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“What…the fuck…are you doing?”
TWENTY-FOUR
For a moment, the last four weeks disappeared. We’d never gone to Kendal, never gotten involved with his horrible family, never gotten to this point at all.
I could have almost pretended that I was fresh from New York, unpacking, and blissfully ready to start the summer. I could have pretended that Sofia was exploring her bedroom for the first time. Or that maybe a few weeks had passed, and we had finally slipped into a lovely rhythm—breakfast on the terrace before Xavier left for work and Sofia and I went sightseeing, then returning at the end of the day to find Xavier cooking us a delicious dinner while drinking wine and listening to an Arsenal match. We’d play a game or maybe read some books before putting Sofia to bed, and then there was the two of us, often in this room, savoring each other for a few more hours before we went to sleep and started all over again.
My heart yearned for those days. For a few scant weeks, we had really felt like a family, hadn’t we? Or at least on the verge of being one. I would have appreciated them for what they were had I known they would be over so soon.
Xavier slowly took in the scene: the suitcases on the bed, the clothes half in, half out. And then he trailed back to me once more.
“Ces. What’s going on?”
My heart ached.
“Xavi—” I started.
“You’re leaving?” His deep voice cracked with pain, hoarse like he’d been yelling for hours.
“I…” I shook my head. I couldn’t lie. “I was thinking about it.”
“Thinking about it with suitcases.” He shook his head, causing that errant lock to flop forward.
I fought the urge to march over there and tuck it back.
“Christ, were you even going to tell me?” he asked. “Or were you just planning to disappear again with our daughter?”
“Would it even matter?” I mumbled to myself as I folded a white blouse.
“Pardon?”
I looked up, suddenly full of anger all over again. “Isaid, would it even matter?”
His eyes narrowed. “And that means…”
“It means you’ve spent all of five minutes with me or Sofia over the last several weeks. I honestly doubt that if we left, it would make much of a difference to you.”
He worried his jaw for several minutes, hands flexing in and out of fists. But to my surprise, he didn’t shout. Not yet.
“Where have you been?” he asked instead. “I’ve been trying to call you for hours. I went back to Parkvale, but Elsie said you’d asked her and Miriam to take care of Sofia while you ran some errands. Were you just going to leave her there forever?”
“Obviously not,” I returned. “I would have come there eventually. I just—”
“Just decided to leave?” His gaze floated again over the clothes strewn about the bed. “Because, what, we’ve been having a bit of difficulty?”
“It’s been more than a bit of difficulty, Xavi.”
“True. It’s been a fucking lot for me, actually, between my uncle going missing and having multiple strokes, then taking over my family’s business and estate at a moment’s notice. What a joke that I might expect abitof support from my girlfriend, eh? Rather than watching her fuck around with other men and then see it reported in the bloody paper?”
He threw the newspaper he was carrying down onto the bed with a smack against my shoes, where it rolled open, showing a picture of me at the Ortham Ball, clearly visible in my red dress, talking to Adam with a smile on my face.
I barely glanced. His words had already set me off.
“Oh,nowyou’re interested in the headlines,” I said. “Not when they were printing lies about Sofia and me. Not when my own mother gave an interview about how horrible I am. No, when it’syourpride that’s hurt that you finally give a shit, right?”
“I care about all of it!” he insisted.
“What a load of garbage,” I retorted. “You’ve been treating us like accessories in your life when we should be front and center. Especially your daughter! I didn’t bring her here so she could get to know a freaking nanny better than her dad, Xavier!”
