a cute white beanie on her head. “You already got me a few things.”
“Yeah, but more things,” I said. “Your things.”
She held my gaze for another beat, then nodded, and a few minutes later, I found myself in a container store. I honestly didn’t understand the concept. It was a warehouse full of boxes designed to hold other boxes, but Jane lit up like she’d been handed the keys to a kingdom.
She wandered the aisles, explaining the merits of drawer dividers and labeled bins with the intensity of someone who took pride in her organizational abilities. I picked up a clear plastic tray with far too many sections for any reasonable person to use it properly and frowned.
“No one needs this many compartments,” I said, holding it out to her. “What would you even use it for?”
“Trinkets.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “If you have as many trinkets as a woman does, you absolutely need that many compartments if you’re going to keep them organized.”
“Trinkets? Is that what we’re calling them?”
“Yes.”
I leaned in closer, murmuring against her ear. “Please tell me that’s code for sex toys.”
She laughed, flushing beet red before giving me a tiny, playful shove. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I groaned. “Oh, shit. That means you totally have sex toys. Which ones? Where are they? Can we—”
She cut me off with a huff of laughter and took off down the aisle. I followed her around, carrying a basket that got heavier by the minute, and while she was lecturing me on sock organization, tossing a box at my chest with a grin, I realized that this was exactly what I wanted.
Quiet Saturday morning with her in my space, rearranging it and claiming it as her own in fun, practical ways. It meant we were finally taking a step forward, and it was insane how much I’d been longing for that to happen.
We were debating whether a set of matching hangers was worth it when she suddenly went still. She didn’t freeze. She wasn’t shocked or injured, just suddenly quiet. I knew the difference now.
“What?” I asked.
She swallowed hard, the column of her throat moving up and down with an almost nervous motion. “I didn’t tell you everything about that night.”
I turned to face her fully, not entirely sure what to expect, but knowing her, it wouldn’t be anything involving another man. I fucking hope. Or I might need to start cracking spines.
“Okay,” I said slowly. “What else is there? You went out for drinks and appetizers with Zara, right?”
“Yeah, but after Zara left, I saw Mallory at the restaurant.”
I clenched my jaw at the realization that this must’ve been what was bugging her when she’d shown up. “Are you sure it was her?”
She nodded. “Very.”
“So she’s still in town.” I reached for her hand, sliding my palm against hers and lacing our fingers together. “Did she talk to you?”
“Yes,” Jane said, scoffing softly as she shook her head. “She introduced herself. Can you believe that? She came over to me and said that since we’d never formally met, she wanted to fucking introduce herself. Like I’d want to meet her.”
“Shit. What do you think she wanted with you?”
“I don’t know. She just approached me like a bad smell you can’t place at first.”
A short breath of laughter escaped me. “Charming.”
“She said she wanted to talk properly,” Jane said, sighing as she raked her hands through the tips of her hair. “She even offered to set up a time, like it would just be a coffee date between old friends. I mean, that’s ridiculous, right?”
“I don’t know.” I held her gaze. “Is that something you’d be interested in, talking to her?”
Her mouth twisted. “Mostly? No. God, no. I hope I never see her again as long as I live.”
“But?” I prompted, sensing that had been the answer she’d wanted to give, but not necessarily the whole truth.
She held my gaze for another long beat before she finally answered. “I won’t give her the benefit of the doubt. I never will, but part of me wonders if I acted too rashly. If there are things I don’t know.”
“That seems fair.”
“I told her that I wasn’t interested, though.”
“You did the right thing, Killer.” She looked at me then, searching my face like she expected an argument.
I just shrugged. “If you ever change your mind, I’ll help you get a hold of her.
You won’t have to do it alone, but for now, you do what’s best for you.
Not for closure or for justice, but for you. ”
Her shoulders eased just a fraction. “Thank you.”
I reached over and slid my arm around her shoulders again. “Anytime.”
We finished shopping in relative quiet after that, both of us pretty clearly lost to our own thoughts.
Then reality reasserted itself on the drive to her family’s house after.
There was an emotional minefield waiting for us behind that front door and I didn’t particularly want her to navigate it when she already had so much on her plate, but there was nothing I could do to change it now.
“Wyatt is still keeping his distance,” Jane said as we pulled onto her street. “I’m hoping tonight changes that.”
I nodded because that was the supportive thing to do, but deep down, I doubted it. I’d been that age once. Seventeen-year-old boys weren’t exactly known for their rationality or forgiveness, but whatever he was going to throw at us tonight, I could take it.
I just hoped he remembered who had really raised him, and that he appreciated everything she’d done and was still doing for him. Because if not? Well, then it might be time to start applying some pressure.
She was staying in this house for him, because of them, and if he couldn’t respect her despite all that, I was dead set on taking my wife home with me tonight—and keeping her there.