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“I’m embarrassed,” she admitted, keeping pace as she pulled her beanie a little further down over her ears.
“Of what? Kyle?”
“Of Kyle. The fact that I married him and what that says about me. Mostly I hate that Nico saw me like that, all messy and broken. God, I wish I knew what he was thinking.”
The bruises on her neck had all but faded, but her humiliation over the whole thing hadn’t. She’d been avoiding Nico’s calls, dodging him whenever she happened to see him around town, even once dropping down on all fours to hide behind the bar when he came in to work looking for her, earning a disapproving frown from Wade—who’d blessedly lied through his teeth for her. It was ridiculous, she knew, but she simply wasn’t ready to face him.
“I can tell you what he’s thinking,” Annie said, rounding a bend as they continued their ascent up one of the many mountain walking tracks surrounding the cove. “He’s wishing you’d get over yourself and call him back already.”
“No, that’s what you’re thinking,” Lexie corrected.
“How many messages has he left you?”
“At last count—four.”
“Ha,” Annie cackled. “I rest my case.”
“I just . . . I don’t know where we go from here. It’s so messed up,” Lexie said. “How can I date the cop who could be about to charge my husband with murder? And what if he doesn’t even see me that way anymore, now that he’s had time to think about all this? What if he’s only calling because he feels sorry for me? I swear, if he tries steering me toward some kind of therapist for battered women, I’ll die.”
“Would you listen to yourself?” Annie gave her a light shove. “You sound crazy.”
“Maybe I am. It’d be the one and only thing my mother ever gave me.”
“First of all, forget that bitch. Second, whether you’re embarrassed, crazy, or both, you can still be those things from underneath the sexy boy in blue, so will you stop spiraling and call him before some other woman sinks her fingernails into his back.”
“Dude.” Lexie gave her a sidelong glance. “Why are you so thirsty lately? Is Paul not doing his due diligence?”
She’d meant it as a joke, even winking for dramatic effect, but soon regretted asking when she saw the tension spreading across Annie’s face.
“Not lately, if you must know,” she said stiffly.
“Oh.” Lexie silently processed that. Just over a week ago, Annie had voiced her concerns about Paul possibly cheating on her. Now this?
“He’s been super busy at work, traveling all the time,” Annie said. Her voice was strained with worry. “They’re rolling out this new system, and a lot of companies are needing more hands-on support. He’s leaving for Toronto this morning. New York next week.”
“Uh-huh.” Paul was some kind of high-end tech consultant, the specifics of which had eluded Lexie for years, but she was fairly certain he wasn’t inundated with opportunities to meet other women. Or so she’d assumed. “And with him away all the time things are getting . . . cold?”
“Frigid,” Annie said, stopping on a flat to twine her fingers atop her head and catch her breath. Lexie followed suit. “It’s like we’ve forgotten how to be passionate, you know? We’ve become that couple who eat dinner together in silence, sit and watch television until we can’t keep our eyes open, then crawl into bed, switch off our lamps, and say, ‘Goodnight, honey.’ ” She shuddered. “Makes my skin crawl. Reminds me too much of my own parents.”
“What if you took some time off from work and went with him sometime?” Lexie suggested. “Make an adventure out of it. Try to relight the fire, so to speak.”
Annie’s eyebrows twisted in thought. “You think Wade would go for that?”
Lexie shrugged. “I could always use the extra shifts. I’m sure the casuals could pick up whatever I couldn’t cover. You should ask him.”
“Yeah. I will.”
Now that they’d reached a lull in the conversation, Lexie felt compelled to voice something that had been weighing heavily on her mind for days, even before all the stuff with Kyle. It probably wasn’t the right time, what with Annie’s personal life potentially going up in flames, but she needed to talk to someone about it. She needed her best friend. There was no one else around to interrupt or overhear. It might be the best opportunity she’d get.
“Hey, can I ask you something weird?”
Annie began stretching her legs. “Shoot.”
“Well, you remember how . . . uninhibited you were in your youth?”
“Are you implying that I’m no longer youthful?” she asked with a wry tilt of her head.
Ignoring the question with a smile, Lexie continued, “Did you ever do something you deeply regretted? Like something you wish you could forget?”
