by Erin Hayes
Henry nods in agreement.
“And I was hurting,” I continue. “I’d lost everything important to me, so I joined the Air Force. And what happened with Mother…”
“Don’t worry about it,” he murmurs, but I shake my head.
“I left you when you needed me most. I just couldn’t go back.” It sounds so weak now, saying it out loud. “I’ve made a great many mistakes in my life,” I tell Henry finally. “And I will try to make it up to you, even though there’s no…”
Henry puts a hand on my shoulder, and my words die in my throat. I had been so absorbed in my thoughts, I didn’t know he got so close to me.
“You’re here now,” he tells me softly. “So long as you’re here now, and you’re here for your niece, then we can keep going forward.” He considers his next thought. “Uncle Ferdie.”
I smile. “Alexandra was always the one who called me that.”
Henry swallows thickly, because he’s always called me that in jest. “Fuck, man, I’m so sorry, I…”
“I like it,” I say. I smile, rolling it over in my head. “Uncle Ferdie. It makes me sound less like an asshole.”
“I wouldn’t go that far. You’re still an asshole.” Henry shrugs. “Then again, so am I. But not little Elizabeth.” He cups a hand over his daughter’s head. I’ll admit, it’s a little weird seeing my baby brother gush over a baby.
Yet it suits him.
Just like him, I need to find joy in life again. And maybe I’ve taken steps toward finding that joy.
20
Alexandra
I’ve found throughout my life that, once I've made a decision, everything else seems to go away and I can function again. It was that way when I broke it off with Ferdinand after the loss of our daughter—I packed my things and moved to America and restarted my life from nothing. I was miserable and cried at the drop of a hat for months, but I functioned because there was no other option for me. Once I stopped crying, I realized that I'd been putting my life together.
It feels a lot like that now. Leaving Ferdinand. Going back to America. Feeling a sense of loss that I can't escape.
I’ve pieced my life back together before. I’ll have to find a way to do it again.
And I’m doing it as an older woman this time. Wiser.
Knowing that there’s not a happy ending for me. And I have to be at peace with that or risk losing my mind.
The overwhelming sense of loss I feel eases with every step I make heading back to America.
Checking out of the Shangri-La in the morning, I find that I can breathe again.
Sitting in my seat on the airplane, I find that I can sleep the whole way back to America.
And when my plane touches down in Washington Dulles Airport, I feel lighter than I have in a long, long time.
I’m not sure exactly why, if I’m making peace with my decisions. Or I’m just resigned to my fate.
There is one thing that's certain, however. As much as I love him, I know that I need to break things off with James. I love him, but I'm not in love with him, and I know there’s a difference. He deserves much better than me. He deserves someone who won't break his heart. Someone who isn't broken already.
I just need to figure out how to break the news to him when he gets back from Salem.
I'm still lost in my thoughts when my taxi pulls up in front of our townhouse in North Arlington. James's BMW is in the driveway, and I hesitate for a long moment after I take my suitcase out of the trunk of the car.
Is he here? Or did he take a taxi to the airport like I did and is still in Salem?
I swallow thickly and dig in my purse for my keys. I may have been preparing for this conversation, but if James is home, then I realize that I'm not prepared at all.
I take a steadying breath and ascend the stairs leading to the front door. Just when I'm about to put my key in the deadbolt, the door opens, and James is here with an armful of flowers and a huge grin on his face.
He was waiting for me.
"Welcome home!" he says, with far more enthusiasm than I feel. I splutter in surprise as he sweeps me up in a hug.
"What are you doing here?" I manage as I take a step back. I look in his eyes, giving him a side glance. "I thought you were still in Oregon!"
"I got home today," he says, not catching my mood. "And then I saw on your calendar that you had a flight back today, so I figured I'd surprise you."
Right. Our calendars are synced, so he would have seen the last-minute flight that I booked.
I give him a weak smile. "Sorry I didn't know you were coming home today," I say.
He shrugs like it's no big deal. "You're coming back from Japan. By the way, did you get everything you needed done?"
He looks back at me, then as if he could pick up the slightest inconsistency between me before my trip and me now, his gaze falls to my left hand. Where my engagement ring is no longer on my finger. There are a great many reasons why I wouldn't be wearing an expensive engagement ring, especially coming back from the airport—but he knows why.
He looks up at me, his eyebrows pinched together in confusion. "What happened?"
I never could hide anything from him. And he deserves the truth.
I close my eyes and step inside our house. "We need to sit down, James."
He lets out a weak chuckle. "Yes, that sounds like there's something definitely wrong."
"Not with you," I say. "With me."
"And that sounds even worse," he says behind me.
I step into our kitchen where I can see the breakfast nook where he had set up dinner, complete with lit candles and a bottle of red wine that's uncorked and ready to be poured. As I walk by the table, I grab the bottle and the glasses. "We need to talk," I say at length to James. "Can we do this in the living room?"
James stands in the living room and looks at me, his mouth slightly agape. He looks hurt, and I hate that I'm the cause of it. Finally, his Adam's apple bobs up and down and he nods. "Okay."
He sits down as I pour both of us glasses of wine. I make mine much bigger than his and take a big sip. He doesn't touch his glass and just watches me.
