Chapter 4
Xander
As man of honor, I took my role very seriously.
While the actual bride, Sloan, did not.
Sloan and Marcus’s engagement party was held at the Met in Manhattan. The entire museum was transformed to accommodate the
event.
Crystal chandeliers, hung from the high ceilings, sparkled and filled the room with facets of light. The walls were draped
in sumptuous silk fabric in shades of deep red and gold, adorned with intricate embroidery and beading. The towering columns
were decorated with fragrant jasmine garlands.
I banged on the door to one of the exhibit rooms that was turned into a dressing room for Sloan. “Sloan Saanvi Amari, you
open this door now.”
I didn’t get a response.
I left her alone for what was supposed to be a few minutes. In that time, Marcus went in and proceeded to break the only two
rules given to them.
Stay put. Stay dressed. Sloan and Marcus were notorious for sneaking off somewhere during parties, hence the ground rules
for this one.
“Guys.” The tiniest bit of frustration bled into my words when there was still no answer. “This is your party.”
I met Sloan seventeen years ago when our older brothers were assigned as roommates in college. She was fourteen, and I was sixteen, and we were both less than enthusiastic about being dragged along to move our respective brothers in.
That was the start of an epic, often messy, always reliable friendship.
A minute later, the door unlocked and opened. Marcus stood with a stupid, poorly controlled grin on his face. He adjusted
his tie. “We were just talking.”
I crossed my arms and noted the red shadow along his mouth. “That’s a lovely shade of lipstick.”
He chuckled and glanced back at Sloan, who stood a few feet behind, running her hands over the skirt of the deep red lehenga .
“Oops.” She grinned.
I looked back at Marcus. “Where is your handler?”
Henry Amari, Marcus’s best man and Sloan’s older brother, should have been here to help keep the lovebirds apart.
“Henry and Selena are running a little late,” Marcus said plainly.
“Seriously?” I groaned. I stepped past my brother and ushered him out of the room he wasn’t supposed to be in. Henry Amari
had recently fallen head over heels for his PR consultant; their relationship was all anyone could talk about for months.
“If anyone was wondering, I am very uncomfortable with being the only adult in the room now that all of you are acting like
teenagers.”
“We’re sorry, Xan. Won’t happen again,” Sloan assured from behind me.
“She’s lying,” Marcus called as I shut the door. “On both counts.”
I turned to look at Sloan, who was beaming. She stood in front of a large trifold vanity and adjusted her lehenga.
“You’re not sorry,” I told her, walking over to the table beside a plush couch. I took the bottle of champagne that sat on
the marble table and poured a glass for her and myself.
“Orgasms have a tendency of making me care less.” She shrugged.
I grimaced as I handed her a glass.
“Did you apologize to Pene—”
“Yes, Sloan,” I interrupted, hoping to abate the flood of different emotions that even hearing her name brought on.
She looked over her shoulder. “Just making sure. Pen doesn’t find our games as... adorable as everyone else.”
No one found our long-standing prank tradition adorable. The reason we kept it going for so long had shifted over the years,
like most of our traditions, but I didn’t question it.
Especially since I won most years. There was a peace—a stability—that came with the knowledge that I could expect that game
to begin at the start of every summer.
“She’s been a little more on edge lately.” Sloan looked back ahead. “About the wedding, I think.”
“Yeah...” A familiar ache settled along my ribs. About a year ago, when she and Sloan got back from an assignment in London,
she told us that she was getting married. To a childhood friend slash old boyfriend. She didn’t wear a ring; it was more like
a betrothal of sorts. One she didn’t want to discuss. “I noticed.”
I asked her about it at the masquerade months ago. I was going to leave it alone, but I couldn’t. I told myself it was out
of concern, but it was more than that. I didn’t know what I was hoping to hear but it certainly wasn’t what she told me. That
the marriage was her choice as much as it was anyone else’s and she was happy about it.
The room became quiet, filled with the sound of Sloan’s golden bangles knocking against each other as she fixed her earrings.
“Are you okay?”
I stood up straighter. “Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She shrugged. “A lot is changing. Nobody would blame you if you felt... overwhelmed.”
My chest tightened.
There was a pitch that Sloan’s voice took whenever she was worried. It summoned memories I would give every cent I had to forget. The ones where my world changed, I fell apart, and Sloan picked up the pieces. Often giving up parts of her own happiness to ensure mine.
I huffed a breath and said casually, “You moved a few miles. Not much else has changed.” She was right, a lot was changing,
and she knew better than anyone to check on me. “You need to stop worrying about me.”
