Chapter 55
Xavier
I’m going to throw up. Not because I think something’s wrong—I don’t think Artemis would blindside me like that in front of people—but because it feels like whatever’s about to happen is going to change everything. It feels… big.
Athena’s screen lights up with Artemis sitting with a woman I vaguely recognize. What’s going on?
“That’s Claudia. Aka Tabitha.” Athena’s steady voice does little to settle the raging nerves fluttering under my skin.
My stomach drops. Great. The woman who tried to bury the man I love is now sitting across from him like they’re doing brunch. Mimosa anyone?
I don’t know what this performance is about, but it’s clearly important to Artemis, because he keeps casting cautious glances my way. Glances which honestly, serve only to make me even more nervous.
On the screen, Claudia’s hands tremble just enough that she clasps them together on the table. “Thank you for agreeing to this.” Her voice is as shaky as her hands. “I know I’m… not your first choice.”
Artemis leans back in his chair, ankles crossed, expression unreadable.
She swallows. “Before we begin, I need to say this on record. I was hired by your father, Alonso de la Pena to follow your activities. To report back to him. To…” Her voice falters. “To shape a narrative that hurt you.”
Artemis doesn’t interrupt.
“I told myself it was just access journalism.” She fidgets with the hem of her skirt as she continues. “But it crossed lines. I crossed lines. And when I realized how deep it went—how much damage it was doing—I should have walked away sooner. I didn’t.”
Silence stretches. It’s awkward as fuck, but Artemis doesn’t give in, he doesn’t fill it. He just lets it simmer.
“I’m sorry.” She looks at him with sad eyes. “To all of you, your siblings… the team.” Her voice cracks, but it doesn’t seem like it’s for pity, but because she knows exactly how deep the knife went.
Finally, Artemis nods once, it’s basically his signature move. “Apology noted.” It’s the verbal equivalent of a handshake with a glove on—it’s formal, cool, deliberate. Definitely not forgiveness, it’s not dismissed, simply acknowledged.
Claudia exhales shakily and taps her recorder. “Then let’s begin. You’ve just completed a hostile takeover of your father’s aeronautics company. Most analysts expected triumph. Instead, you’ve been described as… detached.”
“That’s generous.” Artemis picks at invisible lint on his dress pants. Man, he’s so damn handsome it’s disarming. I don’t even blame Claudia for the love hearts dancing in her eyes.
A flicker of something—wry, almost amused—crosses my man’s face. “I spent my life thinking control of the company would feel like victory. Turns out, it just feels like responsibility.” He says it without bitterness, and that’s what guts me. Artemis has finally stopped fighting ghosts.
“Do you consider it worth it?”
He considers the question carefully. “It was necessary. That’s not the same thing. The company was going in the wrong direction. My father wouldn’t listen to reason, and I wasn’t going to stand idly by and watch him destroy our family’s legacy.”
She nods, scribbling notes. “But I understand that’s not entirely why you wanted to talk to me today.” She unfolds her legs under her notebook, then recrosses them.
Artemis swallows, then nods, then sucks in a deep breath that lifts his whole torso for a moment before he speaks. “The time has come for me to leave UCR.”
Claudia’s mouth falls open at the same time as my own. “Y-you’re… leaving? Like… now? So close to the end of term?”
He nods. “After careful consideration, I’ve decided it’s the right decision.”
“Are you announcing that you’re stepping back from pursuing professional hockey like Apollo? Permanently? Or are you transferring somewhere new? I…” She huffs out a half-laugh. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to… I didn’t expect this. I wasn’t prepared.”
“Yes, I’m stepping back. I’m leaving the university, my team—who I’ve already spoken to—and I’ll be moving out of state.”
An ember of hope flickers to life in the deepest part of my heart. Out of state. To where? His eyes are hot on my face as I watch the interview, but I can’t assume even if I want to, and I can’t stop watching to look at him to see what’s painted on his godlike features.
“I’m sure that surprised many people.”
“Only the ones who thought hockey was my entire identity. Just like my newly acquired aeronautics company, hockey was a job. I am very good at it, but I’ve recently learned I don’t need to keep winning hollow contests to prove my worth.”
The words are precise and deliberate and land somewhere deep inside me.
Claudia looks up. “Including your college degree?”
The air shifts. This is the question his father wanted answered, the question Artemis has avoided answering for so long. He’s tied his success, at work, at school, at hockey to his father’s approval, to his own self-approval so this... I can’t even fathom how much of a huge move this is for my guy.
Artemis doesn’t flinch. “Yes.” His voice is even.
“Including that.” He swallows, taking a moment, probably to gather his thoughts enough to keep going.
“I’ve already proven I can succeed in systems that weren’t built for me.
I don’t need a piece of paper to tell me who I am.
And more importantly—I don’t want to bust my ass for another achievement that feels empty. ”
My boyfriend isn’t rejecting academia—he’s rejecting the cage it represented.
There’s still no bitterness in his words.
Just clarity. Artemis has finally realized that with or without his college degree he can—and already has—succeeded.
Pride blooms in my chest so big, so tight, it hurts to breathe around it.
Claudia hesitates, pointing a pen at him as though she’s connected dots somewhere along the line. “You’re relocating to Wisconsin I’m guessing?”
“I am.”
“Do you want to share why?”
This time, Artemis smiles. It’s knowing, real, and the one he gives to me late at night when we’re in bed together alone.
“My partner is finishing out his degree there. That path matters to him. He’s working hard for it.
