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Immediately, I deflated. No one? “Come—come on. I thought we were being honest.”
“I am being honest. I’ve never been in love.”
I balked. “Never?”
“Never. And since we’re telling the truth, I don’t even know if I’m capable of it. Love, I mean.”
“What about Lucy?” I pressed. “You were willing to marry her, after all. Didn’t you love her at least a little?”
But again, he just shrugged. “I cared for her. I wanted to do right by her. But love? No, I don’t think so.”
I mulled for a long moment. It didn’t make sense. He was willing to throw his life away for a woman, but he didn’t love her? Not even as a friend?
There it was. The memory I’d always tried to forget, all those years ago. Clearly, he had forgotten the way the early morning light had flowed into his hotel room when we had lain together in the bed, tossed in the white sheets, red-faced from sex and heartsickness.
“You said you loved me,” I whispered, more to myself than to him.
But Xavier heard me anyway. He tipped back the rest of his champagne, then set the glass next to his empty plate with a clink. “I guess I did. I’m sorry for that.”
I reared back as if stung. “You’re sorry?”
His eyes were so dark a blue, they almost seemed black. “Yes. I am sorry.”
“Because, what?” I asked. “Because you didn’t mean it? Because you were just trying to get me into bed?”
“Well, I’d already gotten you into bed, Ces,” he pointed out.
My palm twitched where it lay on my thigh, and I pressed my knuckles into my leg, forcing myself not to slap him. I almost left right then and there. But he kept talking.
“We were young, if you remember. And I liked you, Ces, I really did. Maybe even thought I did love you at the time. But now that I’m older, I know that you can’t feel that after just a few weeks. If you ever feel it at all.”
I remained silent, just stared at him, daring him to say more.
Really, though, I was gobsmacked. Because honestly, he wasn’t wrong. How did we know that we actually loved anyone? Sofia? I loved her without a doubt. Mattie? Kate? The rest of my sisters, my grandmother. Sure. But that was family.
This was something different.
“See, I think we’re all lying when we say it,” Xavier broke through my thoughts.
“Lying.” I repeated it deadpan, hating the taste of it in my mouth. And the way it echoed through my belly. “You think everyone in the world who has ever said ‘I love you’ is lying? All, I don’t know, six billion of us?”
He just shrugged in that carefree way I was starting to loathe. “Maybe not lying, per se. But I don’t know, maybe fooling themselves a bit. Saying what they want to feel instead of what they actually feel?”
I grimaced. “Maybe. Some people do, certainly. But—”
“Most,” he interrupted. “Because real love…it’s supposed to be unconditional, yeah? And whether we want to admit it or not, there’s always something another person can do to ruin things. Even parents will walk away from their children if they fuck up enough.”
I opened my mouth to argue that not all parents were like that. But then, what did I know?
Wasn’t that the same thing my mother had done to me?
“And so,” Xavier concluded, “if that love can be broken, I don’t really think it was love in the first place. Infatuation, maybe. But not love. I’ve only ever known one person I loved that way. My mum. And now she’s dead, so…”
As he trailed off, a shadow swept across his hardened face. I didn’t press, lost as I was in my own thoughts.
It was good to hear him say it. Some mothers left their children, but not all. It was my deepest fear that I’d end up like mine, careless and hurtful to my own blood and soul.
But no, I’d never do that to Sofia. I loved my daughter beyond measure. And I’d protect her at all costs.
