Yep…that’s about the best I could hope for. “Okay. We should get back to the hotel. I think my mom was actually expecting to meet us for brunch. Just promise me you won’t make any major decisions about us until we can talk more.”
“I won’t. Let’s go.”
The walk back to the hotel was brisk, cold in every sense of the word. I wanted to be holding her hand, have a territorial arm around her. But she kept a solid distance between us, about two steps to the side and one step behind me. Her face was closed off. The crinkle between her eyebrows told me she was thinking.
My mom was waiting in the lobby when we walked back in. She was hungover. I could tell from across the wide space. She could tell before we got close. She got the steel in her spine that meant I was probably going to get yelled at. She kept her cards close to the chest though, let it play out.
“Hiya, kids! Already been out this morning? You’re doing better than me! Ready for brunch?”
I was about to decline and get us out of it, but Leda spoke, “I’m not doing much better, Nancy. I think I’m going to lay back down for a bit. But you two should spend some time together.” She smiled and played it off, but I knew what she was doing. She was getting away from me.
“Are you sure, Leda?” I asked.
She nodded and walked away.
She wasn’t even at the elevator doors before my mom started. “Alex, what did you do?” She was as soft as she could be, but she was angry too.
I scrubbed my hair and rubbed my neck, the need to move overwhelming. “Stacy came to our room in the middle of the night and it woke Leda up.”
“That girl is so fucking crazy now.” She pulled me into the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. She had apparently chosen to treat herself to a suite. “Come on. We’ll eat in my room for some privacy.”
Once we were settled and had ordered, she asked again. “So what happened?”
“Stacy called a few times after we went to sleep and it woke me up. I answered and told her to fuck off, but she was drunk and told me she was going to come down and wake the whole floor up.”
“She’d probably have done it too. At least you avoided a huge incident.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. That was the least of my concerns. “Anyway, I waited in the hall for her, so she didn’t knock.”
My mom nodded. She understood.
The room service arrived and she answered the door to take care of it. After the waiter was gone, we continued. “So, what did she want?”
“She wants to get back together. She wants me to know that no one other than her really understands me. That I’m the only one for her. But she did it the way she does things, convoluted, twisted. And Leda woke up, heard at least some of it.”
“So…why is that so bad? So someone else wants you. She better get used to that.”
“No, that’s not it. She didn’t know about anything between me and Stacy. And Stacy’s been a real bitch to her at school. And Stacy kissed me. She heard it all.”
“Alex, why didn’t you tell her that you had a history with Stacy?”
“Mom, what would I have said? ‘That girl that’s so shitty to you? I used to fuck her and I think I accidentally raped her?’ How does that conversation end?”
“How did the conversation this morning end?” She raised a snarky eyebrow at me, over the rim of her drink.
“Touché, goddammit. Give me some of that,” I said, grabbing at her Bloody Mary. She just switched to the screwdriver she had also ordered. Nice.
“But, here’s the thing that’s really fucking me up the most. Stacy told me that she wanted it that night. That she wants it again, for good.” I stood up and started pacing. My mom blew her breath out on a curse against Stacy. “All these years, I’ve been destroying myself, afraid to let myself have a relationship because I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, because I was sure I had hurt her. Shit.” I crumpled onto the couch and my eyes watered at the enormity of how that girl had fucking destroyed me.
I had spent the years since that night convinced that I was morally flawed, one of the things I found most repugnant in the world, and she’d let me feel it. She’d let the rumors her father spread about me go uncorrected. She had seen me, called me enough times to have told me that I wasn’t the monster who had ruined her life—and she never had.
Until now. When I was on the verge of being happy, when I had fallen in love with someone else.
My mom came and sat next to me, rubbing my back. “I love you, son. I’ve never thought you were the monster you thought you were. As much as I want to slap that little bitch, at least she gave that to you. You aren’t tainted. You aren’t flawed.”
My body racked against sobs I tried to hold in and I turned to her. She opened her arms and pulled me into her, the way that no one other than a mom can do.
And it didn’t matter that I was thirty-four, that I outweighed her by a good seventy pounds, that I was half a foot taller than her. I was her little boy again. She guided me to rest against her and she kept rubbing my arm, murmuring to me all the things I hadn’t let myself believe. My heart was cracking open to even consider loving myself again.
After I had quieted down, and we had both finished our drinks, she said, “So. Now. How are you going to figure it out with Leda?”
“I don’t know. What should I do?”
“Well, how much did you tell her?”
“All of it.”
“Oh, honey. Shit.” She just took a few deep breaths, then added, “Well, you’ve got your work cut out for you. But I saw her last night. She watched you and nothing else mattered to her in that party. She only wanted to be near you, lived and died by your smile.” Further knife wounds in my heart. “So the first thing is, Stacy has to go, completely. You can’t have anything to do with her now.”
“Done.”
“And you have to make sure Leda knows it. You have to remind her what she loves about you.”
That seemed like the harder part.
When I got back to the room, Leda was asleep. I made a point to be quiet as I got into a pair of sweats and climbed into bed next to her. I resisted the urge to pull her into my arms, turn her toward me and press her into the mattress with my body, lavishing her with kisses even as I held her in place. I started to get an erection thinking about it. But I didn’t do anything with it. I deserved to suffer. I wanted to be near her, even like this.
