Yes. No.
I shook my head. “I—I didn’t belong in there.”
It wasn’t what I had initially been thinking, but my hands remained loose as the truth settled in my bones like an anchor. I’d known it before I’d even gotten dressed, and I’d known it the moment we arrived in that fancy house with all those fancy people. My brother loved the finer things in life. But I was simple. A third-grade teacher and a single mom in her grandma’s clothes.
I was a fake.
“I completely agree. You don’t belong in there at all.”
I looked up, feeling like I’d been slapped. It was one thing to think these things about myself. It was another to have them confirmed. I didn’t even bother asking why his opinion would matter like this. It just did.
“What did you say?” I asked.
Again that brow rose knowingly. “That party was full of fools. Women with tits that could float them across the Atlantic, men with enough coke up their noses to power Times Square. You were the only real thing in there. Ten times more gorgeous. Ten times more interesting.”
I frowned. His praise was the last thing I was expecting. Just like I wasn’t expecting the sudden warmth that flowered in my chest with his compliments.
I shook the feeling away. “Then what were you doing there?”
Xavier just shrugged and took a step closer. His big shoulders blocked the light overhead. “I don’t know. Maybe I was waiting for you.”
I swallowed, cornered once more. But this time I didn’t want to flee. Or fight. Because another memory, a deeper, more powerful one, was rising to the surface.
He remembered me? Well, I remembered him. I couldn’t forget a man who could pick me up like I weighed nothing. Whose arms could shelter against any element in the world. He couldn’t have known what that meant to a girl who hadn’t known much in the way of safety in her life. My family, loud and loving as they were, weren’t exactly stable.
For a few short weeks, Xavier had given me a break from all of that. He had given me a refuge against that broad, strong chest, in those massive arms. For a moment, he had been the safest place I could imagine, a refuge from the instability of my home life and the uncertainty of my future.
His fingers grazed my jaw again, just like they had at the party. I wanted to sink into the warm embrace that beckoned.
“You haven’t changed, you know that?” he said, watching the path of his hand as it dropped down my neck, then toyed with the strap of my dress inside my coat. “So beautiful. Fucking exquisite.”
I shivered yet again, this time, from pure anticipation.
Xavier leaned down farther like he was going to kiss me. And for a moment, I almost let him. God, it had been a long time, so long since anyone had seen me for something other than a teacher, a mother, a tired, weary woman. Or at least, since I’d wanted them to.
But then the truth—the other truth—hit me like a freight train.
“Wait,” I said. “Stop.”
“No,” he growled, going in for the kill.
“Yes.” I smacked a hand on his chest and shoved.
He bounced back two steps onto his heels, then glared at me. “What the fuck?”
“Aren’t you married?” I demanded.
Xavier recoiled like he’d tasted something horrible. “Married? Fuck, no. Why would you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because the last thing I heard from you was that you broke up with me to go back to your fiancée.”
Another set of memories I usually kept firmly locked away flooded through me. The nights I’d spent staring at that email when I should have been combing Craigslist for a crib. Wondering what I’d done to deserve this. Realizing I was alone, so alone with the choices this man had left me.
I opened and closed my fingers, wishing I had something to punch. Preferably him.
Xavier just blinked, looking something like a disgruntled owl.
“Your email,” I prodded. “‘Dear Francesca, so sorry I can’t see you anymore, blah blah, my fiancée is dying.’ Or was that all more bullshit?”