Chapter 6
Xander
When I walked up the stone steps to Penelope’s brownstone, I realized then that I hadn’t been there since that night. The one we spent in her kitchen over a year ago.
The door opened a few inches, and a sliver of her interior peeked through. It opened a few more inches and I could see her
more clearly.
Penelope’s unsure smile wavered, looking like it would be swept away on the warm breeze that brushed along her white linen
dress. My eyes immediately went over her shoulder. I’d only met him once, at the masquerade seven months ago, but I didn’t
need more than a second to recognize Maddox Xu.
The impatient heir to Xu Enterprises—a tech company that manufactured all varieties of gaming systems—and, more importantly,
the man Penelope was going to marry.
A pit formed in my stomach.
“Xander.” Her eyes flickered over me, she took an uneasy breath and twined her fingers. My attention was drawn to the facets
of light that reflected off the diamond on her hand, and she immediately turned the ring so I could only see the band. “I
was expecting Sloan.”
The dress. The ring. Maddox.
Waiting for this—the day she stepped into her preordained life with him—was like waiting for a storm. I wanted to draw out
every second before it came and get it over with all at the same time.
I knew exactly how I was supposed to react when it finally did happen.
Congratulatory, or at least casual.
Unbothered.
Instead, a thorny grip kept me in an immobilizing helplessness. “Penelope...”
She rolled her shoulders back. Despite the stoic facade, her smile wobbled.
Like it had that night at the masquerade. The same visceral pain at the thought brought back a memory that tortured me the
last few months.
It filled my vision.
The loud clack of Penelope’s heels against the marble floors echoed as she walked a few steps behind Maddox. He was leading
her quickly out of the masquerade. Her golden dress sparkled under the chandelier in the empty lobby. It was close to midnight,
and everyone was inside the ballroom for the countdown.
I had never met Maddox before, but she seemed to shrink in his shadow. All evening she’d been silently standing by his side
while he talked to guests. Eventually I found her lingering by the bar seeming distracted. When I asked her to dance, she’d
finally smiled. Until Maddox cut in, tapping her on the shoulder and saying, “I’m leaving. Let’s go.”
To my surprise Penelope agreed to leave with him without question. In that moment, she wilted into something else. Someone
else.
“Penelope,” I called, following right behind her.
“It’s fine. I’m fine.” She stopped and turned, pulling the mask off her face. It only proved to me that she wasn’t. Her face was flushed, her eyes darted around the room, stopping when she saw something over my shoulder. “Xander, I...”
“Penny, let’s go,” Maddox demanded in a tone that set every last nerve on edge.
A surge of possessiveness poured into my veins.
I closed the space between Penelope and me, pulling her hand into mine. “She’s not going anywhere.”
Penelope laid a hand on my chest. “Truly, Xander, it’s fine.”
Maddox pinned me with a hard stare. “This is between me and my fiancée.”
Those three syllables leveled me.
Since learning about her engagement, I did my best to avoid how fucking wrecked I felt. In that moment, the full weight of
it bore down on me.
She was his fiancée.
She was getting married. She was leaving. I was going to lose her.
So, I tried desperately to hold on. “Penelope, is this what you want?” I asked.
I prayed she’d say no. That I wasn’t the only one that felt whatever it was between us since that night before she left for
London.
“Yes,” she answered firmly, taking a step away from me. Though the way her skin paled didn’t seem convincing at all.
“If you need something. If something’s going on...” My voice lowered.
“You wouldn’t...” She looked at the floor. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me,” I begged.
“It’s none of your concern.” Her eyes moved over my shoulder. I could hear a few steps getting louder in the periphery. I
glanced over to see Tristan, Rohan, and Jackson nearing where we stood. “I am none of your concern.”
“That’s too bad, because everyone our friends date gets a proper vetting,” Tristan interrupted, crossing his arms unapologetically. He and Rohan flanked either side of me. I knew someone had to have seen Maddox pull Penelope away from me at the party. “And you”—Tristan looked at Maddox—“Are new.”
