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“As long as the sex was a ten, I’ll swallow my pride at the dismount.”
“A ten?” She scoffs, rolling her eyes. “Definitely not. That was more like a four.”
In a flash, I reach up and snatch her arm, yanking hard and forcing her to fall off the table. She comes tumbling down on top of me with a shriek, but I catch her before I hurt either of us and cradle her against me, rubbing her abused ass and wrists and kissing her forehead, cheeks, and nose. Falling more in love with her by the second while trying to figure out how I can keep her forever because this time I don’t think I can give her up.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“You know I’m following you, right?” Alice keeps trotting along through the woods like she’s been doing for the last fifteen minutes, crunching on leaves and picking up random sticks in her mouth until she finds a better one. “As in, I hope you know where we’re going. These woods are no joke, and I don’t want to end up on a missing person’s flyer.”
She gives me a small bark that tells me she’s got me, and we continue on. Lenox left early this morning for the shop since it’s Saturday, and I’m assuming a relatively busy day for him. I waited in my room until I heard him leave before I came downstairs and ate the warm pumpkin scone he left for me and drank the coffee he brewed for me.
It’s been a strange few days since I dropped to my knees for him in his shop. I was overtaken by all that I had heard he’s done for the town and the people. For what I suspect are his primary reasons for doing it. There was no way I could hold back. It took all my strength to wait those four hours until he was done with his client.
But I realized as he held me on the floor, his fingers trickling along my skin and his breathing slow and peacefully even, that I was repeating old patterns. Old patterns I swore I wouldn’t. So since then, I’ve gone back to playing duck and weave around him other than the few times I’ve gone with him into town for yoga and to hang out at the library. But even then, we didn’t talk much, and I get the impression Lenox doesn’t know quite what to do with me or is fine with what we’ve done and likes us having our space in between.
In the meantime, I’ve hung out a bit more with Brooklynn and her friends and am starting to like them the more time I spend with them. In between that, I’ve been doing research into the company I now own so that when I go back to LA early next month for the board meeting, I’m ready.
Other than that, I stay mostly in my room when he’s home, and when he’s not, I explore the house and the woods around it. He makes sure I have food—yesterday’s breakfast was bacon, egg, and cheese on an English muffin—and he’s been leaving Alice home with me. I’m grateful for that because otherwise, in addition to getting lost and becoming a hiking statistic, I’d be talking to myself in an unhealthy way instead of spewing my thoughts to her in a healthy way.
I don’t know what to do or what to think about him.
He surprises me at every turn.
He’s taking care of me, doing sweet things just for me like the food and coffee, leaving me a hangout buddy, and putting the roses in my room. I won’t even get into his tattoo. He cleared a space in his massive home gym where he hung a punching bag for me and bought me a yoga ball, some resistant bands, and a yoga mat. He’s trying to make me feel at home, and I’m grateful. I’m grateful for so much with him.
But the longer I’m with him, and the more things he does just for me—things that show thought, consideration, and care—the more I’m afraid. I loved him once, and that love wasn’t simple. It was twisted and complex and consuming and dangerous with where it took me and how it left me. So for now, with a litany of unanswered questions and ugly answers between us, I’m keeping my distance.
Alice barks, dropping her latest branch when she hears a snapping sound about fifteen feet from us. Thankfully, she doesn’t give chase. “That better not be a bear. Or a wolf.” I pause. “They have wolves in Maine, right? Oh, maybe it’s a moose, though I’ve heard they’re mean sons of bitches.”
She gives another bark but then turns right, heading away from it.
“I’d see a moose, though. They’re freaking huge, and if it’s a wolf or a bear, just give me a heads-up so I can run… away, I guess since I have no clue at this point where the house is.”
She nuzzles my leg to let me know she’s got my back, and I bend down and rub the top of her head.
“I know. Besties for life. Let’s head to the lake. I feel like that’s a solid place I can find and weave my way back toward the house from if I have to.”
And since Alice is the best dog in the history of dogs, she snatches up another wet branch from the ground and then takes a right and leads me toward what I’m hoping is the lake since I can’t see it through the dense trees and multicolored leaves. I can’t get enough of the changing fall colors. We don’t get this in LA, and to see the fall foliage and feel the autumn chill in the air really brings out the season.
Sipping a pumpkin-spiced latte at the beach doesn’t have quite the same feel.
We reach the edge of the lake, a frigid mist rising off it, and I understand its namesake. The lake is, well, lavender, or more like a gray-purple with the way the muted light settles on it. Snow is supposed to come in this afternoon, the news calling it a November nor’easter, and the air already has that static electric feel to it that comes before a big snowstorm. I drop onto the trunk of a fallen tree right along the rocky shore of the lake, my knees hiked up as I listen to the gentle sound of water lapping against the stones near my feet.
“This really is so beautiful. I can see why he lives here. I mean, I don’t get the fortress of solitude and fuck off thing, but he picked a good spot.”
Alice comes and sprawls out on the rocks by my feet, chewing on her stick, and I pick up a rock, trying to skip it into the lake and watch as it instead plummets into the water with a noisy plop and a loud splash. Alice has the grace not to tease me about that.
“Clearly I need to work on my nature girl side.” I sigh, stretching my legs out in front of me. “So, tell me, how often does he bring home women?”
She gives me a don’t be that girl look and she’s right. But I can’t help but wonder all the same. Does he bring women back to my dream house? Does he fuck them in rooms I designed? A miserable spike of jealousy surges through me, and I wonder if I’ll ever not care. It’s a bleak and disheartening thought, knowing that he might always own a piece of me.
On Monday, I have another coffee date with the ladies in town, and it’s almost Thanksgiving, my absolute favorite holiday. But almost immediately after that, I have to fly out to LA. I haven’t asked Lenox anything about what he’s been doing or not doing with Ezra and Alfie. Not since we had that conversation about my father’s will.
It’s easy to not think about it when I’m here.
It’s easy to allow myself to get lost and stay there.
Just as I pick up another rock to try and skip it across the lake, my phone rings in my jacket pocket. I pull it out and groan when I see it’s my mother. At least it’s not Alfie or Ezra. Alfie, I haven’t heard from, but Ezra, yeah, that boy doesn’t relent.
