CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Riley
Banging woke me up. It sounded like someone opening and closing drawers as hard as they could. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I rolled out of bed and found my clothes. They smelled of yesterday’s shift, but there was nothing to be done about it. After pulling my pants on and buttoning up my shirt, I followed the noises through the penthouse.
The source of the noise was Xavier. He was in a small room I’d never been in that looked like a home office. He extracted a folder from a filing cabinet, shut the drawer, and turned around. “You’re awake.”
“Yeah.” I smiled and leaned against the door frame. “I think I was way behind on sleep. I don’t usually stay in bed so long.”
He went to the desk in the center of the room and put the folder into his briefcase. “I need to get going.”
The tone of his voice made me stand up straight. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were running late.”
“It’s fine.” He walked across the room, his gaze on the floor. As he passed by me, it was like an arctic chill followed in his wake. Something was very wrong.
In the second it took me to turn around, he was already halfway down the hall. He disappeared in the direction of the living room. I went and got my things, then put on my shoes. I couldn’t have done anything to piss him off. When we’d gone to sleep the night before everything seemed great.
Maybe I was being paranoid, but I couldn’t help but take this sudden turn of Xavier’s mood personally.
He waited at the door for me, his face in his phone.
“I’m ready,” I announced.
He looked at me for the first time that morning, but his face was dead. There was a facade there, a bland and emotionless mask. “Let’s go then.”
On the elevator ride down, I tried to think of something to say. “How did you sleep?”
His lips twitched. “Well.”
“Even though you woke up in the middle of the night?”
He adjusted the lapels of his suit. “I do that often.”
I was trying to get him to throw me a bone. What was he up doing during the night? And why was he now in such a sour mood?
Xavier pulled his phone back out. “Want me to get you an Uber?”
“Um, no. I feel like walking.”
“To Brooklyn?”
“Just for a while, and then I’ll get on the train.”
I didn’t want to say that accepting anything from him in that moment felt wrong. His chilly attitude was already making me feel like I’d imposed by staying the night… even though he was the one who’d asked me to sleep over.
The elevator doors opened, stealing away the rest of our time together. Xavier’s shoes hit the lobby’s floor with quick smacks. I hurried to catch up with him.
“Have a good day,” he said as the doorman opened the door for us. It was the nicest sentence I’d heard from him all morning, but like all the others, it was delivered without feeling.
“You too,” I dumbly said, coming to a halt on the sidewalk.
Xavier kept his eyes on his phone as he walked to his SUV. He didn’t even have to break eye contact with the screen to open his car door because his driver did that for him. I made myself turn and walk in the opposite direction. I was not going to stand around and watch him roll out like I was that lovesick girl in Les Mis.
I pulled my phone out and sent Ann-Marie a text as I walked. On Fridays, she didn’t have to be at her office job till ten, so I gave her my whereabouts and asked to meet up.
Twenty minutes later, I sat in an eastside diner waiting for her. The location we’d picked was a ten-minute walk from her office. I fiddled with the salt shaker and stared out the window. My head was a mess of thoughts and my heart a jumble of emotions. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was getting yanked around. Xavier was playing games with me, even if he was deliberately trying not to.
Ann-Marie blew into the diner with six-inch heels and her best white blouse. I waved her over and watched as she settled herself into the booth across from me. She lightly dabbed at the corner of her mouth. “Did my lipstick smear?” she asked by way of greeting.
“No. You look great.”
“So do you. What color are you wearing? Blowjob nude?”
She grinned, but the joke made something inside me snap. Big tears pushed at my eyeballs, and my chin began to tremble.
Ann-Marie’s eyes went wide. “Jesus. I’m sorry.”
I grabbed a napkin from the silver dispenser and turned my face down so the waitresses and other patrons wouldn’t see me cry. I quickly wiped away the tears and made an attempt to compose myself.
“Oh my God,” Ann-Marie breathed. “You’re already crying over him? Oh, this is bad.”
“I know,” I choked out.
She waved the waitress over. “We’ll both have the cinnamon apple pancakes. Lots of whipped cream.”
“And coffee,” I woefully added.
“Sure thing,” the waitress said, taking our menus and leaving.
Ann-Marie folded her arms on the table and leaned into them. “What did he do?”
“Ugh. That’s just it. I don’t even know. Last night, everything was good. I mean, after the scene at the bakery.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He came to Crumbs just as I was leaving and started asking Dan all these questions. Like, making sure I’m getting the appropriate overtime pay. Stuff like that.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. It was pretty intense. Dan was not happy.”
