Chapter 14: Three's a Crowd
The front door clicked shut behind Lexi with a sound of pure finality. She stood on the sidewalk, the chill of the morning seeping through her sweater, watching the black Mustang vanish around the corner. The roar of its engine lingered in the quiet street, a ghost of him.
Inside her, a different ghost remained. A physical echo of him, a sore, secret emptiness that felt more like a possession than a loss. She touched her lower lip, remembering the brutal, surrendering kiss in the car. Obsessed, he’d said. The word thrummed in her veins.
She walked the last hundred feet to her house feeling split in two. One part was still tangled in the sheets of his narrow bed, feeling the desperate shudder of his release. The other was standing here, in the clean suburban light, carrying the weight of his brother’s scared voice through the phone.
The house smelled different. Not just coffee. Something richer, earthier. Roasting tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil. The kitchen was warm, steam fogging the lower halves of the windows. Music played softly from the wireless speaker—some jazzy, unfamiliar thing.
David stood at the island, his back to her, diligently chopping an onion. Dede was at the stove, stirring a large, bubbling pot. She wore his old Columbia Law sweatshirt, the sleeves rolled up. It swamped her frame, but the way the fabric clung to her hips made its ownership clear.
They moved in a silent, synchronized orbit. Dede reached for a wooden spoon. David handed it to her without looking, his fingers brushing hers. It was a small, practiced gesture. It hurt more than seeing them have sex in the hallway.
David turned, sensing her. A genuine, relieved smile broke across his face. “There you are. We were getting worried. You left in such a hurry.” He wiped his hands on a dishtowel. “Come sit, sweetheart.”
Dede glanced over her shoulder, giving Lexi a warm, closed-lipped smile. “I’m just finishing the marinara. It’s your dad’s grandmother’s recipe. He talked about it so much I had to try.” She turned back to the pot, her voice dropping to a murmur meant for David. “More red pepper, do you think?”
“Always,” David said, his eyes soft on Dede for a second before returning to Lexi. He pulled out a stool for her.
Dede slipped past, her hand trailing across David’s shoulders. “I’ll let you two talk. Gonna go shower all this garlic off.” She winked at Lexi, a conspiratorial, feminine gesture that felt completely alien. “Don’t let him skimp on the parmesan. He’ll try.”
She left, and the kitchen seemed to exhale. The ghost of her perfume—something expensive and floral—remained, mixing with the garlic. David settled onto the stool opposite Lexi, pushing a plate of sliced focaccia toward her.
“You okay?” he asked, his writer’s eyes missing nothing. He saw the tiredness, the distraction. “You look… far away.”
“I’m fine,” she said, automatically. She took a piece of bread, just to have something to do. “Smells good.”
“It does.” He drummed his fingers on the table, a nervous habit. “Listen, about earlier… I know that was a lot. Dede being here so much. The pancakes.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not just a fling, Lex. I need you to know that.”
She nodded, chewing the bland bread.
“I filed the papers,” he said, the words quieter. “The divorce. It’s done. Or, it will be. I sent them certified mail to your mom’s lawyer this morning.”
Lexi looked up. The finality in his voice was absolute. This was the true closing of the door she’d heard about over breakfast. He wasn’t just saying it; he was doing it. The cropped photo on the wall seemed to officially become history, not a temporary omission.
“Are you… sad?” she asked.
He considered it, gazing out the window where the late afternoon sun was turning gold. “Relieved. Mostly. It’s like removing a splinter you’ve had for years. Hurts like hell coming out, but then the pressure’s gone.” He looked back at her. “Dede… she’s been a friend. And more. She’s uncomplicated. She wants to be here. After everything with your mom… that matters.”
She wants to be here. Lexi thought of Ace, of the terror in his eyes as he told her to stay away from his life, even as he was dragging her into his bed. Complicated didn’t begin to cover it.
“I want you to be happy, Dad,” she said, and meant it.
“I am trying to be.” He reached across, squeezing her hand. “And you? Anything you want to talk about? You’ve been… secretive lately.”
Her phone, face-down on the table, was a burning silence. No text. No call. Ace was somewhere, dealing with a crisis she couldn’t touch. The distance was a physical ache.
“Just school. Adjusting.” She forced a smile. “It’s all good.”
He studied her for a long moment, seeing right through her but choosing, for now, not to push. “Okay. Well, I’m here. Always.”
Dede returned, her hair damp, dressed in clean, soft-looking jeans and a cream sweater. She’d reapplied her perfume. She moved to David’s side, her arm sliding naturally around his waist as she peered into the pot. “Perfect,” she declared.
