She didn’t answer right away but the words were right there. They were always right there. For a moment, she considered telling him… about Wednesday, about the ache that never fully faded this time of year. But instead, she pressed her hand over his, squeezing lightly.
“I’m sure.”
Xander brushed his lips over her braids.
“Well, whether you’re here, or somewhere else in that beautiful head of yours… ” He wrapped his arms tighter. “That’s where I’m tryna be.”
She closed her eyes in his embrace, letting herself settle deeper into his warmth, her breath syncing with his.
Rylee wanted so badly to make this feeling last. To freeze time.
Dare to dream...
If only the ache didn’t always return when the dreaming stopped.
six
XANDER
Xander sighedas he raised his phone within sight to end the call he’d just placed. He had just called Rylee for the third time that day. Been calling her since the day before to no answer.
It was a Wednesday. Xander’s day off. He’d been working two back-to-back shifts for the past two days and was looking forward to linking up with Rylee.
It was late afternoon. He fought the feeling of reaching out in the morning knowing she would be working. But with her not answering his call for the second day in a row, things were feeling a little off. Which was odd to him, since they’d just had an incredible date night, days ago.
He shifted his position on his leather sectional that was pushed up against the exposed brick wall in his apartment, getting comfortable.
He couldn’t stop his mind from wandering, thinking that maybe her silence had something to do with him popping up last week after that tragic house fire his ladder company were called to.
Nah, that can’t be it, he reasoned.
She gave him the card and the candies at dinner. She seemed a little spaced out at times that night, true. But overall… things were good.
Xander swallowed hard in that instance, recalling that house fire. Recalling breaking into one of the rooms to see the two children holed up in a closet, unconscious and already gone, but Xander being Xander… retrieving them and administering CPR like his life depended on it outside, only for nothing to work.
He wasn’t to blame. But you couldn’t tell him that.
Even Rylee told him that after they made love and he held her in his arms that night.
But Xander couldn’t and would never accept that.
He inhaled a deep breath, shook his head, and brought his phone within eyesight again.
Any other time he would just let it be. He promised to give her space. He was sure she could see his phone calls, so if she didn’t answer, it was because she didn’t want to.
And that would have been fine yesterday when she didn’t answer.
But her not answering today made him feel something was just… off.
Xander pushed himself up and into a seat on his couch and leaned forward, staring at his phone.
Considered sending her a text, his finger hovering over the text app, but decided against it.
Instead, he navigated to his contacts, sorted through the C’s and tapped his thumb on Rylee’s mother’s name.
As soon as the phone started to trill, Xander was up on his feet, mindlessly pacing.
Not nervous to speak with Rylee’s mother, Claudia.
