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“Do you?”
He looked so childlike for a moment that I forgot my intent to put space between us and rounded the counter quickly so I could take his hand in mine and squeeze it so he would feel my enthusiasm.
He didn’t squeeze back, though. Not right away. His hand lay limply, its heavy weight dependent on mine to hold it atop his knee. Like he wanted my hand to stay there and keep him functioning. His scent curled back around me like a blanket, but instead of soothing, it set every nerve I had on end.
As if it was responding to the two palms meeting, my heart gave a strong thump.
Eventually, though, I had to let go. I gave his palm a friendly tap on the knuckles, then stepped away. It was like the air was made of molasses.
“I think it’s great,” I repeated. “Is it helpful?”
He watched me for another long second, then sighed. “It’s hard. I don’t like talking about my feelings, and that’s all she ever seems to want to do.”
I stifled a chuckle as I sat down in my own armchair. “Well, isn’t that kind of the point?”
He gave me a dirty look. “Thepointis to be a better man. For you, for Sof. For that little one.” He gestured toward my belly. “For my family.”
Ihatedthe way my heart warmed at the term. No matter how hard I tried to fight, it did seem more and more like that’s what we were. A strange little family, built across an ocean and stacked between floors of this little townhouse. But a family, nonetheless.
“I hope it’s not just because I told you to—”
“It’s not,” he said quickly. “If you must know, I started just after you left England, before Henry died.”
I cocked my head. That was a surprise. “Why then?” I wasn’t so arrogant to believe my sudden fleeing the country was the catalyst for that kind of growth. If anything, it should have stymied it. Right?
He looked up then, his blue eyes sparkling. “You called me a bully, remember?”
“I…” I frowned. I had, but that was months ago now. He was still caught on that?
“I don’t want to be a bully,” he said quietly. “I don’t want my own family to be scared of me, Ces. I don’t want to be likehim.”
I took it he meant his own father. Rupert Parker.
“The way you looked at me that day…and then later, running away…”
When he shrugged, his big shoulders tugging at the material of his shirt. Xavier leaned forward to balance his forearm on his knees. A lock of black hair flopped most charmingly onto his brow again. I had to lean against my hand to stop from pushing his hair back in place and stroking the furrows out of that typically smooth skin.
“I don’t ever want people I care about to look at me like that again,” he said softly. “When I found out you’d gone. That you’d left me in that house withthosepeople, I knew it was because of that, really. I know you saw Imogene kiss me, but you didn’t even want to talk anymore. You’d given up. And after I was done raging—and Ididrage, Ces. Tore my fucking office apart, right along with your bedroom and half the library—after I was finished and I had to look at all the damage I’d done, all I could hear in my stupid head were your words, ringing like a bloody bell.”
I sucked in a breath. It was only too easy to imagine that scene. Although I’d never actually had to watch Xavier unleash his full strength on anything larger than a punching bag—and maybe my brother, come to think of it—I knew he had a penchant for letting his emotions out in violent ways. His office must have been trashed. The bedroom was probably in ribbons.
“I don’t want to be someone who hurts others just because I’m hurting, deep down,” Xavier continued. “It was all I could hear after you left. That in the end, you couldn’t trust me to put your needs above my own impulses. That you believed I’d just keep using you again and again to feel better.”
He shook his head and then swiped his thumbs under his eyes to wipe something out of them.
Tears?
I held my breath. But still had no idea what to say. Or do.
Before I could figure it out, though, the alarm on my phone burst into the air.
I yanked it out of my pocket. “Crap. Time to pick up Sof.”
Xavier just gave me a crooked smile in return. One of his hands rose and hovered near my cheek. But he didn’t touch me. And I didn’t ask.
“Great,” he said. “I’ll start dinner before you’re back.”
“Oh—okay,” I said, wondering if I imagined the other promise hidden behind his words.