I fell asleep quickly, which wasn’t surprising since I had been awake since Stacy had called in the middle of the night.
Chapter Forty-Four
Leda
John Newman, Love Me Again
When I’d gotten back to the room, I had thrown up the greasy breakfast and cried until I fell asleep. But when I woke again, Xander was there, sleeping next to me. Naked torso and loose, low-slung sweats hanging off his hips. I just watched him for a while. The tight weave of his abdominal muscles and the way they moved as he breathed, the softness around his eyes, his perfectly masculine lips just slightly parted, his rugged hands and wrists. His body was beautiful, sexy beyond reasoning. He turned in his sleep and murmured a sound of sensual appreciation. As I watched, he got hard, but didn’t wake.
His virility was like gravity. I felt it pulling me toward him, felt myself getting heated and slick just imagining what he was dreaming up. Recalling the feel of those hands on me, those lips whispering obscenities in my ear, that torso between my thighs.
“Goddammit. I gotta leave,” I muttered to myself as I grabbed my purse and keycard.
I got a coffee from the small shop in the lobby. I sat back in one of the wide, cushy arm chairs off to the side behind a wall of ferns, letting my brain rest, spacing out and people watching. Refusing to try to dissect the current bullshit any further.
When my coffee had gone cold, I stood, intending to get rid of it, but I saw Stacy across the lobby. The Bell Captain was coordinating managing her bags for her. She didn’t see me so I dropped back down, wanting t
o avoid her, but shifting in my seat so I could watch her.
“Stacy! Wait for a moment, dear.” Xander’s mother was crossing the lobby, heels clicking, smile on her face. Stacy turned with a smile. They went together, were cut from the same cloth, but it was another wave of repulsion—his mother was friendly with this girl that had fucked up his life, that he had harmed. Who the fuck are these people?
They were close enough that I could hear the beginning of their conversation as Nancy walked Stacy out the door. Nancy was smiling and said, “So, my dear. Safe travels. Xander told me what happened last night.”
“Oh? And what did he say?”
“Oh, Stacy. What happened to you?” Her sweet pretension was gone. It was honest sadness and disappointment in her tone now.
“Um, he did, Nancy. You know that.”
“No, I don’t.” She cocked her head to the side in concern that didn’t reach her voice at all. “Why are you pursuing him if he hurt you so badly? I don’t think he really hurt you. I think you couldn’t face your father and you just let him assume the worst. I think that you allowed my son’s life to be ruined instead of being an adult and taking some ownership of your actions.”
Stacy sputtered. “Nancy, we were all drinking last night… I don’t know what Xander told you, but maybe he’s not remembering it correctly.”
They passed through the doors, but I watched them through the window and moved to a different seat to get a better view. Nancy was vehemently gesturing. Stacy stood tall, holding Nancy’s gaze. The Bell Captain interrupted them with an apologetic look on his face and Stacy snapped at him. She and Nancy came back inside again.
“Yes, Nancy. I love him. I’m always going to love him. Don’t you want him with someone who’s his equal? Imagine the life we’d make together.”
Now Nancy sputtered. “I don’t even know where to start with your delusions. You aren’t his equal. And besides that, your father would never condone a relationship, let alone a marriage with my son after the lies you told. But most importantly, he doesn’t love you. In fact, he doesn’t even like you anymore. Stacy, you can’t ruin lives with impunity and think you can still get what you want.”
“Nancy, come on. I always get what I want.” She scoffed.
Nancy leaned into Stacy’s space, an ice-cold smile on her lips. “You will not harm my son ever again, you little bitch. How dare you even talk to me about marrying him? You nearly destroyed him.”
“Then we’re even, aren’t we?”
Nancy raised her voice in exasperated anger. “He didn’t harm you! You asked him to do what he did. That’s what you told him last night when he was completely sober and you were drunk.”
Stacy blanched, her face slackened. It was the look of being caught in a terrible lie. Did she let Xander think he had violated her consent for all those years, when she had consented to it?
I was going to vomit again. When Nancy and Stacy went back outside, I went to the lobby restroom and wet down a paper towel with some cool water. I rubbed it across my face and the back of my neck.
The longer I looked at myself, the more I felt like I had fucked up. Xander was so overwhelming and powerful, I had forgotten my own power, forgotten to take care of myself. I’d let myself get lost in him, let myself become all his. Nothing leftover.
“Fuck that,” I said to my reflection and threw out the towel. As I left the restroom, I heard the deep, rich tone of Xander’s voice in the lobby, in conversation with his mother.
“No, no note. Nothing. I just woke up and she was gone.” He sounded pissed and worried.
“Son, if her stuff’s still there, she didn’t leave. Probably just went for a walk.”
“She doesn’t go anywhere without me.” His voice was a growl, rough with possessiveness, willing it to be true just with his vehemence.
“Calm down. That isn’t going to bring her back to you.” Her voice faded as they walked away and I couldn’t hear his response.
