CHAPTER 6
XANDER
“Dammit, Samantha! Wait!”
I was calling out to an empty room. Anger welled up inside me, and I grabbed a glass vase from the coffee table and hurled it against the wall.
I got very little satisfaction this time out of the sound of shattering glass.
“Fuck!”
My dick was back in my pants, but I stood in the middle of the room like an idiot, still trying to figure out what had just occurred.
I’d wanted . . . and I took what had been offered. Strangely, I’d gotten very little satisfaction out of getting off.
Truth was, I wanted to somehow connect with Sam emotionally because I damn well craved it, but I couldn’t. So I’d used the only available means I had to try.
And I’d fucked up majorly.
“Stupid bastard,” I growled, picking up another small glass ornament from the table. I curled my hand around the small, fragile blown-glass guitar that Micah and Tessa had recently purchased for me while they were in town.
I drew my arm back, then put it back down, not wanting to destroy something that had been thoughtfully bought by my family. The gift was one of many of the kind things my sister-in-law had done for me. I might be a prick, but breaking a gift from Tessa and Micah would be crossing the line.
After carefully placing it back on the table, I paced the room to get rid of my nervous energy, still hearing Samantha’s bland statement in my mind.
It was nothing.
She was damn right. It had been nothing. My inability to give anything to her had been one of the most selfish acts I’d ever indulged in. And I’d performed many of them.
Granted, I’d never fallen in love like Micah or Julian, but when I took a woman, I was never a selfish prick. They always meant something to me, even if they weren’t a “forever” type of woman. Somehow, I’d always given a little piece of myself to any woman I’d been intimate with before my parents were killed.
I was no longer capable of giving anything, obviously. I was so fucking afraid of spilling my guts to somebody that I’d held everything inside. Screwing Sam had been a mechanical act at best, and I knew she hadn’t enjoyed it. Hell, she hadn’t had time.
I, on the other hand, had gotten so consumed by the feel of her tight pussy wrapped around my lonely dick that I hadn’t been able to stop. It hadn’t been the orgasm part I’d enjoyed so much. It had been the sensation of feeling someone after being alone for so damn long.
“I heard a crash. Is everything okay?” Sam asked as she came back down the stairs, a concerned look on her face.
Even after what I’d done to her, she still cared about whether or not I was injured? Shit! I didn’t deserve her concern. “No. Everything isn’t okay. I hurt you.”
She moved to my side, fully dressed again in a pair of jeans and a tank top. “It’s not your fault, Xander. I wanted to try it. I guess I’m just not the type of woman who can just do the physical act.”
“You don’t have casual sex, do you?” I asked. She’d been so tight, so warm, and so rigid that I already knew she wasn’t a woman who hopped in and out of bed with different guys.
“Not usually.”
“Not ever,” I guessed. “Why me?”
“Because I’m attracted to you, and I know it’s all you’re capable of right now.”
Her understanding made me even more angry. “Because I’m a drug addict and an alcoholic?”
“No. Because of your state of mind. I know you’re off the drugs and the alcohol, but you still want to escape, and the last thing you want is any emotional attachment to anyone.” She sat down on the couch and drew her legs up into a cross-legged position.
“I can’t,” I answered in a desperate voice. “I don’t have anything to give.”
“You have plenty to give,” she corrected gently. “You just won’t.”
I pounded an angry fist to my chest. “I’m fucking empty. There’s nothing in here anymore. I’m a goddamn shell of the man I used to be. Don’t you get it? I’m barely existing.”
She nodded calmly. “I get it, Xander. I really do. But you have to find a way to push past the pain and deal with reality now.”
“This is my fucking reality,” I bellowed. “My life ceased to exist the day my parents were gunned down by a madman while I watched it happen. I still see their blood and pain every time I close my eyes. I see the two people I loved most in the world completely helpless to a psycho who had no mercy. I’m haunted by the terror in their eyes in that moment that they realized they were going to die. Physically, I survived, but I feel like my body is just a shell. I’m empty.”
Christ! I wanted a drink. I wanted pills. I wanted anything that would stop the approaching pain I could feel coming toward me like a freight train.
Immediately, instinctively, I shut myself down, unwilling and unable to deal with the tidal wave of emotions trying to surge up inside me.
I couldn’t face that right now. I might never be able to handle it.
Then, I saw a single, solitary tear trickling down Sam’s cheek, her eyes glistening with moisture as she listened intently to me.
Her voice was husky and raw as she murmured, “Reality is that your parents are gone, Xander. They loved you, and you loved them. But it’s been several years since they died. I’m not telling you to get over that or forget it. I’m just asking you to let go. Your suffering won’t bring them back.”
“I can’t let go,” I answered, frustrated.
“Why?”
There was that one word that made me crazy . . . again. “Because they wouldn’t be dead if I hadn’t been at their house that day. They’d still be alive, safe.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do,” I growled. Then I blurted out something I’d never been able to share with my brothers. “It’s my fault that they’re gone. They died because that crazy fuck was after me.”
Nobody knew exactly why there had been a break-in at my parents’ house that day. I was the only one alive who knew, and it had haunted me for years, eating me up inside until there was nothing left.
“How do you know that?” she asked softly.
