Wrecked (The Blackened Window) (49 page)

“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 to 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 recognized 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.

“Look, you gotta leave me alone about it because you’re starting to piss me off even more. Did I fall in love with you? Yes, of course I did. But it all feels like a lie. I don’t know what I fell in love with.” My tears spilled over again and I wanted to ignore all the shitty stuff. I wanted to climb in his lap, snuggle into him, and lose everything in kissing him.

After a moment of silence, he stood, walked to the back of the plane, to the bar. I sat in my seat, stunned that he was that cold, that dismissive. That he could just turn it off and walk away from me like that. I shifted in my seat to look back at him. He was facing away from me, arms stretched to the sides, resting his hands on the bar, head hanging.

The expanse of his back rippled under his shirt when he moved to pour himself a drink. The flight attendant approached him, but he snapped something at her and she walked away, a look of shock on her face.

He sat on the low couch beside the bar, legs wide, resting his elbows on his knees. He looked up, held my gaze for a moment, face unreadable, hard, distant. Then he stretched out on the couch, glass of scotch balanced on his chest, staring at the ceiling.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and the flight attendant brought me a blanket. She was cool, but deferential. I rested my head against the window and watched the lights of cities pass under us. I faded into a dozy sleep, but woke a while later when we hit some turbulence.

I got up to use the lavatory, and Xander was waiting when I came out. I tried to shimmy past him, but I couldn’t get around the bulk of his body. And he didn’t shift to let me through. I put my hand on his chest and he sucked a breath in. I could smell the scotch on his breath.
Has he been drinking this whole flight?
When I tried to push past him, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me into him, securing my neck with his other hand.