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

Chapter Twenty-Six, Game of Love

Chapter Twenty-Six

FRUSTRATION BUBBLED WITHIN Dex's chest and gut. He stifled the desire to release years of suppressed frustration and tell Ellie exactly how she was driving a knife through his heart. Ellie clung to his hand like a lifeline as he pulled her to the street and flagged down a cab. They climbed in, and she looked at him with her beautiful blue eyes, sadness and worry fighting for top billing. Damn it. He needed a shield to protect himself from the love he had for her. He looked away, feeling his nostrils flare and his chest constrict. He gave the driver his parents' address.

"Why are we going there?" Ellie asked.

"Because. That's where this all started, and that's where we're gonna figure this out." He stared straight ahead, the muscles in his neck twitching with the need to look at her. Dex had always been in control of everything in his life—except his feelings for Ellie and their relationship. In every other aspect of his life, he knew where he was going and he knew how he was going to get there. Now he was completely, one hundred percent fucked. He knew what he wanted, but he was not even remotely in control of how to get there—or what it would take to remain there with Ellie. Always with Ellie.

They drove in silence for a long time. Forty minutes, maybe fifty with traffic, he wasn't sure, but it felt like forever, and it gave him time to think. People had always come in and out of Dex's life. Friends from college, colleagues in the gaming industry, girlfriends, buddies, but very few had remained on the fringe of his every thought like Ellie always had. As they drove toward his parents' neighborhood, he wondered if she was on his mind because she was unobtainable. The whole wanting-what-you-can't-have thing, but then his mind revisited the last few days. Ellie was here. Present. With him. She is trying. She got a job and was putting down roots. With him. She wasn't running away. No, he decided. She wasn't unobtainable. At least not anymore.

"Dex?"

He looked down at their hands. How many nights had he held her hand? How many nights had he been afraid to move for fear of waking her and having her crawl out the window? Dex loved Ellie's small, feminine hands. He loved the way the curve of her palm felt against his, the way her fingers were so slim he could barely tell they were laced between his. He loved when they touched his chest and roamed lower, loving him in ways that could only come from her heart.

"Yeah?" he answered.

"How did we come to this? Over a text? I don't understand what's going on, and I need to."

"So do I," he answered solemnly. He still couldn't look at her, though he felt her eyes boring into him, trying to read his expression, which he hoped was unreadable. He'd always thought he was as good at caging off his emotions as Ellie was, but the truth was, she read him like a book. She knew when he needed her, and she knew when he loved her.

Do you feel both now, Ellie?

The driver's deep voice broke the silence. "Where would you like me to drop you off?"

"The corner of Carlisle and Marlboro, please." The tension brewed in his stomach and filled his limbs with heat. He didn't know what led him here tonight, but he assumed he'd figure it out.

That's how Dex handled everything in life. He acknowledged the issue, studied it, then calculated possible solutions. When there was an impediment, he found its weakness and worked past it. Ellie's weaknesses were his undoing: honesty and staying power, or lack thereof. To work past those weaknesses, they needed to acknowledge them and understand where they stemmed from. On nothing more than a hope and a prayer, Dex paid the driver and stepped from the cab.

"You want me to wait for you?" the driver asked.

Dex glanced at Ellie as she stepped from the car and shivered against the night air. "No, thank you. We're good."