I knew he was going to be pissed when I got back up there, so I went across the street for another coffee before heading back up to the room.
He was waiting when I got back, sitting in the chair, still in the sweats, with only an A-frame undershirt on top. He looked goddamned delicious. His head was dropped and he lifted it slowly as I came through the door. His face registered relief then pain, then stormy anger.
“If we weren’t all fucked up right now, I’d put you over my fucking knee, little girl.” His voice was low, restrained but pressured nonetheless.
It pissed me off even as I flushed with some vague sense of wanting. Anger won. “Well, shit isn’t fine between us.”
His eyes flared. “Where have you been?”
I held my coffee cup up, saying, “I needed a coffee. Didn’t want to wake you.”
“You should have left a note.”
He was right and I knew it. I relented a little. “Sorry you worried. I really thought I’d be right back, but I almost ran into Stacy and I just didn’t want to talk to her.”
His hands fisted in his lap, tension evident in the set of his shoulders. We held each other’s gaze for a span of moments that felt fraught with meaning, anticipation. But neither of us caved. Neither of us reached out.
“I’m taking a shower. What’s the plan for the rest of the day?” I asked, my tone cordial, but cold.
“We’re leaving.”
“Pardon?” I turned back from the bathroom.
“Yeah, I know you don’t want to be around me anymore and I don’t want to fucking be here, so I took care of it. Just waiting for the details about the time.”
I sputtered a little, pissed that he made such a big change of plans without discussing it with me first, but he was right. I needed some space from him. “Okay. I’m assuming that I have time for a shower.”
“Yeah. Even if we didn’t, they’d wait for us.”
“All right.” I turned and went to the bathroom. I ran the water to cover my sounds as I felt the tears welling up again. He seemed so distant, so cold, and now, he just wanted to get away from me.
We grabbed a quick dinner at a bistro down the street from the hotel, joined by his mother. It was so fucking uncomfortable. Interestingly, Xander’s mother seemed to be a little cold to him and I wondered what he had told her. She was perfectly cordial to me, though.
She drove us to the airport in his car, planning to take it back out to her house where he stored it. Before we boarded, she pulled me aside. “Leda, you have to understand, Alex had a terrible role model of how to be a man.”
Umm, whoa. That was out of the blue. “I’m sorry, Nancy. I don’t follow. What are you talking about?”
“His father was never home. It was a sacrifice we made because Denny is the Senator’s right-hand man. But it meant that I pretty much raised Alex by myself. He does stupid things. You just have to be patient with him.”
“Nancy.” I cringed. How do you tell someone her son is twisted? And you don’t think you can love him? And really he should be with Stacy because they are each other’s brand of fucked up? “I see the relationship and love between you two. But I don’t know what will happen between me and Xander… I mean Alex. I mean, I didn’t know his real name until this trip.”
“And there’s Stacy, who seems like she knows so much about him, has all this shared history.” She just stated it, a knowing look on her face.
“Well, yeah. And, honestly, she’d such a…we’re just so different. It doesn’t make sense that he could have had a relationship with her and then have one with me.”
“You just didn’t know her when she was younger. She’s broken. I don’t think he really even knows her anymore. I thought when she went down there for school, they’d reconnect. But…he kept his distance. But, listen to me, Leda, what Xander and Stacy had… It was a lie they told themselves for a while.”
As we walked toward the gate, she held my hand, genuine sadness in her eyes. “Let me say two more things. Xander is the only name he has recog
nized for himself for twenty years now, so I don’t think he was trying to hide anything from you.” She paused, giving my hand a little squeeze as she breathed deeply. “And, he made a terrible mistake. No one but Stacy and him really know what really happened, but he has paid for it, over and over. He lost his career, the majority of his social network and was shunned by the people he considered an extended family. Jason and I were the only ones who completely stuck with him. It’s the moment that has completely defined him since and he hates it. I don’t know where you are in your thoughts about him, but just consider that he has already borne an awful consequence and, for better or worse, the decision to go to Texas for med school was to get away from all that and it led him to you.”
She pulled me into hug. “I hope I see you again, Leda.”
The lump in my throat threatened to choke me and tears welled up in my eyes. “Bye, Nancy.”
I walked onto the plane, leaving Xander to say his goodbyes with her in private. I nestled into a window seat and looked out at the night, while a few tears spilled over my lashes.
When he boarded the plane, he sat next to me. I tried to make small talk as we taxied and took off, asking why the Ivorys weren’t with us. When he explained that it was Jason’s plane, I gaped at one more thing I didn’t know about. After a few minutes of obviously wrestling with something, he turned to me and took my hand. “Do you still think you need space from me?”
I gently pulled my hand away from him. “Yeah. I don’t know what to say to you right now. I feel like everything about us is built on falsehood. I don’t know who you are and I don’t know who I am with you. I barely recognize myself anymore.”
“Leda.” The anguish in his voice, the pain…almost made me reconsider. “Don’t do this.”
His face was desolate. And I simultaneously felt so sad to see him hurting and so goddamned angry that he brought it on himself, that he set us on this fucked up path when we met.
Wrecked (The Blackened Window) Page 38