Chapter 45
Penelope
The frustrating thing about being an adult with a fully formed frontal cortex and critical-thinking skills was that while
anger felt so cathartic in the moment, once logic set in, it was fleeting.
All you were left with were simple truths.
I knew whatever the explanation was, it wouldn’t be nearly as tumultuous as I’d created in my head hours ago. It would be
nuanced, and I’d be upset. But I also knew Xander and unless I was truly blind—which after thinking this over for hours, I
knew I wasn’t—there was probably a decent explanation.
One I needed to hear.
“We need to talk.” I looked up at him momentarily then stared blankly at the horizon.
After sitting in a state of numbness for about an hour in my office, I knew I couldn’t possibly get any work done. I came
here, and every muscle felt sore. I tried to lie down, but I saw my poppies and just sat there. I figured he’d find me once
he returned.
Xander sat down beside me; he tried to take my hand but I pulled it away.
“Silas called. It was him who called in the tip,” I told him. “Is Sloan alright?”
Whatever the explanation was, Sloan was surely in on it. That knowledge actually helped, after the initial shock wore off, and I could think—that fact helped steady me. There was a reasonable explanation. There had to be.
“Yeah,” Xander said quietly. Looking at me instead of the early autumnal sunset, the one I refused to pull my eyes from. “She’ll
be fine.”
After spending hours wondering how I’d have this conversation, I knew where I wanted to start. “Why did you agree to this
marriage?”
The first thing I needed was to understand what he was thinking that day, out on the terrace when he told the lie. The one that launched this entire thing.
“What?” He turned to me; his brow furrowed.
I faced him and tried to keep that steely feeling, but it swept away the second I finally met his gaze. My detached facade
crumbled immediately. Because I loved him and no matter how logical whatever argument he gave me was—he’d lied and it hurt.
“Why,” I repeated, my voice dipped before I immediately pulled it back together. “You told Beatrice we were engaged. You went
along with it when I gave you an out. Why?”
His brows rose, forming lines along his forehead, surprised. As if it were obvious. He turned his entire body so that he was
facing me. “Poppy, I spent seven months trying and failing to figure out how I was going to grin and bear it while you got
married. In that moment, I saw a way to hold on to you a little longer.” His voice shook before he said the rest. “I took
it.”
“It had nothing to do with the Chen-Xu merger?” I asked, knowing what Silas said was not the explanation. But I needed to
hear him say it. “Or wounding companies enough to take it over. Like you did Hightower?”
Hurt flickered in his eyes, but he answered with resolute clarity. “No.”
“You didn’t know Chen Tech was in a precarious financial situation?”
“No, but after we were in Singapore it was a safe assumption.”
“So, you expect me to believe that it’s purely coincidence? That you now happen to have control over the technology that both
Chen Tech and Xu Enterprises would need after their merger?”
“Well...” He rubbed the back of his neck, looking down at his lap.
“Now is not the time to omit something,” I warned. “Start from the beginning.”
“Originally, Sloan and I wanted to take down the Hightowers because their automotive tech division made the automatic braking
systems that failed and killed hundreds over the course of a decade. My parents were two of them. The company covered it up.”
I wanted to stop him because suddenly this felt like it went a lot deeper than I thought, but he kept going and I let him.
“When you told me your family or Maddox’s was going to use whatever influence they had to get you back in line, I took what
I knew about Xu Enterprises and changed the plan. I asked Sloan to make sure the Hightowers went down, quickly and publicly,
so I could buy them out. I used the open CEO seat as incentive for Herrera to sell majority stake in SunCorp to Dawn Capital.”
“So, now you control both,” I surmised.
He nodded. “Herrera is tiny. Put him at the helm of Hightower, it has global reach. Nobody would be able to compete. Xu Enterprises
still needs things like extended battery life for their devices. The kind Herrera already developed. Maddox would need to
play nice to continue.”
“You took down Hightower to install your preferred leader, with the technology you’d need to have some power in the exact
market Maddox and Silas were participating in.” I strung it all together. “Do I have that right?”
“Yes.”
“So instead of Maddox and Silas having power over me...” I demanded, hurt wedging itself between my ribs. “You do?”
“No,” he faltered, taking my hands and this time I didn’t pull them back. I believed him, but I needed the rest. I needed
his motive. “Look. I never planned to use the power. I just wanted it available.” He squeezed my hand a little tighter. “I
know you act in the best interests of the people around you, and sometimes you feel trapped by your familial duties. I wanted
to make a way out. If you ever needed it. If either your family or his had something that made you feel like you had to do
what they asked, then having power over their future meant you could dictate terms.”
The scattered colors of the now setting sun dispersed along his irises as they became glassy. My mouth hung open.
“I wasn’t ever going to use it against your family if you didn’t need it,” he asserted quietly. He looked down at my ring.
“This was also a great business deal. The world would have a clean energy company replace Hightower—one of the world’s worst
carbon emitters. Win-win. You have to believe that I would never use that power unless you wanted me to.”
Emotion welled in my chest. Hurt from the lie. Love from the motive of it all. Pain knowing this conversation wasn’t close
to finished.
“Xander...” For some reason I wasn’t surprised. The scheme was crazy, but the sentiment, from Xander, was almost predictable.
“I believe you.”
That was what he did, he held on to the people he didn’t want to lose. His heart was in the right place. But that didn’t mean
it was right.
“But you can’t do that,” I whispered, pulling my hands from his. Swallowing a lump in my throat, one that threatened to push
tears from the corners of my eyes. “You can’t hold on that tight or you put me in the same position I’ve been in my entire
life. Where someone else is attempting to pull the strings—no matter how well-meaning. I’ve already lived that life.”
