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At first, things felt casual and light. Free. I didn’t feel like my wings were being clipped and I didn’t even mind having the same sexual partner more than once.
I’m not even sure when it started to snowball into something I no longer had control over.
I’ve seen Rhett most days for the last month. He’s continued to take me out on dates, and he spends time with me in the afternoon before I go to work and most of the weekend except for when I’m at Aces. He wormed his way into my life and now I’m not sure how he did it.
I’m not sure how to stop it either.
I’m not sure if I want to stop it.
Who the hell have I become?
I have feelings for him. Real feelings. I think that’s what has me freaked out even more right now than I was a few days ago before I realized exactly what was going on.
I’m blaming my panic on the family I’ve been sucked into. Well, maybe it’s not all their fault, but definitely the fault of some of the women. And Troy.
I should have never gone to get that pedicure.
I thought I was treating myself, and I was, but I got lost in thought surrounded by way too many people. I was debating which color to get and was thinking about which one Rhett would like better to see on my toes. I had never had such a thought about what a man would like before. What toenail polish? Really?
Before I could snap myself out of it, Andrea, who is the manager of all the Banks’ businesses which consist of a tattoo shop, an art gallery, and a photo studio, teased me, “What’s that goofy look on your face? It looks like one of those ‘I’m in love looks’ we’ve all had on our faces at some point.”
I could feel the blood drain from my face and I felt lightheaded. Love? No fucking way.
I turned slowly, my eyes round. I’m sure I looked freaked the fuck out because I was. “I’m not in love,” I snapped.
Andrea’s gaze was assessing, too fucking assessing. “Oh really? Then what were you thinking about?”
The words were lodged in my throat. I didn’t want to admit what I had been thinking about. Because I had been thinking about Rhett. And my toes, but mostly Rhett.
“Oh,” Troy, one of the artists at the tattoo shop and a complete gossip, “you’ve got it bad.”
“Guys,” there was a warning in Trix’s voice, probably because she knew I was about a second away from freaking the fuck out.
“I don’t have anything,” my voice sounded a lot weaker than I wanted it to. It sounded almost contrite. I cleared my throat, and I felt a resolve fill me that it was time to end things with Rhett. “At least I won’t have anything long,” I snarked.
Trix’s eyes went soft and accusatory at the same time; I have no idea how she managed such a thing. “You don’t mean that,” she was gentle in her words, but it was difficult to hear her over the sound of my heart pounding.
I barely got my shit together after grabbing a random color because who the fuck cares what color I chose at that point. When I sat in one of the chairs, I tried to hide the way I was freaking out. When I looked next to me to find Amelia, the unofficial matriarch of the family and the wife of the tattoo artist Beckett Banks, watching me, I wished I had chosen a different seat.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” my tone was harsher than I intended. I opened my mouth to apologize, but, instead, blurted, “I’ve been seeing this guy for a month, and I just realized it’s gone way farther than it should have. I don’t even know how it really started now. I mean, I’ve always been one and done. That was my thing. No strings and no emotions.” Even I could hear the shock in my voice, “How the hell did this happen?”
Amelia smiled softly at me. “You don’t have to keep running from your feelings, Phoenix.” I shook my head and opened my mouth to tell her that I did, and that heartbreak was just around the corner because it always was, but the look she shot me had me snapping my mouth closed. “Look, I know you’ve heard some of the stories of this family.”
“Yeah,” I choked out the word.
She waved a hand at Troy, “That idiot tried to fight the reality of Ellie for a long time. He’s damn lucky he had Walsh around to keep things moving forward, even if it was slow. Then Walsh was lucky to have Troy get his head out of his ass when he did.”
“Everyone’s lucky to have me around,” Troy threw out from the other side of the room, and it helped to ease some of the tension in my body, but not nearly enough.
Amelia rolled her eyes, but then shot Troy a grin. “Not the point.” She pointed to Penelope, who works at the art gallery, “Penny actually thought the whole thing with Maddox was fake at first even though we all saw the man was head over heels in love with her.”
I looked at Penny and she blushed and shrugged one shoulder. “What can I say? I didn’t want to believe what was right in front of me.”
“Exactly,” Amelia exclaimed. “My point is that sometimes you just need to accept what is instead of trying to force things into what you think they should be. You might be missing out on the beauty life has to offer if you try and deny the truth and you could lose something really good in the process.”
I let her words sink in and she didn’t push me for more information and she didn’t keep hammering her point home.
