X-394

by Dee Garcia

  Oh. Shit.

  Xander…

  I couldn’t leave him behind.

  Daddy thought he was dead and if, for some reason, he showed up to Ravenna Motors to berate “my father” for letting me go on some mission, he'd be a dead man for real.

  My heart shot up to my throat.

  Fuck.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  He was going to have to come with me, and I knew without a doubt, he was not going to be okay with that, especially knowing that the only way I was going to convince him was by telling him the truth...

  Angel: X…

  Me: Angel...

  Angel: Did I wake you?

  Me: Nope, I'm sprawled on the couch waiting for the dryer to stop. Are you okay?

  Angel: No. Open the door in thirty seconds.

  I tossed my phone onto the couch beside my feet and shot up in alarm, peering straight out the front window into the darkness of the night. All that could be seen was whatever the streetlights illuminated, which on this side of town, wasn’t much. The low rumble of Eden’s GranTurismo barely disturbed the silence throughout the neighborhood as it rolled slowly down the street and into my driveway.

  Scrambling to the door, I flung it open to find Eden jetting up the walkway. She was wrapped around me before I could catch her, her arms firmly locking around my neck. The way she clung to me and how her heart hammered against my chest was an immediate red flag. My hands fell to her waist and I pushed her back ever so slightly, blue eyes colliding with mine in unease.

  “What's wrong?”

  “We need to leave,” she said in a rush, slamming the door shut and pulling me by the hand to my room.

  “What? Where?”

  “Out of here. We need to go south, now.”

  “South? Why?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  Eden scampered around frantically, tossing clothes from my drawers onto the bed in a small pile, then into the closet to snatch more clothing from the hangers.

  “Bag. I need a bag,” she exclaimed, eyes wide, her hands shaking.

  What. The fuck. Is going on?

  “Baby, talk to me. What the hell is going on?”

  “Just get me a bag and I'll explain, please!”

  Seeing her like this, terrified out of her right mind, was far from just distressing. Not wanting to upset her more than she already was, I stalked into my closet, pulled out the only duffle bag I had, and set it down on the bed beside the clothes she'd strewn about.

  “There's the bag. Now spill, and calmly, so I can understand.”

  “We have to get out of here,” she said, stuffing piece after piece into the bag.

  “Why?”

  “Because Gaspard came out of hiding and this is my only chance to take back what he stole from my family.”

  What?

  “Who's Gaspard?” I asked, thoroughly confused.

  “The man who wronged my father.”

  Again, it didn't ring a bell.

  “I hate to tell you this, Angel, but you've never told me anything about this. How exactly did he wrong your father? Did he steal cars off the lot?”

  Eden stood there, motionless, lost in a daze. She didn't blink, hell, I didn't even think she was breathing. Suddenly, she paled, but still she didn't seem compelled to answer me.

  “Baby, are you listening to me?” I waved a hand in front of her face. “How many cars did he—”

  “Marcelo Ravenna isn't my father!” she blurted out.

  My heart stopped. “What did you just say?”

  “Marcelo Ravenna isn't my father,” she said, more quietly this time, shame and guilt laced within the words.

  “You lied?” I asked incredulously, anger quickly bubbling to the surface of my emotions. “Why?”

  “Because if I'd told you my name was Eden Scarsi, you would've gone running for the hills.”

  My breath hitched, the shocked sound loud in the quiet of my bedroom.

  “I'm sorry!” She took a step toward me, and I took a few back, holding my hands up in surrender. “Don't walk away from me, please! I did it to protect you!”

  “Protect me? You told me you were Eden Ravenna hours before you tried to kill me! How is that protecting me?” I sneered.

  Silence.

  Nothing but pure utter silence.

  Her mouth popped open as if to speak, but nothing came out. She tried again and again and again, but each time to no avail. I'd caught her right in the middle of a lie and she had no clue as to how to respond. Narrowing my eyes, I regarded her in plain disgust, outraged at the extensity of it all. I wasn't disgusted solely with her, though; oh no, I was equally as disgusted in myself for being so fucking stupid.

  “Exactly, now get the fuck out.”

  “Just listen to me, please. I'm sorry I lied to you, but you have to come with me!”

  “I'm not going anywhere with you,” I gritted out, and before I could react, she bound up to me, gripping the front of my tee.

  “You have to come with me, Xander. They'll kill you without hesitation if they find out you're alive!”

  “So, clearing things up with Scarsi; that was a lie too?” I scoffed, prying her off me. “This just gets better and better.”

  “I did clear it, just not in the way you thought. If I’d told my dad I hadn't killed you, he would've sent my brother, and my brother doesn't hold back for anyone, no matter what their circumstances may be!”

  A lie or not, I didn't care.

  “Just get out, Eden,” I said, my voice gruff.

  “I'm not leaving here without you! Don't you understand? Once I go missing, my father is undoubtedly going to flip his shit and retrace my steps, all of them, and they'll lead right back to you. You have to come with me.”

