Enraptured by Ginger Voight

I rose from the chair. “I’m going home,” I declared. “You guys really need to figure out how to untangle your relationship, because you’re strangling everyone to death with this unnecessary bullshit.”
    I spun on my heel and stalked from his office. I thought he might follow me, but I made it all the way home without any sign of him. I ate a light lunch of soup and crackers before I escaped outside to sit on one of the lounge chairs, sucking up as much vitamin D as I could.
    That was where Alex and Jonathan found me when they arrived an hour after I had. Jonathan was concerned as he approached. “Dad said you didn’t feel good. Are you okay now?”
    I nodded. “Just needed to cut the day short, hon. Sorry.”
    “It’s okay,” he said. “I’ve got plenty to do here.” He glanced back at Alex. “Thanks for lunch, Uncle Alex.”
    Alex nodded and we watched Jonathan disappear into the house with Yoda right on his heels. It was the first time Alex and I had been alone since New Year’s Eve, and butterflies exploded in my stomach as he walked around the fence and approached me where I sat. He perched on the chair opposite mine. “You sure you’re okay?”
    “No,” I answered honestly. “You know that if we work together, Drew is going to make my life miserable. He’ll constantly be testing both of us to make sure that there’s nothing left between us, and torturing us if he finds that there is.”
    “And is there?” Alex wanted to know.
    I squeezed my eyes shut. “I can’t keep having this conversation, Alex. ”
    “Why did you ask me for dinner, Rachel?”
    “It’s what Jonathan wanted,” I answered quietly.
    “Is that all?” he persisted.
    My eyes met his. “What else do you need?”
    He gulped back any answer as he looked toward the pool. “I’m scared for you, Rachel. For you and for Jonathan. And the more I learn, the more scared I get. There’s a lot of shady stuff going on, and I’ve only scratched the surface. Drew thinks he’s untouchable but eventually it’s all going to come back to bite him in the ass. I’m there at that office every day, not because I want to be, but because I don’t know how else to save you.”
    “You could have saved me if you had answered just one of my phone calls last year,” I reminded. He turned to face me. “I needed you, Alex. And you left without a word. You never even told me goodbye.”
    His eyes shined bright. “If there’s one thing I can never say to you, it’s goodbye.”
    My heart ripped at the seams time had only just begun sewing. “Then why leave at all?”
    “I don’t know. I was hurt. I was stupid. Turns out I’m every bit my father’s son, just like Drew. I tested you even though I knew you’d fail.”
    I closed my eyes. “I did fail you, Alex. And I’ll regret that for the rest of my life.”
    His eyes had softened by the time I looked back into his face. “Then we’re even. Because I’ll regret leaving you for the rest of mine.”
    My stomach twisted with the angst of our situation. “So where do we go from here?” I asked softly.
    “I don’t know,” he muttered as he ran a hand through his hair. “All I do know is that I can’t make the same mistake twice. I can’t leave you again. Not when the stakes are this high.”
    I snickered. “Seems like the stakes have been high ever since I opened Drew’s first email.”
    The events over the past two years since then lay between us like scattered debris. “I don’t regret it,” he said in a voice so quiet it forced me to look at him. “I got to love you for a while. And that was more than I deserved.”
    I clenched my eyes to fight more damnable tears. I heard him rise from his chair, but by the time I opened my eyes again, it was to catch him walking away.
    I joined Jonathan in our office shortly after, and he was hard at work on one of his latest assignments. He was concerned as I approached. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
    I gave him a brave smile.