The problem with a perfect memory wasn’t that I couldn’t forget. It was that my mind had a habit of pushing memories I wanted
to never recall to the front of my vision at the worst times.
Like the sound of my brakes when we got to the scene of the accident. Or the myriad times Sloan or Tristan or sometimes Rohan
had pulled me together when I spun out with alcohol and drugs.
“I’m not worried.” She rolled her eyes, her voice dropped to a mumble. “I’m just checking in. If you’re not okay, you don’t
have to pretend you are. That’s all I’m saying. Change is hard for everyone.”
The room got quiet again. I tried to smother the memories of all of those terrible times I gave her a reason to be anxious.
Sometimes I would pretend I was fine, save myself reliving the shame from those instances and sort of trick myself into believing
it.
Things were better now, stable. I wasn’t going to let anything disrupt that stability. I wasn’t going to ever let myself lose
control again. Fall apart and make them pick me up.
“So,” Sloan said with a deep inhale, turning back around to face the vanity. “Did you see the headline? The Hightower whistleblower
has a legitimate case against them.”
“Oh no.” I feigned concern. It was all a part of the plan. The Hightower family was corrupt through and through but pretty good at hiding their tracks. An anonymous whistleblower came forward alleging some pretty heinous crimes—like ignoring safety concerns and modifying regulatory documents that stated their automotive division was in breach of major safety standards. “But, from what I hear, they have some powerful counsel.”
Sloan—as the Hightower Energy official counsel—told them not to worry and to settle with the whistleblower. At the same time,
Sloan may have ensured an old law school contact took up the whistleblower’s civil case pro bono.
Sloan grinned like the Grinch right before he stole Christmas. “I may actually lose this one, Xan.”
That was the plan. Sloan was going to throw the hand, lose the game, and give the Hightowers what was coming to them. She’d
advise, after letting the case drag on a while to damage the stock price, for them to publicly pay out hundreds of millions
and step down in order for the company to continue. Wounding the company and the family, irreparably. But it needed to look
like a fair fight, so one of the best prosecutors in the country took up the federal case and a top firm took up the civil
one.
“You’re not on the hook for any of this, right?” I asked again. Sloan was counsel for the Hightowers, so this was clearly
unethical. While I liked the idea of seeing them fall apart, I didn’t want it to blow back on her. In Sloan’s words, ethics
were in the eye of the beholder. Outside of the fact that their failed braking systems in their automotive division led to
many crashes—my parents’ fatal one included—they were destroying the environment without any recourse. It was a win-win.
But from the second she learned of their involvement in my parents’ deaths, she lost all objectivity and insisted the ends
justified the means. She should have refused to take the case; the fact that she hadn’t told me she had ulterior motives.
And I knew better than to try to stand in Sloan Amari’s way.
“For the thousandth time no.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s murky ethical territory but hey, I never claimed to be a saint.”
Still, I said, “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Sloan took a deep breath, and her smug expression began to falter, a familiar look of concern blossomed. Right on cue, Sloan’s voice switched to cheery. “How do I look?”
“Stunning.” I smiled. It was her party and, after years of caring for me when I wouldn’t care for myself, I refused to do
anything other than make sure she had a perfect engagement party—and in a year, the perfect wedding.
“Is this the part of the movie where you tell me you’ve secretly been in love with me the whole time?” She looked at me through
the reflection in the mirror with a patronizing smile. “Because your brother beat you to it.”
I swore Sloan had a radar for when I needed to get out of my head. And every time, she’d say something wild to snap me out
of it.
“Eww.” I grimaced. There was never anything between us. She was my family long before my older brother ever put a ring on
her finger. “No, it’s the part of the movie where I make a joke about your plans to wear white at the ceremony.”
They were going to have two ceremonies. One Western and one more traditionally Indian.
Sloan’s grin fell. “You have your charms; I have mine.”
“Try keeping those charms clothed for the rest of the night?” I chuckled, walked over to the door, and glanced at my watch.
“I came in here to get you for pictures; you’re late.”
“I make no promises,” she called as I shut the door behind me.
***
I passed under the elaborately engraved marble archway and through the large atrium on my way to the sculpture hall, where
the engagement party was in full swing.
My eyes found Penelope like she was a magnet. She was glancing around the party, grabbing her phone from her tiny purse, like
she was getting ready to leave. I crossed the room to her.
“Leaving?” I glanced at my watch. It was still pretty early in the night.
