5. Xavier
FIVE
XAVIER
It was a lie.
Every syllable I fed Sloane Ty at that banquet table was false.
My mornings started with the thought of her, and my nights ended the same way.
She haunted crowded rooms, empty hallways, the pauses in other people's conversations.
I thought about her while driving, while eating, while scrubbing in at the clinic, the scalding water running over my hands, my brain fixed on her.
There was no version of my life that didn't have her ghost in it.
She lived in the background of every space I'd walked into since the morning I ripped open that package, read her venomous note, and accepted she was gone.
The last thing she'd ever been was irrelevant.
I'd fed her that lie because the alternative wasn't possible.
I couldn't sit beside her in that stunning room she'd designed and let her see what her absence had done to my life.
I wanted to know what she was carrying, whether she felt any guilt at all, or whether the last eight years had dragged on as hard for her as they had for me.
She'd been glued to her phone since the dinner plates were cleared.
Standing near the edge of the hall, nursing a drink I hadn't tasted, I watched her across the room.
Her head was bowed over her screen, and she was smiling.
It wasn't the brittle mask she'd flashed at me earlier.
This smile was radiant, reaching all the way to her eyes.
Her thumb flew across the screen, her mouth curving into a grin as she shook her head.
Who the hell was she texting?
I glared at the far wall, then the exit, then the sweat on my crystal glass.
I looked back at her anyway.
She was still smiling.
Was there someone else, a man she went home to, someone who called her name in the morning and got to see her sleep-mussed before she put the armor on?
Was she texting him right now? Had she spent eight years in the dark tangled up in another man's arms while I burned mine building a medical empire, hauling around a worn velvet ring box, and telling myself I was moving on?
Whoever he was, he wasn't the best she'd ever had.
I turned away with my jaw set. The jealousy spiking in my chest had nowhere useful to go.
Simon appeared at my shoulder and held out a fresh flute of champagne.
"How was the flight in?"
"Smooth enough." I took the glass.
He nodded. Simon asked questions because he valued the connection, not to fill dead air. He was going to make a hell of a husband for Violet, which was the only metric I cared about.
"Have your parents been in touch?" he ventured. "Have they reached out to Violet about the ceremony?"
I shot him a look.
He was marrying my little sister, wanted her family there to celebrate, and still didn't fully grasp why a reunion was off the table. Violet hadn't burdened him with the details. She'd built a new life elsewhere and deadbolted the door to our childhood home.
"Simon," I started, keeping my tone even. "How long have you known Violet?"
He ran the timeline and confirmed it had been a few solid years.
"And in all that time, has she brought up our parents much?"
He chewed on it. "Honestly? Not often."
"That's a choice." I set my champagne on a passing tray. "They weren't kind to her. They held impossible standards for what a daughter should be, and because she never fit the mold, they broke her down without a shred of remorse. She knows what they are, and she's made peace with the estrangement."
He took the hard truth in silence, a muscle ticking along his jaw.
"I just figured weddings had a way of…" He trailed off, hunting for the word.
"A wedding invitation won't rewrite their personalities," I said.
"If they came, they'd pick apart the flowers, the catering, her dress.
They'd sit front row and measure her joy against some twisted standard of perfection.
Violet knows this. She's known it her whole life.
" I picked my drink back up. "Your one job is to protect her happiness.
And her happiness doesn't live anywhere near our parents. "
He gave a solemn nod, the tension finally draining from his shoulders.
"Message received," he said. "Understood."
We let an easy silence settle. After a while Simon shifted to my clinic's expansion, the Columbus launch specifically, and I gave him the top-line numbers.
He updated me on the publishing firm, the explosive app growth, their aggressive hiring, the digital infrastructure he was engineering for creatives. He was brilliant at his job.
Then Simon rocked back on his heels, his own future already settled, and asked, "You ever think about starting a family?"
I went still.
I'd never mapped out how many kids I wanted, or whether I wanted the responsibility at all.
But the second Simon asked, my brain didn't hand me an abstract, philosophical answer.
It handed me a crystal-clear picture of Sloane.
The whole architecture of my future had organized itself around her without my permission, bypassing the woman I was dating.
Eliza had no maternal pull, and I had no urge to build a family with her.
