Chapter Twenty-Two
Xavier
I hated to take this trek to the twentieth floor of this office building, but this was a long overdue conversation that needed to happen. I’d just completed my workout with Jason and told him what my plans were. After we had cleared the air, I knew I needed to speak with his and Chanel’s father. So now, here I was, breezing through the glass doors of the outer offices of the law firm of Combs & Combs.
“How can I help you, sir?” the perky receptionist asked as I came inches away from her desk. She must’ve been new, as I’d never seen her before. I’d been in this office plenty of times.
“I’m here to meet with Elliott. Just tell him Xavier’s here to see him.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
I raised an eyebrow. “He’ll know what this is about,” I answered. She must’ve picked up on my tone, because instead of further questioning me, she picked up the phone.
“Mr. Combs, there’s an Xavier…I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your last name.” She looked to me, covering the bottom of the phone with her free hand. “Wha—? Oh yes, right away sir.” She hung up before I could respond to her previous prompt.
“You can go right in,” she smiled. “His office—”
“I know which one it is.” I gave her a nod and rounded her desk, heading down the long hallway, passing door after door of offices all ending with the title “Esq”. At the end of the hallways, the door on the right leading to the largest corner office was open. Out of courtesy, I knocked on the door lightly. Elliott’s head turned from the computer on his desk.
“Xavier,” he greeted, standing, buttoning his suit jacket. “Come in.”
I entered. Having already been familiar with Elliott’s office, I came in and sat in the chair in front of his desk, making myself comfortable.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Elliott stated, retaking his seat. He was always serious while in the office, and I’d expected nothing different when I decided to come to that day.
“I guess you have a lot of questions. What happened between your mother and me—”
He paused when I held my hand up. “Is none of my business,” I stated. “My mother gave me her version of what happened. And, well, as long as you respect her from here on out, I don’t have anything to do with that.” That was the honest to God’s truth. What happened between my mother and Elliott was between them. She’d moved on, having dated a few different men since then, and he obviously had too.
“So, you’re here to talk about my daughter.”
I nodded.
“I knew this day was inevitable the night I saw you two at dinner together at our house.”
So did I. I’d seen the sidelong glances Elliott tossed our way, concern etched on his face. Even after I’d discovered the truth about him and my mother, I knew that wasn’t his only concern.
“As did I,” I finally said.
His eyelids rose a fraction of an inch.
“You were always perceptive. Great instincts,” he added. “What’re your instincts telling you now?” He sat up, hands tented as they rested on his desk, his complete attention on me.
“They’re telling me you don’t trust me. Not with your daughter, which is odd, since you’ve never been anything but a mentor to me in the past.”
He nodded, lips slightly poked out, contemplative. “You’re right; I haven’t. I’d always had great respect and even love for you, Xavier. I saw how you hustled as youngster and how loyal a friend you were to my son. All qualities any man of my position would admire. But I also saw how you were with women. It reminded me of—”
“You?”
Unreservedly, Elliott nodded. At least he wasn’t going to deny it.
“Yeah, me. Not as bad as me, per se, but still. You can see why that’s a problem for me, right?”
“Not really. It doesn’t seem as if you’ve had too much interest in your daughter over the years. Why would my dating her now be of any concern?” It was a bold question to ask a man in his office—especially a man like Elliott Combs. And considering he was also the father of my best friend and a business mentor, it made my statements even bolder but I held firm. Since I was there, nothing was off-limits. I saw the hurt in Chanel’s eyes whenever her father was brought up, and as I sat in that chair across from the man who’d caused that hurt, I realized it pissed me off. I knew I had no right to step in between the relationship between a man and his daughter, but shit, Chanel was under my skin. Each day she grew more and more mine, and the thought of anyone hurting her didn’t sit well with me. At all.
Elliott’s eyes flared. His face had tightened before the unbothered mask attempted to make its reappearance, but his eyes still gave away his anger. “That’s a fair question,” he conceded, to my surprise. He remained quiet for a long while, analyzing me.
I sat back in the chair, folding my leg over my knee.
“I was a terrible husband to my first wife. I’m sure you know that.” His voice was somber, laced with regret. “But I was an even worse father to Chanel. With Jay, it was easy, my fatherly instincts and love came naturally.” He paused. “With Chanel, it was different.
“I haven’t done right by her in the past. And I...I just want to make sure you’re going to do right by her. However this thing between you two turns out.”
