She let herself wallow for several minutes, then shook her head. “Stop it, Al,” she said out loud. God, she really was over-emotional lately, just like Cole said she was.
Between her job, designing the model home, her classes, getting used to living with Cole, and their upcoming wedding, there was just so much going on. She felt like she should be juggling it all with more grace and enthusiasm. Instead, what she really felt scared her. Scared her bad.
Dread. Skin-crawling, stomach-dropping, run-while-you-can dread.
It was ridiculous.
Alexa was on the cusp of having everything she’d ever dreamed about. A beautiful home she could be proud of, a secure job that she loved, a man who worshipped her, and more money than she’d ever be able to spend. She wasn’t greedy; that wasn’t where her interest in money and a nice house came from. Instead, it grew out of the way she’d grown up. How little she’d had as a kid, how terrible the conditions she’d endured had been—against all of that, it was amazing to think about how much she had now.
She was grateful beyond imagination. Grateful to be safe and secure. Grateful to be able to help her mom, who needed all the help Alexa could give her. Grateful to Cole for making it all possible.
Which made the dread seriously ridiculous.
It was just wedding jitters. Totally normal.
Right.
Sighing, she dried her eyes and surveyed the beautiful dinner she’d managed to throw together. Given how scarce food had been when she was younger, Alexa absolutely hated to waste anything. Problem was, her appetite had been all over the place lately. Either she couldn’t stomach the thought of eating or she was binge-eating a bag of potato chips while Cole was at work.
Knock, knock.
The quick raps on the front door pulled Alexa from her thoughts. She crossed the dining room to the wide oval foyer framed by a grand curving staircase. A glittering chandelier hung from the ceiling, casting colorful prisms here and there from where it caught the late-day sun through the large picture window above the door. Out on the front porch, Alexa found a stack of packages. She gave a wave to the UPS driver as he pulled out of the end of their driveway.
With only two weeks until the wedding, presents from the registry had been pouring in every day. Cole had so many friends and work colleagues that she’d never met, Alexa didn’t know who most of the gifts were from.
She carried in two smaller ones, then two medium ones, and then found herself struggling to move the large square box on the bottom. It was too deep to get her arms around and not easily pushed. What the heck could it be? She crouched behind it to try to gain leverage to push, and was just about to give up when a strong breeze blew her hair across her face and she heard a soft click.
Her gaze cut to the front door.
“Oh, shit,” she said. Knowing what she was going to find, she tried the knob anyway. Locked.
She was locked out and Cole was away until who knew what time. And she couldn’t easily go anywhere because her purse, car keys, and phone were all inside.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
She sat heavily on the stupid box and dropped her head into her hands. And burst into tears.
Not because of being locked out. But because of being . . . trapped with no easy way out of the situation? Suddenly, that felt like a crazy, accurate metaphor for her life.
If she was being honest with herself.
Which she really, really didn’t want to be.
“Stop it, Al,” she said in a rasping voice. “You’re not trapped. Stop thinking that.” Except, just then, she leaned her left cheek too heavily against her hand and sucked in a breath at the smarting of the healing bruise there.
The one from the fight she and Cole had last week. The fight that had started with Alexa leaving a big mess in the foyer from where she’d been unboxing another delivery of packages and escalated into Cole saying Alexa was just like her mother—something Cole knew cut her deep. The fight had ended when Alexa told him he was being mean and he’d kicked a box at her—when she’d tried to duck out of the way, she tripped over another box on the floor and fell, hitting her head against the leg of a console table in the foyer, giving her some nasty bruises.
Alexa had been totally and absolutely stunned, especially when Cole hadn’t stayed to help her. Instead, he’d said her tripping had just proven his point and stormed out. She’d fled. To her past.
A past she’d left behind for a whole lot of very good, logical, and well-thought-out reasons.
When she’d finally returned home, Cole had apologized so profusely he’d gotten down on his knees and cried with his head in her lap. Never in the nearly five years they’d been together had he ever hurt her. At least, not physically. He could be short with her when he was stressed and occasionally his criticism bordered on the mean side. But the truth was Alexa could be messy and she could be disorganized and she could be forgetful, all things that drove him crazy. And Cole could also be generous and sweet and he’d done so much for her and her mother. Their lives were better because of Cole Slater.