LuckoftheDraw (6 page)

He’d been rough with her in the shower, so he kept the pace
slow. He kissed her when she turned to him for one, happy to feed off her
mouth, sucking on her tongue when she offered. When she needed to catch her
breath he kissed her neck, bit her shoulder, whispered to her about how
unbelievably good she felt.

Every time his name came out of her mouth she pushed him
that much closer to coming. It wasn’t long before she arched her back higher,
prompting him to go faster. He kept the same pace, driving them both toward
orgasm with a steady determination, ignoring her pleas for more.

It wasn’t until her words stopped sounding like words that
he let go and fucked hard. Her mouth dropped open wide and her eyes closed. She
sounded as though she couldn’t catch her breath and she had two fistfuls of the
comforter in a death grip. When she drew in a deep ragged breath and let it
back out in a high wail, Alex’s entire body seized and he came so hard he
nearly blacked out from the rush.

When he had enough control over his body he flopped onto his
back next to her. He lay there for a long time catching his breath, listening
to her do the same. After a little while he found he’d regained the use of his
hands, and he laid one on the smooth curve of her bottom. She turned her head
and nothing else.

“Lexi?” she asked from beneath the veil of her tangled hair.

Between the two of them they managed to get it out of her
face.

His heart thumped hard when she smiled lazily at him. “Yes,
Pete?”

“Why has that never happened before now?”

Since Jude had been the wrong answer the first time she’d
asked that question, he decided not to bring it up again.

“It wasn’t for lack of wanting,” he assured her.

She drew her arms under her and rolled onto her side. “Why
did you never try?”

“I didn’t want to lose you for making the wrong move before
you were ready.”

She looked at him a long moment. “What if I’d never been
ready?”

He’d never been dishonest with her before. “Then I would
have died waiting.”

She sighed. “You’re certifiable, you know that?”

“I think we’ve both been fully aware of that for a long time
now.”

She slid into the space he made when he opened his arm for
her.

“Rest up because I’m not finished with you,” he warned,
skimming his fingers through her hair, combing it back from her face.

She laughed softly. “You didn’t really think I was going to
let you out of here after only a couple of practice sessions, now did you?”

“Did I mention Morrison’s is an all-night, all-you-can-eat
establishment?”

“Mmm, good.” She kissed one of his nipples and scraped the
other lightly with her fingernails. “I can feel my appetite coming back already.”

It took Petra forever to feel like getting out of bed the
next morning. She’d known Alex wasn’t going to be there when she woke up. She
had a vague recollection of him telling her he had something going on with his
mom, but she didn’t remember at what point during the night he’d told her or
what that something was.

She’d slept like the dead for the first time in months. She
hadn’t heard an alarm go off or felt him get out of bed, and the fact that she
hadn’t gotten the chance to say goodbye had left her feeling strange and kind
of blue.

He’d left a small square of paper folded in half and
standing on his pillow like a teepee. It had nothing more than a heart and the
letter A written on it in his neat, bold hand. She’d spent who knows how long
sitting at the head of the bed wrapped in a blanket, looking between that note
and the wreckage of her bed.

The comforter was nowhere that she could see. The top sheet
was hanging over the footboard. One large corner of the mattress was exposed
where the bottom sheet had come up. The room smelled of sleepy Alex and sex and
she wished there was a main source so she could roll around in it until it was
permanently absorbed into her skin.

She could hear people moving around the house—the shower
running upstairs on Rachel’s floor, the doorbell and Bree and Cooper’s voices
some time later. She even thought she heard someone tiptoe down the hall to
listen at her door a couple of times.

Eventually she dragged herself out of bed and made her way to
the shower. Twice she had to stop what she was doing to ride out an aftershock
caused by the memory of the fast, hot fuck she and Alex had shared there. And
when she discovered the hickey up high on the inside of her thigh, she’d stood
there staring at it until the water went cold, hating and loving it at the same
time.

She’d gotten so much more out of the night than she’d been
hoping for at the onset of the party. Alex had ravaged her and then some, and
then he’d ravaged her some more. And then, at the end of the night when she was
sure she couldn’t take any more, he’d been so incredibly tender it had just
about broken her heart.

As amazing as the night with Alex had been, Petra still
wasn’t sure interrupting his cold shower had been the best idea she’d ever had.
She’d been lying awake with the things they’d said to each other playing on a
loop in her head when he’d slipped out of bed and her room. After a few minutes
of listening to the water run, she’d gotten up with the intention of starting a
pot of coffee. She wasn’t sure what made her stop outside the bathroom, but the
cool air drifting over her toes through the crack under the door had prompted
her to go inside.

