Page 111 of Xander

“Of course not,” she said, sounding shocked. “I know what it’s like, being forced to play a role that isn’t you. How could I resent you for that?”

She had a point, I supposed. I had forgiven people for so much worse. It was easier to smooth over the faults of others. But it was a lot harder to ignore your own.

It had been so long since I had talked to anyone as a friend. I’d been forced to hold my clients at bay so they wouldn’t peer too closely at the dynamics between myself and the man I’d believed to be my husband, and then Xander⁠—

No. I didn’t want to think of him yet again. The pain was still so fresh.

I focused on Piya instead, my only outlet during this difficult time, and we made plans to meet up once this ugly business was behind me.

Not that she knew much about said “ugly” business.

She knew there was another man, whose child I was carrying—she even woohoo’d it as she had never cared for Henry—and that I was on the run from the Maxwells. She didn’t press me when I refused to reveal who was the baby’s father, and why I didn’t want to raise the baby with them. For some reason, telling her of Henry’s misdeeds fell easily out of my lips, but telling on Xander felt like a betrayal.

Other than Piya, companionship was scarce in my life, and I was miserable and lonely in the most beautiful place on earth.

The city of Paris was so much like what I remembered, but also so different—everything that was familiar now had a new patina, like seeing a childhood friend who had grown up and developed a new taste in clothes. Now there were cafés that did latte art outside of Notre Dame, and people filming themselves doing dances in front of the ivy-strewn French provincial buildings. The city seemed to care a lot more about what people thought of it and had lost the air of careless remove that had made it feel so romantic and appealing when I was a young girl.

You’re attracted to emotionally unavailable places, as well as men, I thought to myself, although that was no longer quite true.

I’d realized that despite my bad habits, there was so much value in being cherished and cared for and having someone put you first. And it was all because of him.

I wanted that. No, I craved it. Like a scraggly plant in a desert feeling the first kiss of desert rain, I had felt myself come alive after feeling dead inside for years.

I walked down the stairs and unlocked the door that spilled out into a little cobbled alleyway that smelled faintly of trash even though the dumpsters had been emptied the day before and walked around to the front of the café. The owner, a hearty fifty-year-old man who flirted aggressively with all women even though he was married, greeted me by name before turning to start my decaf cappuccino and marzipan-filled croissant, even though I hadn’t even yet asked. “Comment une si belle femme peut-elle avoir un mauvais goût en café?” he grumbled good naturedly. How can such a beautiful woman have such terrible taste in coffee?

“Désolée,” I mumbled awkwardly, feeling anything but beautiful in my slightly wrinkled Diane von Furstenberg. The French didn’t believe in decaf coffee. There was no excuse for it except the obvious one.

I looked down at my little flats, purchased impulsively at a trendy little shop on one of those congested arcaded walkways. Henry would have hated them—they were hot pink, with little bows. Knowing that pushed me to make the purchase, even though the tasteful vacation clothes reminded me jarringly of the luxury stores that Xander had aboard his own yacht when he’d treated me to whatever I wanted. The pink shoes wouldn’t have bothered him.

No, Xander had always taken me as I was, never seeking to change me. I wasn’t a project to him. I was just the woman he adored.

I had basked in that feeling, even as I was constantly chased by the guilt that our age difference and illicit relationship caused. Still… he had done so much for me in the wake of Henry’s abuse. His father’s cruelty had warped his protective side, and with his feelings all snarled up from that toxic dynamic, I had felt as if he had projected his desire for stability and love onto me.

But he had betrayed me, using my worst fears against me, and his attempt to control me lanced far deeper than anything Henry had ever done because with Xander, I had dared to hope for more.

The second week in Paris was harder than the week prior. For the first time in years, I was free to let sunshine kiss my skin. To walk around without an escort. To leave my small apartment at the drop of a hat. I also had what I’d always wanted—a baby on the way, and I didn’t even have to deal with the controlling father.

In theory, I should be glowing.

But you wouldn’t think so looking at me.

I stared at my reflection in the small mirror above my bathroom sink and shuddered. I looked worse than when Xander had found me in Henry’s clutches. My eyes were sunken, my hair looked brittle, and my skin was grayish despite catching tons of sunlight.

The vibrancy in my personality that I’d rediscovered after Xander’s return had also magically vanished. A piece of me had been ripped away, leaving behind only a raw, gaping wound that would never fully heal. It was as if the moment I left him, I also left behind the part of me that was alive, taking with me only what was dead inside.

I imitated a walking corpse.

I resembled the person I became the day Xander left, the day when I supposedly got married.

The day after my “wedding,” I fell into a deep depression and didn’t even want to go on a honeymoon. For months afterward, I walked around without direction, going through the motions.

All along, I thought it was Henry’s vileness sucking the life out of me. Ironically, it was never Henry at all. Not being with Xander was what had almost killed me the first time, and this time, I was sure it would obliterate me entirely.

Last time, I didn’t know what it was like to wake up in his arms; I only knew him as Xander, my friend.

This time, I was forced to admit that only two weeks away from him was enough to drain the life from me; I constantly felt dead inside. The only thing keeping me going was my baby.

Because I was immensely, full-heartedly, irrevocably in love with Xander, a man who threatened to institutionalize me, a man who threatened to lock me up in hell.