Page 89 of Burning for Alexander
I regretted the words the second they were out of my mouth. The last fucking thing I wanted was to hurt Alex. All I wanted was to protect him, dammit.
But it was clear by the way Alex’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened, by his single punched-out “wow,” that my outburst had put the final nail in the coffin.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“Obviously, you did because you said it. I’ve had an easy life with no challenges, and all I have to do is go confess to my giant fucking family with their giant fucking opinions that I fucking failed at something they do as if by fucking magic.Twice. That Itrusted the wrong person.Twice. That I thought that person actually cared about me.Twice.”
Every time he saidtwice, his voice broke a little more until he was crying again.
I felt my own tears soaking the front of my collar. “Alex, please.”
“No. This… I can’t do it. Maybe it’s a good thing we figured it out now. Maybe we were never meant to have a first real date.” He took a shuddering breath. “Because if this had happened after we were already officially together?” His face fell, and his voice became nearly impossible to hear. “I wouldn’t survive it.”
Then he turned around and left.
By the very next day, it was as if the past six months had never happened. Alex Marian treated me like nothing more than the annoying fire marshal who hassled him for no good reason.
And after a week of trying everything I could think of to get him to give me another chance…
That’s exactly what I became.
27
ALEX
Ella:How did you like the new therapist?
Alex:She wants me to practice meditation.
Ella:Fuck that. Let’s burn some shit.
_____________________
“Alex, the chief’s here again!”Mali called back to my office. As chipper as my hostess was, even she was getting sick of this.
“You have to be fucking kidding,” I snapped, closing my eyes and counting to ten.
Is he out of his mind?This was his third visit in the past six days.
Ella sighed from her spot in my office’s “visitor’s chair,” which was really just a stack of Rubbermaid bins at the moment. We’d decorated for Thanksgiving last week, and the empty bins apparently lived in my office until it was time to swap them with the Christmas stuffnext week.
“Why is he like this?” she demanded. “I thought the two of you were getting along better and then, boom! More inspections and feuding. Make it make sense.”
Despite Judd’s awful accusation of my running straight to my family, I hadn’t told them anything. Which was honestly making the quasi-breakup ten times worse. I was screaming in pain on the inside and had to act completely normal on the outside.
And it was all Kincaid’s fault.
“What do you want?” I asked when I got out to the front of the house.
He tilted his chin at my string of turkey lights hanging over the bar. “Those aren’t to code. They need to be eighteen inches below the sprinkler deflectors.”
I stared at him and tried not to notice how jaw-droppingly beautiful he was. Judd Kincaid was a gorgeous man. If he didn’t scowl most of the time, people would be all over him like white on rice. Hell, they already were.
“And how many inches are they, Chief?” I asked, because if he was threatening to cite me, he already knew he was in the right.
He met my eyes. “Seventeen and a quarter.”
“This is harassment,” I hissed. “You know it, and I know it, and— Hi, Mrs. Carilla! Yes, it’s good to see you, too. Oh, the mah-jongg group today, hm? Well, that’s wonderful. Welcome to Timber. We’re happy to have you. Mali, here, will find you a couple of tables in a nice, private corner.”
