“I want to…stop feeling like I have to try so hard,” she finally whispered. “I feel like I’ve spent all this time just trying to hold in everything. I can’t be irritated about Parker because I’m friends with Jack. I have to just forget about Elisa because the company wants to forget about Elisa. I have to just accept the man who works a country-club life because he did it for me—when I never asked for any of it! I just have to accept that Ramsey did everything for me because he loves me. I just have to accept that Bekah is trying to tear Jack apart when all I want to do is make it right. I can’t seem to do anything without my past creeping up and smothering me. Above all else, I just want to forget about my past and live my present. Why is that so f**king hard?”
She hadn’t been able to hold in the tears. God, she hated that. But they came to her anyway, and she buried her head into her hands, trying to force them to stop.
Chyna sighed, and Lexi felt the couch dip in when Chyna sat down next to her. She rubbed Lexi’s back, and they let her tears run their course.
“I think the problem isn’t that you can’t forget your past. It’s that you don’t really want to,” Chyna spoke finally.
“What?” Lexi asked, swiping the back of her hand against her cheek.
“Your past shapes who you are as a person. It’s made you into the person you are today. Jack left his mark on you, and Ramsey left his mark on you. Scars can last forever.”
“I know that it shaped me, but that doesn’t mean I can’t change.”
“Of course you can change,” Chyna said, clearly trying to hold in her usual cattiness. “Everyone can change, and I think you have. I just think that the one thing you haven’t changed is running from the things you want. It’s like you think you’re not good enough, like you don’t deserve the world and more—but you do.”
Lexi brushed off Chyna and stood. She made a full circuit of the living room before making up her mind about what she wanted to say.
“You tell me all of this—you say that I run from what I want, that I deserve more, but I don’t know what else I could do to make that a reality. I’ve pushed myself completely into this relationship. I moved to Atlanta. We moved in together. We’ve gone through highs and lows, ups and downs, sideways and back ways—”
“I don’t need to hear about your sex life,” Chyna said, arching an eyebrow suggestively.
Lexi chuckled but continued on, “I’m just saying that I have tried everything and more to make this relationship work. Doesn’t that prove that’s what I want? Doesn’t that prove that I deserve to have some semblance of peace and happiness?”
“You’ve put everything into this relationship?” Chyna asked softly.
“Yes!” Lexi cried, exasperated.
“Then, just answer my one question,” Chyna said, moving to stand directly before Lexi. “Why haven’t you been able to let Jack go? Through all of this…he’s still here.”
“I’ve let him go. We’re just friends.”
“He told you he loved you and wanted to take you home with him. I don’t have friends like that.”
“Are you trying to push me toward Jack? He got married! He married Bitch Bekah!”
“And now, he’s divorcing her! I’m not saying that you have to run back to Jack…again. I’m just telling you to think about your life, Alexa. I’m telling you to be a grown-up and realize that some of what you’re going through might just be your own f**king fault! You might love Ramsey and have put everything into this relationship, but you’re only fooling yourself when you keep saying that you and Jack are just friends,” Chyna said, pushing Lexi’s shoulder in a rage. “I think that’s what pisses me off the most. You can have it, have all of it, what everyone searches for, but you do everything in your power to fight it!”
Lexi sagged visibly, feeling the weight of Chyna’s words. “I don’t know how to do anything else.”
Pushing open the door as quietly as possible, Lexi eased into the apartment she shared with Ramsey. She had bumped up her flight from New York and taken the red-eye back that night. Chyna had tried to get her to stay longer, but Lexi knew where she needed to be tonight. She had taken off the weekend to work with Chyna on wedding plans, but Lexi really needed to be here, working on things with Ramsey.
She needed to see him, to touch him, to hold him, to remember why she loved him so damn much. She didn’t normally need that reminder. She didn’t have to be around him at all times to feel those three-and-a-half years envelop her like a blanket. But tonight—well, tonight was different. Chyna had made her all topsy-turvy, and she wanted to be right-side up again. She wanted her initial gut reaction, the one she had been saying over and over again for three years, to be instinctual, to always be at the tip of her tongue. She didn’t want to think about anything else. That was what she wanted.
In that moment, she didn’t care if she was lying to herself about it.
She shut and locked the door behind her and then tiptoed upstairs through the darkened apartment. She had left her bags in her car since she didn’t want to have to haul them upstairs in the middle of the night. All she wanted was to see Ramsey.
Her feet carried her to the end of the hallway. She stood in front of the closed door to their bedroom and took a deep breath before pushing it open.
