Off Her Rockers (Loving All Wrong #3.5) (36 page)

Mick lugged the suitcase to the front of the jeep, set it down, and stared at the house. His perceptive eyes shifted to the window, as though he
knew
I was there peeking out.

He kept on staring as if to say “get your ass out here, coward!” I planned on going out, but I wanted Xavier to be completely out of, and away from, the jeep first, so he couldn’t hit reverse and flee when he saw me.

Mick gave up staring and turned to Xavier and Chloe. He said something that made Xavier bark out a laugh. Teeth white, head thrown back. At that moment, he didn’t look unhappy as Mick claimed he was. He didn’t look like someone who came to stew. As far as my eyes could see, he looked blithe and refreshed. Over the moon to be in the presence of his Dad and his Chloe.

Finally, he closed the door, car keys twirling around one finger, and I unwittingly drew closer to the window, unconsciously pulling the curtains wider.

Last time I saw that man, he was nothing but a shell of himself. Lines and tubes hooked up to every vein. Bruised and battered with a long scar down his head that gave me goosebumps.

Now…now he was standing to his full height, hale and alive and in the world again. I could cry right then.
I could cry
.

He was in dark denim, black boots, and an ivory cowl-neck sweater. Like his Dad, he was naturally built with that perfect macho, I’m-a-God form, but his muscles weren’t as prominent as they once were. He’d no doubt lost weight. He might have been running the treadmill to train his leg, but he obviously wasn’t lifting weights or doing his regular intense workouts. That much was evident in his shrinking muscle mass.

That didn’t detract from him or make him any less attractive, however. It went in alignment with his super bouncy, super blond hair, shoving him even farther into the pretty boy category.

His fierceness would return with time. I would make sure of it.

Responding to whatever Mick said, he began moving away from the vehicle.

I stared. This was the part I was waiting for. I was expecting his artificial leg to be dragging behind him, but all he had as he threw an arm around Chloe’s shoulder and started toward the house was a little bounce to his gait.

And that was it. From my bed, to a car-wreck, to a coma, to memory loss, to a bionic leg with a little bounce. There he was. My future.

The trio laughed and chatted as they jaunted up to the house. As they got closer, close enough for me to hear them, Xavier’s eyes abruptly jumped to the window.

I held my breath.

Jerking his chin at the window, he said, “Never told me you got company, Dad.”

“Huh?” Mick responded, playing dumb.

I knew that was my cue to move, but I couldn’t. I was planted.

Xavier asked, “Who’s inside?”

Slowly, I backed away from the window.

“Ah, oh, yeah,” Mick dragged out, delaying. “We’ve been, ah, hosting a friend for the past two months.

“A
friend
?” Xavier’s tone was incredulous. “Dad, you don’t like people enough to have friends. I remember that much.”

“Oh, hush,” Mick grumbled. “I happen to enjoy her company. She—”

“
She
?” The approaching footsteps paused. In a slow, ominous voice, Xavier questioned, “
Dad
?”

“Oh, Christ,” Mick grumbled. Then he barked out, “Young girl, this is not what we had planned! Get out here and stop skulking!”

“Wha—what?” Xavier was baffled. “Plan?”

Okay. Here we go
. With one fortifying deep breath, I forced my feet to move across the floor to the door. Then, with every bit of courage and love I had within me for that man, I turned the doorknob and stepped out into the cold.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

X
AVIER WAS A STATUE.

He didn’t blink, he didn’t move, and I could swear he didn’t breathe.

Lifting my shoulders to my ears and then letting them fall, I whispered through cold wind, “Surprise.”

He stared at me.

I determinedly held his stare.

Mick smirked.

Chloe looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there.

Suddenly, Xavier dropped his arm from around Chloe and moved toward me as swiftly as his leg would allow.

I took a small step back, unsure what was happening.

Halting in front of me, he glared down with eyes that blazed. He looked like he wanted to rip my head off my body and stomp on it over and over with his prosthetic leg until it was one with the ground.

Feeling the need to calm whatever rage was boiling inside him, I started to apologize, “Xavi, I’m sorr—”

He decapitated my apology by curling rough, angry fingers around the back of my neck, dragging me in and crushing his lips to mine. Hard, punishing, and desperate.

Oh. Wow. I did not expect this
.

Melted, raw, and close to tears, I opened up to him, all of me. After months,
months
of not being able to see him, here he was, his hands on me, his tongue in my mouth. I felt overwhelmed, underwhelmed, brimming with fear, excitement, and relief.

Feeling dizzy at the unexpected turn of events, I pressed tighter against him, submitted, and moved to lock my hands around his neck, but in an instant, he ripped his mouth from mine and knocked my hands away.

“Your apology means nothing to me,” he bit out raggedly, wiping me off his lips with the back of his hand like the taste of me was venom. “Pack your shit and leave.”

Trying to catch my breath from that ephemeral mouth-rape, I blinked. “What? No. Why?”

That was the wrong response. In the next second his eyes went from fire to ice, and he
exploded
, “What made you think you could come
here
?! Who the shit do you think you are, bitch?!”

His face was flaming red with rage, his veins pressing through his pale skin.

“Yours,” I replied in the face of the storm.

Curling my toes in my shoes to keep standing firm, I refused to wince at his derogatory name for me. I’d never witnessed Xavier irate to the point of shouting before—except for that one time in the parking lot, but he was blind drunk that time, so that didn’t count.