Her soft canary yellow lehenga shimmered among the flickering light from the candles scattered around the room in ornate brass holders. She tucked a stray
lock of hair behind her ear.
“Oh yes. I have some work...” She trailed off, putting the small clutch back on the table and her phone on top of it. Her
eyes were frozen on her phone. She snapped out of it a second later and shook her head. “I’m a bit tired; I thought maybe
I’d turn in early.”
“You’re that bored?”
A faint floral wisp of her perfume clouded my normally clear mind. It had a habit of stalling when she was around.
“Of course not. I was talking to Selena, but then Henry walked over and...” She looked over to Henry Amari dancing with
his girlfriend.
“You realized you were granted the power of invisibility?” I asked.
Her tense frame finally relaxed, her shoulders dropped, and she laughed airily.
“I know the feeling,” I assured her. “You get used to it.”
She glanced down at her phone again.
“So...” I put my untouched drink on the table, the sound it made yanking her attention back to me. “Should we use our invisibility
for good or evil?”
She crossed her arms. “I imagine you’ll use it for some stupid game.”
“You’re probably right. But, before you go...” I took her hand and felt the dull tremor. I nodded toward the couples dancing.
“Come on, live a little.”
Even though I knew I should have been trying to untangle myself from her, I couldn’t. I kept convincing myself that one last joke, one more smile, one more eye roll at me—and I’d finally stop seeing her the way I did. That, eventually, I could just pull her out of my head and see her the way she saw me. And then everything would be fine.
Her heels clicked along the marble floor as she let me tug her forward.
“Did Xander Sutton have trouble finding a date?” An amused smile played along the delicate curve of her lips as she rested
her hand on my shoulder.
I didn’t. Tonight was a family event, and it felt disingenuous to ask anyone I had no intention of getting serious with to
accompany me.
“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” I assured her. My hand slipped around her waist and rested at the small of her
back, pulling her close for the few seconds that I could. “But keeping Sloan and Marcus apart during these events is a two-man
job, and ever since Henry became a lovesick teenager, I’m a man down.”
“Yes... Sloan and Marcus are rather amorous at all hours,” she replied. I glanced past her to the table. The phone she’d
set back down was ringing again. “It’s sweet.”
I momentarily pulled her closer for a turn. “We’ll see how long you think that after being in their guesthouse for the rest
of the summer.”
The summer was already halfway over but our group of friends was planning to spend the rest of it in the Hamptons. For work
and leisure. Penelope planned to stay with Sloan and Marcus.
“We’ll be working,” she reminded me.
“ We’ll be working,” I corrected. “I don’t know what Sloan and Marcus will be doing, but a piece of advice, never trust an unlocked
door.”
She laughed again. “Thank you, I will keep that in mind.”
“I was surprised you agreed to stay with them.”
Penelope was friendly but reserved. She was the friend that always left your home at an appropriate time. She never showed
up uninvited. Always a little formal. Proper. Like she didn’t ever want to ask for anything.
I didn’t grow up in this world; it was only when I met Sloan that I got glimpses of it. And up until my brother’s company took off, we were relatively normal. I never got the high-society coating everyone else in this world did. Penelope’s was tough to crack. She seemed to open up to Sloan, though.
“Why’s that?” Her voice lifted in a playful volley. I tried to ignore how it made my heart race.
I raised my arm, leading her through a turn.
She never spent the summers out there with us. The most we saw her in the summer was when she’d visit for a weekend.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I teased as I pulled her back to me. In the corner of my eye, I could see her phone was ringing again.
“Same reason you should probably invest in noise-canceling headphones. You’re going to need them if you’re staying at Sloan
and Marcus’s.”
She rolled her eyes with a reluctant smile. “You’re a deeply unserious man.”
The song ended, and I felt her begin to pull away.
“Song’s over.” Her eyes darted back to the table; she stood up a little straighter. “Have I satisfied your request?”
I nodded. “You’ve lived exactly a little.”
Her polite smile did nothing to mask the uneasiness that swelled in her eyes. She sparkled as she walked out of the sculpture
hall, the soft uplighting catching the silver details on her dress.
Pushed by an urge to stop her, I took a step forward.
And then I took a step back as her words from the masquerade rang in my head.
“It’s none of your concern. I am none of your concern.”
I reminded myself that there was a reason I only got involved to a certain point. That kept me focused on the people I knew
I wouldn’t lose; everyone else was easy to let go of. Everyone but Penelope. I was supposed to be letting her go, but I couldn’t
help but hold on.