He got precious little work done on Monday or Tuesday. Wednesday he took off completely, despite the preparation he knew would need to go into his upcoming merger. He needed some time to think.
Being in the house he’d planned to live in with Helena was nothing short of torture, so he forced himself to get out. He drove to the other side of town, to the boardwalk, and began a jog with a bruising pace, hoping to burn the lingering agony out of his system.
She didn’t want his child. She didn’t even want to give it a chance.
He didn’t know what was worse, that she was going to abort the child or that she had lied to him. As he inhaled and exhaled sharply in tandem to the punishing rhythm he’d set his body to, sweat trickled down the back of his neck and stung his eyes.
Since Helena had left, she hadn’t called. Neither he nor Brandy had any idea where she might be, and he hadn’t called into her office to see if she was still reporting to work. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t care, but that was bullshit. As badly as she’d hurt him, he still cared.
Still loved.
He wondered how long that would take to fade. Before Helena he’d never really been in love – never really felt the way she’d made him feel. Remembering the fact only made him run faster, until his muscles started to protest.
Before Xavier knew it, he had done about six miles along the beach and found himself in front of the hotel where Brandy and Emily were staying. He knew they were leaving the next day, and he felt awful that he couldn’t be a better host, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything. Anything other than moping around, that was.
Slowing his pace, Xavier made his way onto the hotel patio, waved in by a guard who he recognized. His company was the establishment’s tech support, and he visited the premises enough to be allowed where he would. The young CEO made his way to the railing that overlooked the sea twenty or so feet below and stood, staring out at the ocean as he caught his breath.
Christ, he was a mess.
As his body cooled, he began to catch the first strains of sweet, low music floating to him from the direction of the hotel. Turning from the water, Xavier slowly made his way back to the immense brick building, picking a path through the manicured garden and into the restaurant just beyond the terrace. He thought, for a moment, that the music he’d heard was coming from the speaker system, but quickly realized his error. His eyes widened as he found none other than his youngest sister, Emily, seated in the center of a crowd of admirers, her cello balanced effortlessly between her knees as music flowed effortlessly forth.
For at least five minutes, all Xavier could do was watch her, transfixed. He remembered the long hours the young woman had been forced to put in from a very young age – how she’d been driven to tears multiple times when their parents had forced her to play well past her bedtime. She’d been accepted to Julliard without question when she was twelve years old, but at the time, he hadn’t been able to stand to hear her play, knowing exactly how she’d advanced.
But that had been years ago – and then, she had sounded nothing like she did now.
This was…utter perfection.
Emily played with her eyes closed, her expression utterly serene. The bow was an extension of her arm as it slid silkily back and forth over the strings of her gleaming instrument; her fingers moved effortlessly, masterfully, and the music that emitted was like nothing he’d ever heard. It was small wonder she’d drawn a crowd, with more approaching every moment. Xavier would never have imagined Emily might have brought her cello with her across the country. He thought she might see the trip as an escape…but now…he was forced to admit that he might be wrong.
Along with the other people gathered around her, Xavier lost himself in the music she played. The melody was one sad and sweet, and only emphasized by the fact that complete silence seemed to have fallen on the first floor of the establishment. People checking in stopped mid-conversation, those having dinner ceased eating, and everyone listened, their attention rapt, to Emily Thompson.
The piece she played seemed to go for an eternity, lilting over highs and lows that brought tears to Xavier’s eyes. It was for this that his sister had cried when she was younger – this had upset her. She’d told her parents that she hated the cello - that they couldn’t make her play beautifully – but they had.
And here she was – not hating the instrument, but very clearly enjoying what she did.
As the last strains of her piece finally faded out into silence, Xavier found himself questioning everything he knew about his upbringing – and the way his parents had always acted towards him. They had repressed him certainly, and from that repression he had built everything that he was.
Only to find that the one who’d inspired him to do it all might not be meant for him at all.
Everyone around him clapped loudly and Emily’s cheeks flushed as she set her bow aside, thanking them for their adulation. She refused a bevy of tips and took their admiration with grace, impressing upon Xavier what an impeccable young lady she had grown into – a character completely different than that of their sister, Brandy.
“Emily?” When people had begun to move off, he addressed her by name and she looked up, her eyes widening in surprise to see him standing there.
“Xavier!” She quickly stood, turning to lean her cello almost lovingly against the partition between the restaurant and the lobby. “What are you doing here?”
He knew he must look a mess, in his running shorts and sweat-soaked shirt. “I…um…I was out for a jog and I happened to pass by the hotel. I heard the music from outside and I...Goddamn, Emily. That was impressive.”
She only blushed more darkly, looking away in embarrassment. “I was just practicing for the show I have coming up. I had no idea I would draw so much attention.”
“Why wouldn’t you?” He inquired incredulously. “You have a gift, truly. I just…I can’t believe you’re the same little girl who balked when Mom and Dad tried to make you practice as a little girl.”