Sober Xavier got angry all the time, of course, but in a silent, sulky, brooding kind of way. This, though…this was new for me. As much as my mind was telling me to leave and not push it, not push
him
, I felt it was high time I manned up and fought for him.

“
No
.” Jaw tightening, he shook his head and jabbed a finger to my chest, hard, as though he was aiming to physically split me in two with it. “
Not
mine. His. You’ll always be his. Done with this triangle. Not willing to spend the rest of my shot-to-shit life with you, worrying every goddamn second of every goddamn day if you’re screwing him behind my back. Forget this. Done. It’s done.”

“Xavi—”

“
Leave
.”

Pleadingly, I reached out and grabbed a fistful of his sweater. “It won’t be like that. Not anymore. I swear to you, I won’t—”

“No more strikes left, remember?” He peeled my fingers from his sweater and moved back a step, smoothing out the wrinkles my desperate grab left in the material.

“What?” I asked.

“Am I the one with the memory problem or is it you?”

What’s he talking about
? “I don’t—”

“You asked me how many strikes you got left and I said…?”

“None,” I answered meekly, suddenly remembering that morning in the penthouse when he’d found me and Davian sleeping on the couch. I’d forgotten that conversation. He really
had said I was out of strikes.

In that moment, however, what I also realized—and understood his vehement rage—was that he hadn’t regained all of his memory. He
couldn’t
have. If he had, then he would’ve remembered that twenty-four hours after that conversation, we had broken up.

Obviously, he didn’t remember that much, or else he wouldn’t have brought up that conversation. Because, considering the reason for our break-up, there was no way he would think that that “no strikes” conversation we’d had was a valid enough reason to shut me down right now.

My guess was that the memory of our breakup was completely blanked out, and whatever his last memory of our relationship was, we were in a good place. Which we kind of were, but not completely. We’d been
making up
from an ugly breakup.

Now that explained why he cried when he saw the video footage, as Xena claimed. Why he took it so hard.
He didn’t remember it all.

Despite that startling realization, however, I elected not to remind him of it. Who knows, maybe that memory was voluntarily blocked.

The fact was, he’d forgiven me, screw up after screw up. Stuck it out with me. The one time he screwed up, I kicked him to the curb, but this last sin—cheating while he was in a freaking rehabilitation center learning to cope with being an amputee, battling to find his way back—it wasn’t a strike, but a goddamn gunshot.

How could I have been so selfish and greedy to expect him to forgive me for this? To expect this would, memory or no memory, be just another shrug-off for him? Not when things were immensely different for him right now. Not when his life was drastically altered.

I was positive they stressed to him in his therapy sessions how essential it was for him to start making healthy decisions for his betterment, and I was dang certain I fell under the “insalubrious” category.

I loved him, I wanted the best for him, and if the best for him meant I would have to give him up, then I would. Leave, like he asked, and let him decide for himself if being with or without me would aid in his adjustment. As strong as he appeared to be physically, I had no idea of his mental state. Mentally, he could be fragile, barely hanging on by a thread, and my insistence might just push him over the edge.

On that thought, I nodded, agreeing, “Okay. Okay, I’ll go.”

Not on board with this, Mick piped in, “Now wait a minute, son—”

“It’s okay, Mick.” I tried to convey with my eyes that this was most likely the best thing for
Xavier
right now. That he wasn’t fully recovered as we thought. What did we know about his mental health? We knew only as much as Leo leaked to me, which wasn’t a lot. “I believe I’ve worn out my welcome, anyway.”

Before he could attempt to further talk me out of it, I turned and ducked inside, shooting off to the guestroom. Closing the door behind me, I leaned back against it, slid down to the ground, and I cried.

Yes, I allowed myself a few weak minutes to feel sorry for myself. To mourn what might be the end. Maybe, after stewing, he would decide he couldn’t live without me. Maybe, sadly, he would realize he could. The latter made my insides writhe in agony.

Maybe the memory of the break-up would return and he would realize it wasn’t as horrible as it seemed to him. Because he didn’t know I’d been shut out, banned from seeing him, visiting him. He didn’t how hard it had been for me feeding off scraps of information from his band member. He didn’t know how hard it had been for me to hold it together. To not give up.
He didn’t know
.

I refused to give him excuses. Because at the end of the day, I wasn’t sorry for what I did.

Summoning the energy to deal with this outcome—no one said winning him back would be easy—I stood, crossed the room and got out our suitcases from the closet, zipped them open and began packing.

Jacob was stirring and mumbling in his sleep. A marker that, any minute now, he would be up and fussing for food.

I packed his mini suitcase last. Moving as quickly as possible. I could hear Mick’s voice out in the living room, reasoning in a placating tone. Xavier’s responses were belligerent, no-nonsense. He wanted me gone and there was no talking him out of it.

The hurt, the pain, the feeling of loss, was like nothing I’d ever felt before.

I packed faster.

Jacob still wasn’t awake by the time I was done and had shrugged on my coat. Nonetheless, we had to leave, so I dressed him in warmer clothes, scooped up his sleeping little body, stuck my head out the room door and called for Chloe.

Chloe appeared in less than five seconds, as though she’d been waiting around the corner or something. “Yes?”

She seemed uncomfortable. I supposed she’d never seen Xavier that irate before either and didn’t know how to react to it. Maybe she felt guilty for being an accomplice in harboring me here.

Frowning at her unease, I indicated Jacob. “Can you hold him for me while I take out these suitcases?”