Chapter 6 #2
Since then, I’ve moved through the night in a strange, fragile daze. After months of silence and distance and words left unsaid, I was starting to think we were already standing at the end.
But now he feels like mine again.
My husband. My midnight sun.
Xavier laughs at something the man says, and my smile deepens as I watch him.
Dark hair, artfully tousled. A few unruly strands fall across his forehead, softening the sharpness of his face. His golden-brown eyes crease at the corners, dimples cutting into his cheeks when he smiles.
He looks devastating.
And he is mine.
My husband glances over, as if he can feel me watching.
His eyes sweep down the length of my dress, over my bare shoulders and the curve of my waist, then drift back up to the side of my throat.
He lingers there. I’m sure he can see straight through the concealer I dabbed over the marks he left less than an hour ago.
Heat sharpens in his gaze. He lifts the glass to his lips and takes a slow sip, watching me over the rim with the kind of lazy hunger that makes my skin remember his hands.
Suddenly, I feel naked, my nipples tightening beneath the thin fabric of my dress. I shift, letting my hair fall forward to hide the betraying reaction.
Knowing exactly what he is doing to me, Xavier gives me a lazy, wicked wink.
My heart stumbles, warmth spilling across my cheeks.
God, this man will be the end of me.
I bite back a grin and blow him a tiny, teasing kiss.
His mouth curves into a slow, satisfied smile, that familiar glint of amusement flickering in his eyes.
In that look, an entire conversation passes between us.
Later , he promises. When we’re home. We’ll finish what we started.
I can’t wait, I mouth back, then wink.
We’ve been tiptoeing around the wreckage between us, but tonight feels like a brief, aching regression to the beginning.
To the boy with sorrow caught behind his eyes, still uncertain what to do with the world. And the girl too reckless for self-preservation, foolish in her belief that she could make it gentler for him.
The memory lingers between us. I force myself to look away, hiding my smile behind the rim of my wineglass.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we really will be okay.
My nerves ease, and I let out a slow breath.
I know we can still be happy, just the two of us. But I ache for more.
I already buried one dream. I refuse to bury this one too.
Someday, maybe, I’ll see him holding our child in his arms. Until then, we just have to keep choosing each other.
A burst of laughter nearby pulls me out of my thoughts. I square my shoulders, smoothing my expression into one of contentment. Tonight, I’m not going to brood. I can worry about everything else tomorrow.
Tonight, I’ll drink good wine, cling to my husband’s smile, and survive this circus of a dinner.
The air in the ballroom is warm with laughter and the clink of crystal. Chandeliers scatter golden light over the upper echelons of the French Riviera and Manhattan elite, illuminating a familiar tableau of wealth, lineage, and polished indifference.
The high-ceilinged room is all marble floors and tall windows draped in burgundy velvet. By the grand fireplace, beneath a massive oil portrait of some long-dead Navarro ancestor, Xavier’s parents hold court.
Geneviève and Alejandro Navarro exude effortless authority.
She wears an exquisite ivory cocktail dress and a strand of pearls, while he wears a sharp black suit accented by a silk pocket square.
They greet each new guest with her double-cheek kisses and his warm pats on the back, their gracious smiles perfected over years of performance.
Money and pedigree radiate off them in tandem with a rot no amount of refinement can disguise.
I wonder if they are still the same imperious hypocrites they were when I met them years ago.
My husband is no longer the son they can summon, silence, or shame into obedience. I am sure they know that by now.
Why is he still standing there instead of looking for Elise?
Near the gleaming mahogany bar on the left, I spot a cluster of Alejandro’s relatives—the Spanish contingent.
They’re louder, more boisterous after several glasses of rioja, their laughter full-throated and genuine.
Xavier’s Uncle Tomás gestures animatedly as he recounts a story, the others roaring at his jokes.
To the right, by the ornate French doors leading out to the moonlit terrace, Geneviève’s side of the family gathers in a comparably restrained fashion. The aunts and cousins there are the picture of understated elegance.
Muted tones. Polite smiles. Voices that never rise above a genteel murmur. Pearls and silk and air-kisses.
Two halves of the family blending under one roof, however uneasily .
