Chapter 28 - Victoria

Victoria

P lans for this particular Sunday originally involved me digging through boxes in storage. Alone.

“How far away is your childhood home from here?” Xavier asked, following me down a long hallway.

Plans can obviously be modified.

“About a ten minute drive.”

“Do I get to see it when we’re done?”

“Sure, why the fuck not.”

His throaty laugh echoed in the corridor. “Your excitement is unmatched.”

I stopped in front of our unit and unlocked the door. “I sold the house ages ago. It’s not like you get to go inside and critique the place.”

“No gold couches?”

I shrugged. “There might be. But when I lived there? Fuck no.”

“You’re spicy today,” his voice rumbled. “Maybe I should keep track of how many times you swear.”

“Oh, okay, St. Xavier of the Virtuous Mouth. You do that.”

“Hey.” He turned me so I faced him. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

I winced. I shouldn’t be snapping at him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Nothing’s going on. I’m just a little on edge with,” I gestured toward the storage unit and then squeezed his hand. “I’m happy you’re here.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t hmm me. I can see you smiling.”

“Must be a mirage.” He leaned in to kiss me. “What are we looking for?”

“A diary,” I answered, rolling the door up. Rows of boxes and plastic bins appeared in shadow. Feeling along the wall, I found the switch and turned on the lights.

Xavier let out a low whistle. “Needle in a haystack, yeah?”

“They’re labeled. It shouldn’t be too bad. Just pull everything with my sister’s name on it.” I walked in and turned. “Please.”

“I was just going to say something about lack of manners,” he chuckled.

I twirled a strand of hair and said in my best light and airy voice, “Thank you, Mr. Maddox.”

“I want to hear you say that later when I have you bent over the couch.”

“Boxes,” I pointed to the stack.

We got to work grabbing everything labeled Charlotte . There were more boxes and bins than I remembered. Most of them had random stuff tossed inside with no rhyme or reason. Clothes, sneakers, nail polish, pillows, stuffed animals, hair clips.

“Jackpot,” Xavier exclaimed.

“Did you find it?”

“No. I found this.”

The opening bars to Wannabe echoed around us. The Spice Girls really wanted to tell us what they really, really want .

I jumped to my feet in time to see him reading the lyrics in the CD jacket.

“Is this what they were singing about? I never quite paid attention to the words.”

Sitting on top of some bins was my old CD player. Color me surprised that it still worked.

“Pretty sure it wasn’t in a box with my sister’s name on it.”

“Actually it was, princess. I may not have an Ivy League education but I can read.” He grinned and waved another CD in the air. “What exactly is an Essential Pop Music Mix for the Ages?”

Slightly mortified, I laughed. “Put it in and find out. But just remember, you did it to yourself.”

“Can’t be that bad,” he said, popping the disc in the player. “Besides, it’s too quiet in here.”

Gentle guitar notes sounded from the speakers. I grinned, recognizing it immediately. “Well, maybe I want it that way.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” he griped.

“Not a Backstreet Boys fan?” I giggled, yanking another box off the pile and putting it on the floor. “I’m hearing a lot of bitching and not seeing enough searching. Get to work, Maddox.”

He pulled a pillow out of the box in front of him and tossed it to me, then walked over with one of his own. “I suppose if we’re going to do this we might as well be comfortable.”

We put the pillows on the cement floor, sat down and started digging through my sister’s stuff. Backstreet Boys faded into Christina Aguilera which then faded into Nelly.

“No Britney?” he asked, flipping through a notebook.

“She’s on there.”

“How about Take That? S Club 7?”

“Um, no.”

He shook his head and tsk-tsked. “I’m disappointed in this alleged essential mix. ”

“I didn’t know you were such a connoisseur of pop music.”

He smirked. “I’m not. All the girls I liked were though. I did what I had to do to get a date and a proper kiss.”

I threw a stuffed elephant at him. “Poser.”

“What?” he laughed. “I was a teenage boy, not the prime minister.” He picked up the elephant. “Be kind to animals.”

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be sitting in a storage facility rummaging through my sister’s things and having a good time doing it. It’s possible he knew I was a jumble of anxious energy deep down and was doing all of this to help keep me relaxed. Whatever the reason, I appreciated it.

“Little Xavier liked to impress the girls did he?” I winked at him. “My sister wrote that you were huge flirt.”

He stopped sifting and looked at me intently. “She did?”

“Mmhmm. She said you guys never spoke but when she did see you, you were always surrounded by girls. Not much has changed.”

His shoulder lifted in a small shrug. “What else did she write?”

I pulled out one of her blankets and hugged it, trying to breathe in traces of her scent. It only smelled like it’d been sitting in a plastic bin for fifteen years. “About you or in general?”

“About me.”

