“Quiet?” she asks, seeming to relax under my slow strokes down her side and over her hip.
“Yeah.” I don’t let people in like this, but Lexi is different. She’s always been different. “Being on top of the water is somehow riskier. Being under the sea is a safe zone for me.” I hesitate for a split second, but then, this isLexi. “Before my parents’ divorce, we had one last vacation together as a family in the Cayman Islands. It was tense, as my parents were constantly at each other’s throats… I thought they were going to kill each other.”
Her eyes go wide as she reaches up to caress my cheek. “Oh my God, really? That bad?”
“I was right in the middle of it. Even out on a catamaran for a snorkeling excursion, they didn’t stop. It was hell, and…so awkward. The skipper, the stewards, jeez, my parents went at it as if they didn’t exist. Only once we were in the water they were forced to shut up. That moment made quite an impression on me—the sudden stillness with the surprise of the world down there.”
“I can imagine.”
For a moment we’re quiet, and a low rumble of thunder sounds. It’s farther away now.
“How old were you?” Lexi asks.
“Nine.” I shudder. “After the snorkeling, I got my dad to sign me up for every other water activity that week so I could stay out of their hair. My parents didn’t care. They were glad to be rid of me. I think the resort staff took pity on me, a single kid in themiddle of all that—so much so that I had my first scuba dive with one of the dive masters. It was only two meters down, but I was hooked on a world without humans, and I’ve never looked back.”
“A world without humans?” Lexi brushes a finger along my jaw. “My world is all about humans.”
“It is.” I hug her closer. “Where I go, you can feel part of the world even though you’re an outsider.”
She dips her head under my chin again, and her soft breath soothes over my chest. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “Our house was filled with so much love, until my dad panicked and messed it all up.”
I lost everything on that boat, and workwise it set me back months, but the whole ordeal crushed my morale more than anything else. “Losing everything in the hurricane must have been hard for him. He was unable to care for his family as he wanted to?—”
“It made him desperate.” Lexi swallows hard. “What he went through was so much worse than this, but I think I finally understand his side of the story.”
Desperate. Here we are, hacking out our own path in desperation. Ever since I saw Lexi’s video with Mia Reed, it’s been eating at me. Yes, it’s funny, but there’s more to her dread of having it out in the world than just being an innocent bystander in a sex tape going viral. “Babes…” I start.
“Hmm?”
“What’s really happening in that video? Why did you walk in on Mia Reed?” She looks like she’s just at work, but I know Lexi. Ever since that first morning at Evan’s house, she’s been in my space, and we’ve gotten so close and intimate with each other, I know there’s more to this video than what everybody’s picked up on.
The sob that tears through her rips through me, straight to my heart.
“Oof, babes,” I whisper as I perch onto an elbow, hugging her close, letting her hide her face in my armpit. “Lexi.” I try to soothe her with slow circles over her back, but she seems to curl into herself, pressing as close to me as she can as she cries.
I let her, giving her space to let go of all these bottled-up emotions.
“I was such an idiot, Tris. I thought I needed to go up there…to keep his interest. I went up there with the intention of doing something that I knew was wrong,” she whispers eventually. “I thought hecaredfor me, that I meant something to him, because we’d been seeing each other on the sly for months—” she gulps in a breath between two sobs “—and then he asked me to meet him in that banquet room, only for me to—to—” Her body trembles as she weeps, and her pain vibrates into my own. “I never felt so cheap in my life.”
I drop back on my shoulder, rage battling on her behalf. The last time I saw her crying like this was when I walked out that night five years ago. Fuck. Of all the hurt I caused that night, did I make her feel cheap too?
I’m a total dick to wrench this out of her. But what a fucking wanker. My fists clench where I pause for a moment from rubbing her back, wanting to beat the asshole up. Wanting to beatmyselfup.
Lexi, so loving, always gives someone her all, only to be used by men. I might have drawn the line, but I used to be no better in my day-to-day dealings with the women I used to have on quick dial. And then I had the audacity to tell her thatshe wasn’t readyfive years ago where it was really me. These lies we tell ourselves because we’re not ready to face our true selves in the mirror… At the time I hadn’t been ready for this woman and everything she gives when loving a person.
Nobody is worthy of her. Least of all me.
“It’s okay, babes. Nobody would guess that from watching the video,” I whisper my weak platitudes because I can’t offer her anything more. “Is this why you got restructured?”
“No. Maybe? Probably? We never discussed it at all. Not even Sheila knows the full story,” she mutters, her voice muffled against my chest. Then she perches up, blinks at me with red-rimmed eyes, her nose all snotty, but a smile teasing her lips. “You have to admit it is funny. At St Chalamet I got fired for sleeping with management, and with Beaumont it is a freaking requirement.”
I smile back but now I get it. It all makes sense now, why she’s been freaked out by this whole fake engagement situation.
She drops her head to my chest with a deprecating chuckle, wipes her nose on my T-shirt, and clings to me. “I need to be octopused.”
“Yes, you do,” I say with a silly grin as I wrap her in my arms, weave her legs with mine, trapping her so close that we’re one body with eight limbs.
Eventually her breathing evens out as she calms, and I loosen my hug so I can play with her hair.
