“I lub you, Suh-pee.”
She ached to hear those words again. Those wonderful, priceless words. She’d been through so much with him yet had missed so much as well. The connection between sister and brother was a far cry from mother and son.
Her vision broke and splintered as tears overcame her and the stinging in her chest grew to unbearable levels. Everything hurt with a chilling strain that would never pass. Sophia collapsed on her bed, letting the feeling of loss—not only for her son, but for Xavier—overwhelm her.
Xavier had known about the pregnancy and kept silent the whole time. Why hadn’t he told her? Did he not think it was important?
God.
Maybe when she hadn’t returned to him when she could’ve, he’d thought the pregnancy was false—that there was no baby. So he’d let it pass, not bothering to share that intimate detail of their lives when Sophia had deserved to know the truth—the whole truth.
And now…she was hiding it from Xavier. But truly, it was best to protect him from the knowledge of their son. And to protect him from her.
He wouldn’t trust her, couldn’t love her after he knew the whole truth of a child they could have shared together had it not been for her heartless mother. And weren’t all mothers and daughters alike in some way? They had the same blood running through their veins, after all. What was more, Sophia wasn’t whole anymore; if she’d felt incomplete before, she was now a shell of who’d she’d been even since the accident. A fraction of the woman he’d once loved. With a piece missing for her son. A piece missing for her mother. And a piece missing for Xavier. She’d never deserved him anyway.
The throbbing in Sophia’s chest told her to fight for what she believed in and the love she couldn’t live without. It burned, seeking out all those things she needed. But at what cost? Her heart. Her soul. Her one true love.
She buried her head in her pillow. It was a fight she couldn’t win.
One week later, Sophia was packing her belongings into cardboard boxes. The moving truck was outside, ready to take her things to Anne Marie’s two-bedroom flat. It was high time she got out from underneath her mother.
Anne Marie had told Sophia to go after Xavier. To not let her fears of the past get in the way of the happiness that could be her future. But Sophia hadn’t listened. She’d had strength, but not enough to return any of his calls. Once she came to terms with it herself, she would face him. But not now. Not yet.
“Last box was just put in the lorry,” Anne Marie said cheerfully as she walked into Sophia’s room. “We’ll have to throw you a welcoming party.”
Sophia tried to smile but failed.
“I’ll be waiting outside.” Anne Marie turned to walk out. “Oh, and there’s someone here to see you before you leave. He’s in the sitting room.”
Sophia trundled down the stairs, her steps weighted down by the blackness in her heart. Rounding the corner to the sitting room, she stumbled back and narrowly missed smacking the doorframe. A cold chill swept through her, making her shiver from head to feet. Xavier was standing near the mantel, shoulders slumped.
She wasn’t ready for this. Butterflies swarmed in her stomach as she took an uneasy step toward him. Her hand clutched her stomach as the floor creaked beneath her feet.
His head snapped around at the sound. He put down the picture he’d been holding and turned to face her. His eyes looked tired, and his hair was ruffled around his face. Hadn’t he slept? And was that anger she saw flashing in his eyes?
“I’ve been worried about you.” Xavier’s tone was flat and held a hint of ire. “You haven’t returned my calls.”
“No.” She barely managed to contain the unease in her voice. What did he want her to say?
“Why?”
“I-I’ve had a, um, a lot g-going on…” she stuttered. She never stuttered. “Some things to work out.”
His eyes narrowed. “I came here because I wanted to see you. I’ve missed you. But I saw more than I bargained for.” His eyes fluttered back to the picture on the mantel. “Tell me something—how is it that someone who was once so warm-hearted, so caring, could turn into someone so callous?”
The air was thick, and Sophia struggled to breathe. “I’m sorry?”
He waved at the moving truck outside. “Are you running from me?”
“No.” She straightened her shoulders. “It’s time to get away from Mother.”
“History has taught me you make a habit of running when things don’t work out for you.” Xavier leaned back on his heels and shoved his hands in his pockets.
Sophia took several hesitant steps in his direction. “In case you haven’t realized, I have a lot going on inside this brain of mine. The last thing I need is for you to come in here acting smug and rude. There were a lot of questions I needed answered.” She exhaled a long breath. “Questions that still need to be answered. I told you that.”
He arched his brow. “I remember you saying nothing. Not. One. Word.” He removed one hand from his pocket and tugged at the collar on his shirt. “You ran then. And you’re running now. Questions don’t make you run from people you love. People who want to help you. You didn’t even bother to return my calls. Why?”
Tremors rocked her. The knots in her stomach grew. Her feet shuffled back.
She forced her words through her lips. “I got some of my memories back.”
“I figured that,” he said. “Something I should know?”
“Nothing that concerns you.” She cast her eyes away.
“You’re lying.”
He snatched the picture off the mantel and closed the distance between them with two long strides. His wild stare made Sophia want to retreat. He held the frame right next to his face, and his storm-cloud eyes never left hers.
“Look familiar?”
Sophia forced her gaze to the picture. It was of her and her brother: a close-up shot of their faces when he was five, just before he’d gotten sick. She blinked and dared to glance back at Xavier. His beautiful face looked cold and dark. Yet even through the anger, she saw the resemblance.
