Breathe for Me

chapter Twenty-Two





Patronizing bastard. Furious wasn’t the word for how Chelsea felt. There were no words to describe her rage. Her hurt.

She’d finally done it—instigated, acted out a fantasy only to have it fail. Except it hadn’t. He’d been so into it, she’d have said he loved it. But then he’d done the whole Jekyll and Hyde thing—turning into a totally different person. A side of him she’d never seen—a side she didn’t believe in.

It pissed her off. Royally.

She felt like chopping his precious frickin’ tee-shirt into dime-sized pieces and stuffing them into his mail box. Except she wasn’t going to go psycho-ex-lover on him. He wasn’t worth it.

And she was worth more.

Twenty-four hours later she was still raging. And she’d accepted she wasn’t going to walk away from this. She wasn’t going to bury this for too long and have it fester.

Not this time.

She’d learned from that mistake. She was going to deal with it. Clear the air. Express her emotions. Because wasn’t that part of this whole thing? Learning to communicate was part of forgiveness. Was part of being able to move on.

Well she’d just aced the art of communicating her sexual needs, now it was time for the emotional. She had to be honest. Even though she knew she wasn’t going to like what he was going to say, she damn well wanted to hear it. And she wanted to tell him more than a few things too.

Because Xander Lawson was every bit as much of a coward as she’d been. Every bit as constrained in his ability to communicate. Well that was changing. This minute.

She knocked on his door. Kept knocking. She knew he was in there. She’d gotten Brad to text her the moment Xander walked through the door. He wasn’t at the pool—she’d just checked that. So she was sure he was here in his apartment.

His door jerked open. He looked at her, his body language freezing. Slowly he lifted a single eyebrow as if he couldn’t for the life of him understand why she was bothering him.

“You owe me answers.” She barged past him, not caring if he had company. “And don’t you dare say it’s because I don’t do it for you anymore. I can get you hard in seconds. I’m willing to bet you’re hard for me now.”

“Chelsea.” He closed the door and turned to lean against it.

She pivoted and got right in his face. Still furious. “You wanted me to tell you what happened with Tom. You wanted me to trust you enough to open up to that. And I did. But it’s a two way street. If you have a problem, it’s not fair to hold back from me. Because I’m feeling like I’m failing again.” She rubbed away the annoying tear that had escaped. Damn it, she hadn’t wanted to get emotional, but here she was welling up already. “Don’t do this to me. I played, Xander—I finally played up. For the first time I felt good about doing something sexy and silly and naughty again. I finally felt like owning my body and what I wanted from you. I felt released from that guilt. And I loved it. So if that isn’t what has you going so cold, then you need to tell me. Because this isn’t fair.” She’d been through too much.

“Chelsea.” Her name was wrenched from him. “It wasn’t you. It’s not you. You’re…” He didn’t finish. Instead he put his hands on her shoulders—but didn’t draw her close. Rather he literally held her at arm’s length. “I’m sorry.” He searched her face, his own expression somber. “It wasn’t that. I loved that. Not just the Catwoman moment and that wildness. But that you came back to me, that you were there for me. I loved that too much. And that was the problem. It wasn’t you. It’s me.”

Chelsea gritted her teeth through a momentary hit of rage, before she could speak again. “That’s the worst line ever. I need more than that.” She fisted her hands and crossed them in front of her breasts and then jerked her arms wide—knocking his hands from her shoulders in a sudden, slicing move.

She stepped forward before he had the chance to blink—slamming her body against his.

“I need you to be honest,” she snarled at him. “You wanted me to open up, you damn well do the same. You’re as chicken as I am, Xander Lawson. Only you hide behind your charm and your easy arrogant playfulness. You think you can stop from getting involved by keeping things light and fun and all just a game. Well we moved past light and fun days ago. Be brave. You like a woman who’s your match? I’m more than a match for you. You need to step up to my level and you need to do that now.”

For a moment he stared at her, but then he closed his eyes. A second later he pushed past her. It wasn’t hard, he had the greater strength after all. She turned and watched him walk. She’d never seen him hunch before but right now he sat with his shoulders raised, his elbows propped on his knees as he pressed his forehead into his fists.

“Xander?” She knelt sideways on the sofa beside him, facing him. It hurt to see the person she loved suffering and in pain and not knowing how to help. How to reach out and comfort. But she had to try. Because she did love him. She put a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Please.”

“I don’t like the person I’ve become around you.” His voice was low and croaky.

Her hand fell from his shoulder in her surprise. “Pardon?”

He looked up at her. “Being around you has brought the worst out in me. The very worst.”