“Your fragile ego is showing,” I teased. Pausing for a second I held his pretty blue stare. “She said I’d totally get a crush on you if we met.”

The shy smile tugging at his mouth delighted me. It’s crazy how one innocuous sentiment written two decades ago could affect our present situation.

“Did you?” he asked.

“Did I what?”

“Get a crush on me when we met?”

Don’t say it .

“Maybe.” I struggled to hold back laughter. Especially after he pinned one of his devilish stares on me. He stroked his lower lip and grinned.

“We’ll deal with that later as well.”

After a couple minutes of quiet glances and charmed smiles while searching more boxes, I asked, “How old were you when you started playing soccer?”

“Six. My dad used to take me to one of the pitches near our house and let me kick the ball around.” He thumbed through a couple of text books before continuing, “I didn’t join a team until year four.”

“What’s year four?”

“Primary school,” he explained. “I guess you’d call it third grade in elementary school here?”

“Gotcha. Did you always want to be a goalkeeper?”

“No. I wanted to be a striker, like Cade.” His eyes lit up. “I actually played that position until I was eleven. Then one day our keeper got hurt and I filled in. I was really good at it, too. Really good. Poor kid never got the position back.” He chuckled to himself. “I reckon the rest is history.”

“No wonder you were always surrounded by girls. A striker and a keeper. Must have driven them crazy.”

A facetious smile curved his lips. “You mean like the person Britney’s singing about in this song?”

“Oh, one hundred percent.” I pulled out the elastic in my hair to redo my bun. I have no idea what my face looked like but whatever expression it held caused him to check me out from head to toe, exhale, and level an impassioned cobalt stare in my direction.

“What?” I asked, sounding more nervous than curious.

“It’s just…you’re wearing the same outfit you had on when we met on the side of the road. You even have your hair up the same way.”

I touched my hair before glancing down at my gray yoga pants, white tank top and gray hoodie. “Have I committed a fashion crime?”

The storage bay erupted with his loud, deep laugh. I loved seeing his carefree side just as much as his dark and dirty side .

“No, love.” His wide, crooked smile remained. “It just made me think of that day.”

“Good thoughts?”

“Yeah,” he answered, looking down. Apprehension flickered across his face. It didn’t last long. A mischievous glow brightened his eyes when he looked at me. “Need a new bin to dig through?”

“Yes, please.”

His lips quirked up. “Something else you’ll be saying to me later.”

He grabbed more boxes and bins as we continued to search for the diary. I found some of her journals but they were mostly from junior high.

Xavier’s genuine enjoyment while we bantered back and forth about random shit beguiled me. I learned he’s a Guardians of the Galaxy guy while I’m firmly team Captain America.

Once we ventured into the topics of architecture and renovations, I couldn’t get him to stop talking.

“…with a brick wall on one side and the original exposed beams in the ceiling,” Xavier concluded with an animated smile. “I’ve been working on this house since last September. It’s a bigger project than what I normally do but it really needed the work.”

He paused, regarding me cautiously.

“There’s something so satisfying about rebuilding something from the inside out. Maybe satisfying isn’t the right word.” He thought for a second. “Fulfilling. It’s taking something that’s beautiful but broken and making it whole again.”

The way he looked at me with such affection and desire left me utterly debilitated. I wanted to freeze this moment, complete with the contradictory image of us sitting on a cement floor surrounded by my dead sister’s belongings.

Beautiful but broken.

He flipped through a worn out notebook and paused. “What are these?” he asked, holding it up .

Sketches of feathers and flames filled the pages.

“Oh. Um, those were some drawings I made. Some ideas I had for my tattoo.”

“Twin phoenix feathers in flames,” he said softly. “For your sister?”

“Yeah. A phoenix always rises from the ashes. I thought the fiery feathers would be a beautiful tribute.”

“You designed it yourself?”

“I did. I can’t draw very well but thankfully I found a tattoo artist who really understood what I wanted.”

He looked down at the drawings and asked, “Did you get it done here in New York?”

“No, I actually went to Boston. I was in college at the time. There weren’t many tattoo artists near campus so I drove two hours away to get it done.”

“Dedication,” he smirked. “I like it.”

“It’s kind of in the middle of nowhere,” I laughed.

“I know. I looked it up.”

I stopped rummaging through the bin. “You did?”

“Mmhmm. Sort of surprised me you decided to go to university in such a rural place.”

“Me too,” I admitted. “I had my sights set on California. But, you know, best laid plans and all that.”

Another veil of reflective silence fell over us. This one lasted longer than I expected.

I pushed the bin I’d been looking through away, dragged another box closer and opened it. My heart stilled. Piles of photo albums filled it. Photos and memories from a life I barely recognized but remembered so vividly. Some pictures lay scattered among the albums. One in particular brought me to tears.

