“EXCEPT FOR HER,” I SAY aloud, as Averie approaches from the end of the hall.
“What?” she prompts, crossing her arms over her chest and looking out the window as I am.
The others have left us alone to talk as Mason promised they would.
Before making their way out, Katherine reached up, offering a reassuring squeeze to my shoulder. Amelia hugged my side. Mason slapped my back. Their actions said I have their blessing, their hope, to give Averie all she’s ever wanted and deserved.
I’m just not sure she’ll ever fucking let me. But this will be all I have left, my last attempt. A man can only survive so much.
“What are you saying?” she prompts.
“That’s what I told myself when I tried to forget about you after the engagement party,” I return and repeat, “Except for her.”
Her voice is shaky, nervous, but she manages a quiet, “Jaxson.”
“When my day goes to shit. When everything I touch turns bad. When I think no one else in the world would understand how I feel about anything.”
“You know I would,” she interrupts.
“Except for her, I would tell myself. You would, yes.”
Averie looks down, kicks her bare foot in front of the other. I do the same, watching, wondering how soon those feet will have her running.
“My life was so much easier when you still thought boys were stupid,” I give, remembering one of our first conversations the summer that changed my life.
I’d known Averie just inside an hour, yet I told her about my mom, my life, and where it started. Even then, I guess I knew, or sensed, what we’d come to mean to each other.
“Most of them still are stupid,” she confirms. “Ridiculous, even.”
I smile but don’t let her see it.
“I should’ve danced with you,” I admit next.
“Danced with me?”
The night of Mason’s wedding, Averie stood at my side as she always does. She was lost and alone among the people she was supposed to consider close. I knew what she wanted, a single dance with a friend she trusted herself to be around. I denied her that.
“I was too proud. Too cocky. Too afraid of what we’d look like to everyone in the room. I shouldn’t have cared.”
“Yep. You should’ve at least asked,” she realizes and confirms. “But you had your reasons.”
Forgiveness.
“And the night I first kissed you?”
“I remember,” she returns, a smirk in her tone. “Of all the boys I’ve let kiss me, you’re the only one whose lips burned like tortured fire.”
Fuck.
The night Kaiden was born. Averie opened a piece of me I hadn’t wanted to expose. It wasn’t until I’d gone back to San Diego, and missed being in her company, that I realized she needed what I did. She longed for the closeness of someone as lonely as her.
Years passed before I realized it wasn’t our loneliness that ever bound us together. Respect, trust, and understanding are the elements our relationship has always been built upon.
“That night, I should’ve taken your hand, led you to your bedroom. I should’ve stripped you of your clothes and my doubt. I should’ve worshipped everything you were to me. That’s what I wanted to do but didn’t.”
“That’s a lot,” she comments quietly. “But I’m not sure either of us were ready for that.”
Understanding.
“Probably not. But you were right in what you said that night. At the very least, I should’ve told you that.”
“I was right about what?”
“You said I wanted to be understood. And it’s true. I did.”
She shakes her head. “We all want to be understood.”
Averie clears her throat, stands straight, and turns directly toward me. I don’t look. I can’t. If she’s about to give me anything but her goddamn surrender, I won’t let her watch as her rejection tears me to pieces for the last time.
“Jaxson,” she calls.
“Right here, baby.”
“Are you saying all this because you’re over me?”
God, but the woman is hardheaded.
“I don’t get a choice to ever be over you. Do I?”
“So we’re not finished?”
Turning only my head, I look her in the eye and promise, “We haven’t even started.”
Taking a breath in, she immediately exhales.
Releasing a sigh of my own, I slide my hands in my trouser pockets and turn to completely face her.
Her beautiful blue eyes come to mine and she queries, “So what happens now?”
Examining her soft expression, I come to understand so many thoughts, images, and memories of my life began with Averie Dyer. The good ones do, anyway. I’m hoping they end with her too. Turning away from her would be pointless. I couldn’t so much as escape the ghost of her if I ever tried.
“How do you feel about California?”
Her eyebrows lift and her mouth opens. “California?” she prods.
“How do you feel about coming with me to California?”
Again, surprise comes first before she presses, “To live?”
Carefully tempering my agitation, I counter, “Well, this isn’t an invitation to visit.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little sudden? I feel like maybe we should—”
Fuck, she’s exhausting.
My careful tempering loses to a sneer, as I push, “Are you kidding me?”
“And I don’t know if I can leave Amelia and my mom,” she says.
Shaking my head, I ball my hands to fists. “Swear to God, you better be fucking with me.”
“And what about Mason? My God, he’ll go mad without me around.”
“Fucking hell.”
Smiling, Averie steps toward me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “Of course I’m messing with you.”
“Thank Christ.”
Settling her hand on my cheek, she pledges, “I’m going to drive you crazy.”
“I’m there.”
“I’m going to make your life a living hell.”
“You already do, don’t you?” I return.
“I’ll be really good at it, too,” she promises. “I’ll probably keep getting better, even.”
“Then what’s a change in address going to matter?”
Averie smiles, leaning her forehead to mine. She closes her eyes and confirms, “Well, then I guess we’re going to California.”
Kissing the side of her mouth, then her cheek, I whisper against her skin, “Good luck, baby.”
“What?”
Smiling, I move the fuck of all this to her and insist, “You’re the one who’s telling them I’m taking you away.”