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“I think so.” Xander’s eyes look darker than ever in the dim evening light. He folds his arms, his frown deepening. “Is that your concern? Don’t worry. I should be able to convince him to keep his side of the bargain, to give me what I’ll need within a week or two at the most. You’ll be home soon.”
My heart cracks in two at those words. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, sudden and unexpected. “Is it really that simple?” I ask, my voice low and threaded with pain.
His forehead knits with confusion. “What do you mean?”
“It’s that easy for you to walk away from this, isn’t it.” It’s not a question. I take one step back from him, then another.
“Melanie.” Now he’s really frowning. “What are you talking about? This is what you wanted; what we agreed. Isn’t it? You get the money, you get your old life back… aren’t you having fun acting in the meantime?”
The tears burn my eyes. They spill over down my cheeks, which are furiously hot. Whether my face is red from embarrassment or anger, I’m not sure. Either way, I don’t want Xander to see it. I don’t want to be standing here like this, so pathetic. I don’t want to be indebted to him anymore.
I want to be with him. For real. But I know that can’t happen. It’s clear from the way he’s talking that I was never anything more than an actor to him. A liar and a fake. “I’m not the actor,” I growl, reaching up to grasp the ring on my left ring finger. It sticks around my knuckle—it really is the perfect size for me. I don’t know how Xander managed to get the size so perfect on the first try, after only knowing me for a few days. It takes a second for me to wrench it free. When I finally do, the diamond glitters in his father’s porch light. “You’re the actor, Xander. Because I started to actually believe you cared for me.” The tears fall hotter. Faster. “But that’s my fault. I see it now.”
I shake my head and reach up to rub at the tears with the heel of my hand.
“Melanie…” His expression, wounded and concerned all at once, nearly breaks me. Because he doesn’t look like a man in fear of losing his wife. He looks like someone worried about his business investment.
Which I guess is all I ever was to him.
“Keep your money,” I hiss. “Keep this too.” I throw the ring at his chest, hear it bounce off and skitter across the pavement, landing somewhere in the grass. I don’t pause to watch it go. I take off down the drive, only pausing for long enough to wrench off the stupid high heeled shoes he bought me.
I’m not entirely sure what my plan is, or how I plan to get back to the city. I don’t even really know where we are. Somewhere not quite upstate but definitely not New York City anymore.
Luckily, I don’t make it more than a few hundred feet before I hear a car creeping up slowly behind me. Andrew pulls even with me where I’m limping along the driveway—which is proving to be a lot more gravely than I’d anticipated at first glance, when I wrenched these shoes off in the first place. “Don’t worry,” Andrew says before I can refuse the ride. “I left Xander back at the house.” He nods toward the back seat. “Climb in.”
But I don’t get into the back. I cross around the front of the car to the front seat instead, and slide into the passenger side beside Andrew.
He waits for me to buckle up, and then he starts the long drive home in silence. For a while, neither of us break it. He drives without comment, eyes fixed on the road. I stare out the window, my tear-streaked reflection looking back at me in the glass. He only says one thing, when we finally reach the freeway back into the city.
“Back to the penthouse?” he asks, like he already knows what my answer will be. Probably he does. Everyone here seems to know me better than I know myself.
Everyone but Xander, the man I was pretending to marry. I swallow hard and run my hand across my eyelids until I see sparks flash behind them. “No,” I whisper. “No, I think it’s time for me to head home.”
Without comment, without arguing, Andrew switches on his blinker and takes a different exit. He heads toward JFK instead.
12
Xander
I sit on my father’s porch with my head in my hands. The ring glints on the sidewalk in front of me. It was easy to find. But I don’t pick it up. I don’t run after her. I’m trying to respect the space she clearly seems to want. I’m trying to process what the hell just happened, too.