I didn’t know why his words caused my temper to spike. My nostrils flared and I tented my fingers in front of me, studying him for a long moment. Despite my anger, I could tell it was hard for him to admit the type of father he’d been to Chanel.
“You’re asking how serious I am about her?”
He nodded.
“And I want to know how serious you are about her?” This time I uncrossed my legs. “I’m very serious about Chanel and have no intentions of hurting her, now or ever. Can you say the same?”
He sat back in his chair, eyes on me, lips pulled in.
He nodded. “Touché. But I’m not the same man I was while Chanel was growing up.”
It was my turn to stare. I knew Elliott’s ho-like proclivities had seemed to fall by the wayside in recent years, since he’d gotten with Marjorie.
“I’ve been making an effort to get to know her, asking Marjorie to make sure she comes to our monthly family dinners. Getting Jason to pressure her about joining the firm.”
I raised an eyebrow at that. “Have you tried, you know, actually talking to her? I hear that works wonders.” I’d tried to stem the sarcasm in my voice, but failed.
He gave a humorless chuckle. “Youngin’s got jokes.”
I smirked.
“I’m working on it.”
“My advice?” I stood, ready to leave. “Don’t let your pride get in the way of knowing your daughter. In my experience, she uh, can be a little prickly in the beginning, but she’s worth it.”
Elliott stood, giving me a look. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
I held out my hand for his to shake. He paused and gave me a look when I held onto his hand, squeezing when he tried to remove it.
I looked him square in the eye, so he knew how serious I was. “With all due respect, Elliott, you might be Chanel’s father, but she’s my woman. And I don’t let anyone—family, friend, or foe—hurt the people I care about.”
He stared at me. My eyes remained unflinching on his. “I’ll take that under advisement as well,” he finally said.
“See that you do.” I released his hand and made my exit. I said everything I’d come to say.
****
Chanel
“Why’d you and your fiancé break up?”
“Shit!” I yelped as I sliced through the skin of my pointer finger. Bright red blood squirted onto the white marble cutting board I’d been using to cut the onion and green and yellow peppers for stir fry.
“Damn,” Xavier cursed, grabbing my injured hand and guiding me toward the sink to wash the blood off. “Hold it there for a second. Don’t move.”
“It’s fine. I—”
“Don’t move,” he ordered in a way that froze my hand right where it was. I grimaced as the initial shock of the cut started to wear off, and the actual pain increased. Even with the pain, I was grateful for the distraction it created from Xavier’s question just seconds before.
“Here, lemme see.” He didn’t wait for me to show my finger, turning off the water and inspecting my finger. He’d come back with a small first aid kit and a clean dish towel.
“No,” I protested, attempting to pull back my hand. “You’re going to get blood on your dish towel.”
He gave me an are you fucking serious? look, keeping my hand in his grasp and applying the towel to stop the bleeding. I swallowed the lump in my throat at seeing the look of concern on his face. I’d become familiar with that look the night of Anne Marie and her son’s murders and the weeks following. It felt good to know someone cared so much for my well-being.
Too good.
“It’s not that deep.” He removed the towel, inspecting the cut. “Bleeding stopped so you won’t need stitches. I’m going to put some ointment on it and a Band-Aid to keep it from getting infected. Does it hurt?”
He seemed so clinical, as if he was a physician addressing a patient. His eyes never even left my finger as he ensured the bleeding had ceased.
“No. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, but it’ll heal up soon.”
I rolled my eyes. I swear, he treated me with kid gloves so often. As if I was a porcelain doll that would break if touched too hard. I hated and loved that treatment at the same time.
“It’s just a little cut, Xavier. How’d you get so good at treating wounds anyway?” I asked as he finished bandaging my little ol’ cut and picked up the discarded wrappers to throw away.
He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’ve owned and operated more than twenty-something restaurants for close to fifteen years now. I’ve seen my fair share of knife injuries. Once I had to hold an employee’s hand as his finger was damn near dangling off to stem the blood flow as another employee drove us to the hospital.” He shook his head.
“How was he?” I asked, picking up the glass of red wine I’d been sipping on.
“Doctors were able to save his finger. He still works for me. That was seven years ago. He was a trainee at the time,” he added cavalierly. “How about you sit your ass over there while I finish doing the cooking. We don’t need any more blood in our dinner.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” I replied sarcastically, but grabbed my wine and went to the center counter in his kitchen to happily sit my ass down. Cooking was not my forte. Not that I didn’t know how; I just didn’t prefer to do it.
