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“If Chance was here, he’d tell me to hand over my man card and then he’d probably ask me to drop ‘em so he could see if my balls were still there.”
“I don’t doubt it.” Don’t think about him dropping his pants. Don’t think about his balls.
Alix liked their truce. She liked their friendship, even if it was tenuous and formed from necessity. She didn’t want to regress back to where they were before, barely civil to each other. She didn’t want to do anything or even think anything that could jeopardize what they were able to share at the moment.
“Alright. Honestly, I am tired. I’m exhausted. I feel tired right down to my bones, if that’s even possible. I feel like I could sleep for a week straight, so I’ll accept your bath and your clean sheets and your terrible baking if it means I can have a few hours. If you end up poisoning me, I guess I’ll get a trip to the hospital and I can rest there too, so it’s a win-win.”
“Hey! My baking isn’t terrible!”
“Remember the fall fair you thought you could enter when you were in grade eight? Chance and I were in grade twelve. You almost set the house on fire. Seriously. Your parents had to buy a new oven. Theirs was so destroyed. We ended up helping you bake a new cake on a new stove and the only reason you got fifth and not kicked out of the state for trying to kill those judges with your witch’s brew concoction was because we helped.”
She stuck out her bottom lip in a pout. “That’s not true! First of all, the oven was shitty and instead of baking at like four hundred it was more like double that, so the fire thing wasn’t my fault. Third, I was just following a recipe I found online, so I wouldn’t have been responsible for killing anyone. And you didn’t help me that much. Chance just acted like an ass the whole time and you stirred and measured things here and there. That’s not the whole cake.”
“I was the one that told you a pinch of salt doesn’t mean a whole handful.”
“I’m going to run that bath now,” Alix muttered.
She stormed off in the direction of the bathroom, leaving Ross standing there, laughing about the stupid cake fiasco. She wasn’t really mad. She wasn’t actually even annoyed. Hearing him laugh, that deep, fully belly laugh for the first time in what felt like years, was just about the sweetest sound in the world.
CHAPTER 11
Ross
It took months for him to pull his head out of his ass. Okay, maybe years. Maybe not. He couldn’t really decide where the line was.
He wasn’t one for deep introspection or even getting in touch with his feelings. He didn’t go on spiritual retreats and when he worked out, he hit the gym hard. No yoga or meditation for him. Maybe he needed it. Maybe he’d take it up in the future. He could see the benefits of it. At the moment though, he wasn’t that in touch with his inner goddess. Case in point, he really did think lavender might be some fancy new breed of dog.
Okay, he’d just said that to make Alix laugh. He didn’t like her standing there, all awkward and uncertain, when he was sure they were past that. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted to hear her laugh. The past months had been downright damn depressing and she’d been there every single step of the way.
That night on the tower changed how he saw her. She wasn’t just the kid sister he liked to bug. The pesky, annoying little brat that he had to watch out for. She was a woman. A grown woman. A beautiful woman. A sexy, gorgeous, vital woman with an incredible soul. Kindness and compassion bubbled out of her. She’d put her life on hold, finding a job, moving out of her parent’s house, so she could be there for him and his family. He wouldn’t have asked her. He’d even tried to drive her away a couple of times in those first few weeks, but she wasn’t having any of it.
Little Alix Bear wasn’t so little anymore. She wasn’t little at all.
The past few months he’d been so focused on his mom that he hadn’t thought about much else. Except for Alix. He’d pretty much forgotten what it felt like to actually be a part of the world and function in it, the real world. She was his lifeline. She was the one who was always there, encouraging him and his family. She was there when he felt like breaking. When he didn’t want to be strong, she’d tell some stupid joke in an effort to make him smile and she’d pull him back from the brink.
