Page 21 of This Cruel Fate

Friends. A convenient half-truth. She was engaged to one and barely speaking to the other. Some friends. “They aren’t like that. They’ll probably kill me when they find out.”

“Just don’t tell them where you were.”

Xolia crossed her arms. “Do you make it a habit to disappear from your friends lives for an entire weekend?” Why didn’t I tell him about Marshall and me?

“You don’t?” Adonis countered.

A smile almost landed on Xolia’s face. Her stomach growled. Adonis stood and led her to the foyer, where he grabbed a jacket and a pair of car keys. He opened the front door to a spacious elevator. Xolia stepped in and Adonis followed, pressing the bottom button. There were only three; the basement, the lobby, and the top floor. A private elevator.

“What do you do?” she asked.

“My parents took me back in. I joined the family business.”

She was happy for him. In her work experience, more than half of all variants from the barracks were still estranged from or unclaimed by their families. It wasn’t an easy thing to reconcile, especially when many of the families had human children they loved dearly. “What do they do?”

“They’re Persions.”

Xolia looked down. “The clothes.”

“It was good PR to accept their variant son,” Adonis said bitterly. The elevator reached the basement, and they stepped out to a parking garage with half a dozen luxury cars. He unlocked a sleek black sports car with windows so darkly tinted she couldn’t see inside. “When they found out I had a knack for business, it turned into a financially beneficial arrangement.” And there it was. It wasn’t a happy story of a broken family healing.

“I’m sorry.” It wasn’t the right thing to say, but Xolia had nothing else to offer. She refrained from ever reaching out to her family for fear of the same thing happening to her.

“Don’t be.” Adonis opened the passenger door and waited until Xolia was seated in the soft leather seat before walking around to the driver’s side.

Xolia didn’t have a license; there had never been any reason for her to drive once the war ended. The ease with which he maneuvered the car out of the garage and onto the relatively peaceful street fascinated her. It was short-lived as her thoughts strayed to Marshall. And what he would be thinking. How worried he would be. Or angry.

Her stomach growled. She needed a distraction. “Why were you at the fights?”

Adonis side-eyed her before refocusing on the road ahead of them. “It’s something of a business venture for me. You would have made me a lot of money on Friday.”

Xolia huffed. It didn’t really answer her question. “So, was Helen upset you had your ex in your apartment all weekend, or did you just not tell her?” She hadn’t needed to ask about Helen. She shouldn’t have asked about Helen. She lied to herself that she’d asked because Adonis having an angry partner would lessen the guilt she felt about Marshall.

“Helen?” Adonis furrowed his brows. “We’re not—she’s not important.” He closed himself off, his knuckles turning white around the steering wheel. “What are you doing for work?”

A stilted question and a clear deflection. Xolia sighed. This distraction wasn’t doing anything to quell the tumult inside of her. Talking about work only made it worse. Her job was the main reason for her lapse in judgement. “I work at the bureau.”

Adonis pulled into a drive-thru, where they paused their conversation to order fried foods that made Xolia’s mouth water. Food like that had been unheard of in their early years, anything they had been given to eat was fully utilitarian. Nothing sweet or fried or having the least bit of flavor.

She savored the warm, salty crunch of a fry before giving Adonis her apartment address. She gave him the unit number, too, though it was unnecessary.

“So, is Grant Howard still a hard-ass?” Adonis asked once they pulled out of the drive-thru.

Xolia pictured Director Howard, austere behind his desk and telling her that he wouldn’t give her the one thing she wanted—needed. And Rowan’s guilt at being caught. And how nothing had been right since that meeting. She couldn’t say any of that to Adonis, not now, when he must already think her pathetic and a shell of who she used to be. I’m not who I used to be. It was the first time she thought that in so many words. It was the first time she realized that for the past seven years of her life she hadn’t been in control of who she was or what she was doing. She had let everyone tell her what to do, let them convince her of the best way to be happy. And none of it had worked.

“Xo?” Adonis asked.

Xolia turned to him, and their eyes met for a single second. A second that stretched out beyond them and into the future. A promise of who she could be if she only dared to take it. Xolia broke contact first, nausea roiling around her gut. She shut the bag of fast food, unable to stomach the grease any longer. “I’m sorry.” She dropped her head into her hands, threading her fingers through the still-damp strands.

“For what?”

I don’t know. Abruptly, Xolia lifted her head. “I did look for you. After. I was kept in solitary confinement for the first few years, and you had no record of being in a rehab center.”

Adonis’s jaw clenched, and he tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. “I looked for you too, but things were hard at first. With my parents.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Xolia said, resting a hand on his leg. He looked at her, and her breath caught.

“Not tonight,” he said, his voice half an octave lower.

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