“I thought so.” He held the picture out. “That’s your brother, isn’t it?”
All Sophia could do was nod, tears stinging the backs of her eyes.
“That’s my son,” he said in a strangled voice. He thrust the picture into Sophia’s hand and whirled away from her. “Connor…his name is my middle name. Is this what you remembered? That you’d given birth to our child?”
Sophia nodded numbly, unable to form any words.
Xavier’s face stretched, looking sharper and angrier than she’d ever seen. “You knew when you left, and you didn’t even bother to tell me. I thought I knew you. I thought you knew me.”
Sophia reached out to him, but he jerked away. His features remained hard, his lips in a firm line as he looked over her face. When he spoke, he sounded like he’d been dragged over broken glass. “Why would you do that to me? After everything I’ve done for you?”
She twisted her fingers together so hard she thought the bones might snap. “I…I thought I was protecting you.”
The laugh that escaped his lips made Sophia’s blood run cold. “By keeping the most important memory of all from me?”
“I didn’t know—”
“What I would think?” He paced in front of her, tension rolling off of him in waves. “What I would think doesn’t matter, Sophia. What matters is that you remembered a key piece of our history and failed to share that with me. I already knew you were pregnant when your mom took you from me—”
“And why didn’t you tell me that?” Anger simmered inside Sophia. “You’ve known this whole time. You went to all this trouble taking me to America, showing me places, teaching me about my past, when you left out one of the most important details, too.” She clenched her hands. “Don’t you think you should have said something? How do you think I felt when my memory showed me that the man I love had kept one of the biggest secrets from me?”
Xa
vier stopped and rubbed a hand over his sullen face. “I didn’t know—not for certain! Right before you left me the first time, you had told me it was possible…that you thought you were.”
“I know. I remembered that. What I can’t figure out is why that wouldn’t be one of the first questions you’d ask me.” Her cheeks were bursting from heat. “If you had, then maybe we could have avoided this whole situation.”
“I didn’t hide it. I asked you.” His voice had gone cold. “Remember?”
Her mind flipped through the recent memories of her and Xavier together. He had asked her that day in Kensington Gardens if she’d had a husband, a child, or even a dog. She’d told him no. God, she was an idiot. And so was Xavier for thinking that simple question—asked so flippantly—absolved him of any guilt.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But that was different.”
Frown lines creased his hard face. “No, it wasn’t. How would you have felt if I’d said, ‘Hey, babe, you got knocked up. Now where’s the kid?’”
She gaped at his tone.
“You would have thought I was crazy,” Xavier continued. “I had to be careful about what I told you. It would’ve been wrong to manipulate you into loving me because of our teenage fling—and the possibility of a baby. I wanted you to love me for what we could have, not what we did.”
“You still didn’t tell me—”
“So that you had a fair chance to remember on your own!” His body trembled with rage. “You didn’t appear to have a child, so why would I make you think something so important happened that might not even have been true? Sophia, I was protecting you. What you did, though, was flat-out lie to me. You weren’t going to tell me. There’s a difference.”
She reached out to him again, but he stepped away. Straightening her shoulders, she looked at him with pleading eyes. “Don’t you see that I have suffered, too? I’m not the only one to blame here, Xavier. Please, I didn’t realize this would make you so upset.”
His nostrils flared. “Remembering I had a son and hiding that fact?”
“Yes.”
“What you did was more than cruel. I trusted you and thought you cared about me—about us. I helped you because I thought we could rekindle our lives.” He let out a sardonic laugh. “I gave you everything I thought you needed. Put you on the path to get what you most wanted. And yet you never intended to give me everything, did you? You’ve never been totally honest with me, have you? Always running away from something. Never trusting me, the one person in this world who would do anything for you. Keeping part of you locked inside for whatever reason. I can’t live like that, Sophia. I’ve worked too long and too hard to have everything I’ve wanted blown away because you’ve lied to me. I wished I could’ve seen the real you sooner. You aren’t the same girl I loved.” He brushed past, his anger and disappointment swarming over her like a thick cloud. “Goodbye, Sophia.”
The door slammed.
She looked down at the picture clutched in her hands. Connor did look like him. Same blue eyes, same dark hair. The tears she’d held back splashed down on the wooden frame.
Her heart imploded in her chest, making her fall to the floor like a rag doll. Like the time she’d dropped her favorite crystal figurine, she could never be put back together. Her mother had ruined her past and her future.
No, Sophia had ruined her own future by not telling Xavier the truth in the first place. All that time she’d been afraid he couldn’t handle it, when really—she was the one who couldn’t.
She was just like her mother. A hard lesson learned.
Chapter Nineteen
“NO,” SOPHIA WHISPERED as she stared down at the two little pink lines. After nearly a month without Xavier, this was her final parting gift? She slid down to the cool tile floor, ignoring the skid of her knees across its hard surface.
This wasn’t happening. She wasn’t pregnant. She wasn’t. How had she been so careless? When she was with Xavier, they had used a condom every time. Hadn’t they?
