Ice Steam (Loving All Wrong #3) (37 page)

Instead, he pulled away.

I started to ask, “Xavi, is there somethi—”

But he cut me off, tugging my arm. “Dad’s dying to meet you. C’mon.”

Before I could utter another word, he pulled me along through the archway that led into a long kitchen, then straight through a plank door that led out to the side of the house—a cool, prosperous sitting garden that wasn’t visible either from the front or back of the house.

Beneath an enormous tree was an octagon-shaped wooden table with a giant loaf of bread that looked fresh out of the oven, an assortment of cheeses, white grapes, cherry tomatoes, and red wine. A type of setting apt for afternoons, not when the sun was calling it quits for the day.

“This is supposed to be supper?” I whispered to Xavier.

He chuckled. “Dad never cares what time of the day it is. He wants what he wants when he wants it. Will drive you out for dinner later…if you want.”

Of course I want, you complicated douchenizit!

The man sitting at the table mumbling to himself had dark hair, not blond. And as Xavier and I edged around the table, catching his attention, I noticed he had brown eyes, an upturn nose, and thin lips. Handsome, yes, but he looked absolutely
nothing
like Xena or Xavier.

When he saw me, his eyes lit up and he quickly stood, his hands going up in defense mode. “I know, I know. Young Xander looks nothing like me, and
every bit
like his beautiful, gorgeous angel of a mother.”

He tipped his head to an empty chair at the table and smiled fondly at it. And I wondered for a brief moment what was so special about a chair made from Eucalyptus wood.

Offering me his hand, he said through a grin, “Nice to finally meet the
woman
. The woman powerful enough to put
that
look in my son’s eyes. To send him running home to his pa, wailing ‘love is beautiful and it hurts!’” He turned his face up to the tree leaves. “Love! Is
beautiful
! And. It
hurts
!”

Twinkling lights suddenly flashed on, wrapping in brilliant sparkles around the tree trunk all the way up to the thick branches. And at the suddenness of it all, I jumped out of my skin, spinning and looking around with wide eyes, wondering what the hell was happening, expecting to see explosions of fireworks and a spraying fountain next. The entire garden was lit up with sparkling lights and lanterns hanging from the trees.
Beautiful
.

Hearing a stifling sound, I turned back around and glanced up at Xavier. His shoulders were shaking, uncontrollably, but his lips were folded and his face contorted as he fought to hold in his laugh. “Getting dark, Chino. Chloe just turned on the outside lights.”

“I…he just shouted and then…lights just…I didn’t…”

Losing the battle with his laughter, Xavier burst out laughing full on at me now, and I wanted to punch him so hard, but knew only my knuckles would feel the pain.

Instead, I took his father’s hand and shook. “Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Xander.”

“Call me Mick,” he said, grin still in place. His voice was deep, but coarse, like that of a smoker’s.

Although Xavier didn’t have his looks, he decidedly had his build. He had the same intimidating height and was far more robust than Xavier.

Releasing my hand, he once again gestured to the empty chair. “And this is my lovely wife, Aline.”

Two things struck me speechless for a brief moment: the fact that Mick was seeing his dead wife’s ghost, and the fact that her name was
Aline
. Only a single vowel making a difference. Like a single vowel making a difference between Live and Love.

With a hesitant smile that made me feel as insane as the man across the table, I waved at the empty chair and murmured, “N-nice to meet you, Mrs. Xander.”

Mick gave his son a pointed look, like that’s all he’d needed to hear, and Xavier averted his gaze, pulling out a chair for me to sit.

Why hadn’t he told me his mother’s name was so close to mine? Was that the reason he almost never called me by my real name? It was kind of creepy, yeah, but in some weird way, it made me feel like we had an even deeper connection. Fate, maybe?

This rested on my mind for the full hour that we ate and chatted under the tree.

Mick dominated the entire conversation, giving us old tales of the past, ones I was sure Xavier had heard a zillion times over, seeing as he kept spacing out.

He had cut my bread and cheese for me, poured my wine, fed me grapes, but he hadn’t eaten a single bite. And his disregard for the wine seemed substantial evidence that he hadn’t relapsed—either that or he was
really
good at faking sobriety.

Mick also cut bread and cheese for his invisible wife, whom he constantly included into the conversation with “You remember that night, love?” or “I didn’t leave anything out, did I?” or “That is why I love you so.”

The man was a full-blown American, living in France, to remain in the past with his dead wife who committed suicide to be with her dead son, with a world-famous, rotten rich rock star son enabling him, along with a daughter who was holding out for a broken man who was holding out for a woman who was married and with child.

Oh, the wonders of the world
.

“Did young Xander tell you the story of how his mother and I met?”

Feeling full, relaxed, a little buzzed from the wine I’d indulged in, I fixed my elbows up on the table, chin in my hands as I replied, “Nope. But I’d love to hear it.”

“Dad,” Xavier said in a warning tone.

But Mick’s gaze was fixed on me. “I can understand why he didn’t tell you. The beginnings of mine and Aline’s forever is not exactly one to brag about. It was messy. Reckless.” He slid a quick glance to his son, and then back to me. “Aline came to seek me out herself. She needed a new manager. Someone who could help her crossover. She heard I was one of the best in my time and she wanted me. To manage her, that is. I’d never heard of the French sensation Aline Acy before then, but I knew from the very second she sauntered into my office I would hand her my balls if she asked me for them. She was mine. I knew it. And no one could tell me different.”

A snort from Xavier had both of us glaring at him for interrupting, and he held his hands up in defense and gestured for Mick to carry on.

