Chapter 4

FOUR

J ust go. Go, go, go, go, go .

It was the word that went through my mind the moment his finger touched my skin. Like a rabbit cornered by the fox, my reaction to Xavier’s gaze had been visceral. Fight or flight.

So I fled.

Now, after snatching my coat from the attendant and sprinting across half the Upper West Side, I was genuinely lost. In New York City. Despite being born here and growing up here and literally only leaving maybe once or twice in my entire life.

If he was a shark, I was a guppy, drawn into his clutches like I was an idiot virgin all over again.

Frankie, you fool.

He didn’t want anything from me but sex. Just like he had before. And look where that had gotten me.

I stopped beneath a streetlamp, on yet another block where May Welland might have lived. Good God, was there anything other than brownstones and perfect cast iron gates on the Upper West Side? The warmth of wealth glowed beyond gently curtained windows. Refined and elegant. A world I’d only really visited on class field trips and in books. So far from my real life of a crumbling Brooklyn row house and the peeling paint of my grandparents’ home in the Bronx. Places where I belonged.

Dammit, where was the nearest subway stop? And the cabs, did they run uptown or downtown on Amsterdam? Which direction was Broadway from this corner? Why couldn’t I remember anything about this place?

“Francesca!”

My name echoed behind me, the voice deep and foreboding, hinting at the inevitable brewing storm.

My own personal tempest.

I heard his large footsteps pounding the pavement before I finally opened my eyes and looked up.

And there he was. Xavier.

“Ces,” Xavier said as he came to a stop in front of me. “You ran out. Why?”

It was barely a question. A demand, really.

I gulped. Somehow, he was even more gorgeous out here, looming over me like a vampire, a bloodthirsty creature of the night. Our Austen novel had disappeared. Now I was in Bram Stoker’s fever dream.

“I—I just have to go,” I mumbled. “I can’t do this. I forgot, I have to be somewhere else tonight.”

Before I could leave, my hand was seized, and I was spun back around. Another thing just like before: that faint electricity, sizzling at a single touch.

I yanked my hand. He did not release it.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Let go.”

“No.” One of Xavier’s black brow cocked in challenge. “You’re lying, Ces. You think I can’t tell?”

I pulled and pulled, but his grip was steel. “What? No, I’m not. I have to?—”

“Go. Yeah, I know. But you’re clenching your other fist like you want to punch me in the nose. I bet your nails left marks on your palm too.”

At last I relaxed, but only because I realized he was right. My right hand was locked in his steel grip, but the other was, in fact, bunched so tightly that when I opened it, angry moon-shaped indentations lined my palm.

“Fine. I’m lying.” I flexed my left hand. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

Xavier looked me up and down, like he was measuring my flight risk. At last, he released me. “I told you, Francesca. I remember everything about you. Every. Single. Thing.”

Another shiver traveled down my spine. Was that fear or anticipation? I couldn’t tell. So I looked away, flexing my fingers to get the blood flowing again.

“So, why did you run?” he pressed. “Was it me? Did I scare you off?”

Yes. No.

I shook my head. “I—I didn’t belong in there.”

It wasn’t what I had initially been thinking, but my hands remained loose as the truth settled in my bones like an anchor. I’d known it before I’d even gotten dressed, and I’d known it the moment we arrived in that fancy house with all those fancy people. My brother loved the finer things in life. But I was simple. A third-grade teacher and a single mom in her grandma’s clothes.

I was a fake.

“I completely agree. You don’t belong in there at all.”

I looked up, feeling like I’d been slapped. It was one thing to think these things about myself. It was another to have them confirmed. I didn’t even bother asking why his opinion would matter like this. It just did.

“What did you say?” I asked.

Again that brow rose knowingly. “That party was full of fools. Women with tits that could float them across the Atlantic, men with enough coke up their noses to power Times Square. You were the only real thing in there. Ten times more gorgeous. Ten times more interesting.”

I frowned. His praise was the last thing I was expecting. Just like I wasn’t expecting the sudden warmth that flowered in my chest with his compliments.

I shook the feeling away. “Then what were you doing there?”

Xavier just shrugged and took a step closer. His big shoulders blocked the light overhead. “I don’t know. Maybe I was waiting for you.”

I swallowed, cornered once more. But this time I didn’t want to flee. Or fight. Because another memory, a deeper, more powerful one, was rising to the surface.

He remembered me? Well, I remembered him. I couldn’t forget a man who could pick me up like I weighed nothing. Whose arms could shelter against any element in the world. He couldn’t have known what that meant to a girl who hadn’t known much in the way of safety in her life. My family, loud and loving as they were, weren’t exactly stable.

For a few short weeks, Xavier had given me a break from all of that. He had given me a refuge against that broad, strong chest, in those massive arms. For a moment, he had been the safest place I could imagine, a refuge from the instability of my home life and the uncertainty of my future.

His fingers grazed my jaw again, just like they had at the party. I wanted to sink into the warm embrace that beckoned.

“You haven’t changed, you know that?” he said, watching the path of his hand as it dropped down my neck, then toyed with the strap of my dress inside my coat. “So beautiful. Fucking exquisite.”

I shivered yet again, this time, from pure anticipation.

