Chapter 504 | What You Actually Want

Chapter 504: 504 | What You Actually Want

The valet opened Jordan’s door. Jordan handed over the keys, walked around, and opened Alexis’s door himself, holding out a hand like this was a debutante ball instead of a parking circle.

She didn’t take it.

"I don’t understand you," she said from the passenger seat. The sun behind him turned his hair gold at the edges. That stupid cocky angle to his jaw. "Every other boy I’ve ever met would have pulled this car over ten miles ago."

"I’m not every other boy."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the only one I’ve got right now." He kept his hand out. "Come on, princess. Let’s get you checked in."

She took it.

He pulled her out of the car. Her bare feet hit the pavement. The cat slippers stayed on the floor mat. She stood in the valet circle of the Ritz-Carlton Dana Point in silk pajamas with gas station mustard on the cuff, a stolen henley underneath and nothing on her feet, and Jordan McKnight looked at her like she was exactly where she was supposed to be.

"You’re going to get us thrown out," she said.

"They won’t throw us out. I’m paying."

"With what? Your business economics degree?"

"With my card." He produced a black debit card that looked nothing like her family’s but had his name embossed in silver. "The one that actually works."

"That’s a low blow."

"It’s a debit card. Everything about it is low."

The lobby was exactly as she remembered. Marble. Chandeliers. Staff in uniforms that cost more than most people’s car payments. She had stayed here twice with her mother, a spa weekend and a charity gala, and both times she had walked in wearing Louboutins and a professional face.

At the gala her mother had pinched the back of her arm under the tablecloth every time she laughed too loudly. Afterward Alexis had locked herself in a bathroom stall off this lobby and laughed at nothing, quietly, just to hear what it sounded like when nobody could pinch her for it.

Today she walked in barefoot, and the concierge didn’t blink.

Barefoot at the Ritz, it turned out, worked exactly like being a Van Der Berg at the Ritz. Nobody said anything, because somebody was paying.

"Good evening, sir. How may I assist you?"

"I need a room for the night. Ocean view if you have it. King bed."

Alexis’s heart stuttered. King bed.

She had slept in king beds her whole life. She had never once slept in one she’d asked for.

"Of course, sir. A name for the reservation?"

"McKnight."

The concierge typed. Alexis stood behind Jordan’s left shoulder, close enough to feel the warmth off his back, close enough to smell gym and gas station hot dog, a combination that should have been disgusting and somehow wasn’t.

"I have a Premier Ocean View on the sixth floor. The rate is seven hundred forty-nine dollars per night plus tax."

"That works."

"Will you need a second key, sir?"

"No," Jordan said. "Just one."

He said it the way people declined a receipt. Alexis felt it land somewhere under her sternum and couldn’t decide yet whether it hurt.

Alexis grabbed his arm. "Jordan, that’s—"

"Loan, remember? You’re paying me back with interest. Chloe’s writing the terms on a legal pad."

"But seven hundred—"

"Do you want the shower with real water pressure or not?"

She shut her mouth. Her fingers stayed locked on his bicep. The concierge pretended not to notice.

The elevator to the sixth floor took forty-eight seconds. Alexis counted every one, because her brain had stopped producing words and needed something to do. Jordan watched the numbers climb with his hands in his pockets, as calm as he’d been at the gas station when she asked him to take her to bed.

In the polished brass of the doors she could see the two of them, him in a gym hoodie and her barefoot in silk, like the before and after of two different makeover shows.

Room 612 opened onto the Pacific. Floor-to-ceiling windows. A balcony with two chairs. A bathroom the size of her freshman dorm with a walk-in shower that promised actual water pressure. And in the middle of the room, a king bed with crisp white sheets and roughly eight pillows.

Alexis stood in the doorway and looked at the bed.

Jordan walked past her and set her bag on the luggage rack. He pulled the curtains wider. He nudged the thermostat two degrees cooler. He set a bottle of water from the minibar on the nightstand.

He picked up the minibar menu, read one line, and set it face down with a small wince he didn’t think she saw.

Then he walked back to the door.

"Wait." Her hand caught his wrist before she could stop it. "Where are you going?"

"Home." His pulse beat steady under her palm. "Chloe’s probably sent three texts asking where I am, and Kumiko’s probably written four pages on the emotional implications of gas station hot dogs."

"You’re leaving me here alone?"

"You said you didn’t want to face Chloe tonight. This way you don’t have to."

The cord in her neck wound back to full tension in one breath. She had asked. She had implied everything after. She had watched him drop seven hundred dollars on a king bed, and now he was walking out like they’d finished a business meeting.

"I don’t understand," she said, for the third time that day.

He turned and cupped her cheek, thumb brushing the place where her mascara had smudged and dried and smudged again.

"It’s not enough."

"Enough for what?"

"Enough for you to know what you actually want." His thumb traced her jaw. "Right now you’re scared and broke and your mom just deleted you from her operating system. You’re asking me to touch you because I’m the only person who showed up when you called. That’s not a reason. That’s a reflex."

Her eyes burned. "You don’t know what I want."

"Neither do you. That’s the problem." He stepped closer, close enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple. "Ask me when you can walk out that door if you don’t like my answer."

"Did Chloe write that?"

"No. She’d have made it shorter."

"And if I still want you then?"

His jaw shifted. The tell.

"Then I’ll give you exactly what you’re asking for. Every single thing." His voice dropped into the register that turned her knees liquid. "But not like this."

He kissed her forehead. Over before she could lean into it.

Then he walked out the door, and the room was very quiet, and very large, and full of pillows.