With a small smile, the young woman shrugged. “I’ve grown up, Xavier. Both of us have.” He sighed, glancing at the instrument she played so masterfully before sinking down into a chair next to one of the tables.
“I’ll say. Everything’s different, isn’t it?”
Emily’s smile faded slightly as she came to sit next to him, touching his arm lightly. “I heard about what happened with Helena, Xavier. I’m really sorry.”
He stiffened slightly, as his heart throbbed with the rawness of the still-open wound, before he forced himself to relax. “So am I.” His tone was soft, regretful, before he shook his head, pushing thoughts of his lover from his mind as he concentrated on the sister who had eluded him for a decade. “But I’d honestly rather not talk about it right now. We have other things to catch up on, right?”
His youngest sister’s smile returned.
“We’d need a lot more than one night; but yes, you’re right. We do have a lot to catch up on.”
He chuckled softly. He’d already managed to procure Emily’s number from Brandy and he planned on making good use of it. For now, however, he just wanted to know that she was alright – that living under the shadow of their parents hadn’t hurt her as badly as it had him. “Emily, can you tell me something, honestly?”
“Anything.” Blue eyes so like their mother’s gazed earnestly up at him, making him wonder what Mariah Thompson had been like before money and prestige had ruined her. Had she been as sweet and carefree as Emily? Or had she always been cold, cruel and calculating.
Had she been afraid of having children?
“Are you happy back home? When you’re with Mom and Dad…do they treat you…” he struggled to find the correct words. After all, it wasn’t his aim to turn his sister against their parents. God, no. As against their parenting methodologies as he was, he was no monster. “Do you have everything you need?”
Even in the face of his obvious discomfort, his sister never lost her serene smi
le. “Xavier, I think that what I need has less and less to do with our parents as time goes on. They are what they are. They did what they did…now, we do what we do. Right?”
While that wasn’t quite the answer he’d expected, it certainly gave Xavier an ever deeper insight into his youngest sister’s psyche: she was far more mature than he, even though he was ten years her senior. While he tended to linger on the idea that his parents had slighted, Emily seemed to fully accept the lot she’d be dealt in life…and had even learned to embrace it to some extent.
“Are you happy?” He rephrased the question more directly. Just because the young woman appeared more mature than he didn’t mean he was assured that she would be returning home to have her flame smothered.
Emily laughed gently, shaking her head at his relentlessness. “I’m happy Xavier. I swear, you and Brandy are just alike. You expect me to be some kind of repressed flower.”
And for good reason.
Nonetheless, it was good to hear her admission. Emily seemed completely sincere – and atop that, it seemed as if playing the cello brought her genuine joy.
Which meant that at least one of the Thompson children was happy. Reaching out, Xavier cupped Emily’s chin gently, taking in her blonde waves and the light pattern of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “You know, I’m always here for you. If you ever need anything, you know where to find me.”
“Now I do.” The young woman emphasized, before she leaned across the space that separated them to wrap her arms around him in a warm embrace.
In that brief moment, Xavier forgot the pain that Helena had caused him. He forgot that he would lose the child he had never really had, and forgot how much he blamed his parents for the affection they’d denied him. He let his sister hold him, and held her.
And for however brief a time, he was comforted.
Chapter Five: Determination
What had she done?
It was the hundredth time in the past week that Helena had asked herself the question. Each time, the answer only seemed to elude her further, and she felt more alone than ever.
It had taken her, she realized, a full twenty four hours to even regain her bearings. When she’d left the gorgeous, new home that she and Xavier had only recently bought, she’d been blinded by grief and hurt, so overwhelmed that it was all she could do to simply continue moving. She’d thrown her hastily packed bag into her car and driven for three hours – far beyond the outskirts of town and then some - until she’d come to a solitary motel.
And there, she had cried for what had seemed like an eternity. She checked into a small, ratty room that reminded her of the one assigned to her in her childhood home, and she sobbed into sheets that smelled of cigarettes and sweat.
In the entirety of her relationship with Xavier, she had never seen him look at her that way – with disgust, horror, and terrible disappointment. In that moment, when he’d told her how proud her mother would be if she could see her now, Helena knew that she’d never be able to gain the forgiveness of the man she loved.
The realization was no less devastating a week after the fact, though, by that time, she’d cried all of her tears and had nothing left but silent, stony grief. She watched late, outdated reruns on television until she got sick of them and ate so much dehydrated ramen that the taste lingered, toxic, in the back of her throat.
Which, of course, didn’t help her morning sickness at all. In her hurry to leave the house, Helena had forgotten her meds, and as a result, she remained poised over the toilet for a good two hours every day, heaving up everything she’d eaten the previous night. She didn’t really know if it was from lack of meds, or simply from heartsickness, but her nausea had increased tenfold.
She could get rid of it, she reminded herself, by simply making another appointment at the clinic. She’d missed her first one by simple virtue of being wrapped in pure, unadulterated emotional distress. The moment that was supposed to have been her triumph – the moment she surmounted all her fears and took back control of her life – had never happened.
