Girl Code (29 page)

My mouth opened so wide I was sure there were ships in the harbor waiting to make passage through it.

“Xander,” I said his name breathlessly. “You…you admitted that you…that I didn’t…I didn’t feel passionately about you, as passionately as you felt about me.”

“I know.” He nodded solemnly. “But you did love me—you do love me, and I think you gave me everything you were able to give. It wasn’t all of you, and I may never have all of you, but I guess I didn’t appreciate what I
did
have of you. You gave me a hell of a lot, and I know I can be happy with that again. When you’re here, I’m happy and I hate when you leave.”

Up until my eventful trip to Miami, I probably would have fallen into his arms and…well, settled, and the truth was that I would probably settle eventually anyway. Anyone that wasn’t Leo Pesciano was settling, but they didn’t have to know that. Xander would know it. Xander would already be aware that I was settling and somehow that just seemed sad and wrong.

“That wouldn’t be fair to you,” I said in a rush. “To love me like that and I’ll never be able to reciprocate.”

“I don’t know what else to do.” He brought his lips too damn close to mine. He shifted and kissed my jaw instead. “I love you and I want you,” he said in my ear. “I can’t make it any plainer than that.”

I didn’t get a chance to respond. Xander put a hand carefully on the back of my head and kissed me. I was too stunned to kiss back at first, but my natural instincts kicked in and I kissed him back. It was sweet. It was nice. My heart fluttered lightly. Xander kissed me in a give-and-take sort of way. He gave a little; he took a little. Gave a little more, took a little more. It was…nice. It wasn’t like Leo’s kisses, which made me forget my own name. Leo’s kisses lit me with fever and deliciously bruised my lips. There was no give and take. He just took. Commanded. Dominated. Possessed. Ignited.

I pulled away from Xander and took several steps away from him, covering my mouth with my hand as if I could erase the last few moments. When I saw the hurt register on his face, my eyes filled with tears, even as I shook my head, denying him.

“I’m sorry,” I said, letting the tears fall. “You are wonderful, you truly are. You will make a perfect husband and later a perfect father. You’re…you are perfect in so many ways, and way too good for me, Xan.”

He looked sympathetic and troubled as he started toward me, but I held up my hand.

“No, Xander,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m in love with someone else, and I guess you and I are one in the same there at least. You can’t be with me. I can’t be with him. I can’t go into a relationship with you knowing how I feel about someone else. I do love you, and I love you too much to hurt you like that. In the long run, it would only hurt you.”

Xander watched me for a long time, biting his lip as his mind raced. Finally, he said, “You went to Miami to visit your friend and now you’re different. It’s him, isn’t it? Your friend Leo. It’s always been him, hasn’t it?”

I said nothing, but I nodded slowly.

“Wow,” Xander breathed out heavily. “Damn.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

He held up a hand as if to dismiss my apology. He looked at his watch and blew out another breath.

“I am going to pick my pride up off of the floor and get to work before I’m late,” he said with a small, forced smile.

I stood, rooted to the floor as he gathered his suit jacket off of the back of a chair and walked out of my sight into the living room. He returned a few moments later with his jacket on and his briefcase in his hand. He stood there, watching me again for a few seconds.

“I really am trying to be humble here,” he said. “It’s not your fault that I feel the way I do, or that I besieged you with my emotions and a kiss, but…I’m pissed. I’m pissed at myself. I’m pissed at you. I’m pissed at Leo. I feel like I could put my hand through a wall right now, that’s how angry I am.”

He ran a hand over his face and stared at the fridge beside me as he reeled in his anger.

“I know we had dinner plans tonight, but I don’t think I can do it,” Xander said. “Not tonight anyway. I’m not sure when or if I’ll be back tonight, so don’t expect me.”

He turned and walked away. Moments later, the front door slammed with a note of finality.

Chapter Twenty

I moved out of the house that was no longer my home immediately. I paid a lot of money to movers to come later that day and take away everything I personally owned and put it in storage. It wasn’t a lot. I left most of the furniture and all of the appliances. I left Xander a note, giving him my apologies again, but also to inform him that I was willing to sell him my share of the house for the minimum price allowed by law, whether it be thousands or a dollar. Between the two of us, we had paid it off a year earlier, so we didn’t have to deal with any mortgage crap. I got a room in San Francisco. I spent a little time with friends. I attended my event and hit up Napa, and then I bid Northern California goodbye and headed to Long Beach.

Xander sent me an email a few days before I was due to depart for Chicago. He flew down to San Diego to meet me. He was still obviously hurt and a little angry, but we were able to spend an afternoon together in comfortable companionship, but not before signing paperwork to sell him my share of the house. When I left California, I knew I was closing a door on that period of my life once and for all.

