Chapter 5 Xavier
XAVIER
My skin was on fire, the flesh spreading thin over my bones, too fucking small for the turmoil inside my body.
There were important things I should have been focusing on, especially as Caleb went over the plan for The Harvest, yet I couldn't hear a single word he had said.
I nodded along the way, but my mind was on the first floor of this house, focused on one person I shouldn't be thinking about.
My stepsister.
The bane of my fucking existence.
Rational thoughts did not exist anymore it would seem, and for the last three days I could barely breathe.
I could barely fucking eat, because She.
Was. Avoiding. Me. Since that day at the Clear View Country Club when I made her cry and almost broke Ryder's nose for daring to stand up for her.
It wasn't rational, none of these reactions I had were rational, but as the time passed I stopped giving a fuck about what's rational and what isn't.
I stopped giving a fuck about anything that wasn't related to her.
I wanted her pain.
I wanted her fucking tears.
I wanted to shatter her soul, to sneak behind her ribs all the way to her heart, just so I could feel it pumping only for me.
The moment I walked inside the Lounge, seeing her peachy round ass there as she served Ryder first, I thought I would lose it.
But the second she bent down, placing a drink in front of Rhett, I lost it.
I promised myself I would stop this shit.
I vowed I would stop obsessing over her, feeling more and more like an addict craving his next fix, but I couldn't.
The two weeks I've spent hiding from her, avoiding any kind of contact, were excruciating. She had me under her spell and I knew I wasn't strong enough to resist this pull.
And I didn't want to.
The last thing I wanted was to fight this. The last thing I planned to do was let her be, but this time around I wasn't the one avoiding her—she was avoiding me.
"Are you even listening to me, dude?" Caleb's voice penetrated through my thoughts, and as I looked at him and Ryder, all I could see were the two men sitting on the couch in the house where my little lamb was living.
All I could think about was the fact that if she came out now, they'd be able to see her.
They'd be able to get those little smiles she often graced Caleb with, because she actually liked him.
She. Liked. Him.
Every single time I thought about her smiling at one of my friends something sliced through my chest, leaving me open with raw wounds only she could heal.
I never should have agreed to meet at my place, especially not now, but Caleb was already asking questions I wasn't ready to answer, and Ryder saw more than I wanted him too.
Just like now, his eyes narrowed at me, waiting to hear yet another bullshit explanation why I was distracted.
I never got distracted. Not. Ever.
I was the one who planned. I was the one who knew what he wanted to do with his life long before any of them did, and to behave like this, to be this distracted wasn't something they saw very often, if ever.
"I'm fine," I gritted out, my fingers tightening against the armrests of the sofa chair I was sitting in.
"You were talking about the starting location this year and the candidates, right?
" That sounded convincing enough, but truth be told, those were the only two things I heard.
The rest of the conversation pretty much disintegrated into the thin air, because I didn't want to be here.
I wanted to be upstairs, arguing with her, pressing her until that fire she possessed licked over my skin, making me feel alive.
I wasn't sure at what point I stopped wanting to destroy her so that I would destroy my father, to wanting to destroy her just so I could fix her myself and tie her to me forever.
Perhaps it happened three days ago, when I saw her in the Lounge, or maybe it started even earlier but I was too stubborn to admit it to myself.
But there was throbbing behind my breastbone, and I hated every single second of it. Most of all, I hated not being in control of the situation, especially because this wasn't how I usually behaved.
Caleb frowned, leaning back, observing me with those watchful eyes that rarely ever missed anything.
Just like most of my friends, we met thanks to our families, thrown together during the parties neither one of us wanted to attend.
But what cemented our friendship was the fact that Caleb always had my back and I his.
He didn't sugarcoat shit, didn't try to suck up to me just because my father owned one of the biggest corporations on this side of the world.
Ryder, on another hand, was still an enigma I was trying to understand.
He hated Rhett with a burning passion, but he still hung out with us even when the man in question was there.
He seemed to get along the best with Caleb, which was one of the reasons he was here today.
Add to that the fact that Ryder was the executioner of most of our plans when it came to The Harvest.
The Harvest.
My mouth practically foamed at the mere thought of the night where we would be able to do whatever the fuck we wanted to.
It was one night in the year where not even the Police in this town reacted.
One night where everyone involved could let their inhibitions run however the hell they wanted them to.
Men and women from our circles participated willingly, or well, maybe not so willingly considering that some of them were forced to be there by their families.
The Harvest was the legacy our ancestors left us with.
A perfect way for their sons and daughters to get together without their parents mingling.
I always scoffed because I still thought it was just another form of arranged marriages so many of those same ancestors were forced into.
The only difference was that this time they gave us an illusion of a choice, letting us think it was up to us who we would choose as our bride or as our groom.
I refused to participate for the last three years, completely dismissing the fact that it was expected from me to be at the very least engaged by the end of my college years.
It was just another one of my fuck-you moments to my father, and considering that he managed to fuck up everything in our lives, I wasn't too surprised that he didn't press the matter.
But this year I wanted to be there. This year I knew who would be my bride, even if she had no idea what was about to happen to her.
She thought she was sneaky with her plans of getting away from here the moment she saved enough money, but she was going nowhere. There wouldn't be a corner on this Earth she could hide in from me. She was mine and The Harvest would just cement the fact.
I was counting on the shocked faces from my father and her mother, but once The Harvest was done, there was nothing either one of them would be able to do to break us apart.
There was not a single thing my father would even say, not when The Harvest was fully approved by the secret Council made out of men and women from influential families from this town.
I had a plan, and while a part of me hated blindsiding her, another, more depraved, part of me jumped around in excitement, because it couldn't wait to see the shock on her face.
Ryder looked at Caleb and then at me, scoffing when we didn't say anything.
"You have something you want to say, Ryder?" I asked, already pissed off from earlier that he was even here. I didn't forget the way he stood up for Yara, or the way he pushed against me when I got all in his face, telling me how pathetic I was without a single word uttered.
I knew I was, but I didn't want to hear it from any of them.
If it wasn't for Ezra and his level-headed thinking, we probably wouldn't be sitting here.
But Ryder was an asset I refused to lose.
A man who was both my friend and someone I barely tolerated, but all of that could change if he didn't keep his big fucking paws to himself and those eyes in a different direction from Yara.
As long as all of them stayed away from her, we would be fine and I'd be able to focus on important things.
Ryder's eyes landed on me, one of his eyebrows perched up high. "I'm just surprised you allowed us inside your house today, to be very honest." My eyebrows furrowed. "Tell me, Xavier—" he smiled wickedly, "— is there a reason you're no longer hosting any parties at your place?"
"There was a party here two weeks ago," I gritted out, hoping that would throw him off the scent.
I didn't want to admit another reason why I didn't host any of the parties. I wasn't ready to have that conversation with my friends.
"True." He nodded. "Yet in the past you practically had a party every single week as we headed into The Harvest season. Last year alone you had parties five days a week just before the hunt. What changed?"
My fucking stepsister happened, that's what changed.
My fucking need to keep her far away from every single one of these people happened.
Not because I thought they would hurt her, but because I knew that I wouldn't be able to take it if she even dared to look at any of them, not to mention anything else.
Just thinking about her with anyone else filled my mouth with acid.
"Ryder." Caleb's warning tone echoed around us. "Don't."
"Why not, C?" He looked at Caleb. "Xavier is the king of parties, especially the ones where things none of us ever talked about happened. Hell—" he looked at me, "— I think that Rhett is the most disappointed about the lack of parties this year. His usual hunting ground is no longer available."