She was still very pregnant.
Now, she told herself, she didn’t have a choice. She would have to get rid of the baby.
After all, it wasn’t as if she’d ever had a choice before. She’d been dead set on reclaiming her life and her future…hadn’t she?
It took a good three or four days after she fled the house but slowly, steadily, Helena began to realize that her resolve had begun to waver the moment she’d seen the hurt on Xavier’s face. She’d never intended for him to know because she’d known, somehow, that he would be able to talk her into keeping a baby she wasn’t sure she wanted. To convince her that she would be enough for both him and their child – that she could provide it with tender, loving care.
The pain in his eyes had undone her so much so that she’d reacted instinctively – defensively. She had to make him understand why – had to make him see that she’d only ruin any child she had; that a baby wasn’t right for them and would perhaps never be.
It had all blown up in her face.
She had ruined everything, not only by hiding her pregnancy from Xavier, but by trying to justify herself as she’d felt her resolve fading. She’d felt both manipulated and scared, and, as a result, had probably said some things she shouldn’t have.
But none of that mattered now. She could take them back no more than she could will away the child swelling in her belly; and as days passed in the wake of the appointment she had missed, she found that she could no more bring herself to make another than she could rid herself of the awful, gnawing emptiness in her chest.
When the seventh and final morning in the dark, bleak hotel room dawned, she sat on the edge of the bed, after puking her guts up for the usually allotted time, trying to make her fingers dial the number of the clinic. It was the first time in days that she actually cried, the tears dripping warmly down her face to stain her jeans darkly.
She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.
As awful of a mother as she knew she would be, and as petrified as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to purge the last Xavier’s child from her body. It felt immoral and almost sacrilegious – not for the act itself, but for what it represented.
She had already almost certainly lost the man in every other facet that mattered. His child was the only remainder that she would have of him…and so, she couldn’t let it go.
After about an hour, Helena gave up staring at the clinic’s number on the screen and instead began to scroll through the numbers of all those who’d called her in the past week. She hadn’t answered even a single call, and so she was sure she had a great deal of people worried about her, but in that week, Helena hadn’t been able to face them. How could she? It felt as if her entire world was falling down around her.
And her hormones were wreaking havoc on her sanity. Helena had never been pregnant, and she’d had very few friends that had ever been pregnant, and so, naturally, she was completely lost. She only knew that she needed to acquire some new meds and get herself together before she stopped being able to eat solid food entirely.
And more importantly, she would have to come to terms with the child she was carrying. If she really wasn’t going to give it up – if she meant to embrace the last part of Xavier that she would be left with, she had to stop seeing the baby as some kind of foreign entity and start planning to at least try to be the best mother she could.
The best single mother.
The thought was almost enough to set her off again. Helena liked to think she had a good head on her shoulders. She knew what she’d done – and that Xavier would never accept her back with open arms. She’d practically spat on his ideas about family, she’d lied to him and she’d proved to him that she could never escape her past completely.
She’d made her bed…now she just had to lie in it. Much easier said than done.
Standing from the bed, Helena took a deep breath, and began to prepare herself for the task of retur
ning to her life. She had been cooped up inside a fetid hotel room for seven days, writhing in self-pity. Whatever she was – whatever she feared – she couldn’t just give up. She still wanted that doctorate – to follow in her father’s footsteps, give her life meaning, and to prove her mother wrong. That would prove harder than ever now, with Xavier’s comment on how much she and her mother were alike ringing in her ears.
He had uttered her greatest insecurity – her worst fear – and relieving it in her mind made her almost as nauseous as the hormones warring for mastery over her body.
But, through the discomfort, Helena forced herself to begin packing the few things she’d strewn around the hotel room. She went about it slowly, dragging the action out for as long as humanly possible, because she knew she’d have to face the people who cared about her sooner or later.
Well, all of them but one.
The first person she called, inexplicably, was Brandy. It wasn’t because she wanted an in to Xavier, but rather because she knew she owed the attorney an apology. Brandy would probably think horribly of her after the way she and Xavier parted, but she didn’t want to go down in history as the nasty ex.
She wouldn’t.
The phone rang once, twice, three times. Every additional tone made Helena wince as she waited with baited breath for Brandy to answer – and simultaneously hoped she didn’t. She would have gone back east by now – away from her brother’s problems and back to her own.
Just when she had begun to believe the elder woman would never answer the phone, there was a click on the other line as Brandy picked up. Helena winced, knowing the attorney would immediately recognize her number, and prepared herself for a full on verbal assault.
“Helena, thank God! Where have you been? Where are you now? What on earth happened?”
The young woman opened her mouth, searching desperately for the right words to say. The last thing she’d expected to hear from her ex-lover’s sister was such intense concern – really, Brandy’s voice was almost shrill with desperation.
A Kiss of Color: A BWWM Interracial Pregnancy Romance (Book 2) Page 7