Ramsey was lying on his side of the bed, curled in, facing where her body normally lay next to him. He looked so calm with the covers falling half off his bare muscular torso. She smiled at the familiar picture—one that she had grown accustomed to and taken for granted. She got to sleep next to him every night. Even when she staggered into bed, exhausted, she still felt the warmth of his embrace and the acceptance between them. Those were the things that mattered.
Lexi easily stripped out of everything but her underwear and crawled into bed, next to him. He didn’t even stir as the bed dipped under her weight. Moving forward, she pressed her chest against him and then her whole body. Without even opening his eyes, his arm came around her, holding her gently in place against his body.
She trailed her hand up the definition in his six-pack, to his built chest, up his neck, and then to the strong jawline. At first, her lips landed on his lightly, but then her increasingly demanding kisses began rousing him from slumber.
His fingers digging into her back was the first indication that he had awoken, and then his lower half pressed into her before finally his lips parted to let her tongue inside his mouth. They kissed passionately, desperately, as she fed him every emotion locked away in her body. He didn’t hold back either as he began a slow grind against her. She could feel him stiffening through the thin layer of clothes separating them.
“Baby,” Ramsey growled against her mouth, rolling her over and pressing her firmly into the bed.
“Mmhmm…”
“You’re home early.”
“I needed you,” she said, giving him the most honest answer she had.
She needed the physical connection now more than ever before. She needed the reminder tonight that she was making the right choice.
“I love to hear that,” he groaned. He spread her thighs and eased down between them, continuing to grind against her.
“Make love to me,” she all but whimpered as his c*ck pushed against the thin material of her underwear.
Removing their last layer of clothes, Ramsey settled back down between her legs and took her for his own. She felt him pull back and meet her again and again, and she tried to keep her mind in the here and now.
This was what she wanted. She wanted to have this feeling, to know he was hers and she was his. To feel him and know that she was going to have this for the rest of her life…that this was what she wanted for longer than that.
She could feel him straining to release, and her walls were tightening around him, quaking at his measured thrusts.
She loved this man.
She f**king loved this man.
They might have their problems, but every couple had problems. She could get past everything that had happened. She could deal with the problems they had faced, like she had been since the beginning. Because here and now…was the right decision.
She wasn’t going to fight him on this.
And she didn’t as he pushed her over the edge, sending waves of pleasure from her core to the very tips of her fingers. She closed her eyes, savoring that feeling, and then she let her body relax back into the bed. Ramsey collapsed over her before pulling out.
“I love you,” he said.
He kissed her lips and then slid off the bed to head into the bathroom.
Her endorphins spiked and then released. It was like she was hitting the bottom of a sugar high. She rolled over and buried her face into the pillow.
If this was how she was supposed to feel, then why did she have to keep reminding herself she was happy?
Chapter 16
Atlanta was a bustle with tourists throughout the holiday season. Traffic clustered the interstates, the malls were packed with Christmas shoppers, and everywhere Lexi went, the city was full of Christmas cheer. It was unseasonably cold for the South. These low temperatures didn’t normally hit until the end of January or early February, and they lasted only a few weeks at most. She was surprised to be constantly clad in her New York attire of sweaters, knee-high boots, and peacoats. She loved the layers, but she was already missing the summer.
The law firm had given her two weeks off around Christmas, and she had no idea what to do with herself. Last Christmas, she’d had three days off. She figured the extra time off came from paying her dues…or maybe they had just seen how much of a wreck she had been recently. It certainly didn’t help when her relationship woes had made it into the news.
When Elisa had been hauled out of Opera that night two months ago, she had been arrested for trespassing. The local Atlanta news had reported on the event, including a picture of Ramsey and Elisa together outside of the venue. It had been all sorts of humiliating.
His father had been worried about the backlash against the company and ran a series of press releases, trying to do minimize the damage. But aside from the embarrassment, it hadn’t done anything to the medical wing. In fact, it seemed to get the word out even more, and the new building was flooded with people. Lexi just hoped the company didn’t try to use personal scandals to get more business after this.
The one benefit from all of this was that Ramsey had been incredibly chill about everything in her life. Going to lunch with Jack was no big deal. Spending time with Brandon didn’t irk him. She didn’t know if he had just let go of his concerns or if he just didn’t want to put her through anything else after that. She wanted to believe that he trusted her, so that was what she was going with.
Either way, it was a relief not to have to worry so much. Ramsey had always said that he didn’t care about Jack and Brandon or anyone else as long as they kept their hands to themselves, but she had never really believed him. After that incident with Elisa when Lexi had been left standing in the middle of Opera with a glass of vodka poured on her, then Jack saving her from Bekah, and no one but Cierra and Parker to look after her—well, things had changed.