TWENTY-SIX Xander
TWENTY-SIX
Xander
Ishould hit him.
That’s the first thing my body wants.
Seeing Dylan standing in my entrance hall as if he belongs here, every instinct I’ve spent years honing into restraint goes feral all at once. My hands clench hard enough my knuckles ache. My jaw locks so tight I can feel it behind my eyes.
And the worst part?
He looks older. Worn in ways I recognize too easily, which somehow pisses me off more.
“You’ve got about ten seconds,” I say, “to explain why you’re in my house.”
Dylan stares back at me with the exact same blue eyes I’ve spent my entire life trying not to see in mirrors.
“Still dramatic,” he says.
Still stupid enough to poke the bear.
I take a step toward him before I can stop myself.
Gabe moves into my peripheral vision, enough to remind me there are witnesses and consequences and fucking staff somewhere in this house listening to every word.
“You don’t get to walk in here,” I say. “You don’t get to show up after years like none of it happened.”
Dylan’s expression flickers.
Good. Let him feel uncomfortable, for once.
“I know what happened,” he says.
“Oh, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Interesting.” I laugh once. “Because from where I’m standing, you seem real comfortable.”
“That’s not what this is.”
“Then what is it?”
His jaw tightens. “Christ, Xander.”
“No,” I snap. “You don’t get to stand there acting confused about why I don’t trust you.”
Then Gabe says, very carefully, “This isn’t helping. Maybe we should all just talk—”
I turn on him so fast it almost makes my vision blur. “You don’t get to say a thing.”
Gabe doesn’t move.
That’s what makes him different. Most people step back when I get angry. Gabe plants himself harder. He thinks stability is contagious.
Usually, it works.
Right now, it makes me want to throw him through the nearest wall.
“You thought this was a good idea?” I ask.
His expression stays infuriatingly calm. “I wasn’t exactly thinking straight.”
Ugly heat twists behind my ribs, because there it is. The betrayal.
Not Dylan. Him.
Dylan betraying me is old news. Ancient history. Built into the architecture at this point.
Gabe’s different.
Gabe knows exactly where the fractures are because he helped hold me together after everything imploded.
He watched me come apart after Josiah died.
Watched me bury myself alive in work and contracts and silence because it was easier than admitting grief had hollowed me out so badly I barely recognized myself afterward.
And he still did this.
“You went behind my back,” I say.
Gabe’s jaw tightens almost imperceptibly. “I was trying to help.”
“That’s what makes it worse.”
The room goes very still after that.
Dylan drags a hand through his hair. “This isn’t on him.”
I look at him.
Longer hair than the last time I saw him. More tattoos. Thinner, somehow, despite still carrying the same build. There’s exhaustion sitting under his skin.
Good.
He deserves some.
“You don’t get to tell me what this is,” I say.
His mouth flattens. “I came here to talk.”
“You should’ve stayed home.”
“You think that’s what I wanted?” he fires back. “You think I enjoyed any part of the last few years?”
I bark out a laugh. “Oh, that’s rich.”
“I’m serious.”
“And that’s supposed to matter to me?”
Dylan takes a step closer. Gabe shifts, preparing for impact.
Smart man.
“You never let me explain,” Dylan says.
“Explain what?”
His eyes flash. “What actually happened.”
I feel my pulse hammer behind my eyes.
“What happened,” I say carefully, “is you slept with my fiancée.”
Dylan’s face tightens. “It wasn’t like that.”
I almost hit him then, because of the audacity. The sheer unbelievable audacity of standing in my house and trying to reshape memory into something softer than it was.
“It was exactly like that,” I say.
“No.”
“She was wearing my ring.”
“That relationship was dead before I touched it, and you know it.”
The sentence lands cleaner than a punch. For one horrible second, nobody moves, because that’s the part nobody ever says out loud.
The ugly truth underneath the betrayal.
He’s not entirely wrong.
I had already started disappearing by then. Josiah died and everything in my life went gray afterward. I stopped sleeping. Stopped talking unless I had to. Stopped being someone anybody could reach.
But that doesn’t make what he did survivable. It just makes it sadder.
“You think that excuses it?” I ask.
“No,” Dylan says. “I think pretending you were happy before everything blew up is bullshit.”
My vision narrows.
There are moments in your life where you understand exactly how violence happens. Not abstractly. Physically. The split second where grief and humiliation and rage all hit the same nerve and your body mistakes destruction for relief.
This is one of them.
“You don’t get to rewrite my life because you feel guilty now.”
“I’m not trying to rewrite it.”
“Then shut the fuck up about it.”
Dylan goes still.
