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Lexi knew she should have been thankful for the way that all the pieces fell into place so quickly. She was thankful. She truly was. She hardly even cried herself to sleep at night anymore. Hardly. Ever. She didn’t spend every spare moment of the day thinking about the one missing piece in her puzzle. The one that would never fall in. Never could fall in.
Because she’d left it.
She’d left it and there was no going back.
Just as she was reaching for her car keys and her purse, her nerves churning her stomach worse than any other morning, the apartment buzzer went off, crackling through the kitchen. Sam jumped so hard that her toast flew out of her hand landed facedown with a peanut buttery, jammy, gooey smack on the kitchen floor.
“Assholes and buttholes,” Sam muttered under her breath. “Who the heck is ringing the buzzer at seven in the morning? Must be the wrong place. I swear, if anyone else drunk buzzes this apartment in the wee hours of the morning on any day, I’m going to go down there and rip them a new butthole.”
Lexi bit down on her lip to stifle a smile. Sam’s favorite curses always involved something about a butt. It was quite endearing and drunk buzzing or not, she could use a little humor in her life.
Lexi slid her purse strap over her shoulder while Sam bent with a wad of paper towel in her hand to tackle the toast disaster. “Okay, I’m going now. I’ll text you at lunch to let you know how it’s going.”
“You’ll be a rock star. This job will be a breeze after your last one.” Sam scraped peanut butter off the floor with the paper towel without looking up. Lexi loved that about Sam. That she wasn’t afraid to tiptoe around the past. It did hurt but that burn in her chest was never going to disappear. So, she could handle it.
At least she liked to tell herself she could.
Before she got halfway to the front door, the buzzer blared again. Sam straightened, smoothed her hair out of her eyes, and rushed like a pissed off locomotive over to the buzzer. She punched the speaker and yelled something about it being obscene to ring the wrong apartment twice first thing in the morning.
Lexi slipped into her shoes, shaking her head. “I think you told them off. They’ll definitely get the right number next time.” She stifled a grin, knowing full well they’d probably have another three drunk buzzes that weekend. It seemed like a common occurrence in Sam’s building. It was kind of weird because no one ever buzzed her old apartment by accident.
“I’ll be waiting for your report,” Sam grinned. Lexi gave her a small wave and slipped out the door.
She ignored the way her hands trembled and clutched her car keys a little more firmly in her fist, until the metal dug uncomfortably into her palm. It momentarily distracted her from her first day jitters, which was fine by her. Her flats scraped over the three flights of stairs as she made her way out the back door to the parking lot where she was parked.
She flung open the back door and stopped dead in her tracks. It was a beautiful sunny morning, even if it was a bit crisp. It would warm up soon enough. The crisp fall breeze wasn’t what stopped her dead in her tracks.
Curtis James did.
He leaned against her car, wearing one of his usual two thousand dollar suits. All black. He had his arms folded over his chest and looked every bit the six and some odd foot granite god of a mountain that he was. He wasn’t smiling. Wasn’t smirking. Even still, he was just as gorgeous as she remembered. No. That was wrong. He was far more beautiful because he was there, in real life, in all the real, technicolor detail. She had to blink a few times, sure her mind had conjured him up, she’d thought about him so often, but no. When she pressed the key into her palm, it hurt. It was real. He was truly there.
Lex swallowed hard. Turning and retreating back into the apartment wasn’t an option. At least not one she was willing to consider. Curtis was there and she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t just going to disappear. She had to face him head on.
She raised her head up high and rolled her shoulders back. She didn’t want him to see what his very presence did to her insides. If she thought the smell of Sam’s breakfast was bad, the anything of Curtis was insane. He didn’t just do things to her stomach though. As usual, he threw her entire being into a messy disarray.
Lexi stalked over to her car, as composed as she could be. He was leaning up against the driver’s door so that she couldn’t get in.