“It was never my intention,” he pleaded, leaning his head against mine.
He pulled me to him like he needed physical assurance I was there. Putting both hands on my waist he gently eased me into
his lap. I went willingly because it was so tempting to just let this be it.
“You made me question myself,” I admitted with a bob in my throat. That’s probably what hurt the most: that just as I was
finally trusting myself, this flipped it all on its head for a few hours and it felt like being in a tailspin. “Question you.”
“I never meant for any of this to cause you any sort of pain,” he whispered into my ear. “I’m sorry.”
The initial razor-sharp pain of the lie had dulled because like all things with Xander it was rooted in good intent. It was
out of love or fear. I wasn’t sure which. But it was meant to protect me.
Which only made the next part harder.
“I know.” I swallowed a shaky breath. I turned a bit in his lap and ran my fingers through his hair, wanting nothing more
than to feel him hold me. A shuddered breath rippled out of him. “You cannot ever lie to me again.”
“I swear to you I won’t.” He took my hand and kissed it gently.
I nodded.
I believed that, too.
His arms wrapped around my waist and he held me close. I shifted and leaned my head against his chest. A deep, cutting betrayal
would have made the next steps easier. But Xander would never hurt me, that much was clear. I had to forgive the lie of omission,
which would take time, but that didn’t change the fact that I loved him.
We sat like that, entwined in each other silently for a few minutes before I finally summoned the courage to have the conversation
we’d postponed but Silas’s interference brought to the forefront. We couldn’t keep ignoring it, no matter how tempting it
was to float along as we were. The ache moved through my muscles.
I pulled away and shifted to face him. “I need to go to Singapore to settle this.”
“We’ll leave tomorrow,” he said quickly. “I know all of this was a... lot.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “But it’s a
means to the same end. You can use SunCorp’s new position as leverage with Silas or—”
“I need to do this,” I interrupted. I needed to do this for myself. I trusted myself, finally. And this lie might have shaken
it, but I needed to follow this through. “And you need to stay here.” His body tensed. The arm he had around my waist tightened
like he was physically trying not to let me go. “I know you’re sorry and I do forgive you.”
I asked for the truth, and he gave it to me.
I asked for assurance it would never happen again, and he gave it to me.
I could have used all of it—the secret and the omission—to be angry and hold on to some hostility. I could let it break us if I wanted
to.
But my instincts told me not to, and I had to trust them.
The fact was that despite the lingering ache, I understood. I’d never forgive his keeping secrets again, but I had a confidence
he never would.
Because he wouldn’t risk losing me.
And that, right there, was the conversation that might actually break us.
“I need you to stay here because I need you to think on our future.”
“Poppy—”
“Just listen,” I begged quietly.
He nodded.
“I’m not sure how long it’ll be, but I think I want to stay in Singapore.” I looked down, unable to look him in his eyes, knowing how much it would hurt him to hear this. “And then from there, who knows. I haven’t had my chance at adventures and I’d like to have a few.”
My first ever decision for myself was moving to New York instead of home to Singapore and that decision was riddled with guilt
over the years. I didn’t want to live like that anymore. I finally had the strength to be loud and ask for what I wanted.
Thanks, in large part, to him.
And I wasn’t going to keep second-guessing it. I was going to make my decision based on what I wanted, not what scared me.
He had to do the same.
“Okay.” He pulled me onto him so I was straddling his legs, making it impossible to look anywhere but into his eyes. “We’ll
move to Singapore.”
I could hear it in the rapid cadence of his words—the fear. He was making a split-second decision, weighing the outcomes quickly
in order to keep moving forward. To keep playing. But not playing to win, simply playing to not lose .
To not lose me. It felt knee-jerk, born of fear, and I couldn’t let him make this decision that way.
“It’s not that simple,” I asserted, trying not to feel the pain that was so palpable radiating off of him. Heartbreak and
fear. “We can spend this year, the marriage contract, wherever. You don’t have to come. You don’t have to pick up your life.
Asking you to leave home is an enormous task. I know that.”
“ You are my home.” His tone became more agitated. Anxious.
“It’s more than that, Xander.” My heart twisted. He had to be ready for it, on his own. No gaggle of friends to unquestioningly protect his heart for him. “You have to fully understand what you’re giving up, because I can’t be those things. I can’t make Singapore Manhattan. I’m one person. I can’t be every single friend you love and you’re leaving behind. Putting all your happiness on me is too much pressure.”
I spent too long taking responsibility for other people’s well-being; it was exhausting.
With the sun now fully set, twilight enveloped us.
“I don’t expect you to be anything other than who you are,” he insisted, his voice cracking.
The anguish in his voice tore at my heart. All I wanted was to give in, kiss away the pain, and make us both feel better.
I held his face in my hands and leaned in to kiss him. His arms wrapped around my waist, keeping me firmly planted there.
As I pulled away, he captured my lips again desperately.
My hands spanned across his chest and I pulled away.
“You have to think about this and really give it thought. Because I need to know that you’re doing this because you love me. Not because you’re afraid of losing me.
I deserve the first one, not the second.”
It had to be love that steered this decision, not fear. The exact emotion I could see so clearly in his eyes.
“Okay.” His throat shifted with a hard swallow. “You go. I’ll stay here.”
“For now,” I added, hoping his love for me was greater than anything else. It felt that way, but no matter how much it hurt,
I needed him to be sure. “Once everything is settled we can figure things out.”
His arms pulled me in, holding me close. I let him, laying my head along the crook of his neck. He didn’t say anything, rather
held me like that for a while before it became too chilly to be outside.
We quietly went to bed knowing that the next few weeks would be more painful than tonight was.