Behind me, Gabe says my name once. Warning. I ignore him, because I can’t stop now. Not when it’s all sitting here in the open for the first time in years.
“You vanished,” I say to Dylan. “After Josiah died, after the band imploded, after everything fell apart, you disappeared.”
His face hardens. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” I laugh again. “You want fair?”
“I was grieving, too!”
The shout echoes through the entrance hall. Real emotion cracks through him cleanly enough I can see it. Not arrogance or defensiveness. Pain.
“I lost him, too,” Dylan says. “You think you were the only one wrecked after Josiah died? He was my friend, too. Okay, so he wasn’t my bandmate, but I still loved him.”
My chest tightens so violently it might as well be a pulled muscle. I look away first because I can’t breathe.
The silence after is worse than the shouting. Heavy. Raw. Nobody knows where to put themselves inside it.
Then, Julian walks back into the house.
He takes one look at the room and clocks exactly how bad it is.
“Well,” he says carefully, shutting the front door behind him. “This feels healthy.”
Nobody answers.
Julian exhales. “Okay. Great energy in here.”
“Not now,” I snap.
“Actually,” he says calmly, “now seems ideal before one of you says something you can’t take back.”
Too late.
We crossed that line years ago.
Julian looks between Dylan and me, reading the damage in real time. Then at Gabe, whose expression has gone flat in that dangerous way it does when he’s absorbing stress instead of showing it.
Finally, his gaze lands on me. “Sit down.”
I stare at him.
He stares back.
“You’re pacing like you’re about to murder somebody,” he says. “And while I support self-expression creatively, this feels excessive.”
“Julian.”
“Sit.”
I should tell him to go fuck himself.
Instead, somehow, I end up moving toward the kitchen because some exhausted part of me recognizes Julian’s trying to stop this from becoming irreversible.
Dylan follows.
Nobody speaks while we move. The kitchen feels too small for all of us.
Gabe leans against the counter, arms folded. Julian drops onto one of the bar stools, trying to force normalcy into the situation.
Dylan stays standing across from me.
Julian breaks the silence first. “Okay. Ground rules. Nobody throws punches. Nobody storms out for at least five minutes. And nobody says the word ‘betrayal’ like we’re in a network drama.”
I look at him. “You think this is funny?”
“No,” he says seriously. “I think it’s sad.”
That shuts me up.
Dylan rubs a hand over his face. “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” I say.
His eyes flash. “I came because Gabe said maybe—”
I turn toward Gabe again.
Gabe lifts his chin. “I said avoiding each other forever wasn’t sustainable.”
“For who?”
“For any of us.”
I laugh under my breath. “Unbelievable.”
“It’s true.”
“You don’t get to decide what I forgive.”
“I know.”
“Then stop acting like this is a fucking strategy meeting.”
Gabe loses his composure. “This isn’t just business to me.”
“Really?” I ask coldly. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Julian swears softly under his breath as if he can physically see the situation deteriorating.
Dylan steps in before Gabe can respond. “Don’t do that.”
I look at him. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t punish him because you’re angry at me.”
I actually smile then, but not pleasantly. “You don’t get to tell me how to be angry.”
“You’ve been angry for years.”
“And whose fault is that?”
Dylan goes quiet again.
Finally, Julian says softly, “Xander.”
I rub a hand over my mouth. I’m exhausted, tired in the deepest possible way. Tired of grief, of rage, of carrying this thing around that’s been poisoning everything it touches for years.
Dylan sees it happen. “I’m sorry.”
I look at him and all I can see is every version of us layered on top of each other.
Kids in garages. Stages. Fights. Headlines.
Funeral black. The moment I realized he’d slept with her and felt absolutely nothing at first because grief had already burned me hollow enough there was nothing left to hit.
Then later, when it finally landed.
Christ. It nearly killed me.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I say finally.
Dylan swallows once. “I don’t know either.”
Julian leans forward. “Maybe this doesn’t get fixed tonight.”
Nobody argues, because he’s right. There’s too much here. Too much history. Too much damage sitting under every sentence.
Dylan pushes away from the counter. “I’ll go.”
Julian stands. “Probably smart.”
Nobody stops him.
The front door shuts behind him with a heavy, final sound that echoes through the whole house. Silence settles afterward.
Julian exhales first. “Well.”
I turn toward Gabe, who already looks braced for impact. “Why did you bring him here? You had no right.”
“I know.”
I stare at him.
My oldest friend.
The man who helped build this place with me.
The man who somehow managed to betray me while trying to help me in the exact same way only Gabe Stockton could.
“I trusted you,” I say.
“I know,” he says.
The worst part?
He means that, too.