I called Leslie from the airport. I had been avoiding making that phone call for weeks, but I couldn’t keep running from it. Of course, I got her voicemail.

“Listen, Leslie,” I said, taking the direct approach. “We
have
to talk. We have a lot to discuss. I will be boarding a flight to Chicago in a little while, but I’ll have a few days before I have to actually be anywhere. You need to call me. Don’t blow me off.”

I ended the call and took a deep breath. I was hoping she’d call before I boarded for my flight to Chicago, but I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. After some thought, I wasn’t sure if it was a conversation I wanted to have in the middle of an airport anyway.

When I got off of the plane and reached baggage claim, he was there, standing with his legs apart, arms crossed, looking sexy and serious. Disbelief made my footsteps falter. When my feet stopped moving altogether, he patiently closed the distance between us. He said nothing as he looked me in the eyes and took my carry-on bag and slung it over his shoulder. He grasped my elbow and guided me to the area he had been standing. He left me there and went to stand by the carousel. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and preoccupied himself with that while he waited, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that he wasn’t watching every move I made out of his peripheral.

I felt like a child in trouble with her parent and I had just been put in timeout. I knew what Leo said about finding me anywhere, but honestly, I didn’t really believe it. It sounded like fiction, like something I would write into one of my books. In real life, who had the time and money and resources to hop on a plane to stalk someone? Apparently, Leo Pesciano had the time, money, and resources to hop on a plane to stalk someone. How had he even known what flight I would be on in the first place? The only person who knew for sure was my assistant, Suzanna, and Su would impale herself on a sword before she’d tell anyone my personal information, including Leo.

By the time Leo retrieved my suitcase, I had an argument ready to go. I had so many things that I was going to say to him. I was going to make him understand, make him see things my way, the way things should be. I was prepared for a fight, but when his hard eyes met mine, I swallowed comically loud and bit my tongue.

Again, we were silent as Leo firmly took my hand and led me out of the building. It wasn’t a sweet gesture, it was a commanding gesture. His hand may as well have been a handcuff.

The car service I generally used was waiting for me as usual, the driver held up a sign with my last name written in black marker on it. Leo left me on the sidewalk to speak quietly with the driver, slipping him a few bills in the process. I had no idea what he was telling him, but I had a feeling my plans of checking in to my hotel and meeting Suzanna for lunch were out.

Leo left the driver to handle my bags and ushered me into the back seat with his hand on my back. After he had slid in beside me, I looked over at him, my eyes wide, my heart hammering. He looked at me for a few seconds before turning his gaze to his window.

The silence was killing me. There was an invisible cloud of rage suffocating me and forcing me to remain as silent as the man beside me. I knew he was probably angry that I stopped taking his phone calls, that I stopped answering his text messages, I would be, too, but I didn’t expect such uneasy quietness. It was much more frightening than any verbal fight. I wanted him to
say
something.

After about forty-five minutes, it was so very clear we weren’t going to my hotel. We were driving through one of the Chicago suburbs. I leaned forward as far as my seatbelt allowed me to look at the GPS mounted on the front dash of the car. I had barely noticed it before because it was on silent. I didn’t see the address of where we were going, but I did see that the ETA was less than five minutes.

“Where are we going?” I asked the driver, but gave him no time to answer before I turned to Leo and asked him the same question.

He looked at me, his eyes still like cold steel. It sent cold shivers up my spine.

“We are going to Emmy’s son’s party,” he said, the first words he’d spoken since I saw him at the airport.

“What?” I shrieked. “How do you even know about that? And I don’t want to go.”

“I know about a lot of things,” Leo said darkly before looking back out of the window. “You’ll be amazed what I can learn when you accidentally leave your email account wide open on my computer.”

I gaped at the side of his head. During Leo’s surprise visit to New Jersey, I had used his laptop while mine was updating. I probably didn’t close out my Gmail when I finished, out of bad habit, and since Leo was a Hotmail kind of guy, the chances of him even realizing that he had access to my emails were small, but apparently not small enough.

“You snooped through my private emails?” I asked in astonished anger. Not that I had anything to hide, not really, but that didn’t mean I was okay with Leo or anyone else going through my emails.

The car slowed to a crawl as we moved down a wide street, dotted with trees and well-manicured lawns. The houses weren’t enormous, but they were big, family size, and though the neighborhood looked old, it was clean and there were kids outside all over the place.

Leo looked at me again. Instead of answering my question, which obviously I already knew the answer to, he asked a question of his own. “Why didn’t you tell me you still own a house with Xander?”

I fell back in my seat. He had read Xander’s last email to me. There was much he could deduce from it, and probably most of it wrong, but I didn’t know how I was going to convince him of the truth after I had withheld such a vital piece of information. It was hard for me to believe some things he said after finding out about Leslie, and now in a way, I was in his shoes and he in mine, though my secret was less devastating.

