AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Twenty minutes later, I was standing at the end of the driveway looking at the taillights of a cab. I frowned and felt my heart drop as the driver loaded four large duffel bags into the trunk of the car. I said nothing to the driver. Instead, I ran up the front steps and threw open the front door. I wanted my girl in my arms, and to say I was slightly panicking would be an understatement.
Jim and Barbara looked up from where they sat, tears in Barbara's eyes. Zach and Ann Marie stood by the fireplace, Zach meeting my gaze as I shut the front door.
"I told her not to pack, but she was insistent." Barbara said, shrugging her shoulders. "Even Ann Marie and Zach tried speaking with her," she said, wiping her nose with a balled-up tissue.
"Where is she?" I asked, shrugging my coat off and hanging it on the corner of the banister, kicking my wet shoes off.
"Upstairs. She said she had a phone call to make to her landlord and her boss," Ann Marie whispered, her eyes full of tears as well. She curled herself into Zach's side and buried her face in his shoulder.
My heart thudded in my chest. I couldn't lose her. I ran up the stairs and threw her bedroom door open. She jumped as the door banged against the wall and frowned at me as she continued speaking to someone on the other end of the line.
"That's right, I sent the down payment through e-transfer. I will send the remainder of the rent tomorrow afternoon via e-transfer as well. Great, okay, I guess I will see you in a couple of days then, and I will pay you the rest at that time." She hung up her phone and threw it down on her dresser.
"What's going on, Lex?" I asked, stepping into the bedroom and looking around at the now-empty space. "Where are you going?"
"Now isn't the time for this, Drew. I have to get ready to go. My cab is here to take me to the airport."
My heart sank. She picked up her purse and placed the strap across her shoulder and pocketed her phone.
"Lexi, please..."
"I have to go, Drew." She reached up and placed a kiss on my cheek, lingering there for a second. "I left your gift in your room. I hope you like it, and I wish you both all the best."
I couldn't find the words as every part of me ached. She slipped past me and walked down those stairs. I leaned against the doorframe unable to move, and when I heard the front door shut and saw the cab back out of the driveway from the upstairs window, my heart shattered into a million pieces. I slid down and sat on the floor, my arms resting on my knees.
I had no idea how long I had sat like that, but the next thing I heard was my name being called. "Drew...Drew?"
I blinked hard as Barbara came into view. She was kneeling beside me, a worried look on her face.
"She left." Those were the only words I could get out before the first of the tears slipped down my cheek. I felt utterly embarrassed. There had only been one other time in my life that I had cried, and that was when I was six, the day my mother had walked out on Dad and me.
Barbara wrapped her arms around me and pulled me against her, and then the tears just poured. "She can't be gone," I murmured through heavy sobs. "She didn't even give me a chance..."
"I know, sweetie. It will be okay. She will come to her senses, I promise you. Now Zach is downstairs and waiting out in the car. He's going to drive you to the airport to get her."
"I can't." I sniffled. "I can't take another rejection."
"You won't have to. I know my daughter."
I looked up at Barbara. She looked down on me with a soft smile on her lips and eyes full of tears.
"She loves you. I could see it on her face. Go, go get her." She leaned in and placed a kiss on the top of my head. She backed up and cupped my cheek. "Andrew, even though I already think of you as my son, I can't wait to have you marry my daughter."
Chapter 26
Alexa
I randown the front stairs of the house fighting the tears all the way. The look on Drew's face as I kissed him good-bye broke my heart. I didn't give him a chance to explain, because I think it would have killed me to hear the words that he was going to say. It would kill me to know that he had taken Laura back. So I did the only thing I knew: get into the cab and go. This life worked for me, as lonely as it was, and packing my things up was the only way I now had of protecting my heart.
As soon as I was in the safety of the back seat of the cab and had told the driver what gate to drop me at, the tears started to pour. I studied the landscape through watery eyes as we passed through town. The first intersection we came to was where Drew and I had shared our first kiss. I could almost see us standing on that corner, the snow falling around us as his lips met mine. I remembered the way his lips grazed mine, cautiously at first, and then hard and with purpose. I could feel his hand at the back of my head, as his fingers wound through my hair. I could still feel the warmth his body gave off on my cold skin that night.
I blinked hard and quickly shoved that memory to the back of my mind as the cab pulled away from the intersection where we had stood.
I really wished he had taken the other way out of town, that way I wouldn't have been subjected to this drive. He pulled up to the next light, just outside of the little cafe. I looked at the front window where we had sat and had our hot chocolate, where he had surprised me with a hot cup full of those mini marshmallows. We hadn't seen one another in a few years, and yet he still remembered.
As we started to move, the cab stopped in front of the other window of the cafe, the scene I had watched through that window just a couple of hours ago that had broken my heart in two. Seeing him kiss Laura had just about swallowed me whole. It was amazing to me how one building could hold such two different memories for me. I wiped the stray tear from my cheek as the cab began to move again. I needed to get out of this town.
I glanced out the window and to my left as the cab stopped at the next light, just in time to see the sign of the bookstore as the cab pulled away. My mind flashed to Drew's face as he looked at the book I had chosen to give my mother. That sexy half-smirk as he had caught me in my lie. The memory of him turning that book around to show me the title and how he had struggled not to laugh brought a soft smile to my lips.
