I was going to punch her.
Okay. She could probably kick my ass, so I would punch her and run.
She clasped her hands together as she looked up at me. “Hi,” she said. “I know we don’t know each other, but I was wondering if you had a couple of minutes to chat?”
Struck dumb, I stepped aside. Would I seriously refuse her? Uh. No. Alex walked in and closed the door behind her. I faced her, having no idea what in the hell was going on.
Standing in front of her, as close as we were, I felt like—like Bigfoot looming over her. A blonde Bigfoot. I could legit pick her up and put her in my pocket.
“I’m Alex An—”
“I know who you are.” The moment those words left my mouth, I cringed. Icicles could’ve formed in the room. “I mean, I know who you are. Everyone knows who you are.”
Her brows lifted. “That’s kind of creepy.”
I snapped my mouth shut.
“Not that you’re creepy for saying that. It’s just that I’m not used to everyone knowing who I am.” She paused, wrinkling her nose—and oh my God, my eyes widened. I did that. All. The. Time. “Well, people kind of knew who I was before the whole ‘rise from the dead’ demigod thing, but it usually wasn’t anything good.”
“Oh,” I murmured, still staring at her.
A half-smile formed on her lips. “Anyway, you’re Josie.”
I nodded slowly.
Alex laughed, the sound husky and warm. “Well, duh. You know who you are.”
I nodded again.
“This isn’t coming out right,” she said with another laugh. “I wanted to meet you. I hear there’s something we have in common.”
“We’ve both been with Seth?” I blurted out, and holy shitballs, I did not just say that.
Her brown eyes widened slightly as her mouth formed an O.
I totally just said that.
“Oh my gosh, I mean, not that you’ve been with Seth, like with him. I haven’t even actually been with him in that kind of way.” Heat scalded my cheeks. I wasn’t even sure if Seth and Alex had gone there, but I was seriously hoping that they hadn’t because that would be yet one more thing she had going for her that I didn’t.
Ugh. I couldn’t even believe my brain was spewing out these kinds of things.
“I meant that we have him in common and that’s all I was trying to say,” I finished lamely.
“Um. That’s not what I was going to say,” Alex said, blinking slowly as she reached up, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I was going to go with us both having Apollo in common.”
“Ah. That . . . that makes more sense.” Walking around her, I dropped onto the cushions of the love seat, suddenly exhausted. The epic diarrhea of the mouth was tiring. “Apollo. Yeah, he’s, um, something else, isn’t he?”
“Yeah,” she drew the word out as she sat in the small chair. “I want to talk about Apollo, but let’s back up a second. You and Seth are . . . together?”
My face was going to melt right off. Tongue twisted, I had no idea what to say, because we weren’t together anymore, and Alex was the absolute last person I wanted to be discussing this with. But it was my fault for letting my mouth strip down and do a jig.
Alex’s lashes lowered, but the intensity of her stare could still be felt. “Okay. I know you don’t know me at all, but you’re going to learn pretty quickly that I’m super blunt, and I feel like I totally need to get this out in the open, because I didn’t know we had more in common outside of Apollo. And I’m going to probably punch someone for not filling me in on that.”
Oh geez. I squeezed my eyes shut.
“You know that Seth and I—”
“I know what you guys are,” I cut in. “I know a lot about what happened. Deacon filled me in and Seth . . . he talked a little about it.”
Her gaze sharpened. “Okay. Then did Seth explain that he and I kind of were seeing each other only for, like, a hot second?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Well, we didn’t really get into that kind of detail.”
“I see.” She paused, glancing down at her hands. “Seth and I never got together like that.”
Something did a wholly inappropriate happy dance in my chest.
“We did fool around a couple of times,” she added, lashes lifting, and that something stopped dancing and whipped out Covenant daggers. “But Aiden was my first and he will be the only one.”
Oh. That something slowly lowered the daggers.
“Don’t get me wrong. I cared about Seth—I still do. Things are . . . weird between us. Complicated isn’t even a right enough word, and if you really know what happened, you understand that, right?”
I nodded. “I do.”
Alex held my gaze for a moment and then reached up, wrapping her hands around the middle of her hair. “Seth and I never went that far.” She started twisting her hair, and oh my God again, I did that all the time too. This was so weird. So weird. She twisted her hair into a rope. “But you two . . . ?”
“No. I mean, we were seeing each other, but not . . . not anymore.”
She eyed me closely. “Were you guys serious?”
“Yes. I mean, I thought so. I . . . uh, I really cared—” I cut myself off, looking away as I shook my head. “None of that matters.”
“I think it matters if you were actually dating Seth and he didn’t have sex with you.”
My attention swung back to her sharply.
“The Seth I knew would pretty much hump a tree if there was a hole in it,” she said, and my nose wrinkled. “And he was never serious about anyone.”