CHAPTER 45
Lex
The shuffle of feet padding across the wood floors. Running water from a shower. The rustling of clothes and hangers in a closet. All sounds were faint as my mind fought the exhaustion that had finally taken me hostage well past midnight.
My eyes peeled open, and I stirred to look at the clock on the nightstand—two in the morning. My heart rate picked up. I listened harder to track Theo’s movements, wondering if he had ever come to bed, but I knew he hadn’t. I was a light sleeper. I would have wakened instantly to the feel of his warm body pressing against mine.
He said he would be home early. My gut churned with discomfort as I played over every possible scenario that didn’t include him and Winter together … all night.
Light poured over the bedroom as the bathroom door opened. A second later, the light flicked off, swallowing the room in darkness. Bare feet again padded across the floors, stopping a few feet from the door. And then silence. My eyes searched the dark as I forced deep breaths to calm my racing heart. I caught Theo’s faint outline near the bedroom door, as though he was about to leave.
Why isn’t he coming to bed?
I stirred, hoping to bring his attention to the woman between his sheets. The woman who had waited up for him for hours until finally succumbing to sleep. The woman who was desperate to be wrapped in his arms, to feel his whispered mutterings of how crazy I drove him and how he loved being inside me. I could already imagine his hot kisses peppering my back as his fingers played their favorite game inside me. I needed them on me—inside me—now.
“Theo,” my sleepy voice croaked. I couldn’t bear the distance anymore. “Come to bed.”
Too much hesitation snaked through that moment of silence, and more negative thoughts made their way to the forefront. When he finally started to come to me, my heart went into my throat as I imagined him spending the night naked and tangled with Winter. The images became more vivid when he crawled under the sheets and didn’t make a move to touch me.
“Sorry I woke you. Go back to sleep, Lex.” His tone was gruff, cold, heating the backs of my eyes. Hot tears dripped down my cheeks, and I couldn’t seem to stop them.
I could have asked him where he’d been. I could have asked him if he wanted me to leave his bed, his room, his home. I could have asked him if he wanted to continue breaking the rules in Vegas, because before I’d fallen asleep, I was ready to risk it all for him.
But as my heart began to crack in two, I knew I didn’t have to ask any of those questions, because in the span of a few hours, something monumental had shifted, or maybe the truth was finally coming to the surface.
I was falling in love, and Theo didn’t feel the same.
I’d barely fallen asleep when the alarm went off. I hit Snooze and waited for Theo’s arm to hook me and slide me toward him. That had been our routine for the past week, so we always set the alarm earlier than we’d needed. Last night, I had set it to give us a full hour before we had to get ready.
But when a few seconds went by and I didn’t feel Theo’s rough fingers, memories of last night barreled through my mind. I twisted my body in the sheets to find Theo’s side of the bed empty. My chest was achy and swollen. My head was full of fog from exhaustion. And my eyes were heavy and puffy from my tears.
It should have been the happiest day of my life. I was waking up to fly to Vegas as a backup dancer for Winter’s residency series, a dream come true. But my happiness dimmed at the finality of what Theo and I had shared this week. I hadn’t wanted it to end.
I moved slowly to the bathroom to shower and get dressed. When I was completely ready, suitcases in hand, Theo came into the room, looking as though he hadn’t slept at all. His eyes moved to my fingers, which were wrapped around the handles of my bags, and he stepped forward. “I’ll take those.”
His hands landed on mine. But when I wouldn’t release my hold, he let out a deep breath and looked up, meeting my eyes. “Lex, I’ve got it.”
None of this made sense. Him coming in late, not touching me, his cold tone. This was guarded Theo, the one I told off in the theater. The jerk. Not the man I’d grown to adore.
“I waited up for you. What happened last night?” I hated that I even had to ask. I didn’t want to know the answer. Not the answer I feared, anyway.
His jaw hardened, and he looked away, dropping his hands from mine. “I should have called.”
I waited for him to say more, but when he looked at me again and gestured for my bags, I knew that was the end of the conversation. Heat flamed inside me as he reached for the handles again. “Your ride will be here any minute.”
A black hole opened beneath me and proceeded to suck me in. “My ride?”
He looked over his shoulders as he rolled my bags out of the room, not meeting my eyes. “We can’t show up together. Everyone will be arriving at the same time, and there’s only one small lot at the terminal. I don’t think we should take any risks.”
He placed my things at the landing of the steps and turned around. “Breakfast?”
My stomach rolled. I shook my head. “Not hungry.”
He nodded and strolled past me into the kitchen, returning a minute later with a bottled water and handing it to me. “For the ride.”
I couldn’t stop the first tear that rolled down my cheek. As much as I wanted to be strong and hide the pain, I couldn’t stop my emotions from unraveling right there in his foyer. “So that’s it? You’re just going to send me off in a strange car, and that’s the end of us?”
“We said one week, Lex.” He still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We’re headed to Vegas. You have your career ahead of you. A job to do. That was the plan.”
“Yeah. That was the plan. But plans can change, Theo. When two people feel the way about each other that you and I do, plans change. Unless it was only ever about sex for you.”
His eyes finally met mine, and everything about his expression crumbled. “It wasn’t. You know it wasn’t.”
“I thought I knew a lot of things that turned out to be wrong. I thought things were over between you and Winter, for one.”
I watched as his face transformed into anger. “There’s nothing going on between Winter and me.”
I wiped my cheek and shook my head. “You were with her until two in the morning. You didn’t even touch me last night. And you weren’t there when I woke up. Where do you think my mind went? There isn’t much you can say to me at this point to convince me of anything else.”
His jaw went slack. “What the fuck? These were your terms. One week, and then you wanted to focus on Vegas. On your career. And now you’re holding it against me. I was trying to do the right thing last night. Or would you rather have had me try to get one last fuck in before our flight? Would that have made you feel better?”
Rage filled me as his words spewed like lava, destroying everything in its path. Our history, our memories, and whatever potential future we had. My hand reeled back and shot forward, slapping him across the face before I could think better of it. I swiped the tears from my eyes as he reached for his face, his eyes wide—shocked—but I didn’t stop to see if I’d left a mark.
I grabbed my things, moved past him, and yanked open the door just as my ride was pulling up the drive. “See you in Vegas.”