“Did you two date?”
“No.” The answer fell from her lips so fast it took her by surprise.
“No? Hm.” Regina twirled her Twizzler.
“Hm what?”
“Nothing. It’s just. The way he reacted to you at NightCaps seemed…I don’t know. Like you two had been close.” Regina took Ellie’s plate to the sink.
Ellie cleared her throat. “We…” Should have been? I wish we were? I was too scared? “Were just good friends.”
“I guess that makes sense. Dex doesn’t date many women. He’s always working. We all are, really.”
All’s fair in love and war. “Did you two date?” Ellie held her breath.
Regina looked over her shoulder, her hands busily scrubbing the dishes. “You’re kidding, right?”
Ellie shrugged. She’d already sunk her feet in deep; might as well see how much dirt she could get.
Regina turned back to the sink. “Nah. I crash here a lot, but he and I? We’re just friends. Dex is…” She dried her hands and came back to the table. “Dex Remington is a complicated man.”
“Really? That’s a change, then, because he never used to be. He was always easy to understand when he was younger. He didn’t have many needs. I mean, give him his books, a computer, and a quiet room, and he was happy.” She wondered how he’d changed.
Regina shrugged. “He’s still like that, but he’s pretty closed off. He protects himself. Which, given his social status, is probably not that bad of an idea.”
“His social status?” Ellie had seen Dex on enough magazines to know he was doing well, but he didn’t act like he’d changed very much on the social scale.
“Yeah, you know. Now that he earns millions, everyone wants a piece of him. It’s a good thing that he protects himself.”
It occurred to Ellie that Regina might think she was after Dex’s money. Great. Now I’m a money-hungry vagrant? “I didn’t realize...Do you mean like protecting himself from people trying to rip him off?”
“He protects his heart.” Regina held her gaze.
A direct reflection of my impact on him. She cleared her throat, skipping over that comment altogether. “Listen, I know what it must look like. A girl from his past suddenly shows up out of nowhere. I’m not here for Dex’s money, or to take advantage of him or anything. It was a complete fluke that we even ran into each other.”
“Fluke? Or something else?” Regina leaned her elbows on the table again and stared at Ellie.
“What else?” Ellie sat back, too tired to deal with being accused of anything.
“Fate, maybe?”
Fate? “I don’t believe in fate.” If fate were real, that would mean I’ve been fated to a shitty life, making it from one moment to the next on a hope and a prayer. “Besides, I’m not looking for a man, thank you, and I highly doubt Dex has any interest in that with me.” Then again, she’d felt an ocean of emotions coming from him. Her own feelings were coming in with the tide, too. Or maybe they’d always been there but she was finally allowing herself to feel them again. She just didn’t know if she was ready to swim.
Regina checked her watch. “I gotta run.”
“Thanks for the pancakes, Regina.”
“My pleasure.” She started for the door, then turned back to Ellie. “I’m glad you’re here. Dex seemed happy to see you.”
When the apartment door closed behind Regina, Ellie let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Fate. Fate? Could running into Dex be fate? Ellie’s phone vibrated, and she pulled it from her pocket.
Meeting till 10. Will u be up after?
Dexy. Ellie closed her eyes, thinking about what Regina had said. The last few weeks had been stressful. From the minute she’d found out about Bruce’s marriage, she’d been on edge, and not just because he’d slammed her into a wall. She’d blamed herself. There had to be something wrong with her to not have known he was married. The clues were right there in front of her. He “traveled” all the time. He hardly ever spent the night, and if she called him in the evenings, he almost always said he was somewhere he couldn’t talk. But for the first time in forever, Ellie had opened her heart to a man. Only she hadn’t really opened it at all, had she? She’d opened her legs, but the minute she was back in Dex’s arms, she realized there was a huge difference between opening her heart and allowing herself to be physically close with a man.
