Page 100 of X: Command Me through Alexander’s Eyes

“This is our normal,” I say with a note of careful surrender. “This is our sanctuary.”

“How?”

“The house is in Norris’s name,” I explain as she begins to pace the living area. “I pay for it, of course, but this way, we maintain our privacy.”

I’d considered all the angles after my talk with Edward. We needed a space of our own. We needed normalcy. We needed things my world could never give, but my power could easily take.

But Clara sounds rattled. “You mean to maintain secrecy.”

“Privacy. Secrecy,” I say with a shrug. Of course, I want to keep this from the tabloids and my father and the whole rotten lot. Doesn’t she? “Here we can be Alexander and Clara. Nothing between us.”

“Except the secrets.”

How can I make her see? I cross to her, take her in my arms, certain she’ll find the answer she truly needs there. “Not between us. Nothing between us.”

“Oh, X.” My pet name is heavy on her lips. “Everything is between us. Can’t you feel it?”

“I don’t want it to be.” With time, it won’t be. I just need a chance to show her.

“Your father expects you to get married. He has it all planned,” she speaks in a measured, neutral tone, but there’s a rumble of thunder under her words.

“I can’t control what he plans, but that doesn’t mean he can force me to do anything.”

“Did you know about his plans?” she asks.

I can lie and shrug off her concern, but then I’ll be putting another obstacle between us. But not an invisible one: a glass wall that she’ll see through but have no hope of shattering. Or I can tell the truth and hope she recognizes that I’m trying to give her all I have to give. “Yes.”

Is what I have to give enough?

She jerks away from me like I’ve hit her. “I’ve spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. Because I don’t believe loving you is wrong.”

I hate that word on her lips. I hate how much I want to hear it. I hate the way it cracks open my chest and reminds me there’s nothing inside the hollow space. “Perhaps not for you. I stayed away because I felt it was unfair. I felt like I was leading you on.”

Loving me can only hurt her, destroy her, steal all the light inside her.

“And this isn’t doing just that? Why are we even here?”

Suddenly, I realize she’s right. And wrong.

I’m not leading her on, but that doesn’t mean I can give her more than this. I’ll never ask her to carry the burden of my life. She thinks I’m keeping myself from her, but I’m protecting her. Why can’t she see that? Why can’t she give us whatever scrap of happiness we can salvage? “Because I need you.”

It’s harsher than I mean it to be because I’m angry. Not at her but at myself.

“But you don’t love me,” she murmurs.

Lie. I try to say I don’t. The words won’t come. I can’t tell her I love her. I can’t tell her I don’t. I shove a hand through my hair, frustration taking hold of me. I’d expected a fight but not this much resistance. “I told you I don’t do romance. I don’t do long-term.”

“What mixed signals you give me, Your Majesty.” There’s venom in her voice, the result of weeks of stewing in her own anger and pain. “That’s a dangerous thing to do with a girl like me. What is this? A place to fuck me in? A little hideout your father doesn’t know about so you can keep your tart a secret because you can’t have me showing up in the press?”

That’s what she thinks? “That’s not what this is!”

“Then tell me what it is,” she says, shifting into a wide-eyed offering before me, “because I’m trying to understand. I really am.”

I look away. I can’t stand the need I find there because I know I will never, ever be enough to fill it. And that even if I try…

I’ve told Clara about my past—some of it. She knows about my mother. My sister. If she knew the truth…I set my jaw, determined not to make my ghosts her own. When I turn on her, she takes a step back as I find the only words I can to explain, “Every woman who has ever loved me is dead.”

“I’m sorry, X,” she says softly, and my rib cage cracks open a little wider revealing more of the emptiness inside until she continues, “but I’m not dead. I’m right here—and you can’t make me stop loving you.”