He’s earned it. I’m not asking him to give that up for me.
And I’m not prepared to do long distance for a moment longer than I have to.
It’s simply not working for me.” He swallows. “My brothers say I have zero chill.”
Claudia’s pen stills, right as my heart threatens to explode into a bazillion pieces. He’s choosing me. In private and in public.
“You’re moving in together.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re comfortable making that public now?”
Artemis leans forward, forearms resting on the table. “I’ve never been uncomfortable with it. I kept the nature of my relationship with Xavier under wraps to avoid my father using it against me as a weapon or hurting him and his family in any way. That’s it.”
“So this isn’t a coming-out story,” she says carefully.
“No.” His tone is almost frosty. “It’s a context correction.”
Whoa. Claudia visibly startles. She hesitates again, then lowers her voice. “Your father will undoubtedly see this whole thing as betrayal.”
Artemis meets her gaze. “My father sees everything that isn’t obedience as betrayal. That’s his limitation. Not mine.” Another silence. Then he adds, quieter, “He hired you to watch me, to hurt me, to report back.”
Claudia stiffens.
“And yet,” Artemis continues, “here you are—owning what you did. Publishing the truth. That takes courage.”
Her breath catches as her brows pop.
“I won’t punish you for surviving his orbit. But I will ask you to choose differently going forward.”
Her eyes shine. “I intend to.”
He nods. The decision’s made. “Then we’re done here.”
Claudia reaches to turn off the recorder, but whoever is recording the interview, probably to ensure he’s not misquoted when it airs, doesn’t stop.
“For what it’s worth, I know what it’s like to mistake power for safety.” Artemis’s voice is almost casual.
She freezes.
“And I know what it’s like to be backed into a corner by him and to not think you have an escape route.
” He stands, straightening his jacket before he buttons it closed.
“You deserved better than the position you were put in. If you want to keep reporting, you should do it. And if you ever get into a position again, with your family’s medical bills, or whatever trouble you might face, you come to me, or my mother, or one of my siblings. ”
Even when he’s been wronged, he still extends a genuine olive branch. It’s maddening, how gentle he can be with people who never offered him the same grace. She should have gone to him in the beginning; I have no idea why she didn’t.
Claudia’s eyes fill with tears. “Thank you.” Her voice is barely above a whisper.
Artemis pauses at the door. “Oh. And Claudia?”
“Yes?”
“If my father contacts you again, tell him I’m very happy.”
The video on Athena’s phone stops, and the weight of all three sets of eyes on me is so heavy my shoulders may buckle. I’m pretty sure my heart is somewhere on the floor, still beating, still stunned into stillness.
“You’re moving to Wisconsin?” I still haven’t turned to face him.
“I am moving to Wisconsin.” He squeezes the hand he still hasn’t let go of. “I have a house there. I like the state. And it makes sense, you know, when my boyfriend lives there and needs to finish out his degree.” His words are cautious as I finally turn in my chair to face him.
“You asking me to go steady, Sugar Tits?” My casual, southern drawl doesn’t betray my quivering insides.
He picks up a shoulder, but it’s stiff, clearly holding tension.
“You don’t have to quit college and move for me you know.”
He nods, scrubbing his palm over his freshly trimmed beard. “I’ve come to learn that my degree was never really about getting an education.”
I purse my lips but wait for him to explain.
He sighs, like the weight of the world is held inside his chest. “It was about outrunning Alonso, proving to him I could do it, measuring myself against my siblings. I realized that if I finish out college to get my degree, it’ll probably be as hollow as buying Alonso’s company felt.
It’s not what makes me happy. It’s not something I want. ”
The win against his dad gave him everything except himself. The honesty in his voice is raw enough to cut the air around us into pieces.
“But you’re so close, you only have a couple months.” I look at Athena, then back to Artemis. “Are you sure this is what you want? We can make long distance work for a few more months, Arte.”
He nods. “We can. But we don’t have to. I don’t want to, Xavi.
I’m not choosing not to finish because I can’t.
I’m choosing not to finish because I finally understand who I’m not.
I don’t need to be the academic one, the respectable one, the responsible one.
I already tried that path, and it’s just not for me.
I chased it all for so long because I thought it would all make me whole. ”
His palm caresses my jaw, and my eyelids drift closed as I inhale his scent.
“I thought if I finished this, I’d feel like I’d arrived.
But I already know what arriving feels like—and this isn’t it.
I’m financially secure, I have investments, a good job, I have my friends and family…
I have everything I need. And not only will I never get Alonso’s approval, but I simply don’t need it anymore. ”
He looks so fucking vulnerable I want to cry.
“It’s my life, my choice, and I forgot that somewhere along the way.
And just because it doesn’t matter to me doesn’t mean it’s worthless or can’t matter to you.
This is my choice. Wisconsin, with you, finishing out your degree, chasing your NHL hockey dreams.” He gives me a timid smile I’m not used to seeing on my always-in-control boyfriend.
“I’ll have a jersey to cheer Pollo and a jersey to cheer whatever team you join. If you’re cool with it, of course.”
“I mean.” I give him a wicked grin. “I could be down for something. Sure.” Turns out, being chosen hits like winning the playoffs because I’m walking on fucking air. “I guess we could go steady.” I wink at him.
My guy is done with hollow victories. He wants meaning, this… us… we are meaning. And he’s choosing me. What comes next? That’s ours to find out. And for once, we don’t have to earn it—we just get to live it.