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His lips twitch. “A new motorcycle?”
“Something cool and vintage or new and super fast. Whatever you like. Or if you don’t want another bike, something else then. Anything really.”
“How did you know I ride?”
I roll my eyes. “You mean other than the times you took me out on your bikes?” I roll my eyes again, just to let him know I’m annoyed. “Yeah, we fucked for two years, Lenox. Even though ninety percent of the time I don’t know what you’re thinking unless you directly tell me, I do know you to a certain extent. Despite your penchant for wearing all black, your favorite color is green. You love to draw and are insanely talented at it, which is why you got into tattooing, but you did it because it just fit, and you don’t have to talk while doing it. Speaking of being insanely talented, you never sing, but you love to play the piano and write songs with words to them, even though you don’t ever plan to have anyone sing them. You love spicy food but prefer your own cooking over takeout, and I suspect a lot of that is because that’s pretty much all you ate for four years when you toured with Central Square. You love dogs, big, quiet, non-hyper dogs, and are allergic to cats. My hair, especially when it catches the sunlight, is your favorite thing about me. You’d stare and touch it constantly, even when you weren’t aware you were doing it.”
He leans forward, moving right up into my face as we inch along in Boston traffic. His blue eyes dance about my face, and he snatches a lock of my hair, twists it around his finger and gives it a harsh tug. “You’re wrong about your hair.”
“Am I?” I challenge.
“Yes,” he clips out, his sweet breath fanning across my lips. “Your green eyes are my favorite physical feature of yours. Your hair is second. But they’re not my favorite thing about you, Georgia. Just my favorite things to look at on you.”
I ignore the swoosh in my stomach and the jump in my pulse. The ones that make me desperate to know if my eyes are why green is his favorite color. If that’s why he emphasized the word when he said it. But if he says yes, I’ll mount him and ride him like a bike right here, and if he says no, I’m not sure if I’ll believe him, and again, I’ll be tempted to mount and ride him.
So in order to stop myself from doing just that, I ask, “What about everything else? I was right about that stuff, wasn’t I? I can keep going if you want. I enjoy unnerving you with my crazy personal knowledge and brilliance.” I bat my eyelashes prettily at him.
“You don’t want to know my favorite thing about you?”
“I was sorta dodging that one.”
His stubbled cheek grazes my soft one as he dips toward my ear. “Your crazy personal knowledge and brilliance don’t unnerve me. But let me try out my own on you. Your favorite color is pink, though you rarely wear it because you believe it clashes with your hair. Your favorite food is shrimp, and you’ll eat it any way you can get it, but if you had to eat one meal for the rest of your life, it would be jambalaya. You feel brave and more confident in high heels and red lipstick—and apparently sexy lingerie—and wearing scrubs is your least favorite part of your job. Your favorite is your patients and seeing their faces the first moment you hand them their baby. You hate having your hair up because it makes your scalp ache, and you take it down the first chance you get. You hated acting but did it to make your mother happy—a chronic problem of yours since you’re a people-pleaser and it pisses you off, but you don’t know how to change it either. Unlike me, you love to sing and do it very well. Sorta like Grey, but you had no desire to be a rock star like him. And, apparently, you can take a man twice your size down with a single leg sweep.”
The heat in the car intensifies, my pulse along with it, as adrenaline snakes like a heady cocktail through my veins while we play this game with each other.
I pull back until our noses are practically touching and then I graze mine against his. “You are fastidiously tidy and hate it when things are disorganized.”
He tilts his head, inching in closer, his lips hovering over mine, making my breath shallow and choppy. “You are not, nor do you care. You’re a throw things wherever and clean them up later person. Every time your watch shows all the same numbers, like 11:11, you make a wish, and you check your watch frequently when the numbers get close so you don’t miss it.”
My eyes bounce down to his lips and then back up. “You love the rain, but snow is your favorite to walk in. You hate chocolate, which is frankly one of your biggest turn-offs for me.”
He smiles, his lips skimming ever so subtly over mine to the point where it could be construed as unintentional, though I know it wasn’t. “You love being around people, but sometimes prefer the quiet solitude of reading tucked under a blanket. You prefer sweet over salty, which is pretty much your personality.”
“You prefer salty over sweet and back atcha.”
The car comes to a stop, but neither of us moves, not wanting to be the first to back down. Only I’m forced to break the spell first when Ashley opens the back door on my side. Before I can climb out—or take a breath that doesn’t taste or smell like him—Lenox’s hand dives into my hair, and he drags my ear back to his mouth.
“You. You’re my favorite thing about you. What I know and what I don’t. And that is also what I hate most about you.”
My breath hitches, but then Ashley is reaching his hand out for me, thinking I need help to climb out of the SUV. He’s not wrong. Not after Lenox makes a statement like that. And now I have to pretend to be happily married and in love with him in front of my cousins and the world. And I have no idea how I’ll make it through when everything between us is hate, fuck, or foreplay.
Chapter Fourteen
I used to avoid Zax. Him more than Grey. Zax’s pain after losing Suzie was as acute as mine, and not only was it crippling to witness his grief, it exacerbated mine. His suffering was different, but no less tragic. If anything, his was more tragic than mine. I lost my sister, but he lost the love of his life—well, the love of his life until Aurelia came along.
For a while, he avoided me too, for the same reasons I was avoiding him.
Or at least, that was the reason I told myself I was avoiding him.
The reality was that I couldn’t look him in the eye. I was positive he’d see through me. See how I felt about his cousin, what I was doing with her and to her. I didn’t want him to call me out on it because then I’d have to stop, and I didn’t want to stop, or worse, I’d be talked into being her man when I was in no shape to be him.
It wasn’t until I came clean to him after I walked away from Georgia that I could finally face him. Somehow then it became easier to be around him. Less strangling, even though I still felt like shit about it all. Or maybe because that was when I forced myself to crawl out of the gutter of my mind and become something better.
For Suzie, for myself, and… well… mainly for Georgia.
I let her go with no intention of returning, but that didn’t mean part of me wasn’t anxious to become a man worthy of her. It was a notion in my head. A guiding force. I will always regret not acting and saving Suzie, and I will always regret that I stood still and allowed my father to spiral so far out of control with his grief over losing Suzie and venom toward me that it cost him and someone else their life.
But Georgia telling me she loved me turned that self-loathing into a wake-up call. A motivational fuel. I realized what a gift I had been given in Georgia’s love, and though I couldn’t keep it for myself, I couldn’t squander it either. It was time I used my guilt for good.
