“Thanks for having me.” I nod at her. “But I do have a sister and we are very close.”
“She’s amazing,” Lexi praises. “You’ll meet her tomorrow at the game.”
“I have a question.” Zoe holds up her hand. “Why Lexi?”
“Oh, good one,” her twin, Zara, says.
“Well, that’s an easy one.” I look up at her. “Besides the fact that she’s drop-dead gorgeous.” I smile. “She’s kind, she’s compassionate, she puts everyone else before herself. She’s resilient and fiercely loyal. She’s funny. She literally lights up the room with the way she smiles. She is also one of the strongest women I’ve ever met.” She bends to kiss my lips. “And those are just a couple of reasons off the top of my head.”
“Good answer,” Zoe and Zara say at the same time. I don’t know how long it goes on, but I answer every single question until Lexi holds up her hand.
“Okay, okay, enough grilling Kirby, it’s time to go,” she says and I get up, following her lead. It takes another thirty minutes to say goodbye to everyone, and I even offer them my suite for the hockey game tomorrow.
We walk out and she puts her hand in mine. “I have my SUV,” she mentions, and I shake my head.
“I took a cab here,” I tell her and she walks over to her SUV and I open the passenger door.
“Wow, are you doing the whole ‘you can’t drive because I’m here and I’m a man’ thing, Kirby?” She cocks her hip to the side.
“No, I’m doing the whole you can’t drive because I think you drank an entire bottle of wine, Lexi,” I toss back and she giggles.
“Oh, yeah.” She hands me the keys. “Good call.” She kisses my neck and gets into the SUV, and I shut the door before walking around and getting in.
“Are you coming back to my house?” I ask her and she looks over at me.
“I need a couple of things from home,” she says and I pull out of the driveway and head toward her house.
“So…you love me?” I say as I drive us to her house, my heart beating loudly in my chest.
“I do. I think I’ve known for a while now. You’ve supported me and given me strength throughout these last few months even when you didn’t know it. You’ve been patient with me and let me keep my light while making it shine brighter.”
“I never knew I could be this happy. This carefree. I think I’d even go through the past ten years again if only for this feeling. Only for love.” She puts her hand on my shoulder and then slips it to the back of my head as she plays with my hair. “I had fun tonight,” she admits when I pull into her garage, “like a lot of fun.” She opens the car door and jumps down. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun before.”
I get out and wait for her at the front of the SUV and she slides her hand in mine as we walk into her house. The lights are on low in the kitchen as she walks toward her bedroom and I follow her. I go over to her bed, lying down on it, as she walks over to the chair in the corner and grabs her overnight bag. She comes over, putting it on the bed before walking to her closet and taking out a pair of jeans. “Why don’t you pack a couple of outfits and leave them at my house?” I suggest to her and she looks up at me. “So you aren’t, like, coming back and forth.”
“But—” she says.
I smirk at her and put my hands on my stomach. “Or you can move in with me already.”
“That’s so romantic.” She puts her hands over her heart. “Be still my heart.”
I can’t help but chuckle. “But seriously?—”
“I’m still married.” She shakes her head.
“So what, it’s just a paper. You are still married to him on paper.”
“It’s a big paper.”
“It’s not that big of a paper or you wouldn’t have had sex with me before you got divorced.” I wink at her and she gasps.
“It’s not right.” She turns to grab a couple more pants.
“Says who?”
“I don’t know!” Her voice shrieks. “Society?”
“This isn’t the fifties, baby,” I point out to her. “It’s the twenty-first century. People are even living together without being married.” She rolls her eyes at me.