Xavier leaned down farther like he was going to kiss me. And for a moment, I almost let him. God, it had been a long time, so long since anyone had seen me for something other than a teacher, a mother, a tired, weary woman. Or at least, since I’d wanted them to.

But then the truth—the other truth—hit me like a freight train.

“Wait,” I said. “Stop.”

“No,” he growled, going in for the kill.

“ Yes .” I smacked a hand on his chest and shoved.

He bounced back two steps onto his heels, then glared at me. “What the fuck?”

“Aren’t you married?” I demanded.

Xavier recoiled like he’d tasted something horrible. “Married? Fuck, no. Why would you think that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because the last thing I heard from you was that you broke up with me to go back to your fiancée.”

Another set of memories I usually kept firmly locked away flooded through me. The nights I’d spent staring at that email when I should have been combing Craigslist for a crib. Wondering what I’d done to deserve this. Realizing I was alone, so alone with the choices this man had left me.

I opened and closed my fingers, wishing I had something to punch. Preferably him.

Xavier just blinked, looking something like a disgruntled owl.

“Your email,” I prodded. “‘Dear Francesca, so sorry I can’t see you anymore, blah blah, my fiancée is dying .’ Or was that all more bullshit?”

There they were—anger and jealousy rearing their ugly heads. All the Zola kids had a bit of a temper. I could hold mine better than the others, but just like the rest of my siblings, when the cap came off the soda bottle, I exploded.

This man had played me. He had strung me along, made me believe I loved him when he was engaged to another woman. And then he had left me to raise our daughter by myself.

He doesn’t know that , whispered some little voice inside me.

I didn’t really care.

The anger had been wiped off Xavier’s face, replaced with solemnity. And, if I wasn’t mistaken…maybe grief? “Lucy. Fuck, that’s right—that was just when you and I…”

I didn’t know why, but the idea that he had forgotten a cancer patient he was supposed to have married enraged me even more. “You forgot? My God. You really are a sociopath, aren’t you? Is Xavier Sato even your real name?”

His blue eyes bulged as Xavier cleared his throat. Then his expression flashed with something a bit more dangerous. “It’s not what you think.”

“Oh, it’s not? Because from my perspective, you were engaged but decided to have a little fun on this side of the pond before the big day.”

He growled. “I was a different person then. I can explain if you’ll just?—”

“Explain what?” I was on a roll now. No need to stop. “That you seduced me for a few weeks? Cheated on your sick fiancée? Fucked around on both of us and made me believe you lo?—”

I smashed my lips together before the last word came out completely. But we both knew what I was going to say.

Love.

Because he had said it in the end, hadn’t he? Just like I had. Cast under a spell of May jasmine floating through a window and eyes the color of a lagoon gazing down at me in a nest of clean white linens, clear with utter adoration.

In a few short weeks, Xavier Sato had made me believe that the stories I loved so much weren’t just stories, and that I, Frankie Zola, unremarkable middle child from Nowhere Special, Bronx, could be a heroine too.

Now those eyes were scowling at me through the night. Fiery, but rimmed with sadness. Disdainful. Like the villain he was.

Xavier took a deep breath. Then another. Then another. His hand raked through his hair, causing a few shiny locks to stick up, then flop forward over his brow. It was disarming. Charming, even, the way I clearly disturbed his impeccable veneer.

It would be so easy to hate him if he didn’t look like that.

Desire seared through me. And once more, go .

This time, I didn’t let him grab me as I ran down the street.

“Francesca! Fucking—goddammit, will you just wait! FRANCESCA!”

I whirled around two steps from the curb. “Oh my God . It’s Frankie. Absolutely no one calls me Francesca.”

Xavier caught up to me with a few long strides. The streetlight above cast a halo around his looming form. How ironic.

He leaned down so I could see his face. And smirked. “I do. Remember?”

Francesca.

Francesca .

My Christian name, shouted by Xavier’s utterly kissable lips as he grabbed my body, wound my hair around his wrists, held me down as we both shook in the throes of passion and lust.

Oh, yes. I remembered.

I gulped. “What—what do you want? Beyond tormenting me, that is?”

To my frustration, he checked his watch. His watch , which, if I wasn’t mistaken, was a genuine Patek. Or something equally flashy.

“Right now?” he replied. “Dinner. It’s late, but I came straight from the airport and didn’t get much more than a drink at the party. There’s got to be something decent in this city, and I couldn’t possibly discuss something like a broken engagement on an empty stomach.”

He tipped his head toward the busy street up ahead. Broadway, I registered vaguely.

Well, at least I wasn’t lost anymore.

“Shall we?”

It was the closest to a formal invitation I was going to get.

Nope.

“That can’t possibly be the best you’ve got,” I said. “I deserve better.”

The sudden nonchalance disappeared, replaced by his original glower. I wasn’t sure which was harder, being on the receiving end of that nearly intolerable intensity or being totally ignored for a piece of jewelry.

Xavier extended his hand. “Please, Ces. Let me explain. And afterward, if you want to go, I’ll let you. You have my word.”

I should have said no. I should have caught the first cab back to Brooklyn, put on my sweatpants, and forgot that Xavier Sato ever existed.

But his eyes, so wide and blue, disarmed me even in the shadows.

Curiosity killed the cat. I wondered if it was going to kill me too.

“Fine,” I said. “Dinner. Let’s go.”