Fated An Alpha Male Romance - K. Alex Walker Page 0,37
The bad days are the ones where he tells me stories about the grandson Ethan that he raised that ended up becoming a doctor. On his good days, the ones where he actually knows who he is, he tells me about how much he likes the facility. That he’s made friends.”
She smiled and I lifted her fingers to my lips.
“Do you visit him often?” she asked.
“Every Sunday. I’ve told him about you. I’d like you to meet him one day.”
Another smile stretched across her beautiful lips. “I’d love that.”
“But tell me, how did your parents meet?” I redirected, determined to get to the bottom of what made Alexandra who she was. What made her conform. What made her stay.
“A junior cotillion,” she replied. “When my grandfather started making a name for himself in political circles, they were inducted into high society by way of ‘passive diffusion.’ Basically, they didn’t seek it out, but it pretty much still found them. So, my father ended up growing up in that type of environment, and my mother’s father was a Joint Chief before he retired early due to his illness. In case you haven’t noticed, my family is heavily military and political.”
I nodded. “Oh, I’ve noticed. Especially your father, The General.”
She laughed and gave me a playful swat. “Why do you say it like that?”
“Because he acts like a general.” I glanced down. “Unless I’m wrong and he really knows how to cut loose behind closed doors.”
She looked at me incredulously and I burst out laughing.
“Guess not?”
“The furthest thing from it,” she replied. “My father is, let’s just say, extremely uptight. Image is extremely important to him. It’s basically what he’s all about. He’s also very adamant about how women are supposed to act in public and in private. It would probably kill him, quite literally, if he found out that I wasn’t a virgin.”
My brows nearly touched. “Seriously?”
“I’m dead serious. For example, my mother has to ask permission to buy anything. She can’t even consent to buying a carton of grapes without first getting his permission and approval. Then, black women wearing their natural hair is a big no-no in his book because, as he puts it, it looks too indigenous and unrefined, which I think is a load of bullshit. And let’s not even get started on attire. He thinks that women in pants is a heinous concept, skirts without stockings is lunacy, and he forbid me and Gia from wearing red nail polish or lipstick because it made us look like we were aspiring to work in a brothel.”
I wasn’t sure if Alexandra noticed how much she’d gotten off of her chest in the span of that explanation, but I was getting a crystal-clear sense of how she’d sustained a long, yet unsatisfying two-year relationship with Roderick. Through very ardent child-rearing, her father had managed to turn her into a clone of her mother.
“So, what happened with Gia?” I asked. “To me, it seems like she pretty much does what she wants.”
“Pretty much, she does,” she said, smiling. “Gia did something that I’m still not entirely sure I have the courage to do: she made the choice to be herself. She wears her hair however she wants, wears whatever colors that she sees fit, listens to music that suits her mood, and tosses our father’s standards back in his face with amazing finesse. She’s happy in her own skin and successfully found someone who loves her just as she is, in that skin.”
The fire blazing next to us paled in comparison to what I saw burning behind Alexandra’s eyelids. Between the admiration and pride that it was evident that she held for her sister, I saw mountains of envy. The desire to do the same.
“Why does it scare you so much?” I asked. “Being your own person. When you think about it, in your head, what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
She took a moment to think over her answer, and then lowered her eyes. “As much as I admire my sister, I wonder if there’s a hole somewhere in her Teflon,” she replied. “The way that my parents talk about her, you would think that she was nothing but a disappointment. Yet, she’s been successfully running her own art business since she was eighteen years old. Normal parents would consider that a pretty decisive win, but all my parents see is failure because she deviated from the path that they’d created for her. It makes me wonder if it