“Rose. Yeah. No.” I knew my words would anger him, even as they left my mouth.
“Well, which is it?” He was predictably pissed.
“It’s complicated.”
“Not good enough. Letting you get away with vagaries is what got me into this shit storm in the first place. And now, through masks and cloaks that have all of our DNA on, Cygnus is linked to a fucking shootout at a location that I can also be traced to due to my connection with Pixie. So, I’m going to need you to sit your bony ass down, and tell me everything, from beginning to end. And trust me, if I get the sense you’re skimping out on me with the details, Kane won’t be the only one nursing a gunshot wound.”
Xavier cross wasn’t someone to be trifled with in any circumstance, but when he got the hard, flinty look in his cool-blue eyes, I knew there was no reasoning my way out of the situation. Even if there was, all the arguing with Kane had taken the fight out of me. I sat, and motioned for him to do the same.
When I was done filling him in, there was a lengthy pause. I figured Xavier would say something when he was good and ready, not before. That was how he lived his life—on his terms, and nobody else’s. “Okay, so where is Kane now?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea. We argued, and as soon as the doctor had patched him up, he took off. He didn’t say where he was going, and I didn’t ask. But, if I was a betting man, I’d hazard a guess that he went to the hospital to be with Rose.”
“Assuming she’s still there.”
“Oh, she’s still there. I’m tracking her phone.”
“Of course, you are. I’ll be honest, I’m torn between loathing and admiring you, right now.”
“How come?”
“Well, this little stunt you pulled is off the charts, and I always thought you had smarts, but you’ve kept your shit so far under wraps all this time, that I could never quite work out what your deal was. I mean, the more I got to know you, the more I suspected that behind the likable goofball routine there was genius there, but I couldn’t ever be totally sure.”
I knew he wasn’t the only person who couldn’t figure me out, and I was okay with that. In fact, I liked it that way. After everything I’d been through, I wasn’t about handing out my heart and soul to everyone on a platter. People knew of me what they needed to know, and no more.
“Turns out it was not only genius you were hiding, but evil genius. Who fucking knew?” Xavier continued, “I am a little cut that you didn’t tell me your full story before now, though, but that’s a conversation for another day.” He wouldn’t forget to bring this up again when he had the time and headspace, but I’d cross that bridge when I came to it, no pun intended.
“But what I don’t get is that you guys were as tight as you were, you’ve been through everything you have together, he’s had your back through all of it, his family has taken you in like another kid. All of that, yet when it came down to it, you didn’t trust him with the biggest, most important thing in your life.
“He would have tried to talk me out of it.”
“No doubt. But maybe that’s exactly why you need a wingman, to stop you from doing stupid fucking shit you’ll regret later on. You don’t think it was with good reason?”
“It was because he’s in love with her.”
“I was thinking more because he figured you’d end up in jail for murder, never be able to move past the guilt, and therefore, ruin your entire life. But I guess your explanation works also. And what about you?”
“What about me?” What the hell was he getting at?
“You’ve caught feelings for her too, right?”
“What the fuck? You heard the part where I was trying to get her to put a bullet in her brain, yeah?”
“But were you really?” He quirked his eyebrow as he stared me down.
“Is this a trick question? You’re here busting my balls because Kane is injured, and I just told you the plan. The whole plan.“
“You did.”
“Okay, and in what parallel dimension does any of that equate to me catching feels?”
“In the dimension where your aforementioned evil genius—and the way you planned for every aspect of this, including the fact that Kane would never let you go through with it—means that if she’s still breathing, it’s because you want her to be.”
“Bu—” He raised a hand cutting me off.
“You could easily have done the whole kidnapping thing without Kane, and then have had her blow her own head off, and he wouldn’t even have known until you chose to tell him. Instead, you dragged him along, safe in the knowledge that he would act as your conscience, and foil your scheme, and she’d walk out of there alive.” In the end, she was carried, but that was immaterial. “And what about the kid sister?”
“What about her?”
“I presume she’s not dead, either.” He raised his eyebrow in question again. It was a gesture I'd never really been aware of him doing before, but now I was, it was increasingly pissing me off.
“You presume correct.”
“Another brick in the wall of your denial, then. Let me ask you this. Were you ever planning on having her killed?”
“The kid?” Xavier nodded. “Nope, course not, I’m not a fucking psycho.”
“So what was the point of that whole thing?”
“It was exactly what I told you—the ultimate blackmail tool. Unless she’s a sociopath—which given the way she behaved in high school, is possible, but not likely—there was no way she was going to resist what I was asking of her, if it was a choice between her life and her sister’s. But also, like I said, I wanted her to feel the weight of the decision, and heaviness in her heart that Jules would have felt before he finally pulled the trigger.”
“Except, you knew she wasn’t going to be pulling the trigger.”
“She did pull it, though, remember?”
“Semantics. You knew she wasn’t going to die, because Prince Charming with hearts in his eyes wasn’t going to let that happen. Little does he know, but you have hearts in your eyes also.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Then what is it like?” I raked my hand through my hair. My nerves were already shot to pieces, the last thing I needed at that point was an inquisition or lecture from Xavier.
“I obsessed about her for years, then my brother killed himself because of her, and I never saw her again. It was a long time ago, and I was literally a different person then—different name, different body, different mind, different everything. I thought I was over her, and I was, I mean, I am, but that didn’t stop a few residual feelings from sneaking in. But that’s all they were, lingering remnants of an infatuation that once was. Those feelings are dead now, just like Jules.”
“Okay, sure. You keep telling yourself that, and when you’re ready to wake up and smell the pumpkin-spiced mocha latte frappaccino, you let me know.”
Chapter 4
Rose
I was silent for an extended pause, my brows furrowed in concentration. “Did you...? I mean... your side. It wasn’t a football injury, and you weren’t hurt when you kidnapped me, so...?”