Avoiding Temptation (Avoiding #3)(20)

And just as she had the thought, the door to Chyna’s bedroom opened, and she walked down the hallway into the living room.

“What the f**k are you doing here, chica?” Chyna asked, crossing her arms over her thin body.

She wore nothing more than a lacy demi bra and matching lace back V-string underwear. Somehow, she managed to look even more beautiful than she did in some of her thousand-dollar designer dresses.

Lexi hated her every moment for it. How could her best friend be this gorgeous? It just wasn’t fair to the rest of the world. It certainly wasn’t fair to Lexi, who was so much shorter than Chyna. And Chyna was just supermodel thin and tall with perfectly perky br**sts, sleek black hair, and gorgeous emerald eyes. Fucking ridiculous.

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Lexi asked. “I’ve been trying to call you all day, all week. You haven’t answered any of my f**king phone calls.”

“Oh, did you call?” Chyna asked, arching a masterfully groomed eyebrow. She tapped her finger against her arm. “I guess I missed it.”

“You’re not fooling anyone right now—certainly not me,” Lexi said, rolling her eyes. Why did Chyna have to be so difficult? Lexi had known that she was going to be, but standing here and seeing that she actually was made it more frustrating. “You’re angry at me. That’s why you haven’t returned any of my calls. You don’t have to pretend like you didn’t get them, Chyna. I know that’s not true. Why don’t you just admit you’re angry at me?”

“Fine. I’m angry at you.” Chyna shrugged. She grabbed a short silk robe out of a closet and tied it around her waist. “I mean, what the hell, Alexa? You had to hide things from me?”

“It wasn’t like that. I wasn’t purposely hiding things from you.”

“Oh, really? So, when were you going to tell me that you were seeing John?”

“I wasn’t seeing John.”

“Now, you’re going to try to play it off? Alexa, I know you way too well for that. I have known you for three years. I have seen all of the shit that you have gotten yourself into. I have seen Jack tear you apart. I have seen Ramsey tear you apart. I have seen you go back to both of them,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Don’t try to act like I don’t know who you are. I know who you are. And you probably f**ked John just because you knew he’d tried to sleep with me!”

Oh no, she had not gone there!

Lexi was near to bursting with anger. “Chyna! Are you f**king serious right now? I thought you were my best friend. I thought you were the person who—yeah, told me all the shit I’d done wrong and opened my eyes to what the f**k I was doing, but I didn’t think you were judgmental. I didn’t think you ever judged me.”

“Well, you probably shouldn’t have hidden things from your best friend then, should you?”

“Really?” Lexi asked solemnly.

Chyna just shrugged her little shoulders and looked away from Lexi. “So, what do you want?”

“I want to clear this up,” Lexi told her. “I don’t want to lose my best friend. I don’t even want to be with John.”

“Maybe you should have thought about that before keeping everything from me.”

“Chyna, you were gone! You were in Milan. I’d just broken up with Ramsey. I was a hot mess. Adam and I were hanging out, and I met John. He didn’t seem like the person you’d made him out to be. He didn’t seem like a bad guy!” Lexi waved her arms dramatically. How could she get this into Chyna’s head? “I didn’t know how to bring it up with you because I know how you feel about him.”

“We’ve known each other for years. I would think you could just bring it up to me like you have brought everything else up to me. You hid it because you were scared, just like you hide everything else because you’re scared. The fact that it’s John is just icing on the cake.”

“So, what? I kept one thing from you, and now, you’re going to hold a grudge against me forever?” Lexi cried in disbelief. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Sometimes, life isn’t fair.”

Lexi shook her head and tried to clear her mind. She couldn’t push Chyna any more than she already had. If Chyna cared enough to want their friendship to work, being the person that Lexi knew she was, then she would come around. If she didn’t, there wasn’t anything Lexi could do about it. It made her want to walk up to Chyna and shake her. Lexi just wanted to tell her to get over this nonsense.

It was just a guy! Sure, John had been the reason Chyna and Adam had broken up earlier that year, but Chyna leaving for Milan had been the reason they had broken up the second time. Chyna and Adam were back together now, but maybe she needed to look a little closer at herself before passing judgment on Lexi.

Either way, Lexi thought this whole thing was stupid, and she really wanted to move on.

The thought of losing Chyna was agonizing. It made Lexi’s heart feel like it was about to burst out of her. But she couldn’t show Chyna that. Chyna hated weakness. She had always hated it. She hated it in herself, and whenever Lexi had shown it, Chyna would try to slap it right out of her. And really, at this point, the last thing Lexi wanted was for Chyna to slap her. The only time that had ever worked was when she had fainted in Chyna’s penthouse in Atlanta. And even then…Chyna had been right.