15. Sloane
FIFTEEN
SLOANE
I was walking back toward my room after dinner when a hand clamped around my wrist and pulled me sharply to the side.
I whipped around, expecting Andrew, but it was Xavier.
He had me moving before my brain could process it, hauling me down a side corridor, through an unmarked utility door, into a section of the estate I'd never seen. A staff service hallway, plain and cool and dead quiet.
He finally let go of my wrist.
"What do you think you're doing?" he demanded, his voice dangerously low.
I stood my ground. "I was heading back to my room."
"That isn't what I'm talking about." He stepped closer.
The overhead light was flat and unforgiving. There was nowhere to hide the raw expression on my face.
"Ever since we got here," he went on, his tone hardening, "you've been finding ways to be near me.
Every dinner, you gravitate toward the seat next to mine.
You didn't manage it at breakfast because Eliza took the spot first, but every other meal?
You make damn sure you're sitting right beside me.
You stretch out every conversation. You've been working the seating cards.
" He paused, his gaze burning into me. "You think I haven't noticed? "
My pulse raced, but I forced my hands to stay still. "I didn't realize I was doing it. It wasn't intentional."
"I find that impossible to believe."
"Xavier—"
"You can't tell me every single time was an accident," he interrupted, his voice steady.
The control in his tone cut deeper than shouting would have.
"You kept taking the seat meant for Eliza.
You swapped the place cards. You know what you've been doing.
Why? What are you trying to prove? That you aren't over me?
That you want me back? What's the end game?
Because I need you to be honest with me.
I've spent years in agony because of you, and I have no idea what you want or what I'm supposed to do with the mixed signals you keep throwing at me. "
Something jagged tore loose in me.
I'd boarded this trip with a plan I'd dressed up as moving on: bring Andrew, look radiant and unbothered, and let Xavier see every minute of it.
I told myself it was about pride, about proving I'd healed.
But pride was the kindest word for it. The truth was I couldn't stand for him to see me still in pieces while he stood there whole, so instead of staying at Andrew's side, I kept drifting to his.
"I haven't moved on from you," I admitted, my voice trembling.
He stared at me, his face giving up nothing.
"When I found out you were going to be at Violet's wedding," I confessed, "I let myself believe it was a chance. A sign that things could be different. I know that was delusional. I know you have Eliza."
"You don't deserve a second chance from me," he muttered, his voice cracking.
"You don't even deserve my friendship. You wrecked my heart, Sloane.
You decimated everything I was. And for what?
" He stepped closer, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
"I just wanted to live my life. I wanted to be with Eliza without this gnawing guilt, but you keep carving your way back into my reality, obsessing over things that don't concern you anymore.
Why can't you let me have my life? Why do you insist on disrupting everything I'm trying to build? "
He shook his head, looking worn down to nothing.
"This is what you did before," he accused.
"You blindsided me. You blew up the engagement, you trashed the life we mapped out, and you ended it.
Now I'm trying to build a future with someone else, and you're here doing the same thing.
Disrupting. Shifting the foundations of what I'm trying to construct.
" He searched my face with his brows pinched, his mouth a thin line of pain.
"What did I ever do to you? Was I that terrible?
Why do you seem to hate me so much? What did I ever do to deserve this? "
The tears came before I could stop them.
I hadn't planned to break down, but the dam gave way. I lifted a hand to my face, stunned by the heat of them on my skin.
"Nothing," I sobbed, shaking my head. "You didn't do anything wrong. You were never the villain."
His shoulders slumped a fraction. "Then why?"
He'd suffered so much. From the moment the package arrived and the note got read, through the hollow years after, I'd been so lost in my own misery that I'd forgotten his pain was just as deep.
He hadn't moved on from me either. Neither of us had.
And here I was, turning his life into a backdrop for my own performance, forgetting he was a human being who'd been bleeding the whole time.
"I'm sorry," I choked out. "I'm so sorry for all of it. The only thing I wanted… I needed you to think I was fine. I couldn't stand the thought of you moving on while I was still in pieces, so I tried to look like I'd moved on first. I know how pathetic that is. I know."