“I didn’t say anything at first because it didn’t seem important, and later…well, it didn’t come up, and it still doesn’t matter. It’s just a house.”

The car slowed down outside of a big white house. Cars lined the street, balloons floated on the mailbox, and several people lingered in the driveway smoking or talking. I really didn’t want to go in there.

“Why are we here?” I asked Leo. Mayson had emailed me the address with the date and time of the party, and with a map showing the proximity of the house to the city. She was being a smartass. She had also faxed it to me, texted it, and snail mailed it.

Again, Leo didn’t answer my question.

“Did you enjoy fucking him again?” he asked. His voice was remarkably calm, almost flat, but his damn sea colored eyes churned with stormy weather.

I stared at him with my mouth hanging slightly ajar. “I didn’t…”

“You didn’t what?” he challenged.

My eyes flickered up front to the driver who had enough sense to remain still and silent, looking forward as if he wasn’t even in the same car with us.

“I didn’t have sex with him,” I said. I didn’t know why I thought I had to explain myself to him. Had I not let him go? Technically, we weren’t together, right?

I wasn’t sure if he believed me or not. He leaned forward and told the driver to come back for us at five-thirty.

“That’s four hours from now!” I exclaimed. “I don’t want to be here at all, let alone for four hours!”

Ignoring my protest, Leo grabbed a tight hold of my wrist and threw open his door. He got out of the car, pulling me against my will to follow. I stumbled onto the street and tried to pull away from him, but he yanked me to his side as he kicked the door shut. He opened the front door and reached for a large blue gift bag I hadn’t noticed. He released my wrist but hastily wrapped an arm around my waist. It was like having a boa constrictor on me because he held me so tightly. We began to walk up the driveway. Music drifted from the backyard along with a smoke ring from a barbecue. Voices, laughter, and children’s cries and squeals floated out through the screen door.

I was nervous about seeing Emmy again like this. I was nervous about being around her family—my family—because I hardly knew them anymore. It wasn’t just Emmy that I ostracized from my life, it was her parents and her siblings, too. I didn’t do it on purpose. It just kind of happened, and honestly, I was feeling a little guilty about it. Sam and Fred, Em’s parents, still sent me cards around the holidays and Sam even showed up to one of my signings once, gushingly proud of me.

“You are going to smile,” Leo commanded in that calm tone. “You are going to talk. You are going to eat and drink, and be fucking merry.”

“Why are you making me do this?” I whispered, looking up at him.

“I am tired of your ‘my life is so tragic’ bullshit. Your brother’s addiction is your brother’s fault. Stop blaming her.”

I pulled away from him and stopped only a few footsteps from the door. He moved toward me, towering over me, but I didn’t step back.

“I don’t think my life is tragic,” I protested angrily in a whisper.

“Please,” he whispered back, his tone tinted with disgust. “You can’t be with me because of Leslie. Leslie treats you like yesterday’s trash, but you can’t let go of the friendship because you’re ‘loyal.’ Your brother became a hardcore drug addict
before
he started stealing money from your family, but it’s Emmy’s fault because she stopped supplying him with the drugs and money. You have mommy issues, but that’s all her fault, too, because god knows that you just go out of your pretty little way to try to have a relationship with her. You are selfish, and cowardice, Tabitha. You are the most selfish person I know, and the only person with less courage than you is Leslie,” he spat. “I didn’t see it before. You were right. I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did, because I would have never called you selfish before, I would have never called you a coward, but now I do see it and I think it’s time you start to rectify it.”

The tears had come instantly, burning my eyes as they fell over my lower lashes. Leo moved to block me from the view of the people standing close by, but he didn’t immediately touch me. When he had first started talking, I was angry and barely restraining myself from lashing out at him; by the time he finished, I was still angry, but I also felt shame and sadness. I wanted to walk away from that house, from those people and find a quiet, dark place to cry all ugly like, snotty and hiccupping, but that wasn’t an option, and would only further fuel Leo’s ideas about me.

After what was probably a full minute of me silently crying and wiping furiously at my eyes, Leo finally touched me. He swiped his thumbs across my cheeks, wiping away my tears. He didn’t speak, he didn’t try to console me and I didn’t deserve it. He just wiped at my tears until they stopped flowing. When I was sure my face was finished leaking, I let him silently guide me into the house.

I stood in front of the window in our hotel room, brushing my damp hair and watching the sun set and lights click on in buildings. Streetlamps flickered to life and headlights on cars lit up the streets. Leo sat behind me on the edge of the bed, where he had been sitting since I came out of the shower several minutes before. He was shirtless and without socks and shoes, only clad in his low riding jeans. It was a sexy look for him and after glancing at him once, my attention was divided between him and the outside world, but mostly I looked at him.