Chapter Twenty-Four
ALANNApounced on Alex as soon as he walked into their apartment. “What happened? Is Ricky Lee still in jail?”
Alex rubbed his pounding forehead. “I should have called to let you know what was going on, but I think I was in shock.” He filled her in on the afternoon and evening’s events, ending with Odell’s arrest by the DEA and Ricky Lee’s release.
“Wow.” Alanna shook her head. “I always knew Odell was an ass, but I never thought he was that much of a scumbag.”
“I’m sure the news will surprise a lot of people,” Alex said dully. The day’s wild ups and downs had left him feeling drained, physically and emotionally.
“Ricky Lee must be relieved to be cleared.”
“I think this was the last straw for him. He’s going back to Oregon.” Alex drew in a breath. “He’s asked me to go with him.”
Alanna’s head snapped up. “And you said?”
“I told him I’d have to think about it.”
“Oh, Xan.” Alanna took his arm and pulled him to the sofa, then sat beside him, silent for a few moments. “You didn’t think he was going to stay.”
“He’s not—” Alex hesitated, but there didn’t seem to be a reason not to tell Alanna the truth, now that Ricky Lee was leaving. “He owns a software company in Portland. He’s worth millions.”
The shock he’d expected to see wasn’t there. “I knew it! No one drops 40K that easily, and no way it was from something shady.”
“You might have been the only person to think so.”
“Look, Xan.” Alanna took his hand. “I can’t tell you what to do. But it’s obvious how much you care for him. If you’re not sure he cares as much about you, that’s one thing, but I hope you’re not thinking about staying out of some sense of obligation.”
“I couldn’t leave you here to run the store by yourself,” Alex protested.
“I’ve never told you how much I respect you for coming home to take over when Dad got sick. I know it wasn’t what you wanted to do with your life.” Alanna squeezed his hand. “But I don’t chafe at living in Freeland the way you do. Sure, sometimes the gossip and the pettiness piss me off, but I like knowing everyone in town. I felt lost when I was away at college.” She grinned. “And you’re not indispensable, you know. I could manage the store without you. I do have a business degree, after all.”
“You’d do just fine,” Alex agreed, knowing it was the truth.
“I’d miss you, of course, but that’s what vacations and holidays are for.” She bumped his shoulder and then stood. “Go ahead and sleep on it, but don’t make yourself crazy overthinking things. Listen to your heart.”
Alex rose too and pulled her into a hug. “I love you, Lan.”
“Love you too, bro.”
Alex was sure he’d spend the night tossing and turning, but apparently the day’s stress had worn him out. He fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillows.
THEsteady beat of his footfalls usually calmed Alex as he ran, but today his thoughts refused to settle. Maybe because it was the first morning in a week he hadn’t run with Ricky Lee beside him.This is what you have to look forward to if you say no, he realized.
So what are my reasons for staying?Coming out at the town council meeting had proven much easier than he’d anticipated when he’d thought about his relationship with Ricky Lee becoming public knowledge. Yes, there had been Odell’s reaction, which Alex was sure was shared by many of his cronies, though with his arrest Odell’s standing in the town’s social hierarchy would be taking a nosedive. And Willis hadn’t been the only person to thank him for his openness; after the council meeting, several customers and even a total stranger had stopped in the hardware store to tell him about college friends or cousins or children who were gay or lesbian or bisexual or transgender, and how good it was to know they weren’t alone. Time would tell whether Morrison Hardware would suffer any loss in business as a result of his revelation, but Alex suspected that like most other small-town gossip, the novelty would wear off as soon as the next pseudoscandal erupted. So the fear that he’d be ostracized once his sexual orientation became known was no longer a factor.
On the opposite side of the ledger, leaving Alanna alone to manage Morrison Hardware wasn’t the roadblock he’d once seen it as. She was clearly ready, even eager, to prove what she was capable of. If Alex did decide to leave, she’d have to hire some staff to help cover the store hours, but with his share of the profits rolled back into the business, that wouldn’t strain her resources unduly.
Before Ricky Lee’s return, when he’d daydreamed about escaping Freeland and resuming his lobbying career, Alex had thought of leaving Morrison Hardware as another failure—that he’d be abandoning his parents’ legacy for his own selfish reasons. Ricky Lee and Father John had managed to convince him, for the most part, that what he’d always considered his failures were the same kind of choices everyone had to face. When he tried to imagine what his life would be like if he’d made different decisions—opting to continue playing college football, hoping to be drafted into the NFL before injuries sidelined him or worse, crippled him; staying married to Katie, living with the guilt of letting his family’s business fail and trapping both of them in a relationship that had always been stronger as friends than as lovers—he realized that knowing what he knew now, if he could go back, he wouldn’t choose any differently. The decisions he’d made had shaped him into the man he was now and ensured he was here in Freeland when Ricky Lee came home.
And the possibility that he might have missed this chance didn’t bear thinking of. With that realization, the choice became easy. He’d go to Portland with Ricky Lee, or wherever else their lives might take them, because being with Ricky Lee was all he needed to be happy.
Buck’s barking broke into his concentration, and he stopped, resting his hands on his knees while his pulse rate slowed. Before he could turn to see what had caught the setter’s attention, a deep throaty rumble alerted him to Ricky Lee’s presence. But the last thing he expected to see was the Challenger slowing to a stop on the shoulder of the road.
Ricky Lee rolled down the driver’s window. “Need a lift?”
“That rather negates the purpose of running,” Alex answered, walking up to the idling car.
“You can afford to cut it short this morning. I have something to tell you, and I want to say it somewhere a little more private than the Coffee Pot.”