"Where do you want me to start?" I ask softly.
"Just answer this," James says. "Are you cheating on me?"
I blink before I let out a surprised laugh, as bad as that timing is. James's frown deepens, and I know that I'm not helping matters.
"No, no I'm not," I tell him. "And no I haven't."
"Oh, thank god," James says, sitting back on the sofa, and he grabs the wine and takes a huge sip. He's relieved, and I haven't gotten to the meat of it yet.
I close my eyes and inhale deeply through my nose. "I did go to Japan. But I didn't go for a business trip."
James is silent for so long, I open my eyes to look at him. Finally, he nods. "I knew that."
I stare at him. "You knew?"
He chuckles and combs a hand through his hair, a move that I always found sexy. But now, I just feel like I'm on a different planet than him. "You were so damn vague about your trip," he says. He peers over at me. "Usually, you're much more open about what’s going on in your life."
I draw my legs up underneath me on the couch. "Why didn't you stop me?"
He shrugs. "We had just gotten engaged. And you seemed a little....melancholy since then. I figured you needed the time to yourself. Like you needed to do something."
I stare at him for a long moment, completely humbled by his words. How could I end our engagement after he says something like this? James has always been thoughtful. Wonderful.
And I'm about to break his heart.
I take a sip of the wine and look down at the glass. "I will start this by saying that I didn't cheat on you," I say softly. "But I did meet someone from my past while in Japan."
James considers this. "From your past as in an ex of yours?"
I nod.
"Are you leaving me for him?"
Again, I chuckle at the most inopportune time. Because
everything is just turning into complete shit, isn't it?
"No, I'm not," I say honestly. "I didn't kiss him. Certainly didn't sleep with him. But...he made me think about some things. Reconsider some things."
"Like what?" James sits forward and takes my free hand in his. "Whatever it is, Alex, we can work through it."
He called me Alex. While Ferdie called me Lex. I feel as though my past and my present are colliding together, and I can't see which way to go forward. Except, I know I can't drag James down with me.
"He was my first love," I say softly. "Fifteen years ago." I shiver before saying my next words. "We were going to have a baby."
James stills and stares at me, his expression unreadable. "You were...pregnant?"
I nod. "I lost the baby at five months. And it devastated me. So much that I ended things with Ferdie and tried to figure out who I was for myself. It's when I moved here, and—"
"Is that why you never wanted to talk about kids?" James asks.
"I didn't realize I never wanted to," I admit.
"Well, every time my mother brought it up," he says, "you'd leave the room. Or get really uncomfortable. And when my sister wanted to take her kids trick-or-treating, you..."
I remember that time pretty well. Admittedly, it was hard to be around James's sister Silvia and her kids. They wanted me to go trick-or-treating with them, and I found an excuse to be busy that night.
Shit, I hadn't even known I was trying to avoid the topic of kids.
I put a hand on my forehead and shake my head. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. Whatever you wanted to do, I was fine with. Just so long as you were happy."
But I wasn't happy. And I wouldn't be happy. I'm not quite sure how to convey or tell that to James, to make him understand my thoughts and feelings. Hell, I don't even know how to make my thoughts make any sense to myself.
I lick my lips before taking another swig of my wine. "I'm not happy, James. And it's nothing you did or could fix for me."
James—wonderful, beautiful James—puts an arm around my shoulder and holds me tight. I'm crying, and I didn't realize it. "Whatever it is, Alex, we can fix it together."
I shake my head. "I went to Japan, because it was where it all happened for me. Where I was with my ex. Where I got engaged—"
"You were engaged before this?"
I nod, feeling my cheeks flush. I really am a shitty fiancée. I didn't tell James anything about my past, did I? "And I felt like I couldn't move forward without...going back to my past," I tell him finally. "Getting closure."
A muscle twitches in his jaw. "Did you finally get closure?"
"Yes."
"So everything is better now?"
And that's when I hesitate, and he sees it. His gaze goes from my face to my left hand where I'm not wearing his engagement ring. "Did you...do something with your ex?"
"I told you, I didn't cheat on you," I say, although doubt flickers in his eyes. "Ferdie and I...we just talked. And I realized that you deserve better than me, James."
He shakes his head. "What are you talking about, Alex?"
A dry, raspy laugh escapes me. "I have a lot of emotional baggage. And I don't think that I'm right for anyone right now. I need to figure out who I am and what would make me happy. But..." I meet his eyes. "I know that I'm not worthy of you."
He frowns, thinking. "So you are leaving me for him?"
I shake my head. "I left Ferdie in Japan. I don't think I'm in the right space to be with anyone right now." I comb a shaking hand through my hair.
"When you say Ferdie," James says slowly, "do you mean Prince Ferdinand of Dubreva? That Ferdie?"
James knows where I grew up, how I grew up mostly alone while my father traveled the world trying to bring about world peace. To my father's credit, he did make an impact. So unlike what I'll leave behind.
I nod. "I've known him since I was eight."
"Well," James says, "there's no way I can compete with a billionaire prince."
I give him a broken look. "James, I'm not leaving you for him..."
