Page 72 of Savage Obsession
We stay like this for a long time, both awake, tangled up in each other in the soft silence of the night. He runs the tip of his fingers over my bare arm in a steady motion that lulls me into that space between consciousness and sleep.
“I was with Nicola for over a year,” he begins slowly. “We met at a club. She’s an influencer. We immediately started spending time together. We liked a lot of the same things. Had a lot of the same dreams. In the beginning, things were great. I thought she was the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with.”
I stay as still as possible in his arms, not wanting to do anything that will make him stop talking. He said he would tell me about his ex, but I didn’t expect it to happen tonight. Hearing about her… how he felt for her… I want to throw up. I don’t even know her, but I already hate her. Xander isn’t perfect, but deep down within him is something good. I feel it in my soul.
He's also a bit unhinged… I might be, too, because I like that part about him… A lot.
Maybe it’s because I’ve never had attention like this from any person. Or maybe it’s my own messed-up shit that I have going on from my own complex trauma. Whatever it is, Xander makes me feel cared about. Seen. Looked after.
“I introduced her to my brothers. My dad. Bought that apartment on the top floor because she showed it to me and loved it. I sold the house I had near my brothers, which was the house I bought when I became an adult.
“About six months after we moved in together, she started acting differently. I kept close tabs on her from the verybeginning of our relationship, and she knew it. After a while, she started having an issue with it. Called me obsessive and controlling.”
He is.
I knew that about him the very first day we met.
Maybe not specifically.
But I knew Xander was different.
And that’s my favorite part about him.
“We started fighting a lot. She would get me to buy her something expensive, and then everything would be fine for a few days. The picture she’d put in my head in the beginning wasn’t what was unfolding before me. She wanted to party. I wanted to be home with her. She wanted to travel the world. When I told her I couldn’t leave my family business, that I didn’twantto, she said I could still pay for her to go. Things started to really go downhill from there. I started to pull away, and she knew it.
“Then, she told me she was pregnant.”
CHAPTER 29
Xander
I’M TOO FUCKING BROKEN
I rememberit like it was yesterday.
I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a family. We should get married.
My chest physically aches as the moment I’ve tried to forget floats back into my mind.
And then… the words I had to tell my father.
It wasn’t real, Dad. None of it was real. I’m so sorry. You’re not going to be a grandpa.
Every part of me goes numb as I try to find the right words to tell Quinn, to make her understand why I’m too fucking broken to give her something meaningful.
CHAPTER 30
Quinn
SHE NEEDS TO PAY
Every nervein my body tingles as I process Xander’s words.
His ex was pregnant? Or…
“I was so shocked that I didn’t question it at first because I couldn’t even imagine that someone would lie about that. She asked that we wait to tell my family, but I was too excited. I wanted my dad to know that he would be a grandpa.
“When I told him, his reaction was what I expected. He was so damn happy. He told me what name he wanted to go by as a grandpa. It was… I think it was the first thing my dad had really gotten excited about since our mom died.