Fate? She had no job, no money, and no plan. And for the first time in her entire life, she wasn’t scared to death about any of it. She walked down the hall to Dex’s bedroom and picked up the photograph of the two of them. They’d been so young, so vulnerable, and yet neither had taken advantage of the other’s friendship. Ellie pressed the photo to her chest, and she knew the fear that usually lingered in the back of her mind had not appeared because she was right where she belonged. A chill ran down her spine. Not a good chill but a holy-shit-what-am-I-doing chill. No one in her life had ever stuck around. Her mother couldn’t stay sober enough to take care of her—or even to stay alive. She had never known her father, and every foster family she’d ever been with hadn’t wanted to keep her. No one stuck by her.
Except Dex.
Ellie had boxed off her heart with barbed wire, and it had served her well—until Bruce. Fucking Bruce. She would not let one asshole define who she was. If she’d done that, she’d have lost hope years ago. Hell, she’d have given up. No. She’d made it this far, and she was going to have a happy life—even if it killed her.
She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, then blew it out slowly.
She texted Dex with trembling fingers. Sure.
But maybe, just maybe, she had the indefinable, unfathomable fate on her side. Dare she let herself believe? Her legs told her to take off. Suddenly, she was fifteen years old again, lying beside Dex in his bed. Don’t leave without saying goodbye. He’d made her promise. But when he’d come to her house, she’d told her foster family to say she was already gone. She’d watched him out the window. His jaw, too young for whiskers or stubble, was not too young to tremble. His soulful eyes filled with so much pain it killed her to watch. She’d had to turn away, and when she’d found the strength to turn back, he had already gone. She remembered thinking that if she didn’t say goodbye, it wouldn’t hurt. She’d never been more wrong in her life. And when she’d returned four years ago, she’d forgotten that pain, and she’d done it again.
Her phone vibrated again. She read Dex’s message. Please don’t run. Xox.
Chapter Eleven
THRIVE WAS BUZZING with the news of their release date remaining firm and Dex not backing down to KI’s manipulations. The more Dex thought about their release date, the more he believed they were doing the right thing. Dex had never given in to peer pressure. Not in high school when the rest of the kids on his robotics club team had wanted to amp up their robot with materials not included in the approved list and not when he was developing his first PC game in high school. Even Siena had tried pressuring him into being a cooler teenager. And then there was Ellie, with her quiet support, her caring nature, and her belief that every moment counted. She wasn’t like any of the other girls he knew in school. Ellie didn’t push him to go to parties or dress a certain way. She didn’t care that he chose not to play football like his older brothers had or that he never had much to say. Hell, she never asked him for a damn thing. Except once, when she’d asked him to love her forever—and he’d been all too happy to hand over his heart. Which she’d carelessly shattered.
Thinking about Ellie brought conflicting feelings. He was falling for her all over again, and the same old fears prickled his nerves. Would she really be there when he got home tonight? Was he acting like a fool, setting himself up for heartbreak again? Intellectually, he knew he should have learned from experience where Ellie was concerned and treaded carefully. Dex wasn’t stupid, at least not academically, but matters of the heart were a whole different game. He’d left pieces of his heart on the lawn of her foster family’s house. Crumbles of it formed a path from that house to his, and at the time, he hadn’t known how to respawn. If only it were a game and he’d have had a save point in place to which he could retreat—erasing the nights he’d spent with her, the love that had grown toward her. But life didn’t come with save points, and his father would allow him no time to dwell on anything—good or bad. You’re either all in or all out, his father had told him. He’d looked at Dex with that harsh stare of his, dark eyes piercing his already broken heart, and said, You’re better than that, son. You’re a man. Suck it up and move on.
He’d sucked it up, but he’d never really moved on.
“I like Ellie.” Everyone had left the meeting except for Regina and Mitch. Regina stood beside Dex as he logged off of his computer.
“Yeah?” He waited for the but. Dex hadn’t dated much in recent years, or introduced many women to Regina, but the few times he had, Regina had nitpicked them until he lost interest. She’d been right each time. She had a sense about those things.