He stayed silent, his expression guarded.
"How was it so easy for you?" I asked, my voice barely there. "To move on. To get where you are now. How did you do it?"
His jaw worked, tight and silent.
"That's the consequence of your choices," he said.
"You came to me. You're the one who blew up our engagement.
You ended us. If you didn't actually want to break it off, if it was really the lie you're now claiming, then why'd you do it?
Why did I mean so little to you that you could just toss me away? "
I was still weeping. I wanted to give him the ugly truth. I wanted to scream that my father had threatened to destroy him, to burn down everything he'd built, and I'd been a terrified twenty-one-year-old who believed every word of the ultimatum. I wanted to hand him the context.
But I couldn't bear to tell him. I couldn't bear for him to know how weak I'd been in my father's office, that I'd let Henry control my heart, that I hadn't been strong enough to protect us.
I couldn't stand the thought of Xavier knowing he'd been my entire world and I'd still let my father win.
That brand of shame was one I'd never said out loud, because it sounded like a pathetic excuse.
Standing there in the cold, I could hear how the story would land. I could hear myself saying my father swore he'd destroy you, and I could feel Xavier's dismissal before he even voiced it. I wasn't sure I could survive him not believing that truth.
So I kept my mouth shut.
"If you really have regret," he said, cold, "then you're going to have to live with it. That's your burden, Sloane. You built it."
"You aren't even letting me speak," I countered, wiping my eyes. "You're just barking at me and refusing to give me room to explain."
"You said everything you needed to say years ago," he dismissed, turning away. "You said it all in that note."
"You've been flirting with me too!" I shouted. "The boat, the terrace, the tattoo. You've been doing it every bit as much as I have. Why am I the only one standing here getting burned for it? Why is this suddenly only my fault?"
He went dead still, his lips pressing into a white line. He glanced away, then met my eyes with a chilling clarity.
"You're right," he admitted. "We've both been playing this game. So let's stop. Let's both end it right now." His voice was stripped of its usual composure, harder and more jagged than before.
"I want nothing to do with this anymore.
I came here thinking I was mature enough to call the past buried, to screw the history and just be normal human beings, but what you want is different.
You're playing a different game, Sloane.
And I don't want what you're selling. I want to be free.
I want to build a life, I want to be happy, and every time I get close, you're there pulling the thread loose.
" He stepped into my space. "I'm not going to flirt with you again.
I'm not going to talk to you. I'm going to pretend you don't exist. Because honestly? That's what you deserve."
"I regret everything that happened," I whispered.
"You don't get to just wake up and decide to regret it," he argued. "You're the one who made the destruction happen."
"Then let me explain!" I begged. "You keep insisting there's nothing I can say that changes anything, but you don't know that. You haven't given me a single chance to say it."
"What do you want to explain?" he challenged. "What could you possibly say right now that overwrites the fact that you destroyed us?"
I stared at him.
My hands were balled into fists at my sides, my face still wet, the empty corridor impossibly small.
"What if I told you," I began, my voice unsteady, "that my father threatened to destroy you?"
He froze.
"What?"
"My father told me," I continued, the words spilling out, "that if I didn't end our relationship immediately, he'd burn your whole life to the ground.
Your career. Your clinic. Every door in medicine, slammed shut for good.
He gave me a binary choice. I broke it off, or he ended everything you'd ever built. "
Xavier watched me, his face giving nothing back, his brows level, his mouth shut tight.
I'd spent eight years imagining this moment.
I'd rehearsed it in the shower, in my car, in the dark of my apartment at three in the morning.
Every version ended differently. In some, he believed me and pulled me close.
In others, he walked away. In the worst ones, the ones that woke me up with my heart slamming, he laughed.
He wasn't laughing.
He was standing very still, and his jaw was tight, and his dark eyes had gone somewhere I couldn't follow.
"You expect me to believe that?" he finally asked.
"I'm telling you the truth."
"This isn't a damn movie, Sloane. Your father is a ruthless businessman, not a cinematic villain who torches the career of some no-name resident for dating his daughter. He doesn't operate like that. I didn't even do anything to provoke him."