Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,400

quell the pain.

“Still is most days,” I whisper. A sense of tragic sadness weighs me down. Here it was, Emilia’s death that has brought on the first serious conversation between Lex and me.

“May I ask what happened? I mean, I don’t want to pry or gouge open any wounds, but I cared about her.” Lex covers her face and vibrates with quiet tears.

“Hey, it’s okay. I know she cared about you, too. If it makes you feel better, she didn’t talk to me for a month after we split up. I think she may have liked you a little more than me.”

A tiny laugh trails through her. “She was smart.” Lex pulls back with black muddy trails tracking down her cheeks. “What happened to my beautiful friend?”

My heart warms as she says it. Lex has always been a self-proclaimed hermit who only had a heart for blood relations and then only some of those. She once told me that Emilia was her first real friend and she wore that like a badge. She loved my sister. I knew that. I still do.

“She fell.” I shrug because there is no other explanation really. “She went on a hike with her boyfriend—a walking tour about a mile beyond the overlook in Hollow Brook. It had just finished raining, and her foot caught on a branch. She tripped and sailed over a steep embankment—about twenty-five feet. That’s all. Hit her temple on a sharp rock, closed her eyes, and never opened them again. I was at the office with my father and Shep—got a hysterical phone call from Teagan. Tom, her boyfriend, didn’t really have any of our numbers. He was pretty new to the scene. But Teagan had sent Emilia and him a group text—a picture of her headed to a winter dance at school so he knew to call. We took off for the hospital, but she was already gone. Life turned inside out, and it was hell.” I close my eyes, and Lex presses my face to hers by the back of my neck.

We sit there, our noses locked together, our lips lying over one another as our silent hot tears conjoin into one.

“I’m so sorry, Ax. I’m so very, very sorry.” Her lips find mine, and we start in on a slow, delicious kiss that feels more medicinal than it does anything else. For sure it’s not one of those angry kisses we indulged in back in the kitchen. Gone is all the fury, the resentment over what we lost, what we could have been. This was a perfectly mild kiss, penetrating to the core with hope of a beautiful future.

She pulls back, her face glossed with tears, her eyes so red they’re unrecognizable. “Did you think of calling me?”

“I don’t have your number, Lex.” I shake my head. “I tried to find you, but you’ve covered your tracks so well I would have bet you slipped into the witness protection program. Heck, you did a fantastic job of protecting your privacy.”

She gives a wry smile. “I am rather stealth.”

“And stingy with your whereabouts.” I give her hip a light pinch, and she bucks with a quiet laugh. “But I’m glad I found you.” My eyes rake over her features in hope of a hint that she might feel the same. “Are you glad you found me?” There. I said it. For as desperate as it sounds, I really do want an answer.

Lex takes a quivering breath somewhere between tears, regret, and relief. “I was about twenty minutes ago. And I most likely will in about another hour.” She cocks her head to the side and offers up a quick wink. “But prior to this, I pretty much blamed you for the current disarray in my life. You do realize it was you who caused me to bolt from The Sloppy Pelican last spring and send Harlow Walking Disaster Hartley in instead. Everything went to holy heck after that. I lost my job. I gained two friends.” She head-butts me lightly with that last one, and I can’t help but laugh.

“Friends never were your forte.”

“And now one of the she-devils is living with me while the other one is making me wear frilly taffeta in just a couple of weeks. Friends are a hazard I’ve spent my entire life avoiding.” She slaps me over the ass with some muscle behind the action. “And it’s all your fault.”

“If my actions led to tonight, I’m guilty as charged.” I dip a