Page 41 of Last Comes Fate

Xavier took a deep breath, inhaling deeply just over my pulse. “Just like I know that I have loved you since the day I saw you in that bloody pub. I know that we are a family, whether you want to fight it or not. I know we belong together, no matter what anyone else says. And I know, without a shadow of a doubt, in the very depths of my soul, that we are far from over.”

TEN

“And he didn’t say anything else? The entire ride back?”

I popped a calamari in my mouth and shrugged at Kate’s questions following my debrief of the afternoon. After Xavier had dropped me back at the house, he’d offered to take Sofia for a walk to the park before the sun set completely, leaving me to share a meal with Joni and Kate, who happened to be in the neighborhood after a day of scouring estate sales for her shop.

Kate arrived with wine and takeout. Joni chose the music off her phone. And I poured out the intensity of the afternoon to my sisters’ eager faces.

I grabbed another calamari but could only look longingly at the glasses of Sangiovese she and Joni were enjoying next to me on the back deck.

“Not a word,” I said after I swallowed. “Other than to ask about taking Sofia to the park, that is.”

“So, he stands up to Mami for you,” Kate recounted. “Then practically cries when he sees his baby for the first time—”

“He didn’tcry,” I said, although there had definitely been a telltale sheen in his eyes. Tears weren’t totally out of the question.

Plus, the room was really dark.

“And then he offers to buy you a mansion, kisses you on the pier—”

“Don’t forget declaring his undying love for her,” Kate put in while she cut herself a bit of the eggplant parm I’d picked up down the street.

“Right, right. Then he declares his undying freaking love, says you’re anything but over…and gives you the silent treatment?”

Joni shoved a hand through her hair, which she had apparently tipped blond in after I’d left for work. If I hadn’t been so wrapped up in my drama, I’d have been annoyed my bathroom now reeked of bleach.

“That’s beyond messed up,” she said. “Sounds like a whole lot of fuckboy behavior.”

“Sounds like he’s figuring some shit out.” Kate swirled the wine in her glass and tipped her face up toward the lights strung around the deck, looking like Elizabeth Taylor with her big silk hair scarf, vintage gold earrings, and aggressive cat eye.

I shrugged, wishing with my whole heart I could partake in wine too. “Apparently. Honestly, the whole exchange was kind of weird. By the end, I could tell he wanted to yell at me. Like, really let me have it. Then take me somewhere and, well, let mehave it, if you know what I mean. Before, that’s exactly what he would have done.”

“Yell and ravish,” Kate translated. “Let’s not pretend you didn’t like it when the not-so-gentle giant lost his shit a little, Frankie. Especially the ravishing part. Especially in the alley behind his restaurant or two.”

“I didn’t know you had an exhibitionist streak,” Joni said with a grin. “Damn, my sis is a closeted freak!”

“I never should have told you that,” I informed Kate dryly.

She just shrugged. “My point stands. After all, you did let this man knock you upagain.”

I threw a calamari ring at her, which she dodged, laughing. Joni watched us with glee, happy for once not to be the naughty one in the family.

“I didn’t like any of it,” I told them, though everyone there, myself included, plainly knew I was lying.

It wasn’t that I liked being yelled at. But Xavier’s passion was another story, especially when he let it out in other ways. I’d never minded his tendency to say exactly what he was thinking. When it came to Sofia and me, he’d always shown his emotions as he felt them, even if they sometimes erupted like a thunderstorm.

It was when he had started bottling them all up that we ran into trouble.

Or when he had taken those repressed frustrations out on me in other ways.

Was his restraint today just more bottled urges? Or was he trying to change something more fundamental about himself?

“Itiskind of satisfying to know he was willing to come to your rescue with Mami, though,” Kate said. “I still can’t believe she went to thePostabout you.”

“She’s desperate,” said Joni. “I mean, she’d have to be, right? No one would rat out their kids otherwise. Maybe we should help her or something.”

Kate and I both looked at her with varying measures of pity. It was sweet, really, the way she wanted to think the best of our mother. But she was too little to remember much of the bad stuff.

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