“Or hiding,” Noah said.
“I’m going to get a drink,” I said. “Then what do we do?”
“We can dance,” Noah said. “Slow dance. They do that here. Turn the lights down a little. Set the mood. The wives and mistresses hate it.”
“Glad I’m neither of those,” I said with a smile.
Easton touched my back without Noah seeing. He leaned closer to me. “At some point we can bail out of here, Winter. Just you and me. I can’t stop picturing you in that bed…”
Heat flooded my cheeks and I stepped away.
“I’m going to get that drink,” I said.
I shook my head and exhaled a breath as I went back into the tent.
I found the closest person with a drink tray and took one.
I thanked the person but they didn’t say a word to me. They didn’t even look at me.
I started to turn when I felt a hand touch me.
Not my back.
But down.
A handful of my…
“Hey,” I said as I swatted the hand away.
I thought it was Xavier.
But it was Barry.
I looked right at him.
His eyes looked like they were spinning in his head.
He was drunk. And an idiot. My height, sweating because his shirt looked like it was choking his neck, and he smelled like greasy food.
“Come on,” he said. “I asked once and you didn’t listen. Don’t make me look like a fucking idiot here. This is going to happen.”
I stepped back and bumped into the person with the drink tray.
Two glasses fell and hit the ground, breaking.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” I said.
The second I turned, Barry tried to touch me again.
I had the urge to scream but I didn’t want attention on myself.
So I elbowed Barry out of the way and hurried to escape the tent.
Noah and Easton were talking and I didn’t even bother to say something to them.
I just wanted to be alone for a second.
To catch my breath.
To go get changed and burn the dress.
I didn’t care how much money someone had, they weren’t going to just grab at me like I was some prize or a toy or an object.
A wave of emotion smacked at my heart and I touched the corners of my eyes.
I could not cry right now.
I took a few more steps and had the feeling that I was being watched.
I checked to my left and saw Xavier.
He had a drink in his hand.
He dropped it.
I wasn’t sure what he saw or what he knew.
But he did not look happy at all.
Chapter 23
you can’t take it back
There was a moment when I knew I could have stopped Xavier.
The way he charged toward the tent.
The way Noah and Easton stood together, talking, pointing to a few people, without having a clue as to what was going on.
My mind even begged me to do it.
To grab Xavier by the hand and pull him away. To take him somewhere else and keep him out of trouble.
But my heart wanted to see what was going to happen.
What did it really matter what Xavier did? If something happened and he got into trouble, then it was a win for me.
My mind and heart were in a war and had no problem switching sides either.
One second my heart wanted Xavier, the next second my heart wanted to watch Xavier get hurt.
Back and forth…
Xavier disappeared into the tent.
I took a few steps back to blend into the darkness.
There was light that poured from the tent but not enough to keep the entire property lit.
I was hidden and watched as Xavier emerged from the tent.
With Barry at his side.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
My heart raced.
Xavier took Barry out into the open yard area. They were just silhouettes but my eyes were stuck on them.
As Xavier turned to face Barry, he wasted no time in hitting him.
I gasped and covered my mouth.
The first punch was to Barry’s gut.
Barry became hunched over, and Xavier grabbed the back of his tux jacket to keep him from falling.
Xavier then drove his knee up into what had to have been Barry’s face.
He let Barry go.
Barry stumbled back and Xavier swung one more time, hitting Barry in the face.
Barry toppled to the ground and Xavier looked right at me.
My heart continued to race.
And I felt myself getting turned on.
I felt protected.
I had to remind myself of everything that had happened and that was going on.
But when Xavier started to walk toward me…
I forgot about everything.
“Who was that?” I asked Xavier.
He ignored me, took my hand and kept walking.
We walked behind and around the tent to the other side of the property.
Off into the darkness, just Xavier and I.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
There was a very small sliver of rationalization that said this was probably a bad idea. Going off alone with Xavier. I had no idea where I was or where we were going.
The property wrapped around the entire mansion, but we weren’t walking around the entire mansion.
Xavier had other plans.
He took me near the edge of the property, where it becomes a little rocky. Where it dropped pretty far down to get to the ocean.
Now, if someone were to fall, I doubted they would die. Maybe break a limb. The problem was that if you fell down there, you weren’t getting back up without help. Probably a helicopter with a rope or something like that. And in the meantime, the waves of the ocean would just pound away, and that meant you were either going to get sucked out into the water or thrown against the rocks over and over.
Xavier climbed up to one of the bigger rocks.
He turned and reached down for me.
He picked me right up by my sides and stood me in front of him.
I hurried to reach up and touch his face.
“Tell me…”
Xavier curled his lip. “That was Uncle Barry. The family drunk.”
“Uncle?”
“Yeah.”
“You just hit your own uncle?”
“I don’t give a shit, Winter,” he said.
He backed away and took my hand again.
I wasn’t in the right kind of footwear to be trucking across rocks so I stopped to take my heels off. I left them on the rock, then just kept going with Xavier.
He finally stopped at a very flat rock and sat down.
I stood above him and he looked up at me.
“Sit down, Winter,” he said.
I sat down while Xavier bent his legs and hung his arms over his knees.
“This is the best view,” he said. “I always find my way out here when I have to come to this place. Feels like the only place to sit and think for a second.”
“It’s not bad,” I said. “It’s kind of dark though.”
“Just be lucky the moon is out,” he said. “Sometimes it can get really dark. I like it though. If you look at the water long enough, you can see the waves better. Or if you look out to the horizon you can see lights. It amazes, you know? That there are ships or whatever out there. I don’t know, it kind of reminds me that things are much bigger than they look.”