Chapter 9
Lexi
I am so rattled right now.
I go back to my studio and turn on the music, slip off my shoes, and start to go into a few warm-up poses for yoga. There’s no one here but me, but I need to clear my mind. Unfortunately, no matter how many asanas I go through, my mind is full of garbage and worry.
It feels like I’m eighteen years old again, being forced out of my house with no option other than to marry my boyfriend. I think of my rigid, religious parents, who had just caught us sleeping together. How shocked and appalled they were and how they went on and on about how I wasn’t the girl they raised, and how I couldn’t stay there for fear of corrupting my younger sister. My boyfriend, Jonas, was five years older and was about to be shipped out for active duty in the army. He had offered for us to get married, and since I didn’t even have a job at that point, it seemed like my only option. I married him, moved halfway across the country with him to Texas, and lived in base housing for a year. It was miserable for both of us. He wanted to control me way more than I wanted control after breaking free from my parents. By the end of the year, we were ready to kill each other if someone so much as put a dish in the sink wrong. It was awful, and I hated being so dependent on him.
I filed for divorce within another month, and lived on a friend’s couch while I worked two fast-food jobs. It was during that I discovered two things: I’m really not a people person and I really loved yoga. The friend was super into fitness, and when she couldn’t cancel a yoga class she’d signed up for, she had me go instead of her so she wouldn’t lose her spot. I ended up loving the peace of mind it gave me, the challenge of stretching my muscles, and the way people groaned and bitched but the teacher pushed them to work harder anyhow. Within a few months, I got certified to teach, apprenticed at a trendy studio for a while, and then a few years later, moved out to Luka just because with the ultra-cheap rent I could start my own studio.
Of course, I’m not great at running a business. It involves being super schmoozy to people, and I’m not great at peopling. I scare off more clients than I keep. But I like being my own sort of person. I like not having to answer to a supervisor. I really like not having to answer to a husband or boyfriend who wants to know where I am and what did I spend my money on and did I make him dinner. Screw that. So while being single can sometimes be lonely, I wouldn’t trade it for another Jonas.
Jonas was about the same age as Knox is right now when I married him. Jesus. They’re like night and day, of course. Jonas was a weed-smoking man-child even when I met him, and being in the army didn’t change that. He only cared about money when it cut into his pot habit, and since I liked things like groceries and a car, we usually clashed over money.
Knox . . . doesn’t seem like that? So far. But I don’t know him that well. I sure don’t know him well enough to marry him. I already did the impulsive-marriage thing once. I’m not ready to do it again.
I move to the floor and cross my legs into a lotus pose, putting my hands on my knees and closing my eyes to think. I wish I had someone to talk to. I want to call my best friend, Nat, but I feel bad for bugging her with my love troubles lately. She’s been so happy with Clay that I hate to bring her down.
And okay, I’m a little wounded that she eloped last weekend to the JP and didn’t invite anyone. I get it. I do. She wanted to get married and she didn’t want a big wedding at all because then she’d have had to invite her father, and Clay and her dad don’t exactly get along. She told me none of the other Price brothers went, either—it was just her and Clay and the justice. It makes sense . . . but she couldn’t have squeezed in a best friend? Somehow?
Plus, she still doesn’t know I slept with Knox. I’m not sure how to bring that up casually, so I haven’t brought it up at all. Besides, Natalie’s so love-struck right now she’d tell me to marry Knox and make babies with him (ha). I need a salty friend that will tell me to key his car and make him hate life. But that doesn’t seem quite right, either.
I’m not angry at Knox. If I try to analyze my feelings, I’m actually kind of flattered he showed up and tried to save the day. It’s sweet. Wrongheaded and foolish, but sweet.
I wonder if he’ll come back.
I wonder why I care. I shouldn’t . . . but I do.
Knox
She wants romance? She wants me to work to win her? I love a challenge, like I said, but I also like situations in which I can win. I’m not sure Lexi can be won by normal means. Whoever wins her heart is gonna have to think way, waaay the fuck outside the box. And since I’m determined to be that man, that means I’ve got to bring my A game.
I consider my options as I sit in my cheesy motel room. The ceiling is low and sagging, the bed looks like it should be in a police report, and I’m pretty sure there’s black mold in the bathroom. But this is the only motel in Luka, population too few for anyone to care, so here I am. I ain’t leaving without Lexi at my side. And growing up, I slept in worse places. I remember weekends with my mom, when she decided she should spend time with me, and her running off to crack houses to get a fix while I waited in her broken-down car for hours, sometimes a full day. I remember having to pull her out of a party house because I was sick and wanted to go home. I remember her home being full of her wasted friends and the bathroom sink full of broken needles.
I can deal with a little mold.
I sit in the only chair in the room, my feet up on the windowsill, and gaze out into the empty gravel parking lot, the window open to air out my room. Funny how I’m thinking about my mom. Haven’t thought about her in ages. My dad pretty much raised me. I think I was with Mom for the first couple of years, back before her addiction got too bad. She didn’t tell Dad about me, not until she needed some cash for drugs. I was really young at the time, maybe five or six, but I still remember the day I met him and he just looked at me, all tired instead of proud. “Yeah,” he’d said. “That’s my kid all right.”
After that, I started to stay with Dad during the week and Mom on weekends. And then the weekends got less frequent, and every time I went over, they were worse and worse. At one point, Mom was living with six other people in a house with no power. Took me a long time before I realized they were just squatting. At any rate, Mom was a mess, even though she loved me in her way.
But I guess I have her to thank for the gut-deep revulsion I have for the word “bastard.” Dunno when I first started hearing it. Probably one of her strung-out friends. They’d laugh and ask Mary—which wasn’t her name—to have her bastard fetch them a drink, or run to the corner store for them. Mom never corrected them. Never told them not to call me that. I didn’t know it was a slur at first. Just noticed that my dad never said it, and never called me or Gage or Seth one, even though we all had different moms. I only heard the word at home . . . or at school, when kids knew that I was one of the Price boys, and not one of the ones that were legitimate. I bloodied a lot of noses over the word “bastard.”
And now here I am, an adult, and my kid’s gonna be a bastard, too. Fuck, I hate that. I’ll do anything to prevent it. I don’t want him—or her—to have an ounce of the agony I went through as a child.
I need to make Lexi see that I’d be good for them. That I can be a great dad. That I can be there for her, too. That we don’t have to be enemies in this, like my parents were in the end. That we need to think about our kid first. And I want her to give me a chance. I loved that night with her.
I want more nights with her. I want all of them.
So I need to come up with a really damn good plan. I rub my chin, thinking as I stare out the window. Lexi’s an odd one. She’s not impressed by money, from what I can tell. She’s got a wry sense of humor. She likes to hide in the bushes and scare children. My mouth twitches with amusement thinking about that. Maybe I need to invite her to something similar ’round here.
I pull up my phone and look for the closest costume store in the area, an idea forming in my mind.