Her head had been screaming for her to stop. It was Alex.
He’d just confessed that he was in love with her and she’d told him she wasn’t
in the same place. His was the last heart she ever wanted to break, but her
body had still been humming from his kiss, his touch. He’d woken up something
in her that had been sleeping far too long, something with vicious teeth and a
huge appetite. So she’d opened the door to feed the monster, and holy shit what
a feast it had been.

When Petra finally made her way downstairs she found all
traces of the party were gone and the house was spotless. Rachel and Bree were
in the kitchen, laughing and making all kinds of happy noise. Rachel was
dumping a pot of cooked pasta into a colander in the sink and Bree was cutting
apart a whole raw chicken. It looked as if there were half a dozen different
dishes being made at the same time, and there was a chocolate cake—Bree’s
specialty.

Both of her friends froze in place when she came into the
room. She opened her mouth to ask what they were celebrating, but the air
rushed out of her lungs on a choked wheeze. She bent at the waist and meant to
prop her hands on her thighs, but she couldn’t find them. The floor seemed to
be coming up at her quickly, and then it wasn’t. Someone had her arms around
her and they were helping her to the kitchen table, and then she was sitting.
And she was crying. No, she was full-on sobbing.

When she could breathe again someone gave her a towel and
she dried her face. A glass of water appeared and she drank. Hands soothed her
back and her hair as she drew in deep breaths and willed herself calm again.

She put her elbows on the table and propped her head in her
hands.

“He told me he’s in love with me.”

The following silence lasted so long she had to look up to
make sure they heard her.

She studied Bree a moment. “You knew.” She looked at Rachel
and found she had the same unreadable look on her face. “You both know.”

“No, honey, we didn’t know,” Bree said. “We’re just trying
to process the news.”

“Petra, we never would have invited him last night if we’d
known,” Rachel added.

“Or we might have waited a little longer to throw you a
party and rigged the game so the two of you got together instead of the way it
happened.”

Petra gave Bree as droll a look as she could with her eyes
as red and swollen as they were. “I’m sure that would have turned out exactly the
way you planned as well.”

Bree stuck her tongue out. “Bite me, will ya?”

Rachel snorted and they all laughed. And then Petra started
crying again.

She heard the scrape of a chair and arms came around her.

“I’m sorry,” Bree said, her lips touching the top of Petra’s
head. “I’m so sorry. We never meant for things to go the way they did. We were
only trying—”

“Stop.” Petra straightened and took a deep breath. “I’m not
angry with either of you. There was no way either of you could have known
Christie was going to shove her hand in the bowl and mess up your plans. I’m
angry with myself, no one else.”

And she was already sick to death of crying, she thought as
she started up again.

To Petra’s horror, she could hear men’s voices in the
backyard. She rubbed at her eyes with the heels of her hands, but it didn’t
help stop the tears.

“Go upstairs with her and I’ll recruit the guys into helping
me finish cooking,” Bree said to Rachel, and then Rachel was helping her out of
her chair.

Petra glanced out the kitchen window and saw Ben holding the
back gate open for Cooper, the propane tank for the grill propped on his
shoulder. Cooper had a case of beer in one hand and a bag of ice in the other.
She didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed that Alex wasn’t with them.

Rachel led her up the stairs to her bathroom. The shower
curtain was closed, but Petra was hit with another memory of how cold Alex’s
skin had been when she’d touched him, and how quickly he’d heated up after
that.

“I have to tell you, I’m really worried about you right
now,” Rachel said, maneuvering Petra so she sat on the closed toilet seat. “I’m
trying, but I can’t remember that I’ve ever seen you cry like this.”

“I cried when Jude left.” Her breath gave an embarrassing
hitch on the last word.

“Not like this.” Rachel ran a washcloth under cold water.
“Not unless you broke down more than we were aware of when no one was around.”

Her friends had hardly left her alone for weeks after the
morning she came home to find Jude packed and ready to leave. He’d called
Rachel, Bree and Alex to let them know Petra was going to need them and they’d
rallied around her within minutes of the cab taking him away to the airport.

“Thank you.” She sighed as she pressed the cold rag to her
heated face.

She heard the shower curtain slide open.

“So, did you sleep with him?” Rachel asked from her perch on
the side of the tub.

A thrill burned through Petra and she nodded.

“I take it by the way your neck just turned red that it
didn’t suck?”

She laughed softly. “No, it definitely did not suck.”

“So let me make sure I have this right. A very good, kind,
redheaded god of a man, a man who has been your friend a long time, I might
add, is in love with you.”

She nodded. “Right so far.”

“And he’s good in bed?”

“No, he’s amazing in bed.”

Rachel laced her fingers together and leaned forward, elbows
on knees. “I’m having a hard time understanding what you’re crying about,
Pete.”

She laughed without humor. “I can’t hurt him, Rachel.”

“So don’t.”

She gritted her teeth and bit back a flash of anger.
“Because it’s that easy.”

