“C’mon, let’s go to bed.”
She sighs as soon as she’s under the covers and he curls his body around hers, offering up his chest as a pillow. They don’t even have the excuse of someone else using the guest bedroom. Julie’s gone and will be for months as the tour makes an East Coast swing, but what’s the difference now, she might as well take advantage of the time they have left.
“Gonna miss this,” she says into the warm skin at his collarbone, relishing the way goosebumps rise in the wake of her lips, the scent of him, with just a hint of salt remaining after their morning in the ocean.
His arms tighten around her and she feels the gentle pressure of a kiss being pressed into the top of her head. “Me too, boss. Me too.”
Chapter 19
It occurs to Xavier in the middle of the night, Bianca’s warm weight pressing him into the mattress, that he can’t go on like this. Because if he stays much longer, the pain is going to be so fucking intense, it will actually destroy him from the inside out.
Carefully, he extricates himself from underneath her. She sighs a little as her head falls down to the cool pillow below her head, and he edges off the bed, pulling the covers up over her body.
He stays and just looks at her for who the fuck knows how long. Too long, probably, but not long enough to let himself change his mind.
If he . . . if he doesn’t go now, if he doesn’t leave, he never will.
And then, sooner or later, probably sooner, they’ll end up like Chloe or Frankie or Paolo or, worst of all, his parents, and he doesn’t want that for her or for himself. This . . . this is better, to just move on with their lives. She doesn’t need him. She’s got her people and they’ll stand by her side through whatever fallout – to borrow her term – his leaving causes. Not that he really expects there to be fallout, aside from maybe a little shock on her part. And as for him? He’s got everything he’s ever wanted waiting for him on the other side of the world. He just has to get up enough courage to go for it.
Or is . . . it the opposite.
Would staying be the brave thing, and is leaving the fucking coward’s way out?
He wants to ask Bianca. Wants to know what she thinks. She’d know the answer.
But she’s the one person in the world he can’t ask.
He has to make this decision on his own, right or wrong, and he’s going to have to live with it.
How he’s going to live without her, though . . . He’s still not sure it’s possible.
As quietly as he can with Amelia sitting on top of Julie’s bed watching him, he moves his boxes from where he was supposed to sleep for the next few weeks out the door, down the stairs and into the back of his car. He’ll drop it all off later at a storage spot. Before that though, he has some errands to run and he figures he should take care of the toughest one first.
Frankie’s home when he pulls up; the car is in the driveway and her lights are still on. He stands at her front door for a solid five minutes before he works up the courage to knock.
“What are you doing?” she asks when she opens the door, staring at him, still in her work clothes.
He’d been here just a few hours ago with zero notion that he’d be back any time soon, if ever – even if, for the briefest moment that afternoon, he allowed himself to picture this as his home.
“I’m leaving,” he says, without preamble, edging past her into the house.
“You’re what?”
“I’m leaving. I can’t . . . I can’t do this anymore.”
“Listen, I barely know you and I’m grateful for everything you said this afternoon, but I swear to God, if you walk out on my best friend in the whole world in the middle of the night, I’m actually going to murder you.”
“It’s not . . . it’s not what it seems like.”
“It better not be. Or was all that stuff about changing what you wanted bullshit?”
“The opposite actually, which is why I have to go.”
“That makes zero sense.”
“It doesn’t need to make sense. It’s just what’s happening.”
“Are you even going to tell her goodbye?”