Her heart clenched from the missing piece he’d taken when he walked out. There wasn’t a moment she didn’t think of him and the way he made her feel. And now she would have to raise his child, look into its eyes every day, and be reminded of the man she couldn’t hold onto.
The stabbing ache radiated through her entire body, reminding her that he’d let her go. He didn’t want her; he’d made that perfectly clear. And she couldn’t blame him.
Sophia wiped her eyes, rose, and stalked out of her bathroom, a little wobbly on her feet. She lay down on her bed and told herself she deserved to feel this way. She’d let love slip right through her fingers because she wasn’t strong enough to do what needed to be done.
Dragging the duvet over her body, she attempted to wrap herself in the comfort she’d once known when Xavier had held her. It didn’t help. His warmth wasn’t there; she only felt the scraping chill of the cover. The light in his eyes wasn’t there, either, to make her smile, only the harsh light from the blazing sun.
He was gone. And this time, it was forever.
“Are you ever going to get out of bed? It’s almost noon.”
Anne Marie’s voice crept into Sophia’s dream about Xavier, jolting her to alertness. She cracked open an eye, only to be blasted by the light streaming in through the open bedroom door.
“No,” Sophia grumbled, jerking the cover back over her head.
Footsteps padded across the room. The bed dipped. A hand touched her shoulder.
“I heard you crying last night,” Anne Marie said quietly. “I came to check on you, but you were sleeping.” She gave Sophia a gentle shake. “Please, talk to me.”
Sophia’s face was sticky from the tears, her throat dry. Yet somehow, she found the voice to speak. “I’m pregnant.”
The room hummed in silence. Sophia didn’t dare to move the cover and look at her best friend’s face. The bed rocked again as Anne Marie’s weight lifted. The covers that had kept Sophia curled in her cocoon were plucked away and thrown to the floor.
Sophia bolted up, eyes wide. “Hey, what are you doing?”
Anne Marie was smiling. Brightly. “If that’s not the best reason to get out of bed and celebrate, I don’t know what is.”
Sophia flopped back down and covered her head with her pillow. “You’re mad. It’s a good reason to stay in bed for weeks and brood.”
“Stop that!” Anne Marie ripped the pillow from Sophia’s face, then her voice went soft. “Listen, darling, this baby gives the chance to start over.”
Sophia snorted. “This baby reminds me of all the mistakes I’ve made, darling.”
“Well, if you’re going to think of it like that, then you’re hopeless.”
Yes, she was. She’d lost the man of her dreams because she hadn’t told him the truth. She’d lost an important parental relationship with her first child because her own mother was delusional. Now she would have to have Xavier’s child—again—and live her life knowing everything she could have had was ripped from her because her family was crazy and she herself was stupid.
“It’s complicated,” Sophia muttered under her breath.
“No, it’s not. You’re making it complicated. Mistakes can be corrected, you know. You remember that time my hair ended up green, right? After some researching and thinking, we fixed it, didn’t we?”
“Oh, my heavens, Anne Marie! We’re talking about a baby, not hair.”
“And that time our car broke down when we were driving through the outskirts of York? We were geniuses when we found the owner’s manual and figured out that switch problem.”
“A baby,” Sophia reiterated.
“And your education. At one point after the accident, you thought that was hopeless. And now look, you’re getting ready to graduate!”
“Please, stop.” Sophia rolled onto her side, covering her head with her arms.
“The point is, anything can be overcome if you put your mind to it. The solutions are right there; all you have to
do is find them.”
Sophia really didn’t want a lecture. Her whole life had been a lie, and now she had to deal with that. She would have to live with her mistakes and find some way to overcome the rawness in her heart and keep on living life. Even it that meant living it without Xavier.
“You’re right,” she whispered. “But I need time.”
Anne Marie touched the top of Sophia’s head, stroking her hair. “That’s what I want to hear. I know you. You can do it, Sophia.”
The truth was, Sophia didn’t know if she could.
Xavier was living a nightmare. He couldn’t focus; his head wouldn’t stop pounding, and the last thing he wanted to create was clothing that reminded him of the one thing he could never have.
Maybe he’d been too harsh. He shook his head and rubbed at the hollowness beneath his ribs. No. He’d made the right decision. How could she have hidden something like that when he’d always been honest with her?
No, you haven’t.
Damn. His hand dropped to his side. The scenario went around and around in his head, the feelings and truths he’d withheld from her while she’d tried to find her memory. Honestly, he’d thought he was sparing her some of the hurt he’d inadvertently caused himself. But he should have told her everything from the beginning. Maybe then this story would have ended differently.
A loud knock at the door had him cursing.
“Come in,” he barked.
His jaw dropped when the prim and proper Katherine Montel strode into his New York office. Of all people he didn’t want to see, she was number one on the list.
“Hello, Xavier.” Her kind, serene voice scratched at his last nerve. Her once accusing eyes had gone soft as she made her way to the chairs in front of his desk. “I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I’m afraid this matter wouldn’t wait any longer.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “If I’d had any idea you would show up here, I would’ve told my secretary not to let you in. And if you came all the way from London to tell me again to stay away from Sophia, you’re wasting your breath.”
Recaptured Dreams Page 19