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“Is it too late to cancel the wedding and go to the courthouse?” Sondra says.
“YES!” Dottie, Keith, and I shout in unison.
NINETEEN
ALECK
Ever feel like every single thing you touch risks self-implosion, purely from your contact? It’s an awful feeling. My skin crawls with the premonition of looming dread, telling me something shitty is on the horizon. A feeling I know well but haven’t felt in years. I’ve spent a lot of time and trained myself to stay away from situations that lure me into this feeling.
How quickly pleasure can turn to pain.
Two nights ago, I spent the night and early morning inside Winter Sommers. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened after I entered that woman. I knew it would be good—correction, I knew it would befantastic—and it was. The sex, yeah, it was fucking mind-bending. But the feelings… Now they fester inside me like a growing illness.
First, I felt it in my head… the lightheadedness, the confusion, the feeling that I’m not in control. Nowhere near it, actually.
Then my limbs suffered. Sweaty palms, an orgasm I couldn’t fucking control, eyes that can’t seem to blink around her… It was painstakingly irritating.
It moved on to my chest, seizing the part of me I’ve kept under strict watch since I learned people can control how it beats. No one is in charge of my feelings, my lust, my fear, and anger, but me.
Until now.
Everything about the person I’ve created since I became a Fox is unraveling. And I blame it all on Winter fucking Sommers, the siren with big brown eyes and blood-red lips. I didn’t just fuck her, I gave her a direct line to my heart. I melted into her, touched her, kissed her, smelled her,devouredher. And she did the same to me. Webreathedeach other,becameeach other until we were one entity.
I told her things about my life I’veneversaid out loud. I’ve spent the last twenty-two years erasing the person I was before I became Aleck Fox. And in one and a half weeks’ time, Winter has chipped away at my control until two nights ago, when she completely shattered it, making me realize just hownotin control I am.
For a moment, I wondered what Winter would look like in my world. What I would look like in hers. What it would feel like to have her in my arms every night and wake up to her warmth every morning.
When she fell asleep on my chest, I studied her face so closely she’ll never be able to have another emotion without me detecting it before she does. I moved the hair from her face and swirled my thumb over her cheek, and down her neck. Her skin felt like hope. It was the fullest I had ever felt in my life.
It made me nauseous to feel so utterly consumed by my feelings for her.
Why I slipped out of her bed, I don’t know. Because that’s what I do, I guess. I sleep alone because, well, I’ve never had the desire to sleep next to anyone. But also because of my dreams. I’ve had them for as long as I can remember. I’ve always accepted that when I sleep, I relinquish control to the beast inside, and in my dreams, he takes over. I’ve woken up in cold sweats, yelling, gripping and clawing at the blankets like I’m falling a thousand feet to the earth, and I’m desperately trying to pull the line to my chute. I wake with the memory of watching both of my parents throw their hands up to shield the bullets that would travel into their skulls anyway. I wake feeling tethered to the boy who watched his parents being murdered, then hid for three days under his bed, in his own mess, until the urge to eat grew so strong he contemplated eating his own fingernails.
I didn't want Winter to experience that. I didn’t want to lessen what we shared by bringing my beast into her bed. And if I woke from my past and found her next to me, I didn’t want to feel what it would be like to have Winter bring me back to life. Because that would surely be a feeling I’d cling to. A feeling I’m not sure I could let go of.
And when I woke up that morning, I ran an extra six miles to shed the angst of having came so fast our first time together, I couldn’t possibly live it down. Also because I made her wake up alone after what felt like a monumental step between us.
I hated myself for that.
Guilt isn’t a feeling I’m used to. A growing trend in my current situation, feeling things I’ve not yet felt until Winter.
Then Hayden showed up. To revel in the fact that he knows just how to get under my skin, no doubt. Games are his favorite pastime and everything is a game to Hayden,especiallypeople.
When Richard and Mildred Fox gathered me from the children’s home and told me I would live with them thereafter, that I would be their son, I would be a Fox, I vowed to let no one place fear in me ever again. I vowed to remain un-fucking-moveable.
The irony of moving into the role of brother to a master puppeteer like Hayden Fox is almost comical. He got hard on proving nothing was unbreakable. Least of all something as trivial asfeelings.
And when he set his sights on Winter, I fucking lost it inside. I couldn’t showhimthat because I know what he would have done. He would have made her a game to get to me. I’ve learned,trainedmyself, to keep my composure around Hayden or he’ll feed on the pang of irritation he senses until it grows into a savage monster. So, I pushed her away. I made her leave and acted like I could give a shit about her.
I’ve never been a fan of lying. Who the fuck do I have to answer to? No one. Lying makes me feel small and weak, which I’m not. So lying about my feelings for Winter felt no different. And when she charged past us to leave the suite, I saw something in her expression that made me take pause. She was hurt and angry. She couldn’t pass us to leave the room fast enough. She was suffocating, and I saw it. She found no comfort in me, and I saw that, too.
I didn't know why. Istilldon’t.
Because I made her leave the room? Did she really expect to stay and watch Hayden and me duke it out? Typically, I’d brush off this kind of brattiness from her, but this was different. When she came home, she went straight to her room and locked the door behind her.
She locked the damn door.
Nothing says stay the fuck away from me quite like a locked door.