“Now, back to the question that almost caused you to lose a finger.” His eyes glided up from the second cutting board he’d taken out to finish cutting the vegetables.
I took a sip of wine as a lump began forming in my throat. “What question was that?” I feigned innocence, keeping my eyes on his strong hands as he moved on to cut and devein the raw shrimp. I couldn’t help but marvel at the strength of his hands. They moved quickly, looking effortless as they wielded the knife, slicing through the shrimp back, plucking out the vein, discarding it to the side and moving on to the next. While I could never get enough of marveling at his lips, his hands were moving up in the long list of my favorite parts of Xavier’s body. Well, those and the long, thick anatomy that rested in between his…
“Chanel,” he called, and my eyes shot back to his face.
“What were you saying?” I murmured, pulling another sip of wine from my glass.
“Your fiancé. Why’d you break up?”
“Oh, right, um…” My leg began to bounce against my seat. I shrugged in an attempt to play coy. “I’m surprised you even remember that.”
“Remember it?” He set the knife down. “I was at the engagement party, remember?”
I closed my eyes, remembering the night of the engagement party. And the bruises I’d earned that night when my fiancé grew irate because he saw Xavier talking to me out on the rooftop. Not just talking to me, but congratulating me for graduating law school, acknowledging my accomplishment, when Ethan and my father belittled it. Looking back at Xavier, I swallowed down the bitterness of that memory.
“It just didn’t work out.” I hoped he’d accept that flimsy answer.
“Why not?”
No such luck.
“Uh, he wanted me to be a stay-at-home wife, and I didn’t want that.” It was a half-truth. No, that was a lie that was a quarter truth, but I wasn’t up for discussing the real reason I’d left—no, fled—Ethan. Gabby was the only person who knew the dark secret of my relationship with Ethan, and even she didn’t know the whole story.
Xavier eyed me. “So, he wanted to get married and have kids right away? And he didn’t want you to work?” He frowned.
“It was tradition in his family that women didn’t work. The men in his family took pride in that.”
“And you didn’t want that?”
“I’d wanted to be a lawyer since I was five years old. I’ve told you how I had to defy my father’s wishes just to be able to afford law school, although he had more than enough to pay for me to go ten times over.” I had to swallow the bitterness of that memory as well—that one actually stung more. Probably because, unlike Ethan, my father had never acknowledged it or apologized. “I wasn’t about to give up my dream in order to become a wife and get pregnant at twenty-five and settle down into Susie Homemaker.”
Xavier ran his tongue along his bottom lip before pulling it in between his teeth. “Hmm,” was all he said, before turning to the stove.
I didn’t want to ask what that was about, because I didn’t want any more questions about my past relationships. So, I decided to turn the tables on him.
“And what about you?”
“What about me?” he questioned as he dropped the vegetables into the butter sauce he’d already added the shrimp to. Turning down the temperature, he turned and looked at me, hip resting against the back counter.
“What about your past relationships? Ever been engaged? An ex-wife…or current wife…running around somewhere?”
The sound of his laughter floated to my ears and warmed me from the inside out.
“A wife?”
I shrugged. “You never know. I’ve had clients who kept their spouses a secret from the rest of the world.”
“I bet, but nah. No secret wife you have to worry about popping up. No engagements either.”
“Heartbreaks?”
“What?”
“You ever had your heartbroken?”
He gave a manly chuckle. “That sounds corny as shit. ‘Have I ever had my heartbroken.’”
I rolled my eyes.
“So, you’ve never been in love? As many women as you’ve dated?” Shit. I wanted to slap my hand over my mouth after that comment. I never wanted to reveal I was aware of Xavier’s reputation. I didn’t want to come across as the jealous type. Yeah, I had a plethora of trust issues, but he didn’t need to know that.
“Yeah, I’ve dated, hung out with, and fucked plenty of women, but relationships? I can count on one hand, and heartbreak?” His eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “Just once.”
I propped my elbow on the counter, making a fist and resting my face on it, ready to hear this. “Do tell.”
“My college girlfriend. We dated all four years, having met the first weekend of orientation.”
I pulled my lips in, biting down on the inside of my lip, trying to tamp down on the bite of jealousy his confession elicited.
“It was great for four years, but I was busy. I was taking classes, working and building my businesses at the same time. By the middle of our senior year, we barely saw each other. I started hearing rumors here and there that she was stepping out. Of course, I asked her about it. Rule number one—”
“Don’t have me out here looking stupid,” I said at the same time he did.