I dropped onto the couch, feeling defeated. “He told me. He shot me first, but only to incapacitate me. The gut shot grounded me, and I had to watch while my parents died. After he delivered a couple of kill shots to Mom and Dad, all he had left was an enormous blade. Every stab of his knife into my body was a statement, and all he talked about was how much he wanted me dead. He wasn’t after my parents. They were innocent victims who were just there at the time. He was after me.”
“He was obviously insane,” Sam said gently as she reached over and ran her palm down my arm. “You can’t blame yourself for the actions of a mentally deranged man.”
I turned my head, my eyes drilling into hers as I asked, “How can I not? If I hadn’t been with my parents, he would have caught me somewhere else. They wouldn’t be gone. I robbed my brothers of both of our parents. You’re right. They loved us, and we loved them back just as much. My brothers didn’t deserve to lose our mother and father just because I was some music superstar that somebody hated and wanted dead. It was the price they paid for me being in the spotlight.”
“Do your brothers blame you?”
“No. They don’t know. The police closed the case. The guy was dead. Nobody knew everything that happened that day or the murderer’s motives. The authorities assumed it was a random home invasion. But it didn’t matter, because the bad guy was killed.” I pulled my arm from her grip, then moved to the opposite side of the couch. I didn’t want her touching me. I didn’t want anybody to touch me. I was like poison, a dirty substance that killed.
“Julian was in the spotlight, too. How would you feel if this had happened to him? What if he had been the one with your parents, and somebody wanted him dead because he was a public figure? Would you have hated him if somebody killed your parents because of his fame?”
I tore my gaze from her empathetic eyes. Nobody had ever asked that question. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t! I told you I fucking don’t know.” Jesus Christ! She was pissing me off.
“Okay,” she agreed so serenely that I wanted to yank my hair out.
I couldn’t help but think about how I’d feel if our positions were reversed and Julian had been at our parents’ house that day and somebody had been gunning for him. Would it have mattered? Would I have blamed him? “I tried to talk Julian into going with me. I shamed him about not seeing our parents,” I confessed. “I almost got him killed, too.”
“He’s alive, Xander. Don’t dwell on something that didn’t happen.”
My fists were clenched and my body was tight. She was probably right. It wasn’t helping for me to think about what could have happened, but sometimes I couldn’t help it.
I saw my parents bloodied and dead over and over again in my mind, and I remembered hoping I’d just die with them. I’d woken up in the hospital angry as hell, and I’d stayed that way ever since.
“Do you think I want to be like this?” I rasped. “Do you think I don’t want to turn back time and change everything that happened? I hate who I am right now, but I can’t go back. I don’t have a time machine to change the fact that my mom and dad died a brutal, early, painful damn death, and it happened because of me.”
“Do you think your parents would have wanted you to feel this way?” Samantha asked patiently. “They loved you. What would they want for you?”
I hated her in that moment because her point drove home. My mother and father would have wanted me to go on. They would have wanted me to live the life they didn’t have. “Yeah, they would have wanted me to live my life. They were proud of my success.”
“Then you could honor them by living your life to the fullest,” she suggested. “Because you aren’t making their lives count right now. What have you done to make sure everybody remembers them? A scholarship fund? A memorial of some kind? A foundation for any of their causes?”
My parents had given to a lot of charities, especially my mother. She’d always put her work behind her money, too, dedicating countless hours to volunteer time.
I was genuinely furious, and I rose off the couch and glared at Samantha. “So you think that’s going to help? Giving away money?”
She shook her head slowly, never moving her gaze from my face. “It won’t help a bit if your heart isn’t into it.”
“I don’t have a goddamn heart,” I told her angrily, then picked up a small lamp from the end table and flung it against the wall. “I don’t care about anything anymore.”
The light crashed against the wall, shattering the glass into pieces. Samantha shook her head and rose from her place on the couch.
“Where are you going? You want me to tell you things, and then you can’t handle who I really am? Do you think there’s somebody good and decent underneath this scarred face?”
“I know there is,” she shot back at me. “But until you’re ready to see him again, I’m not going to sit and watch you self-destruct. Have it your way for now. Throw everything you own against the wall and have a temper tantrum like a two-year-old. It’s not going to change anything.”
“Fuck you!” I yelled after her.
She turned around when she hit the steps. “No, thanks. You already fucked me,” she retorted. “And I’d appreciate it if you sweep up the glass from the floor. I cleaned this area once. I don’t deserve to be forced to clean up after you again.”
I seethed as I watched her swaying hips disappear up the staircase. How dare she fucking tell me what to do? She worked for me. If I wanted to destroy every single thing in the house, I could, and she could just clean it up. That’s what she did. It’s what my brothers were paying her to do. Or rather, what Julian was paying her to do.
What if she cuts herself on the glass trying to sweep it up? What if she gets hurt because of my stupid actions?
That thought hadn’t crossed my mind before, but unfortunately, I was now considering that possibility.
I released the breath I was holding, allowing my body to relax now that Sam had retreated.
Sucking air in and out, I realized how labored my breathing had become, and how close to the edge I’d actually treaded. Not that I’d ever hurt Samantha. Well, not purposely. But she was in a war zone of her own making right now. I needed her to stop pushing, stop questioning things.
Because I know she’s right.
Truthfully, she was making me think, and that was the last thing I really wanted to do.
I looked around the room, thinking about Samantha’s request, then finally hauled my ass over to the broken glass, shaking my head as I cleaned up my mess.