Game of Love (The Remingtons, Book One: Love in Bloom Series)

Chapter Twenty, Game of Love

Chapter Twenty

THEY LAY ON their backs wearing only T-shirts and gratified smiles. The murmur of a vibration rattled beneath Ellie. With one arm, Dex hoisted Ellie against his side and grabbed her phone from beneath her.

"Sorry. I tossed your phone there. It was buzzing when I walked in, and then I saw you and..." He licked his lips.

She moaned. "You kill me." Ellie kissed his chest and made no move to look at her phone. Today had been too perfect. She didn't want to chance seeing another text from Bruce and clouding her happiness. She snuggled against Dex. "Something changed for me today. For the first time in forever, I feel like lots of good stuff is happening at once."

He kissed her forehead. "Your life is going to be nothing but good things, El. We just had to find our way back to each other."

She leaned up on her elbow and looked into his eyes, remembering the first time she'd snuck out of her house. It wasn't just Dex's kindness that drew her to him that night. She'd seen something else in his brooding, shadowed eyes. A hidden unhappiness that tugged at her heart. She'd braved the darkness, following the sidewalk to the next street down, then turned and went to the Remingtons' address. She couldn't remember what had compelled her to look it up two weeks earlier, but she had felt the need to do so. That night she stood outside his house trying to figure out which window might be his. She'd peered into the three bedroom windows she could reach, and though the first and second were dark, she'd found him in the third. She had no idea how long she'd watched him. Fifteen minutes? An hour? She'd been mesmerized by his ability to lie still for so long. Absorbed by whatever he was reading. Her mind was always running in ten different directions, trying to determine a way out of the hell that had become her life. If she wasn't lovable enough for her own mother to sober up and reclaim her, how could she ever expect anyone else to? By the time she got to the foster home on Carlisle Avenue she'd already become jaded by the system. She'd known her foster homes were temporary, and something about Dex had seemed permanent. Even then.

Through the window that night, she watched Dex in the dim light of the reading lamp. He was lying on the twin bed, which looked too small beneath his lanky frame, wearing only a pair of cotton boxers. She'd been twelve the first time she stood outside his window. He was thirteen. They'd known each other for almost two years. Even at her young age, she'd seen more in Dex than just a boy on the cusp of growth. His legs were thin and long, his muscles yet undefined. He set down the book and pressed keys on a keyboard beside his bed. The monitor came to life and illuminated his handsome face. Back then his cheeks were smooth, still too young to have sprouted hair. His jaw and nose were still buffered with the last bits of youthful tenderness, less angular, and his eyes—those piercing midnight-blue eyes—called to her even then. She'd been standing on her tiptoes in her jeans and oversized sweatshirt. It was October, and the leaves were damp from a light evening rain. The toes of her sneakers had slipped out from beneath her, and as she grasped the windowsill in an effort to remain erect, her knuckles had rapped against the glass. She remembered the metal-on-metal sound of the window as it slid open and the look in Dex's eyes when he saw her clinging to the sill.

"Hey," he'd said.

"Hey." Gulp.

He hadn't said another word. He'd held his hands out for her to take hold, and when her hands touched his, she didn't think. She scaled the wall, holding on to his hands and using her feet to walk up the bricks. She put her arms around his neck when he reached for her, and when he helped her down from the sill, inside his room, then took her hand and led her to the bed, he knelt down and took off her shoes without a word. She remembered watching him move around her like he'd been waiting for her his whole life. He'd looked at her and smiled with the right side of his mouth. And then he'd sat back on the bed against the headboard in the same position he'd been in when she'd arrived, and he lifted his arm. She'd crawled in beside him, one hand on his bare belly, the other against his side—in what would become their nightly position—and she'd closed her eyes. That was the first night she'd slept, really allowed herself to forget the world and fade away, in all the years she could remember.