Summer Breeze Kisses - Addison Moore Page 0,416

would also be so very us.

The slam of the car door. The shuffle of shoes across the gravel. The moon hits her with a burst of light and her hair lights up like a flame. Lex is a walking birthday candle. Those sultry hips of hers slowly sashay toward me like a promise, and for a second I fully believe she’s here to offer up a mouthwatering proposition.

“You came,” I say as the moon illuminates her features.

Lex slices through me with a look that says hold onto your balls, and that knot I’ve been nursing in my belly cinches right back up.

“Bet your bottom dollar. I showed up with bells on.” She strides forward with a dark smile curving on her lips, and any hope of a reconciliation flees from the scene. “I came to give you this.” She holds out a balled fist, and I’m slow to offer up my palm. I already know what happens next.

Lex drops my grandmother’s wedding ring into my hand and I stare at it a moment too long. She didn’t give it back that night in Founder’s Square. I thought she might keep it—she might keep me. It looks like any prospect of regaling my family with an engagement on Christmas Eve just dwindled down to nothing.

“I don’t want this.” I sniff hard at the sight of the lonely band. The gold grows cold so fast it burns its impression over my skin.

“It belongs to your family,” she huffs incredulously as if I were a moron for not wanting it back. “You’ll find someone in New York to give it to.”

“I won’t. I’m not going, Lex.”

Her eyes hook to mine with a fire all their own. Her anger over the fact I refuse to head north has her irate all over again.

“What don’t you get?” My voice shakes with a fury of my own. “I don’t need NYU. I need you.”

“You want NYU. It’s been your dream.”

“You’re my dream. I’ll sacrifice NYU for you. I’ll sacrifice everything for you, Lex.”

“I don’t want you to sacrifice anything for me!” she bellows so loud her voice ricochets around us like a boomerang. “I refuse to be the reason you’re not happy. I refuse to be the one you can point the finger at when you start to contemplate why you stayed. We are not working. We are broken. We are over.” Her voice softens to just above a whisper. Her eyes though. I’m begging for a sign of life in this strangled relationship, something to gauge whether or not she means the words she’s throwing at me so convincingly. But there’s not a tear in sight. Not on her end anyway.

“We’re not over.” I close my fingers over the ring as if maybe we are. “We’ll never be over, Lex.” I take a step in and caress her cheek with my finger. “I love you. You’re hurting, and I don’t want that for you. Whatever happens between us, Lex—I want you to know I’m putting you in power of where we go from here. What do you need from me, Lex? I’ll meet you there. I promise.”

A single tear rolls down her cheek, and relief comes rushing back to the party. Lex cares. Lex is human. Lex loves me. This much I know for sure.

In a brazen move, I wrap my arms around her waist and bring her close to me, warming her body with mine.

She sniffs back her emotions, blinking hard as if disowning the tear that escaped without her permission. “I need you to go to New York,” she whispers while staring out into the dark just beyond the parking lot. “And then I need you to understand that we need to take a break.”

“A break,” I repeat numbly. A break is simply a step up from a breakup, but at this point I’ll hang onto whatever she wants to give me.

Her eyes meet with mine, a genuine disquiet about them. Lex’s eyes were always telling me something, hating me, loving me, openly laughing at me—with me. But at the moment, they are stone cold silent.

She gives a single nod. “We’ll be friends.” Lex slips past me like an apparition. She’s in her car and barreling down the mountain before I can catch my next breath.

Friends.

My soul aches with the sting of grief.

We both know Lex doesn’t believe in friends.

Present Day…

Axel

Lex. She’s back in my life. I can breathe again. I can see the light, and it just so happens to be streaming