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The dim light engulfs us almost as deeply as the dread of hearing what I felt was coming.
“You’ve been avoiding me.” I swallow down the lump in my throat, ignoring the unshed tears behind my eyes.
“I’ve been mingling.”
“You don’tmingle, Aleck.”
He sucks in a deep breath—a breath that sounds an awful lot like rejection—and exhales it against my ear.
“You’re letting me go…” I say, the words leaving my lips as if they had been soaked in acid, scorching my throat on the way up, and burning my tongue raw before they were gone.
Aleck pulled his face back, his light azure eyes now as dark as the deepest most undiscovered crevices of the ocean. “I couldneverlet you go.”
“Then what is this? Did my toast make you feel—”
“Your toast was beautiful, Winter.” A hint of impatience clear in his tone. “Thisis nothing. Maybe I was keeping my distance, but that’s because there are a lot of eyes on us here, and you in that dress… Shit, Winter, I’m just trying to keep my fucking sanity.”
“Because you don’t know how you feel about us…”
“I knowexactlyhow I feel about us.”
His arm tightens around my waist before turning us with precision. Years of attending galas with dates on his arm have taught him how to lead a woman on the dancefloor, and it shows.
“What did my dad say?”
“Nothing I didn’t already know.”
“Yeah?” An ache starts in my chest and spreads to my limbs. “And what was that?”
“That I’m a fire, Winter, hot and destructive. If you don’t get out, I’ll burn you alive.”
He repeated my words back to me.Repeated my own words back to me.
Anger flares hot in my veins, blinding me with tears.I knew it.He isn’t giving us a chance, he isn’t even going to try. We still have hours left, and he’s already conceded. My heart screams “Coward!”into my body, but the word never leaves my mouth. I’m mentally detached, looking around at the guests, now thinning out as we approached the conclusion of this wedding.
I’m not going down without a fight, Fox.
“If you’re the fire, Aleck, I’m the goddamn gasoline,” I repeat his response to me all those nights ago in retaliation. “Let’s say our goodbyes, then take me upstairs. If this is it, and we’re done, I want to feel you one more time.”
I want to send you off with moments that willhauntyou.
Aleck’s eyes narrow on mine with restrained indignation. “I didn’t say we were done, Winter.”
“You didn’t have to.” I move my lips to his ear and whisper like a spell, “Take me upstairs and fuck this anger out of me. Because right now, I’m angry and you’re the source.”
His arm tightens around my waist, my chest burning against his. I feel his ribcage expand and deflate with ragged breaths. He doesn’t say a word, but he doesn’t have to. I feel his need for me wash over him like a title wave. I also hear the words he isn’t saying.
Aleck and I have been playing on the verge of anger-fucking the entire time we’ve known each other. And now I’m asking for it by name.
“What are you waiting for, Fox?” I hiss in his ear.
His fingers dig into my hip. “Fuck,Winter.” He breathes in deeply, holding his breath before clenching his jaw and pulling me off the dance floor.
My family has already left. My brothers have to work early in the morning and my dad didn’t want them driving the distance too late. So we say our goodbyes to Aleck’s family. Midge and Richard are staying at the beach house one more night so they won’t have to make the drive to their house in the hills. Midge hugs me tightly, inviting us to stop by the beach house for brunch after we check out of the resort. A verbal knife twists between my ribs one last time.
Hayden’s gone, too. He has a“soirée”to attend. His words, not mine. Obviously.
I wrap my arms around Dottie and Keith, who are,not surprisingly, still dancing like it’sonlythree in the morning at a Las Vegas nightclub.
