“You did?” I wasn’t sure if I should confess that I’d called Alex Mr. Smolder, I decided on no.
His mouth shifted into a lopsided grin. “We even paid off the magazine to try and force his hand. We thought if he had to be accosted by a ton of single women, he would ask you out. Then when you moved in, we thought it was game over. But he still seems to be fucking things up.”
“He’s not…” I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to defend him. He’d been nothing but honest with me and I didn’t want his friends to think otherwise, but if I admitted that then that was basically admitting that there was something going on between us. At least physically. “There’s nothing to fuck up…”
“Look, normally, I would never revert to middle school tactics, but this situation is…special. Alex is a good guy, the best really, and the tragedy he endured shouldn’t define the rest of his life. I know that’s not what Ash would have wanted.”
I nodded. The only person I’d talked to about Ashley was Lexi. She’d talked about her mom in much the same way I assumed I had at her age, like she was a fictional character in a movie or a book. I completely related. To have someone so important, so pivotal in your life and never meet them, it was easy to make them into a saint or a princess or an angel. Some other worldly creature.
It wasn’t until my twenties, actually on my twenty-eighth birthday when I turned the year older than my mom ever had, that she was, from all accounts, amazing but she was also just a person. She probably wasn’t perfect.
“I won’t ask you any more personal questions, but let me say this,ifyou love him, you’re going to have to tell him. He’s not going to be able to say it first. He just won’t. And he might not be able to accept hearing it, at first, but if you two have what I think you two have, he’ll come around. You just might need to be a little patient.”
“Daddy! I want to do a flip!” Hannah called out as she skated by.
“Duty calls.” Maddox smiled before skating off, picking his daughter up by her waist and flipping her up in the air.
If Charli was here I knew that she’d put him in the ovary tingling category.
I wasn’t attracted to Maddox Cruz, but whoever ended up with him, was going to be averylucky woman.
I stood, unwilling to let these skates get the best of me, and took two more trips around the rink before I figured I’d spent an obligatory amount of time at the birthday party and it would be socially acceptable for me to sneak out.
As soon as I stepped off the wood flooring back onto the carpet I slammed into a very broad chest. The impact caused me to stumble back slightly but strong hands wrapped around my arms, steadying me. My body responded to the contact before my brain was able to process who I’d collided with. Tingles ran up and down my spine and goosebumps broke out on my arms.
When I looked up, I already knew who I would see. Alex’s deep blue gaze met mine with an intensity that caused my already wobbly knees to weaken further.
“Hi,” I breathed unsteadily.
“What were you and Maddox talking about?”
My cheeks heated as I licked my lips nervously. Had he heard what Maddox had told me? Would he be upset that his friend had said those things? “Um…just…”
“Did he ask you out?”
My head jerked back slightly. “What? No!”
I had no idea what Alex was talking about. Why would Maddox ask me out? These conversations were giving me emotional whiplash. First Maddox asks me if I’m in love with Alex. Then Alex asks me if Maddox asked me out? What was going on?
“Are you free next Saturday night?”
“I’m free every Saturday night.” I hadn’t meant to make that admission, but my head was all over the place.
A tiny grin lifted on Alex’s perfect mouth. “There’s a charity event, for the foundation Nick, Maddox, and I started.”
I’d never been punched in the gut, the closest I’d come was taking a ball to my stomach in a very heated game of dodgeball that had ended with me flat on my back and the wind knocked out of me. That was how this conversation was making me feel.
“You want me to go to it with Maddox?” I breathed, barely able to say the words.
A fire lit in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. It was even more intense than the look in his eyes when we got off the elevator after the gala. “No. I want you to go to it with me.”
Yep. I was definitely going to have emotional whiplash.
“Oh.”
He waited, staring at me. “Is that a yes?”
I nodded.
