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my head to the side.
    “At the pizza place,” he said.
    Oh. That .
    “My ex showed up. I flipped out a little.”
    The ropes of muscle in his arms tightened, as did his jaw. “You’re divorced?”
    “No, I never married.”
    Now Austin looked pissed. He leaned forward and scraped his fingers through his hair, staring at the tacky pattern on the floor tiles.
    “How’re your parents doing?” he asked, switching topics.
    “Mom’s great. She doesn’t work as much as she used to. I’m sure dad’s great too. Wherever he is.”
    His head snapped up. “What do you mean by that?”
    “My dad left us.”
    He stood up and erased the distance between us. “When?”
    I laced my fingers together. “About four years ago. I don’t know.”
    “He left ?”
    “Yep. One day he packed up all his shit and told my mom he’d had enough. It came out of the blue because I don’t remember hearing them argue that much, but I wasn’t living at home at the time. Who knows what was going on; she never talks about it.”
    “He left his wife and daughter unprotected?” Austin repeated through clenched teeth.
    I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah. Sound familiar?”
    A low growl vibrated in his throat. “I had no choice. It was the only way to keep your family safe.”
    “Look, I’m tired of playing this game,” I said, pushing him away. I hopped down from the washer and felt trapped because of that damn laundry. I was tempted to pull out every last sopping-wet towel and just go home. But instead, I paced. “You’re the same, but you’re not the same. I know it’s been years, but have you been in prison?”
    Austin stirred with laughter and tiny crinkles pinched the corners of his eyes. There he was—the guy I once knew. The one whose laugh was contagious because you rarely heard it, and it gave him such a sweet expression. With his right arm, he leaned on the washer and I turned my back to him.
    Damn , that lean.
    “No, I’m not a convict. I’m the same guy, just older and a little fatter.”
    I snorted. Hardly . I didn’t see an ounce of fat on his well-proportioned, nicely tanned—
    “Lexi?”
    I spun on my heel and folded my arms. Austin tilted his head and spoke softly. “I want my hug. I’ve got a lot of baggage, and you look spooked, but we need to mend the rift between us. I can’t undo the past, but I want to make it right with your mom. Fuck your dad, because he can rot in hell for leaving you the way he did. Had I known, I would have come back sooner.”
    My knees weakened a little. There was fierceness in his declaration—an honesty in his voice I couldn’t ignore. As pissed off as I was, I owed him the benefit of the doubt as much as he owed me an explanation.
    With my arms still folded, I shuffled forward and leaned into him.
    Austin wrapped his arms around me tight and kissed the top of my head.
    “I missed you, Ladybug,” he murmured in my hair.

Chapter 7
     
    In the span of a rinse and spin cycle, I’d managed to get Austin caught up on seven years’ worth of gossip. Who was married, who was divorced, who was gay, who had five children, who lost all their money on a gambling trip, and who was arrested for public indecency in a museum. Austin’s eyes were brimming with amusement; I always had an animated way of telling a good story.
    We slid into our groove just a little bit more, although in many ways, Austin still felt like a stranger to me.
    I offered him one of my warm T-shirts to put on, fresh from the dryer, but he smirked and held it up to his broad chest. Unless I wanted the stretched-out version, Austin was going shirtless.
    Not that I had any complaints.
    “I’ll follow you,” he said, slamming my trunk closed and walking back to his car. We agreed to head over to my place and he’d tell it all. My stomach twisted into a knot because I wasn’t sure I was ready for the truth—not after what he’d already told me.
    I wrote down my address in case we were separated in traffic, and to be