  “Do you really expect me to just pack my shit and get into a car with you, having no clue where I'll be going, after all of this?” My arms flew up in the air. “You’re asking me to leave my mom, my job, everything—”

  “To keep you safe,” she interjected. “I'm asking you to come with me so I can keep you safe. I know it's not easy, but this is literally the only way. Please, Xander. You can hate me all you want, just please come with me.”

  I must've been a lunatic for even contemplating it, but something in me, regardless of all she'd done, told me this really was the only way. But one very important aspect was the one reason holding me back.

  “If he'll retrace your steps, won't that mean he'll come after my mom?” I asked.

  Eden shook her head. “No. My father may be a lot of things but he doesn't extend debts to family members. I can promise you with my life he won't go anywhere near her.”

  Could I trust her with this? Trust her enough to actually leave Mama behind and risk something happening to her, all to save my own ass? I had no doubts she'd worry, but if I didn't do this, if I stayed and was murdered at the hands of Scarsi, Mama would die of a broken heart.

  “How long is this going to take?” My question came out in a rush.

  “I don't know.”

  “Is that another one of your lies or are you actually telling the truth this time?”

  “I swear it's the truth. Gaspard wouldn't tell me anything except to drive south for two hours.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, a dull throb suddenly knocking the sides of my head. “I'll meet you in the car.”

  For the first ten minutes of the drive, Eden tried everything in her power to apologize and make some sort of small talk in attempt to alleviate the tension. But I wasn’t having it. I didn’t want to hear a word of what she had to say, including an apology, because no amount of “I'm sorry” could mend all that she'd done. I’d trusted her with my life, with my fucking heart, and in less than fifteen minutes, she proved just how foolish I’d been to do so in the first place.

  With my head pressed against the window, I opened and closed every app on my phone over and over again, hoping I could somehow distract myself from the anger, the disappointment, t
he sheer sense of betrayal I felt boiling through my veins. A temporary feat unfortunately, because as I swiped away the YouTube app for the fifth time, Eden’s phone began ringing through the speakers via Bluetooth. She glanced downward toward the illuminated screen in her lap and after muttering “Fuck” under her breath, she clicked a button on the steering wheel and sent the caller straight to voicemail.

  Wonder what else she's hiding, I thought to myself, opening up Safari to fire up Google.

  Less than thirty seconds later, the phone rang again, freezing my thumb over the search results displayed on my screen. From the corner of my eye, I watched her huff in what appeared to be frustration with a dash of anxiety and reject the call once more. Who she was ignoring and why she was ignoring them were the questions floating around in my mind when the phone rang yet again.

  The sound was instantly irritating and just as she was about to reject the call as she’d done twice before, I flipped like a switch, pushing off the window and all.

  “Fucking answer it already, Eden. Damn!”

  The tune carried on for a few more seconds until finally she sighed deeply and accepted the call, sounding none too pleased when she answered with a testy, “Yeah?”

  “Where are you?” a man’s deep voice questioned.

  “Nowhere,” she snapped.

  “Obviously you’re somewhere, Eden. Where?”

  “Why does it matter where I am? What do you want, Luca?”

  “You know,” he sighed. “I told myself I wasn’t going to call you, that I wasn’t going to give a flying fuck as to where the hell you’d run off to, yet here I am, once again groveling on my knees for a spec of your attention. I wanted to come with you for a reason, Petal. A reason you’re obviously well aware of and it seems that no matter how hard I try, how blatantly I wear my heart on my fucking sleeve for you, you reject me ti—”

  Eden growled almost ferociously and slammed her palm down on the steering wheel, halting the man mid-sentence. “I’m seriously not having this conversation with you right now. I've got way more important things to handle than to stroke your wounded ego. Grow some balls, put on your big boy pants, and get the fuck over it. Goodbye, Luca.”

  A click of the magic button cut off the connection and in her sudden fit of rage, she dropped a gear and gunned it down the lane, the engine roaring in protest from being pushed to its limit. Street lights, buildings, pedestrians, everything flashed by me in a blur, and it seemed that Eden couldn't care less about what the speed limit might be as we headed south of the city. I knew better than to stick my nose in places it didn’t belong, but fuck, the question was eating at me like a leech.

  “So, who’s Luca?”

  Maneuvering us through several cars and nearly running a red light in the process, her hand white-knuckling the steering wheel with force, she said, “Just leave it alone, Xander. Don't even go there.”

  What the fuck?

  Had she really just told me to leave it alone? Who in the hell did she think she was?

  Enraged by her ability to think she could undermine me, I shifted in my seat to face her head-on. “I think you'll find that I have every damn right to go there, considering the current situation and all that has led up to this point.”

  She shot me a glare from the corner of her eye, taking profound breaths as if to calm herself. “Fine, but when the answer isn't what you wanted to hear, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  As if anything else she said could make this hellish reality worse...

  “Just get on with it, Eden,” I said, my tone bitter and unamused.

  “Luca is my oldest brother’s best friend,” she started, flipping on her signal as we approached the turn lane at a red light. Once we’d fully stopped, she dragged her gaze to where I sat and melted into the seat. “But I've known him my entire life. We all grew up together, our families very close-knit, and about two years ago, Luca and I agreed to a casual arrangement of sorts.”

  “And that would be?” I hedged.

  “No strings attached.”

