CORD GOT TIRED of lying in bed trying to figure out what the hell had gone wrong with Lexi, so he got up at the crack of dawn and went for a run. Just like old times.
Except, unlike old times, he couldn’t run. He couldn’t even walk fast. And at the end of the damn parking lot, he had to sit down on the curb and rest.
A car drove by, slammed on its brakes, then backed up. The passenger window rolled down and then he was looking into Lexi’s surprised face. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“Perfect.”
She sighed. “Get in.”
“No.”
“Cord.”
“Lexi.”
She put her car in Park and got out. She sat at his side and studied him for a long moment. “Having a bad morning?”
“You could say that.”
“Can I help?” she asked.
“Sure. You can answer a question.”
“I don’t want to talk about last night.”
Too bad. He pulled off her sunglasses and asked the question that had been bugging him. “What do we have, Lexi?”
“Huh?”
“You and me. What is it?”
“Um…a friendship?”
“Is that a question, or a fact?”
She blinked. “What’s the matter with you? We’re friends. We’re…good friends. Best friends, even.”
He nodded and looked at the ocean. Then he voiced his deepest, darkest question. “But not more?”
She was quiet a long moment. “I wasn’t under the impression that you did more.”
Hard to argue with that, he supposed. “Things change.”
She shrugged.
“Is this because of Brad?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I mean I loved him, obviously, and then lost him.”
“And your parents?”
He felt her go very still. “Yes,” she whispered. “I loved them and lost them, too.”
His heart clenched at the look on her face. She was afraid. Afraid of losing anyone else, so afraid she was holding back. “They were older when they adopted you, Lexi,” he said gently. “In their fifties. It’s not your fault your father died from a stroke and your mother from heart failure the same year.”
“I know.” She hugged her knees and dropped her head to them. “I know it, I do. I just…” She drew a shuddery breath, and, with a sigh, he wrapped an arm around her and pulled her in.
“You just don’t like to risk it,” he murmured into her hair.
She was quiet at that.
“I haven’t been much of a risk-taker myself since I got home,” he told her.
Head still on her knees, she turned just her face to look at him. “I think you’re entitled to a break, Cord.”
“I’ve thought about doing as you suggested, you know. I can’t go out for the police department, they won’t take me because of my hearing loss. But the fire department is looking for arson investigators.” Something that actually, surprisingly, interested him. If he couldn’t be military, he could still go after bad guys. “Not sure I’m fit enough, though.”
“You’re strong as hell on the inside,” she said. “The rest will come, so you can just get over that fear.”
“I will get over myself, since I don’t want to sit on my ass the rest of my life. But how about you, Lexi?” He gave her a gentle nudge. “You’re still hiding.”
“From?”
“Intimacy.”
“Are you kidding me?” She stood up and put her hands on her hips, glaring down at him in shock and mutiny. “I beg to differ, seeing we’ve been about as intimate as two people can get. Just last night, in fact, multiple times.”
“Orgasms don’t count. Hell, Lexi, you can get those from my showerhead.”
She narrowed her eyes to slits as he slowly and, dammit, painfully, rose to his feet. “Intimacy is much more than casual sex,” he said. “Intimacy would have been sleeping with me instead of running like a bat out of hell once you were sexually fulfilled. Intimacy would have been waking up together, having breakfast. Intimacy would be—”
“Beyond me!” Breathing hard, she took a step back, eyes bright. “Okay? What you’re talking about is beyond me.” She pressed a hand to her heart and broke his.
“Lexi,” he said softly. “It’s not beyond you. We already have it. It’s our friendship, combined with the rest of what comes with a relationship like ours. It’s real and binding, and—”
“No. We went into this with our eyes open.” She backed away, pointing at him. “Both of us. Now you’re changing the rules.”
“There are no rules. You’ve never followed a damn rule in your life.” He followed her, and ran a hand down her stiff spine. “You’re late for work. Just tell me what you want.”
She just stared at him, her eyes suspiciously shiny, stubbornly mute.
He sighed and kissed her, a sweet, warm kiss that she pulled back from, shaking her head with what could only be fear on her face. “Stop that,” she said shakily. “Stop what?”
“You just said goodbye to me.”
“I think you have that backward,” he said quietly.
“Cord.” She pressed a hand to her heart again, her other fisted in his shirt. “I don’t want to say goodbye.”
“Which leads us back to the big question.” He covered her hand with his. “What do you really want?”
You. It seemed to be on the tip of her tongue, or maybe that was wishful thinking on his part. Still, he willed her to say it, but she didn’t. She said nothing.
In the shattering silence, Cord opened her driver’s-side door for her. “You’ll figure it out.”
And, as she drove out of the lot, he could only hope that was really true.