Page 20 of Last Comes Fate

A simple white gold band framed a cluster of pink diamonds against the black velvet. There had to be at least fifty in all, each tiny and perfect, looking for all the world like a bouquet of English roses. Perfect, pink, and sparkling.

I couldn’t breathe.

I’d anticipated this all summer. Hoped for it. Maybe even in my heart of hearts prayed for it.

I’d never actually imagined what the ring itself would look like. Or how it could be so perfect.

Nor had I imagined it would happen at a time like this.

“So, what do you say, Ces?” Xavier’s deep voice rumbled. His large hands shook where they held the box, the only sign he was nervous at all. “Want to get married? Want to make a family with me for real?”

Lord, in some ways, he knew me so well. But in others, not at all.

“Oh, Xavi,” I breathed, still unable to take my eyes from the gems.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

I floated a hand over the ring nestled in its box. Part of me wanted to accept it. See how the pink would shimmer against my fair skin. Hold it out in the light to watch the facets sparkle.

But he wasn’t asking out of love, but guilt. Yes, he had said he loved me, but that was in the middle of a fight. Even over the summer, he’d said it, what, once? Twice?

He was asking out of obligation. And if there was anything I knew about Xavier Parker after this summer, it was that his sense of duty ran deeper than anything else.

Even love.

“I—I’m so sorry,” I said in a voice I barely recognized as my own. “But my answer is no.”

Heartbreak scrawled across his handsome face in harsh, blatant lines like one of Sofia’s preschool drawings. My heart cracked right along with his.

Oh God, what had I just done?

“Your answer—you don’t—” He pushed off his knee and sat back into one of the dining room chairs, then looked up at me with two pools of sadness so deep I thought I might drown in them. “All I want is for you to come back with me, Ces. You don’t want to marry me, well, fine. I’ll deal with that. But please, I’m begging you. Comehome.”

“I did go home,” I whispered, though I was unable to help the twin streams of new tears running down my cheeks all over again. “I went back to New York. And that’s where I’m staying. After all, England was only ever supposed to be for the summer, right?”

I waited for him to say no. I waited for him to say again he wanted us to stay permanently. Beg me more, give me reasons to stay, promises of change, tell me he’d fix everything with the press, his family, all of them.

I wasn’t even sure if I wanted him to, but I had a feeling if he did…I wouldn’t find the strength to say no again.

For a moment, I thought he might.

But there had been too many moments like this. Times I’d seen the right thing play across his lips like a symphony.

And just like all the others, he remained quiet.

“Does it matter that I love you?” he asked, not without some bitterness. “That I’ll never love anyone the way I love you? Fuck, does any of it matter at all?”

Something inside me cracked as the ring box snapped shut.

Hadn’t I just been dying to hear him say that?

But not like this. Not out of resentment, like it was a favor he was extending and expected to be repaid.

Now it was too late.

“I love you too,” I said honestly as my vision clouded. Oh, God, the tears really were back. “But sometimes love isn’t enough, is it?” I looked down, refusing the urge to stroke my belly, where I knew this little person was growing. “We have more to think about than just ourselves. We have to figure out how to be a family together in another way. I think maybe that is easier when we are apart.”

Xavier gave me a look then that was full of such hunger and yearning, I very nearly broke down. But instead of fighting or snapping or lashing out like he once would have done so easily, he seemed to take several deep breaths, and eventually reached for my hand.

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