"I mean, it's understandable," he says. He gives a mirthless chuckle and gets to his feet. "A billionaire prince over a rich island in the Mediterranean? What woman wouldn't want that?"
I grit my teeth. "I told you, I'm not cheating on you." I made sure of that. There had been a point when Ferdie and I were standing in front of the Shangri-La, when my entire body had been screaming at me to just kiss Ferdinand, to remember the feel of his lips against mine. To reach back through the sands of time and go back to when I was eighteen. When I had been happiest.
But I didn't. I stopped just short of going any further. And sure, I know that there are arguments that you don't have to physically do something to cheat on someone. That perhaps my overwhelming feelings may have crossed that line. But I stopped before anything could have happened.
So while I probably deserve James's scrutiny, I feel exposed and worse than I have in a long time.
"What can he give you that I can't?" James asks.
"Nothing," I tell him. "Because I'm not going back to him."
I can tell that James doesn't believe me. His frown deepens and he shakes his head. I sigh and shift my weight to get access to the pocket on my skirt. I take out the engagement ring that James had bought me and hold it up to him.
He stares at it for a long moment before flicking his gaze back to me. "So you are leaving me," he says flatly.
"I'm doing what's right," I say. Fuck, my words sound disingenuine, even to me. But it's the truth. How could what I'm saying sound so wrong when I'm doing what I know is right? "You deserve so much better than me, James. I—I just..."
"So if you're not going back to him," James says, "then what are you going to do?"
I raise my eyebrows in surprise, because it's a question that I'm not sure I can answer just yet. "I'm not sure," I tell him honestly. "But I do know that this feels right. That I have to do this."
"And then what?" James asks. "Because you're going to lose the best thing that ever happened to you."
I smile weakly. "I know that."
It's the truth. And I could be making the worst mistake of my life. But James doesn't deserve to be dragged down with me. He's on his way toward making a difference in the world. In this moment, I realize the parallels between him and my father run deeper than just what's on the surface. They've been in the spotlight for how they change the world. James will just do it from a political position.
He'll go far.
Perhaps further without me than he would with me.
"So what am I supposed to do?" James finally asks.
I meet his eyes before offering him a smile. "Be happy, James."
Be happy.
21
Alexandra
I make a phone call that I shouldn't. While roaring drunk.
Probably not the best time to call Ferdinand, and I know that I'll regret it in the morning when I'm hungover and more lucid and can remember everything.
But for now, I want to do this.
I need to.
From my hotel room in downtown Washington D.C., I dial Ferdinand's phone number. I don't really even know what time it is, wherever he is. It's around midnight here, which means that it's now morning in Dubreva or afternoon in Tokyo. But that's a little more math than I want to do right now.
Right now, what I want to do, is tell him what happened.
"Alexandra?" Ferdie's voice fills the phone, surprised and shocked. He sounds wide awake, actually.
I refuse to think of his voice as sexy, though. That would just make me that much more pathetic, and I've had enough of that for tonight.
"I just wanted to let you know," I slur to Ferdie as I fall back on the pillows of my bed. It's not as nice as my hotel back in Tokyo—but I'm not spending anywhere near that much money right now. After all, I don't know how long I'm going to spend in this hotel. Not while I'm looking for a new place to live. "I wanted to let you know that I ended things
with James."
There's a long pause on the other end of the line, so long, that I'm not sure that Ferdie's still on the phone. But perhaps I don't need him to listen to everything. Perhaps the only thing I need to do is just get these words out in the atmosphere.
"I ended things with James, and we broke up." I press the heel of my hand to my eye socket. "It's the second time I've ended an engagement, and it's no easier than the first time around. I just...after Japan...I knew that I wasn't right for him."
Finally, he does speak. "Lex..."
I close my eyes. "I just wanted you to know that."
"Are you all right?" he asks.
I turn my head to look at the nearly empty bottle of sake on the nightstand. "No, Ferdie. No, I'm not all right. I'm calling you from a hotel room in Washington, because I don't have a place to live right now. I had to move out. But that's okay. Because, I think—I think that I'm doing something right for once." I chuckle mirthlessly. "Perhaps what I did, way back when, wasn't right. Breaking things off with you. It felt worse than it does now."
"Lex," Ferdie says, and I close my eyes, feeling tears fall down my cheeks.
"I wonder," I say softly. "I wonder if I hadn't ended things with you, if things would have been different. If we would have been happy together. And I wouldn't have just broken another man's heart."
"I would have done everything in my power to make you happy," Ferdinand says. "With or without my family's blessing. With or without their money. We could have been happy."
"I guess we'll never know though, huh?" My voice hitches in my throat. "I learned something when I was in Japan this last time. I learned that I've managed to ruin everything that ever made me happy. And you did make me happy, Ferdie, you did. But, just like James, you deserve someone better. You deserve...."
"Don't tell me what I deserve." Ferdie sounds really tired. I can almost imagine him running his hands through his hair. "Don't do that."
"Then I will tell you what I deserve then," I say. "I deserve some distance to myself. Some time to figure out who—or what—Alexandra Daae is and what she wants to become. And you shouldn't be a casualty of that. Not when there's so much that I need to figure out."
