Chapter 38
Xander
A few hours after a polite dinner with Alejandro and his daughter, Penelope and I walked to the back of the property.
“Did you bring me out here for a tryst?” Penelope followed me outside. The warm air swept past as we turned off the corridor
toward an off-road side-by-side waiting for us. “Because I was planning to work.”
“It’s a surprise.”
Penelope opened the door skeptically and took her seat and buckled herself in. “Is this even safe?”
“Most fun things aren’t,” I told her. The engine roared when I turned the key.
When he was in the Hamptons, Alejandro mentioned that he would stargaze at the edge of the southern agave fields as a kid
and on clear nights, the onyx black of night was blinding with starlight.
He was right. As we pulled away from the compound, after the dust the tires kicked up was well behind us, the deep orange
sunset gave way to a diamond-studded twilight.
“First breaking and entering and now abduction?” She gave me a cheeky grin.
We passed the neat rows of agave and neared the end of the property, rolling up and down small, dusty hills on our way.
“Only you look at something fun and turn it into a federal crime.”
“I’m a dual citizen of Singapore and the UK, residing in the US, whom you’ve abducted in Mexico,” she teased. Her hair whipped
in all directions as we finally came upon our destination. “It would be an international crime.”
I chuckled.
The long stretch of mostly level ground began to fill with soaring hills. I stopped right where the valley tapered away and
the mountainous terrain began.
I checked my watch. It was still a little early.
“Stargazing?” Her neck was craned back, staring at the sky. It was late enough into the evening that it was dark, but not
dark enough yet.
“Your list can be very ambiguous.” I got out and rounded the vehicle, then helped her out of her side.
“Stargazing is not on it,” she reminded me.
The valley was punctuated with soaring rocky peaks on either side.
“The Astra meteor shower happens every year around this time.” I pulled the blanket out of the back, laid it down, and Penelope
took a seat. She leaned back on the palms of her hands and watched the sky.
“Shooting stars,” she deduced slowly.
That was on her list.
I nodded. “We should be able to see it here.”
Herrera wanted to meet in New York, but when I realized I could use the trip to knock something off that list, I took it. I might have been the one to insist we visit so I could get Penelope in a part of the world where she would be able to view the Astra meteor shower perfectly.
“What’s all this for?” She opened the basket and pulled a few things out of it. Some glasses and a bottle of what I thought
was a cocktail.
“I had to be here, and it happened to be on your list.”
It was mostly true. She wanted to see shooting stars and I couldn’t bring those to Manhattan, so I brought her to them.
“Thank you, Xander.”
I shrugged. “What are first husbands for?”
She smiled. Her attention went back to the sky, the darkness enveloped everything, making each meteor striking as it passed.
“Why shooting stars?” I asked.
“It’s childish, but wishes,” she admitted softly. She took a sip from the drink in the glass, not taking her eyes off the
horizon. “Well, just the one wish really.”
I looked at her expectantly, hoping she’d tell me.
She looked down at the drink. She turned it in her hand. “I wanted to go home.”
The words curled around my chest, pushing all the air from it.
It was something I recognized in Singapore and chose to ignore. She wanted to be there so badly she’d conformed to everything
she thought she had to be in order to find a place. It was her home no matter what she’d found in London or Manhattan.
“But I didn’t know where that was,” she added, putting the drink down. “I always assumed once I saw one, I’d have it figured
out.”
“Have you?” I asked, knowing how much my entire world was tied up in the answer I knew, but I prayed I didn’t hear. That she’d
figured out what she wanted and it was an ocean away.
Her lips parted for a second before closing. She turned back to the sky. “Radiant, aren’t they?”
“Yeah.” I watched her as she watched the sky. The starlight swept over the delicate curve of her cheek. “Radiant.”
I wanted to press her on it. But at the same time I wasn’t sure I wanted the confirmation that she wanted the one thing I
couldn’t give her, a life away from home. My home. The one that kept me together all these years.
The deal was all but done. I could tell her everything now: how I planned to put Herrera in charge of Hightower Energy, how
it would provide her with leverage and power. The kind that made any future available to her because she wouldn’t need to
fear Silas’s retribution. And once this year was up, there was nothing left to keep her here.
I opened my mouth, but no words came out.
My chest tightened, reminding me of the last time I was in this position.
Losing Reina hurt, a wound that didn’t heal for years—losing Penelope would be insurmountable. The fear, icy and piercing,
became all I could feel. It told me to hold on tighter. Or at the very least, not to let go.
Not yet. Not when everything could work out. Because there were moments, ones that were becoming more frequent, when I’d hold her and everything felt too deep
and serious for either of us to ever walk away.
She swayed a bit. “You know how to get back, right?”
Her voice, running up a few octaves playfully, pulled me from the constriction along my ribs.
“God, I hope so.” I tried to shake off what I was feeling. “Because you certainly can’t drive us back.”
She laughed. That laugh. A real one. The one that was loud and a little boisterous. Impolite. Each heavenly disharmonic note echoed along the
fractures in my heart.