Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
I wokeup to the sound of birds singing, and for a moment, I experienced that disorienting blur of not knowing where I was that had become second nature to me for a while. But then, I heard the slightly higher pitch of the backing trucks down below and the unfamiliar shouts of people calling to one another in French, and I remembered exactly where I was: in my little rented apartment above a coffee shop in Le Marais, deep in the 4th arrondissement.
It had been one lonely week since I arrived in Paris. The first thing I did was lease a fully furnished short-term rental. Otherwise, I had been careful about using the cash from Piya, who insisted on sending more through Western Union. I was too nervous about leaving a paper trail, however, as Xander would’ve presumed I’d enlist the help of my former best friend and monitor her transactions.
The only things I bought were some clothes and a new burner phone, which I used sparingly to call Piya. I was so grateful to my dear friend that it was worth the money.
“I don’t know if I can ever repay you,” I told her, over and over during our now daily chats. “You must think I’m awful.”
“Of course not,” she said, sounding shocked. “I know what it’s like, being forced to play a role that isn’t you. How could I resent you for that?”
She had a point, I supposed. I had forgiven people for so much worse. It was easier to smooth over the faults of others. But it was a lot harder to ignore your own.
It had been so long since I had talked to anyone as a friend. I’d been forced to hold my clients at bay so they wouldn’t peer too closely at the dynamics between myself and the man I’d believed to be my husband, and then Xander?—
No. I didn’t want to think of him yet again. The pain was still so fresh.
I focused on Piya instead, my only outlet during this difficult time, and we made plans to meet up once this ugly business was behind me.
Not that she knew much about said “ugly” business.
She knew there was another man, whose child I was carrying—she even woohoo’d it as she had never cared for Henry—and that I was on the run from the Maxwells. She didn’t press me when I refused to reveal who was the baby’s father, and why I didn’t want to raise the baby with them. For some reason, telling her of Henry’s misdeeds fell easily out of my lips, but telling on Xander felt like a betrayal.
Other than Piya, companionship was scarce in my life, and I was miserable and lonely in the most beautiful place on earth.
The city of Paris was so much like what I remembered, but also so different—everything that was familiar now had a new patina, like seeing a childhood friend who had grown up and developed a new taste in clothes. Now there were cafés that did latte art outside of Notre Dame, and people filming themselves doing dances in front of the ivy-strewn French provincial buildings. The city seemed to care a lot more about what people thought of it and had lost the air of careless remove that had made it feel so romantic and appealing when I was a young girl.
You’re attracted to emotionally unavailable places, as well as men, I thought to myself, although that was no longer quite true.
I’d realized that despite my bad habits, there was so much value in being cherished and cared for and having someone put you first. And it was all because of him.
I wanted that. No, I craved it. Like a scraggly plant in a desert feeling the first kiss of desert rain, I had felt myself come alive after feeling dead inside for years.
I walked down the stairs and unlocked the door that spilled out into a little cobbled alleyway that smelled faintly of trash even though the dumpsters had been emptied the day before and walked around to the front of the café. The owner, a hearty fifty-year-old man who flirted aggressively with all women even though he was married, greeted me by name before turning to start my decaf cappuccino and marzipan-filled croissant, even though I hadn’t even yet asked. “Comment une si belle femme peut-elle avoir un mauvais go?t en café?” he grumbled good naturedly. How can such a beautiful woman have such terrible taste in coffee?
“Désolée,” I mumbled awkwardly, feeling anything but beautiful in my slightly wrinkled Diane von Furstenberg. The French didn’t believe in decaf coffee. There was no excuse for it except the obvious one.
I looked down at my little flats, purchased impulsively at a trendy little shop on one of those congested arcaded walkways. Henry would have hated them—they were hot pink, with little bows. Knowing that pushed me to make the purchase, even though the tasteful vacation clothes reminded me jarringly of the luxury stores that Xander had aboard his own yacht when he’d treated me to whatever I wanted. The pink shoes wouldn’t have bothered him.
No, Xander had always taken me as I was, never seeking to change me. I wasn’t a project to him. I was just the woman he adored.
I had basked in that feeling, even as I was constantly chased by the guilt that our age difference and illicit relationship caused. Still… he had done so much for me in the wake of Henry’s abuse. His father’s cruelty had warped his protective side, and with his feelings all snarled up from that toxic dynamic, I had felt as if he had projected his desire for stability and love onto me.
But he had betrayed me, using my worst fears against me, and his attempt to control me lanced far deeper than anything Henry had ever done because with Xander, I had dared to hope for more.
The second week in Paris was harder than the week prior. For the first time in years, I was free to let sunshine kiss my skin. To walk around without an escort. To leave my small apartment at the drop of a hat. I also had what I’d always wanted—a baby on the way, and I didn’t even have to deal with the controlling father.
In theory, I should be glowing.
But you wouldn’t think so looking at me.
I stared at my reflection in the small mirror above my bathroom sink and shuddered. I looked worse than when Xander had found me in Henry’s clutches. My eyes were sunken, my hair looked brittle, and my skin was grayish despite catching tons of sunlight.
The vibrancy in my personality that I’d rediscovered after Xander’s return had also magically vanished. A piece of me had been ripped away, leaving behind only a raw, gaping wound that would never fully heal. It was as if the moment I left him, I also left behind the part of me that was alive, taking with me only what was dead inside.
I imitated a walking corpse.
I resembled the person I became the day Xander left, the day when I supposedly got married.
The day after my “wedding,” I fell into a deep depression and didn’t even want to go on a honeymoon. For months afterward, I walked around without direction, going through the motions.
All along, I thought it was Henry’s vileness sucking the life out of me. Ironically, it was never Henry at all. Not being with Xander was what had almost killed me the first time, and this time, I was sure it would obliterate me entirely.