She wasn’t hurt at what he said. She was too perplexed to be hurt. “What do you mean? Xander?” She shook her head. “I don’t get it. You’re fantastic around me. You… you’re…” He was her dream guy.

Dear Heaven, he was sex on toast with double sides of humor, strength, and loyalty.

“Chelsea, my father wasn’t just a thief. He was a thug. Sub-human. Missing a link or twenty. He liked stealing—got off on it. He also got off on hurting people. He beat up on my mother.”

Chelsea’s blood chilled. What about Xander? Had he beat up on Xander?

“He was alcoholic,” Xander added. “The charming kind until he went one drink too far.”

“You don’t drink.” She remembered at the restaurant he hadn’t. Not once in all the nights they’d shared.

“Never.”

“But you wouldn’t be that kind of drunk.” She was sure he wouldn’t. He was fundamentally kind.

“I’m not taking the chance.”

Chelsea’s heart ached. He doubted himself? Did he really worry he could be like his father? “So what happened? Your mom left him?”

“Remember I said I was scared—in the car?”

She nodded.

“One time he left me behind. He got sprung and he hightailed it out of there on foot. He left me. Anything could have happened but he didn’t care. I was okay—just, but that’s when she finally made the decision to leave him. He’d beat her so many times, but it wasn’t until he started grooming me for the jobs that she finally got the strength to get away from him. When she realized he’d sacrifice his son to save his own skin.”

Chelsea tightened her grip on him—ached to draw him close and just hold him.

“Don’t judge Mom,” he said in a low voice. “She’d tried to leave before.”

“And what had happened?”

“He nearly killed her. He threatened to take me from her.”

“So how did she do it that time?”

“She called her family. They planned it. A co-ordinated escape. She’d had to get within the safety of the Hughes home.”

“Did he come after you?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“My uncle is a powerful man.” He looked down. “He ran him out of town. But my mother was so afraid. She wouldn’t leave the family compound. She was scared for me too.” He looked grim. “So we stayed with my uncle.

“Logan’s father.”

“You can imagine the difference. We were poor. My mother was always reminded of her bad decisions. I was always looked at with suspicion. As if they expected me to go off the rails at any moment. After all, I had his genes.” He lifted his head and stared sightlessly across the room—away from her. “I look like him. I look just like him.”

But he and Logan shared that smile? There was so much more to him than his father’s genes. He was his own person. “You didn’t go off the rails.”

“Never.”

“And you went into security.”

“I liked engineering. I wasn’t going to inherit any kind of family business. It was made known that I’d inherit nothing of the Hughes fortune. Nor would Mom. So there was no threat to us. No point to my father coming after us. But it was true anyway—we had nothing. Would get nothing. Not like Logan and Conner. My future was my own. I wanted to study, get good at something. Succeed.”

“And you did.”

He nodded. “Rationally I understand why she didn’t leave him sooner. She’d tried other times and gotten a couple of broken bones for her trouble. But part of me couldn’t understand it. And I could never understand the insanity that he had. Because it wasn’t about the money for him. It was the anger—the sheer need to win. Vengeance. Control. Ownership. As far as he was concerned she was his. He had this belief in absolute possession of a person. I just couldn’t get my head around that. Until now.”

Chelsea’s heart thudded. “Where is he now?”

“In a cemetery on the outskirts of California.”

“What happened?”

“He crossed the local gang. Was so arrogant he thought he could get away with it. He couldn’t.”

No wonder Xander always been keeping an eye on how to make a place safe. For years he’d always wondered if—when—his father would come after them. So Xander had worked out the ways in which he could get in and made them secure.

No wonder he liked to play in the off time that he took. Like to play and be easy with women. No wonder he didn’t do ‘emotional drama’. No wonder he liked to be in control of every situation.

Because as a kid he’d had no control. Watching his mother get hit? Being put into fearful situations as a look-out for his father on a job?

All out of his control.

“You’ll never be like him. You’re not him.” Chelsea whispered.

“But I am like him,” Xander whispered hollowly. “For the first time in my life I understand exactly how he worked.”

She knelt closer, desperate to understand. “In what way?”

“You left. And then you came back.” He bent his head. “I don’t want to do to you what he did to Mom.”

“Why would you think you would?” She was shocked. Not once had Xander physically threatened her. Not once.

“Because that’s how I feel. That other night—I loved it. Chasing you got me so hard. It got me feral. Having you tied to the bed?” He breathed out harshly. “It was like something snapped in me and when you said about leaving you there forever I was like ‘hell yes’ inside.”

“That’s when you panicked.”

