Racing Outside the Line: A Love Story at 190 Mph (24 page)

"I’m so sorry, Lexie, I was talking to that interviewer, and I was thinking about you and wanting to share it all with you, wanting to propose to you, wanting to make love to you when Alexandria suddenly planted her lips on me. Cameras were everywhere, and I didn’t even notice her until she was on top of me. I knew she would kiss me in front of the cameras, I had prepared myself for it back when I found out that I couldn’t get her to
not
come to the race. I knew she’d take it to that level, and I knew I couldn’t throw her off me angrily. Everyone around me and behind those cameras was watching me, and I didn’t want a bigger scene to be made of it, I was afraid it would mean that Desmond wouldn’t let me marry you. I was afraid it would delay us getting married, and we’ve had so much trouble with timing, I didn’t want more opportunities for delay. I reached up and tried to subtly pull her away from me, but she wouldn’t budge. The next thing I knew, I heard Desmond cussing and charging toward me."

"You were kissing her back," I tried to keep from sounding pitiful, but failed miserably at. "I saw you kissing her back."

He came closer and sat down on the wall just beside me, taking my hand in his. "I’m sorry, baby, I swear, I didn’t think there was a better way to handle it. I tried to pull her away from me, I really did, I’m so sorry. Please believe me."

We stood in silence for a few minutes as I listened to the sounds of the rushing river. I didn’t know if I believed him or not. I wasn’t sure if I even
wanted
to believe him or if I was ready to. The movement of the water was my solace, my safe harbor from the onslaught of Seth’s words. I watched the ripples in the water as the wind pushed it this direction and that.

Think about it logically,
I instructed myself. If he had wanted her, he would still be engaged to her, he wouldn’t have broken up with her
after
all this came to a head. Then there was the ring, he bought it before the kiss, he had bought a wedding band before any of this mess even happened. He wanted to marry me, wanted to marry me so badly that he bought the wedding band, something he never did for Alexandria. That counted for something, didn’t it?

A slight breeze kicked up off the water as the sun fell lower, and the sky turned reddish purple. The brilliance of the sky contrasting with the fluffy white clouds and the greenery all around me, made the surroundings look epic. Did I want to marry him? Yes. Could I trust him again? Maybe. Was I willing to forgive him? I didn’t know. Was I willing to let him go?

I turned and finally looked at him. He looked dangerously handsome in the dark suit he was wearing. He had dark circles underneath his eyes and looked older, more tired, but he still made my heart beat frantically and my breath quicken. My eyes made contact with his and I saw such despair and panic in his eyes. My body ached to reach out to him and never leave his arms. I suddenly felt like an idiot for ever thinking I could
not
love him. I still just didn’t know…

"I can’t…" he started to say, but instead of finishing his sentence he lunged forward and grabbed my face in his hands. Before I knew it, his lips were pressed gently against mine. Although I knew in my head that I should stop this, my body responded with all the electricity and obsession I had always had for Seth and kissed him back. He must have felt my response because his kiss turned deeper and more aggressive as he wrapped an arm around my waist pulling me closer to him. I tried so hard to want to pull away, I tried so much to want to push him from me, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t deny how desperately I wanted him to love me, how much I wanted to be with him. I couldn’t stop myself from just melting into an absurd pile of Jello right into his arms.

Pushed out of control by the fierce passion between us, tears began streaming down my face. Seth tore his lips from mine and pulled me forcefully into his arms. "I’m so sorry, baby, please, I love you, Lex; I’ve always loved." I could hear his voice quavering and, for the first time in my life, I thought he was close to tears. He held me so tightly that I could only take shallow breaths. His arms wrapped around my upper body and he kept readjusting his hold on me in what seemed to be an attempt to pull me closer to him as I stood there, tears falling down my cheeks and arms hanging lifeless at my sides. "Please, Lex, don’t leave me… I
need
you." That tore right through me. That was real and unrehearsed, something I didn’t expect to hear from him. Despite the death grip he had on me, he sounded weak and "desperate" was just not a strong enough word for what I heard in his voice.

I closed my eyes. "Okay… okay," I was sobbing and felt his shoulders almost imperceptibly shaking making it clear he was crying too. I don’t know how long we stood glued to one another like that, but the sun finished setting and the sky started to turn purple. The breeze dried my tears as I relaxed into Seth’s arms, taking comfort in finally accepting that I didn’t want to be without him and that he really didn’t want to be without me. The breeze started out as a coolness that tempered the reaction Seth and I had to each other, but as it got darker, it attacked my bare legs and exposed back. I let out an uncontrollable shiver.

Seth pulled back from me, but I avoided his eyes, suddenly unsure of what to do next. We had reconciled, but now what, we just have dinner like nothing had ever happened? That would be too odd. I watched his arms as he shrugged off his suit jacket pulling something out of the front pocket. Then he placed his jacket around my shoulders before drawing me back into his arms. I was immediately warmed by the heat that clung to his coat and by his warm body so close to me. Dropping my head to his shoulder, I breathed in his scent and my mind immediately jumped to memories of waking up in his arms, surrounded by everything that smelled like him.

He pulled back and nudged my chin up until I was looking at him, "I haven’t done anything right our whole lives. I screwed up everything the first time around…"

I couldn’t let him continue to take that all on his shoulders. "You had help—Des told me everything—you really just stood there while he beat you up?"

"I deserved it, Lex, I did. He didn’t know how often I thought of you, even when you were that young. I wanted to hold you and love you even then. He actually thought it was a spur of the moment kind of thing that night. I deserved getting the crap beat out of me. And he was right… you deserved more, you still do. I just can’t, for the life of me, bring myself to let you go."