Last time, I didn’t know what it was like to wake up in his arms; I only knew him as Xander, my friend.
This time, I was forced to admit that only two weeks away from him was enough to drain the life from me; I constantly felt dead inside. The only thing keeping me going was my baby.
Because I was immensely, full-heartedly, irrevocably in love with Xander, a man who threatened to institutionalize me, a man who threatened to lock me up in hell.
What was worse? Living a life without the man I loved or risking institutionalization every time I didn’t do as he commanded? Perhaps I would”ve taken the risk if there weren’t a baby involved.
I had no plan to speak of, but at some point, I had to regain clients and rebuild a new life for myself and my baby. I assumed Xander would eventually give up searching for me. After all, a professional NHL player didn’t have the luxury to travel internationally searching for their ex-girlfriend.
Nonetheless, I spent my limited budget on a laptop to stream his games. After each goal, he’d make the same gesture for the camera, the one he’d done when I went to his game, to signal that the goal was dedicated to me.
The strain this separation was having on him was evident even through a computer screen. He was playing rougher than before, earning just as many penalties as goals and getting into fights that left the ice streaked with blood, almost as if punishing himself for the loss of what could’ve been between us.
It seemed he was far from forgetting me, and the pain in his eyes very closely reflected my own. I was constantly terrified about the extremes he seemed to be driving himself toward.
Amid my anger and hurt, a deep sadness for him washed over me, drowning me in a sea of despair. Seeing him destroying himself slowly was agony. My heart shattered into a million pieces all over again, each one throbbing with the unbearable weight of missing him.
During one of our calls, I asked Piya what it was like to love her husband, Zane. She said, and I quote, “Painful, because sometimes he makes it impossible to love him, but it’s much more painful to live without him.”
That was precisely how I felt. Loving Xander was painful, it was fucking crushing me from the inside.
I couldn’t live with him.
But I certainly couldn’t live without him, either.
My very being had been shattered, like a delicate glass vase that had been smashed into countless pieces. My heart had been torn into two: the piece of me that wanted to live free with my baby, the other part of me that existed only with Xander.
A few men from my apartment building had asked me out to dinner, offering to take away the emptiness that was consuming my daily thoughts and threatening to swallow me whole. But the idea of any of them touching me made me physically ill—and not just because I was pregnant.
I found no pleasure in others or their company. When people tried to befriend me at the local café, I found myself keeping my distance.
Life without Xander had turned into an excruciating ordeal. I woke up every morning searching for him, only for my heart to sink when reality would settle in. The only thing I’d have to look forward to for the day was the cold emptiness of a future without him. It was a cruel fate, robbed of true love and dreams.
But the nights were worse, filled with silence and coldness. When I climbed into bed, the very thought of never feeling the warmth of his arms or experiencing the pleasure he could give me was suffocating, a loss that I hadn’t begun to process. I’d lay awake in bed, imagining the weight of his body pressing against mine, only to feel his absence instead. The loneliness of it was like a physical weight crushing my chest.
Setting the table for one had become more depressing than it had been while “married” to Henry because I hadn’t particularly cared for his company. Knowing who could be sitting across from me made me want to break down on the floor.
I had no idea it was possible to miss someone to the point of pain.
Then, a horrifying thought occurred to me—I would always feel this way without Xander. Because the void I had felt when he left only stopped after he returned to my life.
After another depressing week, my mind was plagued with thoughts of Xander more than ever. As I lifelessly started my daily routine, I absentmindedly glanced at my phone. My eyes widened when they landed on the date on the screen.
Today was Xander’s birthday.
The last of my resolve broke like a floodgate. I couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to talk to him today, even if it was to wish him a measly happy birthday.
That wasn’t so bad, was it? It was his birthday, after all.
Unable to resist, I logged into my social media accounts, which I had avoided for weeks. I needed some sort of connection with him today…
And that was when I saw it. My inboxes were flooded with messages from Xander.
There wasn’t one day he hadn’t tried to reach me.
Correction.
He hadn’t gone an hour without messaging me on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
Like a sap, I read through the Instagram messages first. I thought they’d be filled with threats about locking me up in an institution for good if I didn’t come home.
Instead… they were apologies.
Hundreds of apology texts, and not the half-assed version Henry used to throw my way. Real apologies.
I’m sorry, baby.
I never understood how much I hurt you.
I turned into Henry, into everything I hated. Why? Why did I do that, Jordan?
I was so worried about you leaving me that it didn’t even occur to me that you might not if I simply made you happy. How could I have made such a big mistake?
And now that you’re gone, everything feels dark in my life.
I want to be a better man for you because I’m nothing without you.
I tore up the conservatorship application and testified that you no longer need supervision.
I blinked at the last message, hardly believing it was possible. It was followed by screenshots of him redacting his application and a document stating the end of the conservatorship altogether.
You’re free, Jordan. And as a free woman, choose me because you want to, not because I’m making you.
I leaned back against the uncomfortable, wooden desk chair that came with the apartment. I couldn’t believe it. It was what I had always wanted.
I was free—finally free—and ironically, the only person I wanted to celebrate with was Xander.
I kept reading.
I only show up to my games anymore because I’m hoping you’re watching them.
Did you watch the game last night, Jordan? That goal was for you, baby. The whole game was for you.
I can’t live without you, baby. Please respond to me.
Please, jailbird. Come back to me. Nothing is okay without you.
And then there was his very last message that’d be seared into my mind forever.
I’ll love you forever. I’ll wait for you forever.
At the sight of those words, I felt a few shattered pieces of my heart slot back into place, piercing me anew with an aching sweetness.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I took a deep breath and sent him a message, typing it out with fingertips that were already going numb at my daring. I knew I shouldn’t tempt fate, but I just couldn’t help myself.
Happy Birthday!