Page 55 of The Billionaire's Masquerade Ball

“Can I ask what happened?”

Xander slapped the stop button on the machine and stepped down, squaring off his shoulders at Wyatt. “You know most of it because you helped her plan it. I will now be meeting the city’s eligible bachelorettes tomorrow in a quest to find a woman that I no longer care about. Oh, and I fired Cynder.”

Just saying the words filled him with a gut-clenching sense of regret and guilt.

Xander knew that what he did was horrible. He knew, but he did it anyway, yearning for distance between himself and the one woman who had unraveled so much of him. His feelings, his past—in six days, Cynder had drawn all of those things out. He had fought them, then embraced them and struggled with what to do about them. Somehow, knowing that she knew about Sarah and Ryder and knew that he was just a foster kid who grew up in the system, it was too much for him. Too raw.

It left him reeling with a sense of being unguarded, of needing to draw up into himself. He needed to put the walls back up. It was entirely too terrifying being so exposed. When she said that she knew about his past, about Sarah and Ryder and being Alexander Smith, Xan felt like he had been flayed open, his skin opening up and leaving him laid bare. He pushed her away so he wouldn’t have to feel anymore.

Somehow, having her gone didn’t make him feel better. He didn’t feel safer and more secure. He felt worse.

When he saw her rushing out of the office, he wanted to go after her. He wanted to apologize immediately and to take her in his arms. He wanted to kiss her as he had almost done moments before. Xander wanted to make the kinds of crazy declarations that he had only made once before in his lifetime. His chest burned with longing and regret.

But he didn’t follow her. His feet felt like they were cemented to the floor as his sense of self-preservation warred with the emotions that had been spreading through him since he met her. The familiar blanket of fear settled over his shoulders like a snowdrift, cooling the fire in his skin and leaving him frozen in indecision. It was colder there, but it was also safe.

Wyatt said nothing, but his gaze looked less nervous and more annoyed now. Xander narrowed his gaze. “Did you say you’re leaving? We have to plan for tomorrow. Our office is going to be flooded with women coming after the ad. I’d say cancel it, but it’s too late.”

“I can’t help. I have plans.”

“What kind of plans? This is your job.”

Wyatt shook his head. “I can’t work for you every second, Xander. I have a life. And tonight, I have a date.”

“A date?”

“Yes. With Lucy, Cynder’s roommate.”

Wyatt slung his laptop bag over his shoulder and moved back to the door. Xander stood rooted in the same spot. “How? When did you …”

“I asked her,” Wyatt said. “It was as simple as that. That’s what normal people do when they like someone. They don’t dance around it or give weird challenges related to finding other women. They don’t fire people they’re interested in. They simply communicate what they really feel. You should try it sometime.”

With that, Wyatt left the gym.

Xander stood for a few more minutes after the door closed. He had made an enormous mess of everything. Wyatt made it sound so simple: you tell a woman you like her and ask her out.

But that simple idea sent streaks of terror zooming through him. An undercurrent of despair moved along with it. He had messed things up too badly with Cynder to have things be simple. Or to have anything. She likely wouldn’t want to see him again. All because of his stupid fear and pride, even as Cynder was trying to protect him. She had to know that he would hate the idea. But she did it anyway, not for her sake, but for his.

She didn’t even want to tell him that she knew about his past. She was willing to let him have that privacy, to keep his sense of safety around the topic. It was only when he pressed her that she revealed that she knew.

And then he fired her.

Xander felt sick with the weight of what he’d done. If anyone could understand his grief, Cynder would. She was still very much moving through her own.

He had to do something. Even if he had done too many bad things to win her back, he could still do something to protect her, the same way she had protected him.

Flinging open the door, he called out to the lobby. “Judy! I need your help. Get Gail Glass on the phone. We need to hire them one last time.”

Judy stared at him. “You really want to hire them again? I thought everything was awful.”

“It was. Which is exactly why I want them to run tomorrow’s horrific event. It’s going to be terrible anyway. But I’ve found a silver lining. Call them.”

Judy only shook her head while picking up the phone. He thought she muttered something about temperamental billionaires, but he didn’t even care. It might be too late. It wouldn’t make things right or erase all the ways he had hurt Cynder in the span of a week. But he had a plan to return the good that Cynder had done for him. Even if she never wanted to speak to him again.

But he sure hoped that she did.

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