  My heart stopped for a brief moment as I held her stare. I realize I should not have been shocked in the slightest because after all, she was a drop dead gorgeous woman, yet still I was, along with feeling a tad jealous too, which was an absurdity I didn't even want to entertain.

  A blaring honk from the car behind us broke through the underlying intensity of the moment, jerking Eden into action. She shook her head and refocused on the road, making a swift left at an irrationally high speed onto the next street. Clearly my lack of a response was affecting her composure.

  “So, you mean to tell me that in the time we’ve been—”

  “No,” she said firmly, interrupting me halfway through my query. “No. Luca and I had long since parted ways before you and I hooked up.”

  “How long?” I found myself blurting out through gritted teeth.

  Eden gulped, keeping her eyes on the light traffic ahead. “A month.”

  My head flew back. “A month? You think a month qualifies as ‘long since’?”

  “It's long enough,” she growled.

  “No, it's really not.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “No, it’s not!” I roared. “It’s really fucking not.”

  We screeched—literally screeched—to a stop at another light and she shot me a look so lethal, I felt it down to my bones. But I didn't care; I was equally as pissed off, if not more.

  “Why is Luca even an issue? It’s not like you and I were dating. We were fucking.”

  We were fucking. Apparently all we were doing was fucking. Not falling for each other, not working toward a bigger picture, just plain ol’ “I don't give a fuck about you” fucking. The bite in her words and her ability to dismiss what I thought we’d had smarted as though she’d just slapped me in the face, amplifying every bit of anger I’d felt since the moment she’d come clean back at my place.

  “Oh, now it was just fucking?” I sneered. “What about the ‘I want you’ texts or the ‘I miss you’s? Or all the nights you spent at my place because you didn't want to sleep without me. How is all that ‘just fucking?’”

  Eden sighed and turned the other way. “Just drop it, Xander.”

  “I don’t think so. Answer me.”

  “No.”

  “Answer me,” I growled, completely and one-hundred percent infuriated.

  “No. No, no, no. Just drop it! Fucking drop it!” she roared vehemently.

  So I did. I dropped it. Stunned to fucking silence by all that had come to light in the matter of an hour, I dropped it. And I promised myself I wouldn’t ask a single question or speak a word her way unless it involved when I'd be free to go along my way.

  Even with Emilia Ali’s voice and VALNTN’s beat blaring through the speakers, the car ride was my own personal hell. Anger radiated off Xander in sweltering waves, the effects so crippling, I wasn’t sure how many more miles I could stand it before I exploded. Not only was he angry—more like furious, to be exact—but that raw sense of sexual tension continued to surge between us too, making his demeanor almost unbearable. I wanted to say something, anything, to break the ice. Maybe even pull the car over and climb into his lap until he couldn't refuse me, but I knew the likelihood of an actual conversation, much less a lick of affection, was slim to none. I wasn’t sure I could bear to hear what he had to say anyway, not because I couldn’t handle the truth—my mind all too capable of processing it rationally and logically—but there was no way my heart could do the same.

  Eventually the cramped, hostile confinement finally got the better of me and I ended up pulling off the highway somewhere in Ocean City. I drove around for another twenty minutes, looking for someplace to crash for the night until I found a bed and breakfast that sat right on the beach. Much to my surprise, Xander didn’t question as to where we were going or why we had stopped. He simply followed me out of the car and into the rustic two-story beach house without a single word thrown my way.

  A
teeny older woman with kind green eyes and graying blonde hair, whose name was Elsie, greeted us with a warm smile as we approached the desk. I tried booking two different rooms but with the location and school starting up again soon, there was only one room available for the next several nights or so. The worst part of it all? Said room had only one bed. That right there should've been my cue to graciously decline and drive a little further out of town for different accommodations, but of course me being the masochistic freak I was, decided subjecting myself to countless hours of glares and muttered comments was preferable to the peace and quiet of separate rooms elsewhere.

  Elsie showed us to our room, going over the rules of the house and designated mealtimes while Xander and I trailed behind her upstairs—you guessed it—in silence, until she came to a stop at a door tucked away at the end of the hallway. Unlocking and pushing it open, she stepped aside to let us in, rattling off about where towels and the main bathroom were located. I heard all of two sentences before they were nothing more than a warbled sound, my gaze drifting slowly around the room, taking in every little detail. Soft blues and creams made up the comforter on the wicker framed bed as well as the curtains and accent pillows thrown on a small couch nearby. White hardwood floors, worn from years of vacationers, creaked beneath my feet in certain areas, telling a century-old story of the property.

  I turned toward Elsie in time to thank her for her hospitality and caught Xander standing beneath the threshold, irate brown eyes trained firmly on my form.

  “Unlock the car,” he said gruffly.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I'm not sleeping in here with you.”

  I should've known he would not have been okay with sharing the same room, much less the same bed, but still, his words stung.

  Wringing my fingers together, I gulped and took a few steps toward him. “You can take the bed. I'll sleep on the couch.”

  Scoffing a laugh through his nose, he rolled his eyes. “Even being what you are, my mom would kill me for allowing you to sleep on a couch. Not happening. Just unlock the car.”