Page 90 of Crossing the Line
She ventured outside to see how the other half of her gene pool was fairing and found her father slumped in a chair at the dining table, staring off at the horizon. Xavier was pretending to mind his own business on an overstuffed armchair near the door.
Waverly took the chair next to her father. “Why, Dad? Seriously. I just don’t get it.”
Robert sighed, the weight of the world on his chest. “It’s one of those things I hope you never understand.”
“Help me understand. It’s getting harder and harder for me to forgive you. What compelled you to stick your tongue down our bartender’s throat with your wife just feet away?” Waverly could hear the anger in her voice, knew it would shut him down. But her control was rusty. She just wanted to shake him.
“Waverly, this is between your mother and me.” His tone was tired. He was already withdrawing from her, from himself. “Maybe you could tell her—”
“Why does it have to be me? Why can’t you tell her what you want her to hear?”
“She’s upset right now—” Robert began.
“I’mupset right now. She drinks all the time, Dad. You’re never around because you’re so busy trying to screw your way through the West Coast, which by the way, what do you think that does to your twenty-year-old daughter? How much longer do you think you two can go on like this? Someone is going to get hurt, and it’s not going to just be me this time.”
Robert put his head in his hands, and she knew he was done. There would be no more discussion, no more answers.
She let her words hang heavy in the salt air and the sunshine. Let them absorb the exotic paradise that surrounded them and leave nothing but ugliness and emptiness. Maybe it was what they all deserved. Maybe this was all there was.
Just like her mother, the fight drained out of her. She would never understand, never be able to fix it. And with that crystal clear knowledge, that final acceptance weighing on her, she walked past Xavier into the salon and down the steps to her cabin.
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Xavier didn’t bother knocking. He just opened the door and closed it behind him. She was sitting on the bed propped up by pillows staring blankly. She looked shell shocked. No tears, he noted. Just the exhaustion of a fighter who had finally given up.
He debated sitting on the couch, then decided he’d feel better closer. So he sprawled across the foot of her bed again. Without acknowledging him, she scooted her feet closer to him, and he took them in his hands. They were cold. The rest of her probably was, too. And not just from the Arctic air conditioning.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Waverly just slowly shook her head. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do and nothing I can do to fix this,” she said, head still shaking. “I have no control over them, no matter how much I want it, no matter how much better I could make them.”
“It’s not up to you, Angel.”
“But I could help. I could have fixed it before it got to this.”
Xavier scooted up the bed until he was sitting next to her. He threw an arm over her shoulders. “Angel, it’s not your job to fix them. They’re damaged, but they are responsible for their damage. And they’re responsible for fixing it.”
“Am I damaged?” Waverly asked.
“You’ve got a few dents and dings, but I don’t think you’re damaged.”
“I need to get away from all of this, X,” she said. “If I don’t, it’s going to suck me in, and I’ll never get out.”
“Angel, you make your own choices just like they do. You won’t make their mistakes,” he promised her.
“I guess Stanford couldn’t come at a better time,” she said with a sad smile.
Fuck. Now was not the time to ruin that for her. He couldn’t do that to her.
“What is it?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“What’s what?”
“I say Stanford, and you get rigor mortis.”
“It’s nothing,” he said, trying to brush it off. “Do you need a drink or something?”
“Don’t lie to me, Xavier. I seriously can’t take it from you, too.”
