Chapter 36
Sophie
Xavier.
For a fleeting moment, that name holds all significance.
It could just as well be my own. The darkness is all-encompassing, but there’s no pain. Xavier .
I gravitate toward the distorted sound, finding immense comfort in the syllables. Xavier.
“I'm here. Open your eyes.”
His voice. Oh, it’s everything .
His breath warms my cheek. “Baby, please, look at me… Don’t keep me waiting.”
As alluring as that voice is, this void has freed me from my pain, swathing me in comfort. Precious comfort.
Memories come like consolation, merely a spectator to the beauty I couldn’t see anymore.
A mother, not even blood, spending half her life trapped to protect me. A sister I could lie beside for hours, laughing about nothing and everything. Friends who brought me back to life when I was sure there was no way to revive me.
A man… Most of all, that man.
A lifetime by his side in all forms. Childhood friends who played in the dirt together, racing through life without fear of what awaited us. Years of engagement before a separation that forged a wide gap that stretched until our worlds split, turning us into strangers.
The void reveals the moments I’d forgotten.
The lingering gazes he offered when I no longer accepted them. The hands he reached out to me when I’d turn from him. The words I didn’t hear while I ran from him toward another man. The decisions he made for me that altered the entire course of his life.
Tracing it all the way back, he’s been waiting.
Hoping.
Aching.
I see him moving through a room full of spectators, finally finding me in the crowd after so many years. He was still waiting, hardened by the lack of love I swore I’d never give him.
To me, he was a stranger. To him, I was the goodness he had cast from his life to shield his lonely heart—a lost soul seeking another.
“Sophie, come back to me. I'm here.”
I can hear wedding bells, his unwavering voice speaking his vows in a way I couldn’t.
Friends to strangers to lovers.
I never wish to leave, seeing unrushed lips falling into mine on a bed in Santorini.
His body speaking to mine, professing his love with a gentleness he had once forsaken, releasing all of the years I kept him waiting.
Days, weeks, months escaping darkness only to lose our footing, sinking to depths we’d never reached before.
I see love that grew in distance.
I see him still waiting.
An ocean I’d cross to reach him.
A reunion of tears, shattered souls begging to be mended.
“Sophie. ”
Let me stay. It doesn’t hurt here.
“Open your eyes.”
I shake my head, suddenly feeling the pillow beneath my head that’s too heavy to lift. No .
“I'll go goddamn insane if you don’t open your eyes. It’s been days. I’ve been watching your chest move for days . I'm fucking losing it.” His words have cracks in them. “You broke the fever last night. Why haven’t you opened your eyes?”
His hands. They’re stroking me, brushing my face, willing me to return. Like he has done all of our lives, he’s waiting for me to find him.
Oblivion isn’t strong enough.
The memories become just that: the past I must leave behind, choosing pain, happiness, anger, and everything that comes with life. Saying goodbye to those who are gone, loved ones I’ll have to wait to see.
As the vastness narrows to a single guiding point, I finally feel the weight of my body. Aches that remind me of the pain I’ve endured, pain that my mind had been blocking.
My eyes part like they’ve been closed for years rather than days. The haze clears, and Xavier is right there, filling all the space, battered from the inside out. He’s on the bed, hunched over me. His breath becomes shallow and ragged when my disoriented eyes finally settle on him.
“X…” I can’t get his name out completely.
His lips roam my face, gifts of grateful tenderness.
It restarts my weakened heart, awakening my mind.
The Hudson. Isabella. The warehouse. The knife.
My last moments return with a rush.
Racing through a crowded airport, forsaking freedom for something— someone —greater. Waging a battle on those who tried to take him away from me.
My father. His death will be ingrained in me for life, one of those decisions that you can’t move past… and that’s okay. Xa vier is living and breathing right before me, which is worth the sacrifices.
“Christ, Sophie.”
He presses his cheek to mine, and as if he’s been fighting to keep his sanity all this time, I hear him shatter.
Seeing what this room looks like reveals enough to gauge his mind space while I’ve been unconscious.
The desk still holds scraps and towels stained with blood alongside the knife he removed from my body. On the nightstand, there’s a needle soaking in a bowl of clear liquid. The smell indicates it’s alcohol.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” he says.
“Never,” I breathe out past cracked lips. “Never.”
“There was so much blood.”
“I’m okay.” I can’t lift my arm the way I want to comfort him. “You saved me.”