Rachel shrugged as if to say yes, it was that easy.

“You already love him. Just be with him.”

“No.” She dabbed her eyes with the washcloth. “I don’t want
a boyfriend, or a fucking friend with benefits, or any kind of significant
other who’s just going to leave some day.” She got a tissue and blew her nose.
“I need to put an end to this now before I do something to make it worse than
it already is.”

Rachel blinked once, slowly. “Don’t be stupid.”

“It’s the smartest decision I’ve made in a long time.” Petra
stood and turned on the cold water. “Jude was my one love, just like Momma and
Busha had their one love, and he’s gone.” She splashed her face a couple of
times and reached for a hand towel. “I’ll move Momma and Busha in here with me
and we’ll be a fine bunch of crazy cat ladies.”

“That would be fine if you didn’t dislike cats so much.”

Rachel was standing behind Petra when she finished drying
her face.

“I’ll preface what I have to say next with I love you. You
have been and always will be my very best friend, but enough with the bullshit
excuses. Forget that nonsense about the women in your family being cursed to
only love once, and fuck Jude.”

Petra turned very slowly, caught off guard. Rachel was
usually the gentle one of the three of them. This wouldn’t have surprised her
at all coming from Bree.

“After all the years you were together, Jude ran you over as
though you were nothing more than a speed bump on the road of
his
life,
not the life you had together. I know you loved him, and I know it still hurts,
but he’s gone. Honey, it’s time to stop letting his choices control your
happiness.”

Petra bristled and opened her mouth to say something else
but Rachel stopped her by taking her face in her hands and stepping close.

“Petra, Alex is sunshine. He has the biggest, most loving
heart of anyone I know. He goes to work every night and makes sick, frightened
children laugh and smile and then he comes home and does the same for his
friends and family. He is the fucking sun itself Petra, and he deserves you.”

Petra dropped her gaze.

“There’s more to the story,” she said quietly. “About Jude.”

Rachel brushed Petra’s hair out of her face. “What about
Jude?”

“He didn’t just leave.” She stepped backward out of Rachel’s
hands and leaned against the edge of the sink. “We’d been fighting about it for
months.”

She knew her friends might never forgive her for what she
was about to confess, but it needed to be said. She’d let them go on and on
about how unfair it was that he would just pack up and leave because it had
validated her anger. In the process she’d been dishonest not only with her
friends, but with herself as well.

“He’d been talking about joining an organization similar to
Doctors Without Borders since before he passed his medical boards. There were
many times he tried to talk to me, to figure out how we could stay together
while he did what he felt he needed to do, but I didn’t want to hear it. I
can’t leave my Busha, Rachel. She’s getting old and she and Momma are going to
need me here to help.”

Rachel’s nod was almost imperceptible.

“I didn’t tell you because it was humiliating.” Her nose
burned and her eyes watered. “I begged him to stay but he left anyway.”

Rachel wrapped her up in a hug.

“I offered to wait for him.” She drew in a deep breath and
to her relief the tears subsided. “He couldn’t promise me he was coming back,
and he didn’t think it was fair to ask me to wait.” She straightened. “I’m
sorry I haven’t told you this before.”

Rachel’s lips twitched. “Oh, you think we didn’t know there
was more to the story?” She outright smiled then. “Honey, Bree and I were
friends with Jude too. We know he wouldn’t have just cut and run without giving
you some kind of warning.”

She should have been relieved, but the fact that they’d
known she was keeping something from them only compounded the guilt she’d
already been feeling.

“How are the two of you still friends with me?” she asked.

“Your air of mystery is just one of the many things we love
about you. I think it’s safe to say you’re never going to shake us,” Rachel
took Petra’s hands and gave them a little squeeze. “And you never keep your
secrets to yourself for very long. Having your lover of many years leave is
ugly. No one begrudges you wanting to keep a little of your dignity intact.”

That’s when Petra saw it. “Oh my God I’m such a selfish
asshole.”

She brought Rachel’s left hand close. She was wearing a
heart-stopper of an emerald-cut diamond in a gorgeous vintage setting.

“Rachel,” she breathed, awestruck. “He asked.”

Rachel’s face broke into a huge smile and tears shone in her
eyes. “He did.”

“Why didn’t you hit me over the head with this earlier?” She
looked back down at the ring. “I feel like such an idiot for not seeing it
sooner. It’s
beautiful
.”

“What was I supposed to say? Hey, Pete, enough with the
panic attack. Pay attention to
me
, dammit?”

“Yes you were.” She put her hand over her heart. “He asked
last night? Here?”

“He said he was planning to make some kind of grand,
romantic gesture, and then he thought it would be more fitting to ask me last
night since we were reunited…” Her voice hitched and she positively beamed.
“You know how we were reunited.”