“Exactly. If she wasn’t feeling me anymore or willing to ride out the stressful times, she needed just to tell me. But I’ll be damned if I needed to hear from someone else what the fuck my girl was doing with another nigga.”
I nodded. I knew the humiliation of having friends or family tell you what your significant other was doing behind your back. I’d heard rumors about my so-called best friend and first boyfriend, but ignored them because I never thought it could be true.
“So…” I prodded.
“One night, I went to this party. I’d finally had a free night and wanted to hang with my girl, but she said she was going to visit her parents back home. I thought, cool, I’ll hang with my boys. We go to the party, and it’s fun or whatever. I’m dancing, enjoying the vibe, but had to go to the bathroom. On my way back, I hear a familiar voice coming from one of the bedrooms, moaning. I knew who it was. I knew that moan, had heard it before. I bust through the door—they hadn’t even bothered to lock it. I see her with a dude I’d thought was a friend of mine, ass out, fucking my girl. Raw.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. I hated cheaters almost as much as I hated abusers.
“What happened?”
He shrugged, turning back to the skillet on the stove. “The usual. I beat his ass and told her she could fall off a damn cliff. She tried for weeks to get back with me, but I wasn’t having it. I finally stopped hearing from her months later, after we graduated.”
“And your former friend?”
“After that ass-whooping, he knew to give me a wide berth whenever we were around each other. After graduation, I never saw him again either.”
“Damn,” I said, taking the last sip of my wine. “So wait, that was your last relationship?”
“Nah, but it was my longest.”
“And your most significant, I bet.”
He scrunched his face at me. “Why you say that?”
I laughed. “It was, wasn’t it.”
His head tilted as he pondered. He gave a slight nod. “I guess you could say that. I never got as deep with the other women I was involved with as my first girlfriend.”
I nodded, snickering. “Typical.”
“What was that?” He turned his ear to me, cupping it as if he needed to hear me better.
“I said, typical,” I iterated.
“What the hell that mean?”
I giggled more at his offended tone. “I mean, men often do that. Get hurt once, and then keep their emotional distance from every woman moving forward. But let a woman do the same, and we’re called bitter.”
“Really.” He raised a challenging eyebrow.
“Really.”
“Yet if I recall correctly, it was your ass who’d been doing the damn running between us.”
He had me there, but I wasn’t giving in so easily. “I was just cautious.”
“Whatever, ain’t nobody calling women bitter for being hurt.”
“Tuh, are you serious now?”
He gave me an incredulous look.
“The same thing happened to me with my college boyfriend. I told you about it. My then-best friend not only fucked my boyfriend, but got pregnant by him. Of course, I was devastated. But I lost count of how many times I heard, ‘don’t become bitter now’ or ‘all men aren’t like that’ whenever I said I wasn’t ready to date again. I had to go to law school across the country in D.C. just to escape everyone looking at me as if I’d done something wrong to make him cheat on me.”
“Okay,” he said after a while, beginning to plate our food.
I don’t even want to think of the number of times I’d heard my father pull the “bitter” card on my mom whenever she would rail against his cheating. Even still, she would take the time to remind me not to become bitter like she was, as if she hadn’t had a legitimate reason to feel the way she did.
“You might have a point,” he conceded. “Let’s eat in the dining room,” he gestured toward the area.
I obliged, following him to the room off from the kitchen that housed the long, black modern-style dining room table and chairs.
“I might have a point?” I continued as we sat down.
“That’s what I said.”
“I’ve only been a woman for thirty years, but I might have a point.” I scoffed.
“Whatever. You know more about being a woman, yes. I won’t argue, but don’t downplay shit men go through.”
“I wasn’t,” I countered. “I’m just saying, men and women both hold onto hurt from past relationships, but it seems more acceptable for men than women. How many rap songs do men scream ‘fuck these hoes’ or ‘I’m not here for love’? Hell, even R&B nowadays is these young dudes singing about how they just wanna smash and pass. There’s no more crooning to their lover.”
“What, you mean like Keith Sweat’s begging ass?”
I laughed at that.
“Maybe not that much begging,” I answered. “I’m just saying, it’s okay for men to be more callous about relationships than women.”
“A’ight. But,” he started, picking up his fork and pointing it at me, “that doesn’t mean you get to treat me like I’m some other nigga. I wasn’t the one who fucked up in the past.” He leveled a heavy gaze at me. I had to fight to keep from fidgeting in my chair. I wasn’t treating him like he was one of the dudes from my past, was I?