The meal was a performance of domestic bliss. Dede laughed at David’s stories, her touch constant—a hand on his arm, her knee brushing his under the table. She asked Lexi gentle questions about art, her eyes attentive. It was flawless. And beneath it, Lexi could sense the calculation. Every laugh was pitched perfectly. Every glance held a warm, wifely approval. She was building a nest, strand by deliberate strand.
David was letting her. More than that—he was leaning into it. His laughter came easier. The tight, haunted look he’d carried since the divorce was softening around the edges. Dede was sanding down his rough, broken parts, and he was grateful for it.
Lexi excused herself as they cleaned up together, another chore turned into a shared, intimate ritual.
Upstairs, her room felt like a museum of a different life. Her sketchbook lay open on the desk. Without thinking, her fingers moved. The pencil didn’t hesitate. It captured the strong line of a jaw, the intense set of eyes, the stark worry that lived in them. She drew the curve of a shoulder, the tense muscles of a back. She drew until her hand ached and the page was filled with him, from every angle she remembered.
Her phone buzzed.
She snatched it up. Her heart, a trapped bird, slammed against her ribs.
Chapter 14 (Continued)
Her heart, a trapped bird, slammed against her ribs. The screen glowed, not with a text, but with an incoming call. The contact photo—a blurred, dark snapshot of him she’d taken at the park—stared back. ACE.
She fumbled to accept, the phone slippery against her ear. “Hello?”
For a second, there was only a ragged breath on the line, a sound of pure exhaustion. Then his voice, flattened and stripped of all its usual rough edges. “Lexi.”
“Are you okay?” Her own voice was a tight whisper. “Where are you?”
“I’m at the house. My head’s... I’m all over the fucking place.” He exhaled, a slow, shaky sound. “First thing. I’m sorry. For ditching you like that, straight after... straight after we were together. That was shit. That wasn’t about you.”
“It’s okay,” she said instantly, the relief that he’d called at all washing through her. “Just tell me what happened.”
Another pause. She could picture him scrubbing a hand over his face, the way his jaw tightened when he was holding something in. “He came back,” Ace said, the words dropping like stones. “My stepdad. Waited for me to leave. My mum... he beat her pretty bad, Lexi. The cops were called.” His voice hitched, a fracture in the cool facade. “They got him. He’s going to jail, for real this time.”
“Oh, god.” She closed her eyes, seeing his mother’s frightened face from his stories. The empty bottle.
“She’s in the hospital. Broken wrist, cracked ribs. They’re keeping her.” The clinical report in his tone was worse than any yell. “My aunt’s driving up from Raleigh. She’s coming to get the kids, my brother and sister. They can’t stay here. With me being the legal adult in the house now, and that scene... it’s not stable.”
A thick silence stretched between them, filled with the unsaid: With me.
The implication landed, cold and heavy. “So you’re leaving?” she asked, her voice small.
“Just for a while. I gotta be at the hospital. Then I gotta deal with the social worker, help my aunt get the kids settled at hers. Make sure my mum’s okay when they let her out.” He sounded impossibly old. “All my mom’s money went to him. So there’s that mess too.”
Downstairs, the low murmur of David and Dede’s laughter drifted up. A jarring counterpoint to the bleak inventory of disaster in her ear.
“Because of that,” Ace continued, his focus snapping back, “I won’t be around for a little while. To help with your move. Or... anything. I promised I’d help you unpack the last of your boxes next week.”
“Don’t worry about that,” she said fiercely, pressing the phone closer. “It’s just stuff. Your family—”
“I know,” he cut in, the possessiveness she’d felt in his touch seeping into his voice. “But I fucking promised you.”
That ache inside her, the sore hollow he’d left, throbbed in recognition. He was pushing her away again, building the same wall, but now she could hear the desperation in the bricks he was laying.
“What can I do?” she asked. The question felt pathetic, but she had to ask.
“Nothing. There’s nothing to do.” He softened it with another weary sigh. “Just... knowing you’re okay. It’s a bright spot in all this shit.”
Her grip tightened on the phone. She wanted to tell him about the sketchbook, about the secret warmth and the echoing ache, but the words were too much. “Call me when you can. Even if it’s just a text late at night. Let me know you’re alive.”
A faint, dark hum of amusement came through the line. “Obsessed, remember?” he said, echoing his confession from the dim bedroom. “Yeah. I’ll call.” A sound of a door closing came through the receiver, hollow and final. “My aunt’s here. Gotta go.”
“Ace?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s not a burden,” she whispered into the static. “Letting someone care.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. She heard him swallow. “I’ll call,” he repeated, raw and low, and the line went dead.