19. Xavier #2
I caught Cole from behind, hooking my arm around his chest and hauling him backward. He thrashed against me, still reaching for the phone, his elbow catching me hard in the ribs.
"Get off me!" Cole snarled. "That recording is inadmissible—you can't—"
"One-party consent." Sebastian's voice was cold, steady. He adjusted his grip on the phone, holding it out of reach. "New York law. Look it up."
Cole went still in my arms.
"You had no idea you weren't signing the contract your secretary had prepared..."
His own voice, damning him. His own words, recorded legally and completely admissible in court.
The fight drained out of him. I felt it happen—the moment he realized there was no angle to play, no charm to deploy, no escape route left.
I released him. He stumbled forward, catching himself on the back of the chair.
Sebastian stopped the recording.
"Scram, Matthews." His voice was ice. "Get the hell out of my company."
Cole stood frozen for a long moment, his chest heaving, his face cycling through rage and disbelief and something that looked almost like fear.
Then he ran.
Actually ran, his expensive shoes slapping against the marble floor, his carefully constructed composure shattered. I watched through the glass as he sprinted past Kim's desk, past the elevators, disappearing into the stairwell like the building was on fire.
"And Cole?" Sebastian called after him, his voice carrying across the floor. "You'll be hearing from our lawyers."
The stairwell door slammed shut.
Sebastian turned to me.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. I braced myself for the critique, the list of everything I'd done wrong, the ways I'd almost screwed it up, the reminder that I'd caused this mess in the first place.
Instead, his hand landed on my shoulder. Warm. Heavy.
“You did good.”
Three words. That was all. From anyone else, it would have been faint praise.
From Sebastian, it might as well have been a standing ovation. A parade. A bloody knighthood.
My throat went tight. I didn't trust myself to speak, so I just nodded.
He nodded once, squeezed my shoulder, and walked out.
I stood alone in my office, the adrenaline slowly draining from my system. My hands were shaking. My heart was pounding. My ribs ached where Cole's elbow had connected.
But beneath all of it was something else. Something bright and fierce and so unfamiliar it took me a moment to recognize it.
Pride.
Huh. So that's what that felt like.
I'd done it. I'd actually done it.
But there was one more thing I needed to do.
Kim was at her desk, her eyes wide, watching me through the glass. She'd seen Cole flee. She didn't know the details yet, but she knew something had happened. Something big.
I walked out of my office. Crossed the floor in long strides. Didn't stop until I was standing in front of her desk.
"Kim." Her name came out rough. "Hey. I saw him leave. Did it—"
I didn't let her finish.
I reached down, took her face in my hands, and kissed her.
Not a gentle kiss. Not a careful, appropriate-for-the-workplace kiss. HR was going to have a field day with this.
I didn't care.
I kissed her like she was oxygen and I'd been drowning.
Like she was the answer to a question I'd been asking my whole life without knowing it.
Like she was the only thing that mattered in a world that had been trying to fall apart.
Like I wanted everyone on this floor to know exactly what she meant to me.
She made a small sound of surprise against my mouth. Then her hands came up to grip my wrists, and she kissed me back.
When I finally pulled away, we were both breathing hard.
"Xavier," she managed. "What—"
"I want this with you." The words tumbled out, unplanned, unstoppable. "Us. Everything there is to have. A future. A family. All of it." I pressed my forehead to hers, my voice dropping to something raw and honest. "That is, if you'll have me too."
Kim stared at me. Her eyes were bright, shining with something that looked dangerously like tears.
Then she pulled me down and kissed me again.
"Yes," she whispered against my lips. "Yes."
Someone gasped.
I'd forgotten we had an audience.
The entire floor had stopped working. Assistants peered over cubicle walls. Executives had emerged from offices. Even Gerald Morrison stood frozen in the hallway, a stack of papers clutched to his chest, his mouth hanging open.
For a moment, absolute silence.
Then someone started clapping.
It was Janet from accounting, her hands coming together in slow, deliberate applause.
Marcus from legal joined in. Then Patricia from HR, and David from marketing, and suddenly the whole floor was applauding, whooping, a few people actually whistling like we were the final scene of a romantic comedy.
"About damn time!" someone shouted.
"Get a room!" someone else called, but they were laughing.
I looked at Kim. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright with embarrassed delight. She buried her face against my chest, her shoulders shaking with what might have been laughter or mortification or both.
I wrapped my arms around her and grinned at our audience.
“Show's over, people. Back to work.”
Nobody moved. If anything, the applause got louder. Someone, I was pretty sure it was Marcus from legal, wolf-whistled.
I should have been embarrassed. The old Xavier would have played it up, turned it into a performance, deflected with charm.
This Xavier just held Kim tighter and grinned like an idiot.
Some things were worth looking stupid for.
I had Kim in my arms. I had my family's company safe. I had a future that looked nothing like the empty, charming wasteland I'd been wandering through for thirty years.
For the first time in my life, I had everything I wanted. The company was safe. My brother didn't hate me. Kim was in my arms. And somewhere across the city, a five-year-old girl with her mother's eyes was waiting for me to come home.
Home. When had Kim's tiny apartment started feeling like home?
Didn't matter. It did now.
And I was never letting go.