Chapter 123

But she’d been here almost a week and they were building up again, those encyclopedia entries that together made up Lexi. She still twirled her hair when she was miles away, lost in thought. She still bit down on that knuckle. She no longer hummed beneath her breath, which Tyler felt like a shocking loss. But one morning, when he’d been heading out on the long, hard runs he took to keep his goddamned hands to himself, he’d found himself standing outside the door to the guest room. She’d been in the shower and he’d heard the water running, but that wasn’t what kept him there, frozen still.

It was Lexi, singing an egregiously bad pop song from their university days, as tuneless as ever. His cock had been rock hard and his grin had been wide, and a bigger fool could not possibly have existed on God’s green earth. And the desperate notion he’d formed over these last years when he only saw her sporadically, that familiarity would breathe a little much-needed contempt… If anything, the opposite was true. It was worse now.

Much, much worse.

Because this time around, Tyler wasn’t the overwhelmed, out-of-his-depth kid on cobbled-together financial assistance. He was no longer afraid that he might betray himself completely and start tugging on his forelock to the overlords, or something equally horrifying. He wasn’t crushed under the pressure of his own ambition and need to climb up out of that hole his family had been in for generations, not anymore.

Over the years, he’d told himself that if he ever got the chance to spend quality time with Lexi again, he would see that it had only ever been a crush. He’d been a poor kid, surrounded by toffs and unsurprisingly drawn to the kindest and prettiest among them.

But the truth was that he had never been much of a kid. Children in his old neighborhood grew up fast, or not at all. By the time he’d gone up to the university, he’d been like an old, weary man next to the soft public schoolboys and pampered dons.

Maybe that was why he still, all these years later, was as destroyed by Lexi as if he’d only just met her. Something he was sure he would feel more bitter about later. When she left him, the way he knew she would, and fucked off back to Nemford. And that terrible arranged marriage of hers. And bloody Victor Mckay, who was as approachable as a spot of freezer burn and would crush all the joy and Lexi out of her.

He would enjoy this time. Lexi here, now. He wouldn’t expect anything. And he wouldn’t be disappointed. He would enjoy it, if only because he had the distinct impression that this was the last part of her life she would enjoy, too.

Tyler had been whatever she needed him to be for as long as he’d known her. He could do it this one, last time. Because he knew that it only felt like it might kill him, the weight of this thing he had for her. It never actually did.

That was what he told himself that night, as he dodged tourists on his way to the bar tucked up under Olkfield’s famous opera house. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, glad he’d shrugged on a jacket after his last meeting. He took rather too much pleasure in dressing down, particularly when the client he was meeting with expected rather more of a song and dance.

Lexi was the only member of the landed gentry he had ever bothered to dress up for. There was a notion to make a man’s blood run cold. But it told Tyler everything he needed to know about himself—and in truth, he already knew it—that he didn’t tear off the coat he wore and toss it in the harbor. And that when he saw the slim, dark-haired woman standing at a rail near the bar, her eyes on the harbor bridge lit up against the night, he walked faster.

These were the moments he liked the most. The moments right before she turned to look at him. The moments when he could almost believe that this time, when she did, she would finally see him. The real him, which would be some feat, since he’d spent the entirety of their friendship burying the real him as deep as it could go.

He slowed, his eyes locked on her, and it was as if they were all alone instead of in one of the busiest spots in Olkfield. She was dressed exactly as she had been when he’d dropped her off this morning, but she didn’t look tired or frazzled. She’d clearly bought a pair of heels to replace the more comfortable shoes she’d been wearing earlier. She’d secured her hair on the back of her head, though tendrils danced in the winter breeze. Because she was Lexi, she’d somehow transformed jeans and a slouchy sweater into something elegant.

She turned her head before he reached her, her gaze finding his in the soft dark.

Tyler forgot to grin the way he usually did. And so did she. And for the space of a long, slow heartbeat, he was lost in that gaze of hers.

Usually he broke the tension, because that was safer. Because that made sure they stayed right here. On the same ground where they’d always been. But tonight, he didn’t do it. He went to the rail and bent down so he could rest his forearms on the top of it the way she was doing. And for a long while, they stood there, not quite touching, staring off toward the bridge together.

“Did you play tourist all day?” he asked, many long breaths and jarring heartbeats later.

“I did.” He didn’t look, but he could hear her smile all the same. “I marched all over the place. I explored the Rocks. I got chocolate. And I was nearly mowed down by health fanatics jogging around whilst scoffing it down.”

“Best to stay out of the line of traffic with your sugar and shame, then.”

“I took the ferry out to have a bit of lunch.”

“A fine beach, that.”

“I rode the ferries all over. Even in the rain. I think I’d quite like to live in a place where I could take a ferry to work. It feels more civilized, somehow. And wild at the same time.”

“Olkfield Harbour has its charm.” Tyler said.