Always There

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Five:

Lexi's POV

"This is barely even a dress, Kennedy. It's lingerie. Or maybe it could be considered a shirt. But I think even that would be a stretch," I say, examining the white 'dress' that Kennedy's holding.

Knox and Nathan are sitting on the velvet bench in the changing area as I try on all the dresses that Kennedy has pulled off the store racks for me to try on. They seem to agree with my opinion as they're both grimacing slightly as we all look at that terrible white dress.

Kennedy glares at me from where she's standing, just outside the changing room. "Not true! You're short, so it would probably be long enough on you."

"Probably," Knox mutters, narrowing his eyes at the offending garment.

Exasperated, Kennedy flings the white dress at me anyway. I catch it and hang it up alongside the other several atrocious dresses she has already made me try on that were a definite 'no.'

"I'm going to go find one more dress, and if you don't like it, then I give up," Kennedy announces, turning on her heel and heading back into the main area of the store.

As soon as she's out of earshot, Knox buries his face into his hands and mumbles, "Bloody hell."

Nathan chuckles at this. "My God, you're British."

Knox's eyebrows raise. "No shit, Nate."

Nathan laughs again, and Knox shoots him a final glare before standing up from the couch and taking the few steps between us towards me. He then reaches out both of his hands and rests them on my hips, pulling me a little closer towards him.

I don't feel any butterflies when he's touching me like this. The feeling is nothing like the swarm of butterflies I always felt in my stomach whenever Bryce touched me.

"I quite like this dress, actually," Knox tells me, his eyes roaming my body not so subtly.

I'm still wearing a red, satin dress, the dress that Kennedy had chosen before the white lingerie-shirt-dress, and at Knox's words, I glance down at the dress again myself.

"I don't want to wear red. Red is Bryce's favourite colour, and I used to always wear red whenever we went out together, for him. My prom dress was also red. And so was the dress I wore to the school dance the night Bryce and I made things official between us," I explain to Knox, smoothing down the front of the dress despite the fact that the material is still laying totally flat.

Knox's eyebrows furrow. "You shouldn't let that bastard turn you away from wearing an entire colour."

I sigh at this, shrugging, because I know that he's right. "I know, I know. I just don't want to be thinking about Bryce tonight. This night is about me, not him."

Knox cocks his head to the side. "I suppose that that's fair. You shouldn't have to be thinking about him all day, every day."

Just as he says this, Kennedy skips back into the changing area with a new dress in her hands.

It's quite different from all of the other dresses that she's pulled for me to try on, and I instantly love it.

The dress is velvet and it has a sweetheart neckline that I really like, as it's much more conservative then all the other dresses I've tried on but still will show a little cleavage. The straps are basic and thin, but that doesn't even matter as when Kennedy turns around the dress for me to see the back, I can see that it's almost completely backless, the thin straps crisscrossing once.