Chapter 49
Xander
I got Penelope’s text this morning and texted Sloan to get a few plans in motion since I was busy packing for at least a few
months.
Just as I finished getting a final bag packed—because I planned to go there for as long as she wanted to be there—I heard
a couple of voices bounce off the walls in the grand foyer.
I walked out of the bedroom and toward them.
I’d planned to meet Penelope in Singapore this week and she’d seemed lighter in the short conversations we’d had. I was giving
her time and space not just to prove that I could but also to remind myself that I loved her way too fucking much to ever
let her feel like I was trying to control any part of her life. It was never my intention but that was what I got stuck on
all week.
“You can’t hold on that tight or you put me in the same position I’ve been in my entire life.”
No matter how well-intentioned, I could never make her feel that way again.
And if there was ever a day she needed me to let her go, I would. I prayed there wouldn’t be. That I’d always be able to make
her happy, but at the end of the day all that mattered was that she was happy.
Because that was love, and true love was fearless.
“See, he is planning something,” Marcus told Henry and pointed to the bags as they walked in. They looked up at me as I came
down the central staircase. “You okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
I was doing okay. Not great. But okay.
Over the last week, everyone found a reason to check on me. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel any shame in
it. No bombardment of memories that made me feel guilty for needing them. It was what family did and what we’d continue to
do.
I tried to get my mind off of things with poker, occasionally. I even tried that pottery wheel Penelope used at the club that
we’d planned to do together before all of this. I was really bad at it.
We stood there for a beat when I got down the stairs and to them in the foyer. I waited to hear whatever explanation they
had to “drop by” today.
This was Henry and Marcus’s third visit.
The first one was hours after Sloan. The second was an insistence on boxing at the club, which made no sense to me because
I didn’t find any joy in beating the shit out of a friend like they seemed to.
“Are you going to ask?” Henry wondered to Marcus as they both wandered around the foyer.
“It was your question,” Marcus quipped back.
“It was only my question because you won’t shut up about it,” Henry defended.
They had a tendency of doing that—carrying on a full conversation between themselves while in another one.
“I hate to interrupt the gossip.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “But what do you want to know?”
“You’re going to go to her, right?” Henry asked bluntly. “ Move to Singapore, grand gesture, you know—happily ever after.”
An annoying side effect of Marcus and Henry being close for so long was that now I had two overprotective big brothers.
“You two are getting a little overly involved,” I stated wryly. “It reeks of Sloan.”
“Us? Overly involved?” Henry glided past the comparison and looked at Marcus. “Hey, Marcus,” he said with faux curiosity.
“How did that invitation for the alumni gala a couple years ago end up on your desk?”
I saw where Henry was going with this. It was me.
Two years ago, Sloan was the host of our alma mater’s annual alumni gala. All the invitations were sent out with Sloan’s name
and signature, including Marcus’s, which went to Sutton Industries. He’d been gone for two years by that point, and he needed
to come home, so I made sure it didn’t go to the Manhattan office, rather the London one. Where I was sure he would see it.
If he thought Sloan was the one who sent it, I had a feeling he’d come back for the event. Sloan missed him and it was obvious
how much it hurt her that he was gone. I figured seeing her again might finally be the kick my brother needed to pursue her.
And I was right.
He came home and months later he and Sloan finally got together. And the rest was history.
“I don’t know, Henry.” Marcus played along, wrinkling his nose. “Who convinced Selena to try out the arts facilities at the
Augustus to help her feel more comfortable there?”
That was me, too.
“Point taken,” I conceded.
Born out of a fear of losing someone, I tried to play in the background to push things in the right direction. To keep us
together.
“And, yeah, I’m going to Singapore,” I answered.
I didn’t need to fix things, make them perfect so that everything would go as planned. I couldn’t control what happened to us. But, as long as I had Penelope with me, none of that held the same power it used to.
Henry slapped a supportive hand on my shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. “Look at that, all grown-up.”
This last week proved that I could go through the ringer and make it through unscathed. Relatively unscathed. I would always
be a little scared to lose the people I loved; it was natural, but not so much so that the fear drove my decisions or my actions.
“Oh yeah? Like when Henry Amari went from walking red flag to lovesick puppy?” I retorted back.
“I won’t miss the snark,” Henry countered flatly. “And yes, exactly like that. You know when Selena was thinking about moving
back to LA, I had my assistant start getting the process ready for me to head Amari Global from there.”
It was Henry’s way of saying that the stability that all of our collective meddling made was an illusion and we had to plan
our lives for change.
“What?” Marcus asked, face scrunched looking at Henry. Clearly offended. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, should I have told you I was considering it?” Henry crossed his arms and cocked his head. “When you were a
virtual ghost for two years?”
I smiled at their bickering, and a little ache moved through my chest wondering if or when I’d be back here with enough frequency
to catch it again.
Growing pains.
Marcus’s serious facade cracked with a chuckle.
He looked at me, ignoring Henry.
“Mom and Dad lived in France for years before coming back here,” Marcus reminded me.
“And they were happy,” I added. My parents, after college, moved to France for my mom to study literature. My dad worked and they only came back to the States when he decided on medical school. They were never the “play it safe” types.
They had a love that was fearless.
And, finally, so did I.
I smiled, realizing why Henry and Marcus stopped by today. To be sounding boards, reassurance that everything would be okay.
Tell me all the ways that this was the right move.
“They’d be proud of you,” Marcus said with a deep inhale. He glanced around the open foyer at all the many photographs that
filled the walls.
I let a silent moment pass.
“If I’m there for the long haul, or somewhere... you’re going to visit, right?” I asked, not expecting the dip in my voice.
The one that made Henry’s high-society stoicism falter.
“Obviously,” Henry barked out, then mumbled something about me being an idiot for even asking under his breath.
“It’s cute that you think Sloan would give us a choice,” Marcus deadpanned.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny, Marcus was never really all that funny, but because he was different. A good different. The less-serious
version of himself I hadn’t seen in years; a version I chalked up to Sloan’s influence.
Everything had changed.
We’d all moved on, forward.
And nothing about that scared me.