After our disastrous first night, we'd shelved the physical side for good.
I was fairly sure she outsourced her romance elsewhere, and I didn't care.
Our corporate dynamic was settled: mutual respect, no romantic love, no emotional entanglement.
But it wasn't Eliza's face that surfaced when Simon mentioned a family. It was Sloane's, and the realization hit hard enough that I needed a private minute I couldn't take in the middle of a cocktail hour.
I cleared my throat to shake the image loose. "I guess that depends on the woman I end up with."
Simon flashed an easy smile. "Right. If Violet wants a house full of kids, we'll have them.
If she wants it to be just us, that's fine too.
" He swirled the champagne in his flute.
"I want to marry her because I love her.
Not to secure an heir. Not to hire a live-in nurse.
" His eyes crinkled. "And definitely not to clean my kitchen. "
A startled laugh ripped out of me. "She really is a lucky woman."
"I'm the lucky one."
And he meant it. His gaze was rock-steady, his face free of any performance. Violet had found a man who understood what partnership meant.
I was happy for her, even if that happiness stood shoulder to shoulder with a heavier grief of my own.
The crowd was thinning. Across the floor, Violet was deep in a conversation, her fingers laced with Simon's, their chemistry visible from fifty feet away.
Not long ago I wouldn't have RSVP'd to this dinner.
I'd have mailed an extravagant blender and convinced myself the gesture covered it.
The rift between Violet and me hadn't opened overnight.
It was built from every holiday I missed, every call I sent to voicemail, the selfish years I let slip by while I put my career over my sister.
She never once demanded I fix it. That was the cruelest part of Violet's trauma: she never asked anyone for anything, which made it terrifyingly easy to go years without noticing the debt you owed her.
I'd finally woken up. I watched her fall in love with a man who was becoming her real family, and I understood, with a sick clarity, that I wanted in that inner circle, not as biological trivia but as a chosen protector.
So I started showing up. I put in the work. And the distance between us finally closed.
I worked my way through the lingering guests to tell her goodnight.
She spotted me coming and turned with her arms thrown wide.
"I'm so glad you made it," she mumbled into my jacket.
"There's nowhere else on earth I'd rather be." I wrapped her up and pressed a kiss into her styled hair.
She pulled back, her eyes shining, her chin high. "Go back to your room and get some actual sleep, doctor."
"You too, bride."
She gave my bicep one last squeeze and let go.
As I straightened my jacket, my eyes swept the venue on their own.
Sloane wasn't buried in her screen anymore.
She was deep in conversation with a man in a sharp grey suit.
I didn't recognize him. He stood angled in close to her, and she was looking up into his face with an unguarded smile, the warm one she'd refused to give me.
Her chin tilted up. She talked with her hands, and the man threw his head back laughing.
The rage spiked so hard I felt it in my teeth. I turned for the exit.
Out on the sidewalk, I dragged in the biting night air. It was clean and sobering. While I stood on the pavement waiting for my pulse to drop, my phone vibrated in my pocket.
Eliza.
I swiped to accept.
"You still trapped at the rehearsal dinner?"
"I'm walking out the door right now."
"Did it go well?"
"It did. How are things on your end?"
"Fine. Survived dinner with my parents. I'm putting out a few corporate fires, but my flight's booked for tomorrow." She paused. "I might have to slip into the reception a little late."
"Don't stress the timing. Just travel safe."
"Will do. Goodnight, Xavier."
"Goodnight."
I tapped the red icon, ending the call.
Right behind me, someone cleared their throat.
I turned.
Sloane stood a few feet away on the concrete, a coat draped over her bare arm, wearing a locked-down smile.
"Sneaking out early?"
"I am."
"Same." She fussed with the fabric of her coat, adjusting folds that didn't need it. "We've got a brutal early call time tomorrow."
"The main event."
"Right."
I gave a stiff nod. "You pulled off a brilliant vision in there, by the way. The whole room was stunning."
"I appreciate that."
She studied her coat, then dragged her gaze back up to my face.
"You were right earlier, you know," she said.
I held still, waiting for the trap to spring.
"It's been eight years." Her voice eased. "Carrying this tension around is just stupid. We're both functioning adults. We should move past it. Maybe even try a friendship."