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Hearing my phone beep, I carefully bent down and fished it out of the purse I’d set on the floor, thankful I managed not to spill my wine. I looked down at the screen.Dax.My pulse did a crazy little skip.
He’d typed:You need to do something about this cat.
Checking out the photo he’d attached of a dead bird lying on the floor near his patio chair, I couldn’t help but wince. I replied:She’s just letting you know she loves you. It’s a gift.
Three dots danced on the screen for a few seconds.It’s a dead animal.
A gift,I repeated.
Yeah, if you’re a psychopath.
My lips twitching, I placed my phone on the armrest. This had become a thing over the past ten days or so. He occasionally texted me about this or that. With anyone else, it wouldn’t mean anything. But Dax wasn’t much of a texter, and he generally didn’t reach out to people—especially not about casual matters.
He also wasn’t a person who sought company. Yet, he’d taken to watching TV with me sometimes—especially true-crime stuff. He also invited me to join him in the pool on occasion, or to accompany him when he paid short visits to his siblings or parents.
In other words, he’d been doing some out-of-character things lately.
Obviously, I was pleased that the moat between us seemed to have narrowed. Whatdidn’tplease me were my responses. My pulse jumped whenever I received a text from him. My stomach went all fluttery when he joined me on the sofa to watch TV. My chest went tight whenever he invited me to swim with him or check in on his family.
People weren’t supposed to have such reactions to an attempt by a friend to reach out to or spend time with them, were they? They should maybe smile or feel light or even get excited. More specifically, they should feel touched in aplatonicway. That wasn’t quite the case with me. And I’d come to realize two things.
One, I was beginning to care for Dax as far more than simply a friend.
Two, I could potentially fall for this man.
I’d known I might grow to care about himone day in the future. That could happen to two people who spent years of their life in the same house, raising children and building good memories. But there were levels of “caring,” weren’t there?
There was the kind of love you felt for a friend, relative, or someone you held in high regard—unromantic, warm, jovial, and long-lasting. It was all intertwined with fondness and familiarity.
Then there was a whole different kind of love. One you usually felt for your significant other. It ran deeper and could feel crucial to a person’s existence. It was passionate, profound, often selfless, and could easily become obsessive.
I hadn’t anticipated that I might experience the latter with Dax. As a teenager, I’d fallen for people easily. Not Dax, though. With him, I hadn’t felt in danger of toppling into the love pit. As such, I hadn’t expected it to happen now either.
But now that I thought about it, I realized that back then—knowing what we had could only be temporary—I’d purposely kept a distance from him in an act of self-preservation. This time round, I hadn’t. And it scared me that I could end up in a situation where I loved someone who didn’t return that love.
Being bound to a man who only “valued” me, a man to whom I’d always be second choice, would suck the most mega balls in history. But I could be worrying for nothing, couldn’t I? There was a possibility that I wouldn’t grow to feel that deeply for him. Especially when I generally never fell for emotionally unavailable men—Dax was the epitome of that.
“Major Addie, this is Ground Control.”
I snapped to attention at Alicia’s words and blinked twice. It was only then I realized she was standing right in front of me. “Sorry, what?”
She gestured at the bottle of wine she held. “Want a top up?”
I lifted my glass. “Oh, absolutely.”
Our conversations thereafter were lighter and playful. We went through at least another bottle of wine before we finally decided to call it a night. As promised, I texted Dax to let him know I was ready to go home—he’d insisted I not walk back to the villa.
He arrived mere minutes later, gracefully stalking into the room looking more appealing than anyone had a right to.
Slipping on my shoes, I looked up at the personification of raw sex appeal, hoping I wasn’t wearing a dreamy expression—my hormones certainly were. “You really didn’t have to come all this way.”
“It’s a five-minute drive, if that,” he reminded me. “Do you think you can stand without help?”
“Of course.” Except … my effort to push out of the chair didn’t work too well.
With a sigh, he snagged my hand and helped me rise to my feet. “Let’s go.”
After I’d exchanged goodbyes, hugs, and cheek-kisses with my sisters, I let him guide me to the car with a hand cupping my elbow to keep me steady. Inside the vehicle, I clicked on my belt, plopped my purse on my lap, and closed my eyes. Damn, my head wasswimming.