And here I am, the odd one out entirely. Neither French nor Spanish, but a Greek girl from an island, trying to fit into their mosaic.
Across the room, I catch sight of Xavier’s older brother, Lucien.
He stands by the terrace doors, laughing as he hoists his youngest daughter onto his hip. The little girl squeals, her arms looped around her father’s neck, and the sight pulls a soft smile from me despite myself.
The Lucien I met years ago had been all arrogance and restless indulgence, the sort of man who treated responsibility like an unfortunate clause in a contract he never meant to sign.
Parties, women, expensive liquor, inherited obligations he wore like an insult.
No one would have mistaken him for a devoted family man then.
Now his wife watches him with open adoration, and something twists inside me.
I can’t stop myself from imagining Xavier in his place, balancing a dark-haired, honey-eyed toddler on his arm.
Our toddler.
I force the thought away and focus on the simple sweetness of the moment. The little girl’s giggle cuts through the formal atmosphere like sunlight through glass.
“Lucien,” Alejandro calls, beckoning him over. “Come tell them about the Singapore deal.”
He gestures for him to join the cluster of guests, his chest swelling with pride. Lucien steps into the circle, and Alejandro rests a hand on his shoulder.
“My son just closed one of the largest acquisitions in the company’s history,” he says, beaming with pride.
I see my husband’s expression turn cloudy. His smile slips, just a fraction, before he schools it back into place.
I know that look too well.
Lucien is everything the Navarro family ever wanted in a son—the pride of the family, the golden heir who stepped into Sereno, the Navarro family’s billion-dollar shipping and real estate empire, at twenty-three and never once looked out of place.
Xavier chose a different path. By the time we started dating, his “office” was a cramped room above a laundromat, furnished with a dying laptop and a couch that could swallow you whole if you leaned back too far.
I used to bring him takeout after training and fall asleep to the sound of him fighting for a future no one was ever going to hand him—arguing with banks, chasing investors, and proving himself to men who heard his accent, saw his secondhand suit, and decided he did not belong in the room.
Sometimes I’d wake in the middle of the night and find him still there, working, as if he stopped for even a second, everything he’d built might collapse.
But the part that always stayed with me was what happened after the wins.
He’d go quiet. His eyes would drift to his phone with this terrible hope, like some part of him still believed it might ring. Like maybe this time his father would call and say he was proud.
It never happened.
There was no safety net. No family investment. No hand reaching back for him. Just a man driving himself past exhaustion, trying to prove that walking away from his father’s world had not been a mistake.
Alejandro didn’t seem to remember he had a second son until Xavier made his first millions and the magazines started calling his firm a rising powerhouse.
Even now, the only time he seems to acknowledge my husband is in magazine profiles and business interviews, when Xavier’s success makes the family look good. Here, with no cameras watching, he barely looks at him.
I wish I had left him with a broken arm that day. He and Guinevere are living proof that parenthood is wasted on some people.
I tear my gaze away before the anger in my chest shows on my face.
Near one of the marble pillars, Xavier’s younger sister, élise, stands with her back almost pressed to the stone.
She is dressed entirely in blush pink, from the satin bow pinned at the crown of her pale hair to the delicate tulle sleeves gathered around her wrists. The color should make her look soft. Sweet. Untouched by anything ugly.
Instead, it makes her look like a doll someone placed too close to the edge of a shelf.
Her fingers worry the seam of her clutch, twisting and untwisting the fabric until I wonder how long it will take before she tears it open.
She keeps her gaze fixed on the string quartet, but there is nothing interested about her expression.
Her eyes move too quickly for that, darting from the musicians to the terrace doors, then toward Guinevere before dropping again.
My chest tightens.
She catches me looking and stills, panic flashing across her face before recognition softens it. After a moment, she gives me the smallest wave, barely more than a tremor of her fingers.
I smile gently and lift my glass in silent greeting.
élise doesn’t smile back. Not fully. But some of the panic drains from her shoulders, and the sight makes me want to cross the room and pull her out of this place myself.
But knowing Guinevere, she would rather gouge out her own eyes than let her daughter anywhere near me.
élise and I speak sometimes when she calls Xavier. Brief, careful conversations stolen through the receiver before Guinevere finds a reason to intervene.
That is all she permits.