“Thanks.” It felt so weird to be grateful to him after everything that had gone down. I briefly wondered if I’d been too hard on him, but I quickly pushed that thought away. Xavier was a big boy. He made his own decisions, all while knowing what the repercussions might be.
I took a seat in the middle of the table but didn’t touch anything. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, but I had no appetite. My stomach was a messed up bunch of jumbled nerves. At this point, I felt like I’d never be able to eat again.
Xavier stayed where he was, his hands still behind his back. “How are you doing? Do you need anything?”
“I’m fine.”
He looked me in the eye. “Do you need to see someone? Talk to anyone?”
I stared at him in confusion. “No, I already called Ann-Marie, so… oh.” I snapped my mouth shut as I realized what he was getting at. “Seth didn’t touch me. I mean, he grabbed my wrist and tried to kiss me, but I pulled away from him.”
Xavier sharply inhaled. “If I had known you were going to go out there with him...”
“But you did know.”
Xavier paled.
“You did know,” I repeated. “You put my name on that list, Xavier, knowing that he might look me up. So don’t act like you’re trying to keep me out of danger. You’re the man who put me in it. Yeah, I walked onto that yacht today because I had my own reasons for it, but I wouldn’t have come up with those reasons if I’d never met you or Seth.”
“Your own reasons,” he echoed.
I crossed my arms and nodded. Let him try and figure out just what I’d been up to.
“Ann-Marie told me you were trying to get access to the list.”
I gasped. “What? When?”
“This morning. I went to your apartment to talk to you. She told me you’d gone sailing with Seth and that you wanted to get your hands on the list.”
“She didn’t tell me that,” I muttered. “I just talked to her before getting in the shower.”
A hint of a smile appeared on one corner of his mouth. “Perhaps she thought you would be angry with her.”
I stared at him, my mouth hanging open. So Xavier was Ann-Marie’s confidante now? At what point did the world turn upside down?
I looked at my lap, searching for the next thing to say. I no longer felt as cocky as I had a few minutes ago.
A chair scraped back, and Xavier took the seat across from me. “I’m glad you’re all right. When I thought...” He swallowed hard. “We got to the yacht, and we didn’t see you anywhere. I thought something had happened to you.”
I watched his face, trying to gauge the earnestness of his statement. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“I have to be honest, it’s kind of hard to believe anything you say. You kept such a big thing from me. How can I believe anything now?”
“Good point,” he conceded.
“However...”
He arched an eyebrow.
“You did come after me,” I finished. “And I need to thank you for that. I don’t know what would have happened if you and...”
“Julian,” he offered.
“Right. I don’t know what would have happened if you and Julian hadn’t come out there.” A shudder threatened to ripple across my skin, but I suppressed it. I couldn’t lose myself to my emotions. Not in front of Xavier.
“Seth isn’t a guy to be trusted with anything,” Xavier said. “Not even his own safety.”
“But how are you any different?”
He looked at me with sad eyes. “Maybe I’m not that much different than him.”
His answer took me by surprise. I was expecting a response that was at least a little more defensive.
Xavier laid his arms on the table and wound his fingers together. The sight of those familiar hands, ones that hadn’t touched me in so long, sent a painful longing through my body. This whole thing was so incredibly unfair. I had no business whatsoever being hung up on this guy, but here I was. I sat across him in his dining room, acting like I hated him, but all the while feeling horrendously conflicted.
I hated the things Xavier had done, but I didn’t hate him. I wished to God that I could. If life really were that simple, it would be awesome. But things weren’t that black and white. They’d never be.
Xavier stared at a spot on the wall like it had all the answers he looked for. Noticing me watching him, he moved his gaze to mine. “I’ve spent my life trying to do things right, and it turns out I’ve just been fucking everything up.”
“It’s not that hard. Doing the right thing, I mean. You just treat people the way you want to be treated.”
“So I’ve heard. But most of my life, I’ve just wanted to be left alone.”
“Oh,” I said sadly. “Then I can’t help you.”
“I don’t want that anymore. Riley, I want to know you. I want to wake up in the morning and see you next to me.”
A swell of emotions rose in me. I was happy and scared. Excited and furious. But mostly angry. “You can’t do this to me. You can’t just turn on a dime and come to me telling me you want me in your life, when just a few weeks ago you told me I could only be your once-in-a-while girl.”
“I was wrong,” he nearly shouted. “I was stupid. I was fucking confused, and I didn’t know how to deal with what was happening between us. You’re more to me than any woman has ever been. Can you understand that, Riley? Can you believe me? Because even if you don’t, I’m going to work the rest of my life to make sure you one day do.”
My lower lip shook. I bit down on it to stop it from moving. “How can you possibly say you care for me after everything you’ve done? A person like you doesn’t care about anyone, Xavier.”
“I know,” he quietly said.
“Stop agreeing with me!” I yelled, slamming my palms down onto the table. “Just tell me the truth. Tell me the truth!” A dry sob racked my chest. Tears pooled in my eyes, but I no longer made an attempt to hold them back. Let Xavier see what he did to me. Let him know just how broken and beat down I felt.
Now that I was opening up, I couldn’t stop the words from flowing from my mouth. They rushed out, one after the other, an endless stream of confessions. “I opened myself up to you. It had been a year since I did that. And I took a real chance. The last time I cared for a guy, he broke my heart. Do you know what that feels like? Do you get how hard it is to move on after something like that?”
The whites of Xavier’s eyes were turning red. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Do I understand what it’s like? I don’t know. I’ve spent years on my own. I don’t think the same way as it seems most other people do.”
“So you just proved my point,” I sobbed. “Us being together will do no good.”
I pushed my chair back and stood up. I took a few steps to leave, but Xavier was suddenly in front of me. He blocked my way, his body and face obscuring my vision. One of his hands pressed against the back of my head and the other cupped my jaw.