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He could still taste her. Taste the chocolate vanilla on her tongue. Taste the dusky sweet honey of her below. Her moans echoed in his ears when he tried to sleep at night. The feel of her body, lush, ripe, hard and vital pressed up against him assaulted nearly every waking minute. Her legs spread, the heat of her core burning right though two sets of denim, into his thigh. The spot where she’d ground herself still tingled.
It tingled now, when the little shadow jarred awake, whipped around to face him, and let out a little gasp. It was followed up with a sigh of relief then a grunt of annoyance when she recognized him.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped. She crossed her arms and tilted her chin like the stuck-up little princess he was staring to realize she was.
“This is my place,” he edged out. He clomped out a few more steps so the tower creaked and groaned, but Alix remained completely unphased. She stared at him, her eyes glowing strangely in the near dark even though there was no light to illuminate them.
“It’s not yours,” she snorted. “You don’t own it.”
“You don’t own it either.”
“I know. I never said I did.”
Their conversation was starting to get back to the two-year-old maturity that it seemed they couldn’t help but slip into. He didn’t want to go there again. He just wanted to be away from the house, here, alone, to think about all the shit that he couldn’t control and what the fuck he was going to do about it.
“Right. I don’t know why you’re up here or how you even know about this place-”
“Are you serious?” She cut him off. “You and Chance used to come here all the time. I followed you once, in my car, to see where the heck it was you guys took off to half the time. I liked it. I came back a few nights later when no one was here. It’s peaceful. It’s cool. You can see half the city from up here. I like looking at all the lights winking and glowing in the distance. It’s like the sky reversed itself and crawled down from up there and all the stars ended up on the ground.” She swallowed loudly after, like she was embarrassed that she’d admitted that out loud. To him, at any rate.
“Great. It’s good to know that we’re the ones responsible for you being out here alone. Where anyone could find you and hurt you. You were sleeping up here!”
Alix’s nose scrunched up. He could just make it out as his eyes adjusted to the darkness blanketing them. “I’ve never seen another soul out here, thank you very much. If you have to know, I parked a few blocks over, and I always have my keys with me.”
“What are those going to do?”
“I don’t know. Wreck someone’s face?”
“Fat chance you’d ever be able to use them on someone who actually wanted to cause you harm. You shouldn’t be here by yourself.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t either.”
“I’m a dude. Have you seen the size of me? I think most people would think twice before they took me on.”
“Well… I shouldn’t have to leave just because you’re here. I was here first.”
Ross shuffled a few steps in and sunk down against the rounded metal. It was warmer higher up, in the places that couldn’t escape the sun. He let out a sigh that said that pretty much everything was wrong with the world.
“Do we have to act like five-year old or can we be adults for a minute?”
“I’m pretty sure that you can never be an adult,” Alix shot back.
Ross didn’t turn to look at her, but he heard the annoyance dripping from her tone. That feeling was definitely starting to be mutual.
“I’m pretty sure you can’t either, given that you’ve held this stupid grudge for over four years now. You’re the one who asked for a truce then shot that to hell too, so you know what, Alix, I just give up. Right fucking now. I’m giving up. No fucks given, or whatever people say. I’m done. If you want to act like a spoiled little brat and not come to our family gatherings and hurt my parents, then go right ahead. If you want to act like a stuck-up bitch who tells me to go to hell every single time we bump into each other, go ahead. You want to tell me that I’m a prick for trying to man up and do the right thing and not take you up on something you would have no doubt regretted, then tell me. You want to hold onto that ridiculous hate and anger, or whatever it is, then you do that. I don’t fucking care.”
Silence. Dead. Silence. Finally.
If he’d known that all he needed to do to snap her out of her little self-entitled world was yell at her, he would have done it a long time ago. Except that he never yelled at Alix. He’d spent so many years protecting her, treating her like the little sister that he never had, it was almost ingrained in him.
