Page 54 of Break You

She looked at me again. “What? I didn’t say anything.” I was learning that was probably worse than knowing what was on her mind.

“You didn’t need to.”

“I was just thinking how sad that answer was. Like my life hasn’t exactly been a garden of roses, in fact, quite the reverse—at many points it’s been a truckload of rotten garbage, but there are still things I wouldn’t change for the world.”

“Like what?”

“Like my brother, for one thing.”

I kept my expression neutral and my eyes on the road.

“Hmm…?”

“Yeah. For all his faults, he’s the single best thing in my life. Yeah, I’ve had a rough ride at times, but he’s always been the light at the end of my tunnel, and in so many ways, and for so many reasons, I literally owe him my life.” A heavy silence fell between us, and for once. I had no desire to break it.

Rocky

We let the silence grow, neither of us seeming to need to fill it until curiosity eventually got the better of me. “So, what wouldn’t you change?”

“Hmm…?” He glanced away from the road for a moment to raise an eyebrow my way.

“Well, before you said there was very little you wouldn’t change. So, there are one or two things you’d keep the same, right? What are they?”

As he stared unwaveringly at the road, I thought for a moment that he wasn’t going to answer.

“I guess really just Vivi and Zed, the surrogate parents. The family I chose, not the family I was born to. Cliché, cliché, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Fair enough, I guess. Where are we going, by the way?”

“Well, you won’t tell me where you live, so we’re not going to your place. You do the math.”

“Okay, smartass, but we’re not heading toward campus.”

“Give the woman a prize. Ten out of ten for observation, Sherlock.”

Jesus, he really was an asshole. I was thankful though, because in those small moments, where my judgement would lapse and he’d seem like a half-decent person, I was liable to do something I’d live to regret. Each time he acted like a douche canoe pulled me back from the brink, and he was inadvertently doing me a solid.

As if I didn’t have enough to worry about with school, and all the crazy, sinister shit that was going on in my life, plus collaborating with, and repeatedly screwing him, I really didn’t need to add inappropriate feelings toward Xavier Cross to the steaming turd of my life at that point in time.

“We’re going to my apartment.”

“Oh, of course. Sorry, I momentarily forgot that when you’re richer than God, it’s not enough to have the crème de la crème of the dorm accommodation, but you also need a luxury fuck cabin off-campus too. Pardon my ignorance.”

“Nope.”

“No, you won’t pardon my ignorance?”

“No, this isn’t my ‘fuck cabin.’ Whatever that is. I don’t let anyone back here. Not even the guys.”

“Bullshit. Not that I care, so there’s no need to lie.”

He took his eyes off the road to stare at me for way longer than I was comfortable with, and not just because I thought he might kill the both of us.

“Why would I lie?”

That was a good question. One to which I couldn’t come up with a single reasonable explanation, so I simply shrugged, squirreling the new information away in the WTF file in my mind, which I had to admit was full to bursting by that point.

As we pulled into the underground parking lot of a building that resembled an upscale hotel, I began to question my decision to go home with Xavier. Something about the whole thing started to feel a little “off”, not that I could put my finger on exactly how.

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