“No.” Maddox wrapped a hand around Penelope’s wrist, and she went back to him without hesitation. “You are.”
“Look.” Rohan’s raised voice drew everyone’s attention. “We can keep this civil, or we can make a scene.”
That statement seemed to snap something in Penelope.
“No need.” She yanked her arm away from Maddox but didn’t move. She looked directly at me. “I appreciate you want to look
out for me, but nothing is wrong. I’m telling you to leave us alone. This is between my fiancé and me.”
She turned and leaned into Maddox’s shoulder, whispering something into his ear. He nodded, and they left.
I watched their backs like it was happening in slow motion.
“Should we be concerned?” Tristan said, looking at me.
“You heard her,” I told him, Rohan, and Jackson as they stared blankly at me. “She doesn’t want our help. She’ll come to us
if she needs us.”
The kicker was that the next day, after the masquerade, Maddox was gone. Penelope came to brunch like she normally did and
apologized for snapping at me, insisting it wasn’t how she’d hoped we’d meet her future husband.
“Play along, I beg of you,” Penelope whispered to me, pulling me from the memory, and turned the ring a few times on her finger.
As my eyes ran over it, all the brewing emotions were muted by curiosity.
She was wearing my mom’s ring. Relief flooded me.
I raised a brow. I didn’t know what game we were playing. But I looked over her shoulder again and knew I wasn’t about to
let Maddox win.
“Not usually what women beg me for...” I leaned down to say it quietly in her ear, hoping to turn her manufactured smile into a genuine one. I walked past her and awaited some type of covert explanation in the doorway. “But sure.”
She took my hand, giving it a quick and urgent squeeze. I tightened my grip to keep her palm against mine. She looked at me
seriously, something crackling in her eye. “Thank you,” she whispered, before her voice lifted and morphed into an artificial
cheery one. “Darling. What a surprise. I was expecting Sloan.”
Darling? The weight in my chest lifted. I glanced up to Maddox and back to Penelope.
Oh. This was going to be fun.
I snaked my arm along Penelope’s waist and pulled her in close. The faint scent of orange blossoms from her perfume floated
along the air between us. Her eyes widened momentarily.
“I thought I’d surprise you,” I said, leaning my face toward her.
If we were acting, I was going to sell it.
A mixture of gratitude and irritation filled her eyes.
There she is.
“Maddox Xu.” I slowly turned my head to him and grinned. “To what do we owe the honor of a visit?”
I didn’t know him well, but ever since that night I hated him.
Not just because he seemed to ignore that Penelope existed most of the time even though he was the lucky bastard that she
was supposed to marry. Or because he called her Penny like it meant something that he had a nickname for her. It wasn’t hard to think of a nickname. And Penny was the least creative
way to go.
But because of how he talked to her.
“I’m here seeing Penny, of course.” He crossed his arms, watching us with a hard stare. “Now, if you’d remove your arm from
my fia—”
“Maddox was just leaving,” Penelope interrupted. She began to pull me further into the house, and I kept my tight hold around her. “We’re headed to the beach for a while,” Penelope told him diplomatically, her head turned toward the steps where a few pieces of luggage sat at the landing.
“I think that’s my Poppy’s polite way of asking you to leave,” I added and felt her stiffen at the sound of the new nickname.
“Twice.”
“Penelope.” His eyes slid from me to her as he took a step closer. “We need to speak, privately. Now .”
Anger flared in my gut.
That tone.
He talked to her like she wasn’t a person. Certainly not an equal. Like she was a pet or an ornament. It made me want to knock
his fucking teeth out.
“She’s asked you to leave.” I took a step in front of Penelope. “I suggest you take her hint, because mine won’t be nearly
as polite.”
His eyes flew to Penelope. She stared at him face on, her chin tilted upward, and said nothing.
“I’ll see you when you come to your senses.” He gave me one last filthy glance and made his way to the door. I took a step
back and looped my arm back around her.