Suddenly angry over the constant interference of these two men, I likened myself to the princess who exiled herself in a tower, but had to fight off knight after knight who insisted on trying to rescue her. "Last time I checked, I was a completely individual human being more than capable of making my own decisions in life. Why must you both baby me?"

"I know it sounds stupid, I know it seems unfair, but you’ve always been sort of fragile in our minds, since your mom passed away anyway. And I think it’s always made both of us feel necessary in your life, needing to protect you."

"That
is
stupid!" I said bluntly, "At least for you. You had a place in my life, as the love of my life, and you gave it up."

"I wanted more for you," he was shaking his head as if I didn’t understand.

Ugh! I was so tired of hearing that. I continued with my blunt "are you completely blind" tone of voice, "You have no idea how much I always wanted and needed
you
, just you, not someone else
, you
."

He smiled at me then and kissed my forehead, "I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on that now, actually."

"Good," I felt a little sadistic pleasure over the fact that he had experienced a bit of what I had gone through for years.

"I don’t know how I got so lucky," he shook his head as he grabbed my left hand and pulled away from me. "I’ve screwed things up between us and wasted so much time," he pulled us away from the brick wall and lowered himself down to the ground balancing on one knee. Sadistic pleasure and stubbornness gone, my heart wept again as a moment I had imagined since the age of about seven was finally coming true. It was perhaps not entirely as I had hoped for, but coming true, nonetheless. "I’ve lived in terror the past few days not knowing if you would ever speak to me again. I was forced to imagine my world without you in it, and I felt so sick and desperate." I wasn’t a complete unsympathetic ogre. His honesty did manage to tear at my heart a little. "I know I’ve fucked up, and I don’t care if you hate me and punish me and are mean to me every single day for the rest of our lives just as long as you say you’ll stay with me for the rest of my life." Smiling down at him now, I reached out to touch his face. "I can’t live without you, Lexie." He pulled out my little velvet box and opened the lid. "I love you more than life itself, you were mine that first time I saw you watching me shower," I bit my lower lip to control the little laughter that wanted to come out, but he was so serious I didn’t dare laugh. "And I’ve been yours every single moment since then. Please, Alexis Evelyn Winston, will you marry me?"

How could anyone say no to that? Despite everything, I certainly couldn’t.

"Yes," I said quietly, "yes."

He slipped the hundred and fifty thousand dollar planet and its orbiting moons onto my finger and pulled me into him in a fiercely overwhelming kiss. I vaguely remember hearing cheering from above, but I was too quickly lost in the built up response of my body to Seth’s. It didn’t take long before we were both breathless. He was the first to pull away, and I was too shaky from my need for him the hold myself up, so it was a good thing that he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me up until my feet were dangling in the air. He spun me around and hugged me tight as he whispered in my ear, "I’m never letting go of you again, I’m going to hold you like this for the rest of our lives." He squeezed me tightly as if to illustrate his point.

I laughed and pointed out the obvious, "Guess we’ll have to make your race car a two-seater then."

"I’ll have the guys get to work on it right away."

My back was to the walkway, so I couldn’t see who was approaching, but I did hear their footsteps. "Desmond is going to try to pull you away from me now, but I don’t want to let you go."

"You’re gonna get your butt kicked again."

"I’m used to it," he retorted. "Besides, third time’s a charm. I may actually win this one, now that I have a reason to fight back." He kissed my cheek, then my neck, sending goose bumps across my arms and a shiver of desire down my spine.

"Get your damn hands off her," yelled Desmond’s voice from just up the path dripping with fake bravado, "I’d like to congratulate my sister, you pansy."

Seth squeezed me more tightly before whispering, "Promise you’ll never run from me again?"

"Promise me you’ll never give me a reason to run from you, and that includes the promise to never ever kiss another woman again," I countered.

"Baby, I swear, I was trying to get away from her, there are a million tapes of footage on it. I’ll show you the playback. I didn’t
want
to kiss her." His tone was much lighter than earlier, but his pleading was still serious.

I pulled back from him and placed my palm to his cheek. "I believe you now, there’s no way that you could kiss me like you just did while thinking of another woman."

He kissed my neck again and again, "I can’t think at all when I’m kissing you."

"Okay, okay," Desmond pulled our shoulders apart. "Break it up already." He leaned down and pulled me into the kind of big bear embrace I had always grown to love. "Congratulations, sis," his voice was soft and full of warmth.

"Are you happy?" Chelsea asked me. I nodded and gave her a tighter squeeze. She pulled back and looked at me thoughtfully before announcing, "Guess this means we’ll be going dress shopping."

"Anyone hungry?" Desmond nearly shouted as he rubbed his stomach. "They’ve got a table all set up for the four of us inside since the wind picked up a bit out here."

After a delicious meal, we moved to sit by the stone fireplace and enjoy the most delicious cheesecake I had ever had and cappuccinos. As I sat sipping my cappuccino, I couldn’t help but look down at the way that my ring sparkled in the firelight. It was breathtaking.

Desmond was telling Chelsea a humorous story from my childhood when Seth leaned closer to me and asked, "So you like it?"

"It’s exquisite, but you spent far too much money on it."

"No, I didn’t. A symbol of what you mean to me should cost me much more than what I paid for that, but the more money I was willing to spend, the larger the ring got, and a big gawdy ring just didn’t seem to fit you in my mind."

"It’s perfect, really, but uh," I smiled secretively as I leaned in closer to him. God, he smelled good. "When do I get to see its mate?"

Rolling his eyes, he explained, "I bought the wedding band to match because I knew I would marry you the first chance I got. In fact," he looked down at his watch, suddenly serious, "city hall must open pretty early in the morning; we could head down there and be married by tomorrow morning."

It was my turn to roll my eyes at him, "Yes, that’s exactly what a girl dreams of, being married in a smelly old building in a black dress."