“But you see, I had a challenge cut out for me: Alina Acy was engaged to another man. Her first love. Her high school
and
college sweetheart. A man she swore to all gods was her soul mate, and couldn’t ever see herself without him. So she fought, continuously, what she felt for me, refusing to give in to me…until she did.

“The first time she cried until I swore her eyes bled. She told me it was my fault and made it clear that it would never happen again, because she already had her soul mate. That she would marry him and be happy with him, because I was nothing but the devil, temptation, leading her to destruction.”

Relaxing back in his chair, Mick smirked at his invisible wife and took a sip of his wine.

I peeked over at Xavier. He had a fat grape trapped between his fingers, poking it over and over again with a toothpick like it was voodoo doll, ignoring both of us.

“But despite what she kept telling herself,” Mick continued, “I knew what
I
felt. What I felt with her was the most genuine feeling I’d ever had in my entire life. Aline Acy was a star in the sky leading me to redemption. No way,
no way
could my heart have been that raw and vulnerable for a woman who was fatefully meant for another man. So, I loved her silently when she denied me, and I loved fiercely each time she came back for more, and more, and more of what she couldn’t and wouldn’t ever feel with her betrothed.

“I knew she was mine. I was biding my time. The deeper she fell in love with me, the more confused and unknowingly selfish she became. She wanted both of us. She began questioning whether a person could have more than one soul mate. But my patience ran out. I didn’t want to share her anymore. I was ready to migrate here and give her the life she dreamed of. I was ready to have her barefoot and pregnant in my kitchen. I was ready for love. I was ready for forever. I was ready.”

Pausing, he snaked a hand near to the still full plate at his “wife’s” chair, and his fingers curled into themselves, as though he was envisioning squeezing his wife’s hand.

“I told her to
choose
, Alina,” he said, voice round and lucid and strong, like he was obliquely telling me he saw right through me, knew my secret, and I needed to choose and stop dicking around his son. “I was confident in us. Forced to make a decision, she had to choose between what was real, and what was just a palatable
idea
.

“The trickiest, yet most crucially significant part of life is making the right choices, Alina. And those choices determine our happiness and longevity. Right choices, wrong choices. Good choices, bad choices.

“But stuck in a love triangle, how did she know which one was right or wrong? Good or bad? What would last or what would fail?” He pressed a palm over his heart. “
This
. Not your emotions. Not the lust burning inside you. Not what your mind tells you will look ‘right’ in the eyes of judgmental human beings. But this. You trust
this
above all else. Because this is never wrong. This is what determines the course of your life. Whatever you feel in here,
that’s
what’s real.”

So caught up in his words, I found myself speaking before I could stop myself, before I could
think
. “But sometimes it’s so hard to distinguish what’s from the heart and what’s from the mind. It’s not as easy as you make it sound. Especially if there’s history. How do you choose something new over history?
Really
good history? Even if that something new makes you feel so much more alive?”

When Mick’s eyes shifted to Xavier, I snapped my mouth shut, my blunder immediately realized. Straightening, I dragged my hands away from the table and dropped them in my lap, afraid to even look in Xavier’s direction.

If he hadn’t suspected anything before, he definitely did now.

Eyes still on Xavier instead of me, Mick simply reiterated, “If it’s not in the heart, it isn’t real.”

X
avier’s mood
did
alter after our little tete-a-tete
with Mick, but only for the worse.

Now, he was a brick wall. I could feel him slipping further and further away from me. He walked around with this faraway look in his eyes, and whenever he looked at me, it wasn’t
at
me, but
through
me.

He refused to shave his growing beard, hadn’t kissed me even once, touched or held me with any kind of intimacy. On occasion he would—I assumed unconsciously—get as close as wrapping an arm around me, relaxing, then out of the blue he would just leave me bereft with such sudden abruptness, it felt as though he was caught doing something forbidden—like I wasn’t
his
to touch. And each time I tried to talk to him about what was bothering him, he would shut me down.

Each and every time it broke me a little, and I found myself thinking more about Davian, wishing I’d spent the weekend with him instead, longing for his cuddles and warm whispers of a forever love.

Davian’s cuddles made the world and all its troubles disappear. He’d told me one night that Jessica wasn’t the cuddling type, she liked her space on the bed and insisted on taking a shower immediately after sex because she didn’t like the idea of sweat drying on her skin. And that was a huge buzz kill for Davian because he was a cuddling guy. He loved the scent of sex lingering in the air, in my hair. He loved the taste of salt on my skin, loved to nuzzle the dampness on my neck, and brush his thumb over the pouty swelling of my lips after steamy, passionate sex…

These were the thoughts I was left to dwell on each time Xavier pushed me away. Sucked that I flew twelve hours to France to be with him, yet all my thoughts were now dedicated to another man.

We slept in the same bed but he didn’t hold me. He took me sightseeing and to dinners at cute restaurants, but he was only there physically; mentally, he was elsewhere. Felt almost as though he was begrudgingly doing me a favor.

I spent more time chitchatting with his delusional father than with him, listening to old tales, then Skyping with Jacob in the evenings. I no longer cared whether Xavier was off screwing the pretty housemaid in secret somewhere.

For every time he didn’t kiss me, I thought of Davian’s thick lips, the top a little bit bigger than the bottom, which I loved to bite on each time he drove hard inside me. For every time he didn’t get hard for me, I thought of Davian’s instant and noticeable bulge whenever I walked into a room he was in. For every time he didn’t touch me, I thought of Davian’s long, big-knuckle fingers, lightly brushing over my skin the way they would over his guitar strings.

I simply couldn’t fathom why Xavier made me travel all the way here if he knew whatever he’d felt for me before was dead.

Nevertheless, I was somewhat glad I made the trip; it helped me realize there truly was no hope left for us. Helped solidify my decision. The “spark” was gone.