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Twenty-Six: Wow
Xochitl
Xochitl had barely recovered from Vannah’s text telling her Lex had unblocked her and that she should reach out to him when she’d gotten the call from her begging her to answer if he called her. So, once off the call from Vannah and he did call a few minutes later, she almost hadn’t answered but she did. Now she lay there in bed sobbing, wishing she hadn’t. Hearing his voice was as bad as seeing him on campus the only day she had since their breakup. It only confirmed she’d made the right decision to drop the classes she had and make the arrangements so she could move back home. As if she hadn’t had enough hard decisions to make in the past several weeks, she now had an even bigger one she had to make. It’s why she hadn’t taken Vannah up on her suggestion to reach out to Lex. She needed to wait until after she spoke with her mom. But damn it, she’d given into answering Vannah’s second call after reading her urgent text.
All her packing efforts had taken a dump and she’d been back to lying in bed sobbing as soon as she’d gotten off the phone with Lex. Only good thing about how hard she cried, was that it eventually knocked her out each time. It took a second for her to realize the banging she was hearing wasn’t in her dream. She sat up for a second. When it stopped, she’d just begun to lie back down, and it started up again. “Soch! Open the door!”
Her heart nearly stopped when she realized it was Lex’s voice she was hearing. Fumbling out of bed, she made a beeline to the bathroom before heading to the front door, because even if he was here just to tell her off again, or pick up more of his stuff, she still wanted to looksomewhatpresentable. “Xochitl! I know you’re in there. I saw your car out in the parking lot.”
She rinsed her mouth out, before rushing through the front room. “I’m coming,” she managed to say without her voice breaking.
The moment she opened the door and saw him, she brought her hands over her mouth and fell apart. His big arms were instantly embracing her and kissing her forehead. “I’m sorry.” She shook her head dismissing his apology, even though she still couldn’t speak. “I’m sorry I’ve been so hard on you. I just . . .” He pulled away, cradling her face, and searched her eyes in that intense way he always had. “I told you. Knowing you were keeping things from me was worse than what you kept from me.” She nodded, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, and for the millionth time since this all happened, felt like a complete idiot. “Xochitl, you haveto understand, as insane as my life is right now, you’re the one perfect thing about it. The last thing I need to worry about is the only perfect thing in my life letting me down, and you’d already promised before—”
“I know.” She nodded with even more conviction before having to hear it again and feel even stupider. “I should’ve known I’d manage to ruin the most perfect thingI’veever had in my life. I should’ve known it was too good to be true.”
The empathy she’d seen in his eyes just moments ago seemed to wane as he pulled away and tilted his head, peering at her in question. “Vannah said you have a decision you need to make.” As soon as her eyes widened in surprise to the comment, so did his, but his expression also darkened. “What is it?”
She shook her head. “It’s something I’d like to discuss with my mom before I do anything.”
He stared at her even harder as he took a step back. “You need to discuss this with your mom?” She nodded, praying he wouldn’t press on about it. “Is that why you told Vannah you were waiting until after this weekend to reach out to me?”
Swallowing hard, she nodded again, wiping away her still lingering tears, though the knot in her throat threatened to give again. “I always discuss any big decisions I make with her first. I’ll be talking to both her and my dad when they get back on Monday.”
“Like when you were so torn about breaking shit off with Cade because even though you didn’t feel everything you should for him, everything you were feeling forme.” He jabbed his thumb at his chest sharply, his voice going up a notch. “He’sthe safe bet?”
Xochitl shook her head because this was coming out of nowhere. But she switched to nodding, because regardless of it coming out of left field, he was right. “Yes, because—”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” His booming voice was reminiscent of that awful day he’d been so furious with her, and it made her flinch. “You’re running back to Cade?”
“What?”
“You just told me you loved me on the phone, Eztli.”
“Ido,” she said utterly confused, even if for some stupid reason hearing him refer to her by her last name overwhelmed her with emotion, and she barely got her next words out. “But you hate me now.”
His eyes went even wider. “You really believe thatbullshit? That afteryearsof being completely bewitched by you, because I know it’s been years now,not just the months we finally got together, that I could really hate you? I think you know me well enough now to know there’s no fucking way that’s true. Well enough to know that if you did go back to Cade now, there’d be no chance in hell for things to ever work between you and me. And you’re seriously considering it?”
“I thought therewasno chance in hell already—”
“Un-fucking-believable!” He spun around, running his hands through his hair, and it had Xochitl squeezing her eyes shut because she suddenly understood what he was so angry about. “Well, at least you didn’t keepthisshit from me.” He turned around to face her again. “I mean if I hadn’t come down here like a fucking idiot, you probably would—”
“Is that really the only reason why you’re here?” The overwhelming hurt she’d felt all this time since he’d broken things off, morphed into anger now, and she welcomed it. Because she needed the annoyance—the impatience—she knew now had always given her strength. And if she ever needed strength, it was right at that moment. “Just three days before all this happened, you said you were in love with me and then said it again every chance you got after.”
“Because I was—I am, damn it!”
“Really? Is that why I never even got the chance to explain myself?”
He searched her eyes the way he always had as if he couldn’t understand why she was suddenly so mad. “I was livid.”
“Understandably so.Thatday,” she shot back. “But then you cut me off completely. When you finally got the chance to explain yourself about the night of the wedding, you said you would’ve heard me out no matter how mad you were, and we weren’t even a couple then. Now that you’re in love with me you block me from your life without giving me the chance to so much as plead my case? I get that I lied one time too many and that you thought I told him your family secrets—?
“I never even cared about that, okay? Like tonight I would’ve eventually—”
“He did get the stories from me.”
His brows furrowed instantly, but he shook his head. “You couldn’t have known my family had a beef with him or that he’d be an asshole about it and take it to the press. It’s why I said I never cared about that.”
Hearing him say he didn’t even care that she’d been the reason his family had gone through so much swelled her heart, and the anger she’d begun to feel lessened.