“I was trying to get a point across,” Penelope whispered to me as Maddox passed through the threshold, “not throw him into
a fit.”
The door slammed shut.
“Well, I didn’t have a lot of time to rehearse my lines,” I snapped. Irritation worked its way around my words. She wanted
to protect his feelings while breaking up with him?
That’s what was happening, right?
We stood like that until the sound of his footsteps down to the street were inaudible.
“Kindly remove your hand from my backside,” Penelope demanded.
“Oh.” I pulled my arm back, not realizing just how far it had wandered. After a flustered second, I remembered that she was wearing my mother’s ring. “Remove your hand from my mom’s ring?”
I hadn’t seen that ring in years. My mom left it to the estate and Marcus handled all of that after my parents died. He took
care of everything while I drowned my sadness in any illicit substance that was handy.
Penelope blinked a few times, then a deep crimson ran across her face.
“Oh my God.” She looked down at it then up at me. “I’m a perfect ass.”
I glanced over her shoulder and shrugged. “It’s fine, I guess.”
I was lying. It was perfect.
“Right.” She began to pull the ring off, but it got stuck behind her knuckle. Her face contorted as she twisted it. “I’ll
just...”
As she struggled with it, I ran back the last few minutes in my head. Maddox had always seemed inevitable because Penelope
wanted him to be. She’d said, herself, that it was her decision.
Maybe that wasn’t the case anymore.
The insidious buzzing in my head, the one that tortured me for over a year, stopped.
“So, you’re... not getting married?”
She sucked in a deep breath and released it slowly.
“I just need time is all,” she assured me through gritted teeth as she twisted the ring again to no avail. She groaned, turned
around and walked to the kitchen sink at the opposite side of the island. She ran her hand under the water. “I will get this
ring off and we can pretend this little incident never happened.”
“Time for what?”
“To do what I need to do.” Her hand slipped from the ring with no progress. The pitch in her voice was like a kettle about to whistle. It climbed higher and the words began to run into each other. Like every thought was pushing and shoving to make its way out. “It’s complicated.”
I walked over to her and shut off the tap. I handed her a towel and led her to the seat in front of her laptop.
“Clawing off your own hand is just going to make it harder,” I told her gently. “Let it be, we have a two-hour drive. It’ll
loosen when you stop messing with it.”
She let out a huff; her shoulders relaxed.
“I didn’t mean to do that...” She looked up at me before absent-mindedly running her hand along the trackpad of her laptop.
“It seemed, I don’t know, serendipitous that the ring was there. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I sat down next to her. “I wasn’t using it.”
The laptop screen illuminated a spreadsheet; I ran over it once. Then again. My heart beat a few too many times in a millisecond.
Seconds later, she realized I was looking and slammed it shut with a sharp inhale.
“What was that?” I tried to keep a steady timbre in my voice even though I saw all I needed.
“Nothing.”
A spreadsheet, twenty-four rows, four columns. The columns were name, age, occupation, and “ick factor.” Each row had a different
name. Sebastian Amherst, Preston Scott, Carter Billings, and an entire list of men I happened to know.
My name wasn’t on it.
And just like that, the buzzing was back.
She sighed. “If you must know, I have a plan.”
A carefully categorized one. “And that plan is...”
She stood and dropped the towel on the counter.
“Once I return your mother’s ring to Sloan and Marcus, I’ll settle the requirements for my inheritance.” Penelope tucked her laptop into the side pocket of her purse and motioned toward the foyer.
“Settle the requirements?” I echoed blankly, pushing past the gnawing in my chest. “And what does every bachelor in Manhattan
have to do with your inheritance?”
“One of the requirements,” Penelope said, turning her face toward the opposite wall. “I need a husband. I prefer it not be
Maddox, but really it’s not about finding love. This will just be business.”
“How romantic.” I glanced at the time. My head was spinning and we needed to get going.
I brushed past her and nodded my head in the direction of the door. I picked up the bags that were neatly arranged next to
the landing on my way out to the car.
I released a heavy breath as I walked down her entryway steps.