“No,” he pulls back, his lips trembling. “You saved me .”
His fingers clutch my hair, his frustration unmistakable as he gives me a shake. “You didn’t listen to me. You didn’t get on that goddamn plane. My nightmares came true, seeing you in that place while I was that broken.”
“You threw me into the harbor.”
“I know.”
“You let me believe you were willing to make that trade.”
“You should have known better, Sophie,” he says, shaking his head, brushing my hair back. “That trade was never going to happen.”
I muster enough strength to hit his chest, and he flinches. “You self-sacrificing, stubborn, infuriating?—”
“Sophie…”
“How dare you? How dare you force that decision onto me? Live without you?” I cry as he draws me close. “You don’t get to make that choice anymore!”
I shove his chest, remembering what it felt like to resurface from that water, sprinting through the streets with his child when all I wanted to do was drown.
“Stop,” he whispers. “Stop, baby. I’m sorry. I had to.”
“No, I had to.” A whimper escapes my lips. “I’ve been on that plane before. I know what’s on the other side, what life is like without you. I don’t want it. I can’t bear it. Not again… So don’t be angry with me.”
“Angry?” He blinks, startled. “ Angry ? I’m not angry. I’m amazed. I’m grateful. I’m terrified. I have no clue how I’m still alive, but I know I wouldn’t be without you.” He presses his forehead to mine. “Sophie, fuck , you’re the strongest person I’ve ever known. I can’t believe what you did.”
Xavier takes my face in his hands. He speaks through clenched teeth, his eyes shut. “I want to scream at you for taking that risk and, at the same time, kiss you,” he does just that, over and over again, “for not letting that be our end.”
I tilt my face into his hand, savoring his warmth.
“I’m alive because of you,” he whispers.
He was supposed to be halfway across the world already with his daughter. His hands are bandaged at the knuckles, the gauze stained bright red. Underneath there, I wonder if he’s even taken the time to heal his own wounds. “You would have done it for me. You did do it for me.”
While fighting pointlessly comes easily to us, especially when love hangs in the balance, what replaces it is so much stronger.
Xavier envelops me in his arms, his gentle caresses soothing me, providing comfort that lingers until my trembling subsides, the weight of exhaustion pulling my eyelids shut.
As I slowly regain consciousness, I notice the lamps casting a warm glow, revealing Xavier seated at the desk, his hand glistening with alcohol as he pours it carefully onto his palm.
He looks like a man who just fought for his life and nearly lost .
Without his earlier shirt, the remnants of the beatings mark him, a blend of colors bruising his skin.
While he was my sole focus when I surfaced, my attention now shifts to this hiding place.
Red brick walls surround us. An old flat screen sits in the corner of the room.
A brass bed frame complements the backdrop of Manhattan visible through the misty window.
Without looking up, sensing that I’ve woken before acknowledging it, Xavier calmly says, “It’s the only place that would accept cash. ”
He’s just now threading a needle for stitching, which confirms my earlier suspicions. “Is that for your hands?”
Xavier lifts his arm, revealing an angry gash just above his ribcage. “My side. After I threw you into the water, one of the bastards shot me. It’s just a graze, but it keeps bleeding.”
Seeing him so battered, it hits me hard that it’s nothing short of a miracle we’re still alive. I have no interest in finding out what I look like. He protests when I slip out of the covers, standing to stop me, but I shake my head, bearing through the pain to grab the suture from him.
“I can do this, Sophie. Lay down.”
“Courtney has been teaching me how to stitch since I was eight.”
“Still.”
“Let me heal you,” I insist softly.
Lowering back into his seat, he closes his eyes, cupping the backs of my thighs. “You already have.”
He remains silent as I guide the needle through his skin.
The tension in his white-knuckled grip on the desk reveals his internal struggle.
Because it’s him, and because it’s necessary, my hands weave the thread with calm precision, finishing the job quickly.
While he’s seated, I tend to minor wounds, then notice a tangled clump of hair at the back of his head. Dried blood.
Dominic’s blow—this is where he hit him .
Xavier hasn’t left my bedside, not even to shower, and his body shows it; his eyes are bloodshot and surrounded by a matching redness.
When we were first married, he came home with fresh stitches after intervening in a fight at his club. He couldn’t wet the wound for two days. That level of caution is absent now as we step into the shower, determined to wash away the blood and sweat from the worst day of our lives.