Ann-Marie tapped her finger against her chin. “I have to say, Xavier sounds like a really protective guy.”
“Yeah.” I lifted a shoulder. “Sometimes. Because he’ll act like that, or he’ll give me some big speech about how I need to be more decisive, and then he’ll disappear. I woke up this morning, and he was acting really weird. He couldn’t even look at me, Ann-Marie. I don’t know what I did.”
She made a disgusted noise. “You might not have done anything. Has it occurred to you that he probably is just dealing with his own shit? You’ve known him, what? Two weeks?”
I sighed as I absorbed her logic. “You’re right.”
“Yeah, I’m right.”
The waitress arrived again, and we fell into silence as she set two cups of coffee down. Ann-Marie bent over to take a drink from hers without lifting the mug. I mixed some creamer into mine and watched the white swirls turn into amber ones.
“How does that Patsy Cline song go?” I asked. “Something about dreams being clouds in my coffee?”
“I thought I was supposed to be the novelist. Don’t get dramatic on me. And it’s not Patsy Cline. It’s Carly Simon… def one of the best songs ever.”
“That’s what this whole thing is like. I have these dreams, these preconceptions...”
“Riley, just do it. Let him go. This relationship has barely begun, and it’s already driving you crazy. Don’t do this to yourself.”
“I know,” I moaned, my head hanging. “This is making me crazy. But I can’t just walk away. I’m too deep.”
“You’re in love with him?”
“I… that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say that I have to know what’s going on. I need to know why he’s acting like this.”
“But you are, aren’t you? You’re falling in love with him.”
I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug and gave it some thought. I’d only been in love once. It was with Jesse, the guy who’d haunted my thoughts for a year after his disappearance. And I’d barely thought of him since meeting Xavier. In fact, all I’d thought about was Xavier. And each time I did that, it felt like I was filling up with helium and floating away into the sky.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I guess I am falling for him.”
Ann-Marie winced like she was in pain.
“Don’t do that. That’s not helping.”
“Sorry,” she said, continuing to wince.
“Maybe we’re spending too much time together, and he needs some space.” Even as I said the words, I knew they weren’t true. We’d spent most of the workweek without talking.
“Or maybe he’s seriously fucked up, and you need to run while you still can.” She lifted her coffee like she was cheering for something and took a sip.
“You encouraged me.”
“Uh, no, I didn’t. I told you to go out and get laid. I didn’t tell you to get involved with some guy who might end up being a serial killer. I saw on True Crime that—”
“I really don’t want to know about anything that happens on True Crime.”
Ann-Marie narrowed her eyes. “They’re all real stories.”
“Hence the name True Crime.”
“You need to watch out for yourself. If you have any bad feelings about Xavier whatsoever, you need to walk away.”
“That’s harsh.”
“He’s not a normal guy, Riley,” she hissed.
“What do you mean by that?”
She shoved her hair back from her face. “I mean, just put yourself in his shoes. You’re a hot, young billionaire. You own a club where you have the chance to meet a hundred new women a night. You’ve never had a serious relationship in your life, and you take a new date to each event you go to.”
“How do you know those last two things?”
She rolled her eyes. “You haven’t googled him?”
“No. You have.”
“Yeah.” She looked at me like poking around for information on the man I was dating was the only logical thing to do. “And if you believe his past, he’s just like what we suspected he was. He gets around.”
The last statement was almost too much. I chomped down on my bottom lip and held it tight between my teeth. The pain kept me grounded and stopped me from crying.
“I’m sorry,” Ann-Marie gently said. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”
I cleared my throat. I was not going to cry in the same diner twice in one morning. “It’s all right. You’re just repeating information.”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Yeah, I know. The problem with that is I don’t know what will hurt me more, staying or leaving.”
Ann-Marie solemnly nodded. “I hear you.”
The pancakes arrived, and we dug in. There was a dark gray cloud surrounding me, blocking any of my chances at getting some sunlight and happiness. Ann-Marie did her best to cheer me up by telling me funny stories about her coworkers, and I actually laughed once. For a few brief moments, everything was okay.
And then I remembered Xavier. I remembered the coldness in his eyes. The hard fear. How similar his look of pain was to that of scared animals. He hid something. Whatever it was, he kept it locked down deep inside of himself. And even if I never spoke to him again, I already knew he’d affected me in a big way.
Like it or not, and positive or negative, I would live with the impact he’d had on me for the rest of my life.