“Realized,” he corrected. “Yeah I did want you there forever. For the first time I could understand the mentality. The insane sense of ownership. That you were mine, mine, mine.”

Chelsea’s heart thundered. “You wanted to own me.”

He looked at her, his all-seeing eyes picking up the heat in her cheeks. “It’s not a healthy thing, Chelsea. Not where I come from.”

“Xander…”

“I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to feel that out of control. Hell I was so out of control I had unprotected sex with you. What if you weren’t covered with contraception? I could have put you at risk.”

“You don’t want kids?” she asked, unable to hide the plaintive thread in her voice.

His eyes widened. “Don’t Chels,” he whispered. “Don’t tempt me.”

She put her hand on his wrist. “I want to tempt you. I want you to want me. To want everything with me.”

He pulled away from her. “I don’t want to be like him. I have to let you go.”

“And you did. You have. You’ve already proved so many times over that you’re not anything like him. The number of times you had me—and held me. You’ve never once hurt me. You’ve been more about protecting me. And you left when I told you to, you let me go away without coming after me.” She smiled as she saw his involuntary shiver. “But I’ve come back. There’s such a huge difference here and you know it. You’re never going to beat up on me, right?”

“Never.” He flinched. Then groaned. “I know what you’re saying. I know I’m not like him in that way. But I feel…”

“Feel what?”

His big shoulders lifted an inch higher. His muscles flexed with tension. “Afraid.”

Afraid of losing control? Afraid of wanting her too much? “I don’t want to leave you,” she said.

He lifted tortured eyes to look at her. “Please mean it.”

“I do,” she whispered. “And as un-PC as it might be, I want you to own me. Not in a ‘you must obey my every command’ way, but I want to know you’re there for me. That I can depend on you. Because I want to own you too. I want to know that you’ll come if I call—because I’ll always run to you if you call for me. Always.” She drew breath. “I don’t think that’s an unhealthy thing. I think that’s love.” She suddenly moved, kneeling on the floor at his feet, so he couldn’t hide his face from her. “I know you said this would be over if I became attached, but it’s your fault I did. You were the one bending boundaries taking me out to dinner and on dates and to your damn waterpolo match. You were the one staying the whole night and making me laugh. It’s your fault I’ve fallen in love with you.” She breathed hard, so vulnerable yet so invigorated. “Well, you’re a big tough guy with a heart of gold. You like to help people. And you’re strong. So strong.” She lifted her chin. “And I’m strong too. I survived. There’s nothing you can throw at me that I can’t handle. So go ahead and end this if you want to, but do it with honesty.”

“I know how strong you are. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t let him win. Don’t let him deny you what you deserve. You deserve it all. Maybe you don’t want that with me—”

“You Chelsea,” he interrupted sharply. “Only you.”

She swallowed.

“I have no clue how these things work, Chels. My own parents were a disaster. My aunt and uncle—Logan’s parents. They might be still married but it sure isn’t happily. I’m good at keeping a short-term fling fun,” he said. “I can be a lover, a playmate. But beyond that? When you tire of that?”

“I’ll never tire of that,” she half-laughed, half-cried. “I’ll never tire of spending my time with you. But you have to talk to me Xander.”

“Chelsea.” He bent forward, so she couldn’t hide her eyes from him. “It wasn’t a game anymore for me. It wasn’t a fantasy fling. It was real.” He framed her face with his big hands. “To be honest it’s always been real. It’s always been me, Xander, making love to you, Chelsea.”

She shivered. “I thought it was only about the fantasy for you?”

He shook his head. “I’ve never played like this with anyone else. Those little scenarios—they were what you needed. Wanted. You. I was doing that for you, because it seemed to be how you could ease into it. The way you could let yourself want me.” He brushed her lip with his thumb. “And you wanted to please me—I knew that was part of it. That you wanted to satisfy a lover physically was part of the deal for you. It was exciting and fun. But for me it was always you. And always real. And you’re right. It’s love. I love you.”

“You were right,” she whispered. “I did need that—I was too frozen or whatever, to ask outright for what I wanted at the start. And I love the fantasies you wove. You got me so hot. Hell, from the moment I first saw you I was hot. But then you opened your mouth and all this fun poured out. Tease and danger and laughter. I thought I could handle a no-strings fling. That keeping a lover satisfied could be the way forward for me. But the truth was, it was you pleasing me…” She turned her head to kiss the center of his palm. “I’m not ever leaving you.” She raised her eyes at him. “I love you.”

The last plank of resistance within him broke. His arms wrapped around her tightly. So tightly.

“Xander?” She whispered in his ear. “Let’s make love.”

“Hell, yes.”