Charlotte and I standing in the backyard of our beach home with red, white, and blue balloons. We each wore sundresses. Mine was blue, hers red .

I held it, brushing my thumb over our identical smiling faces. We looked so damn happy. How did it all go so terribly wrong?

“Mind if I join you?” Xavier’s hesitant question broke the silence.

I nodded. He sat next to me, resting his head on my shoulder. “When is this from?”

“Our sixteenth birthday.”

“It’s on the 4 th of July?”

“All the red, white, and blue give it away?”

He chuckled, studying the photo.

“This is you, yes?” He pointed to the girl on the left.

“How did you know?”

The warmth of his hand on my leg calmed me in a way I didn’t expect. “Your smile. It lights up your whole face. Your sister’s smile is just as lovely but yours,” he paused, “yours is radiant. I’d know it anywhere.”

I pushed out a ragged sigh. Overwhelming sadness threatened to suffocate this tender moment we shared.

“Hey.” He pressed a gentle kiss to my cheek. “Are you alright?”

“I will be.”

He took the photo from me and laid it on the pillow. “Do want to continue?”

I looked at him, feeling the weight of the last nineteen years pushing down on me.

“Green,” I answered with a small smile.

He embraced me with more affection than I was prepared to accept. But I let him. I melted into his arms and let him hold me, let him care for me. All of a sudden, I wanted to tell him all of it. Every dark moment I’ve dragged with me since I was sixteen.

“I promised her I wouldn’t leave her side,” I blurted. “The night of the bonfire. I promised her we’d be within shouting distance the whole time. But I went off with some tattooed rugby player and ended up making out with him most of the night. ”

I swallowed hard. Xavier didn’t say anything. He just pulled me closer.

“When I finally found her, she was upset. At first I thought she was pissed at me but then I saw her hair was all mussed up and her dress was dirty. I knew someone did something to her. I could feel it. All I could see was white hot rage. I asked her what happened. I asked her who she was with. She wouldn’t tell me anything. She was never the same after that night.”

I took a deep breath and continued.

“The following spring we were on school vacation. It was a Wednesday morning. Dad was at work. Mom planned to take us out for lunch in the city. I was downstairs and mom ran up to see if Charlotte was awake yet. I heard her scream. It was like a howl. I’d never heard someone scream like that before.”

I shivered, reliving the panic and fear.

“You know how people talk about twins being connected? I couldn’t feel her anymore. My mother ran into the kitchen and called 911. I went upstairs and…Charlotte was still in bed. It looked like she was asleep but she was so still. I saw the empty pill bottle on the floor. I knew…I knew she was gone. The rest is a blur. Sirens, paramedics, my dad coming home, police.”

For several long moments I stayed quiet. The only movement was Xavier wiping the tears from my cheeks.

“My mother blamed me,” I finally said, my tone flat. “She blamed me for taking Charlotte to the party. She blamed me for what happened at the party. She blamed me for not doing anything to stop it. She blamed me for tearing the family apart. She hasn’t stopped blaming me.”

“This goes without saying,” Xavier said, tilting my chin up, “but none of it was your fault. None of it. I am so sorry you’ve carried this with you for so long.”

Having him comfort me felt good. My parents and I splintered into our own worlds of pain after Charlotte died. It often felt like there had been no one to just listen . Not even Killian. As much as I loved him for being there from the beginning, he always tried to fix it.

Telling Xavier was different, like it mattered how I felt about it. How I still feel about it.

“I think, on some level, even if my mother never said those things to me, I’d still blame myself. If I’d done one thing different that night, if I hadn’t gone off, maybe she wouldn’t have been alone with whoever hurt her or maybe—“

“Don’t do that,” he interrupted. “Please don’t play the maybe game. Maybes and what ifs won’t change anything. You’ll just keep punishing yourself for something you could never control.”

I picked up the photo of my sister and I from our final birthday together. Even though I still felt the sadness stretching through me, I also felt a sense of peace. Revealing the worst part of myself to him hadn’t been as terrible as I’d built it up to be.

Beautiful but broken .

I turned to face Xavier and kissed him. “Thank you,” I whispered on his lips.

“Anything for you, love.”

I glanced around at the pieces of my sister’s life strewn all over the storage bay.

The diary. I had to find it.

“We should get back to it,” I said, caressing his cheek. “Break time is over.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I continued digging through this box while watching him sift through old school books and folders. He lifted a diploma cover and looked at me. It had to be mine because I was the only one who graduated.

He turned it so I could read the school name.

Dartmouth College.

“Why is this at the bottom of a box? ”

“I don’t know.”

“Victoria.”

“It’s just a piece of paper.”

His brows knit together in frustration when he opened the cover. “ Magna cum laude . I know enough Latin to know what this means.” He looked up at me through a dark fringe of lashes. “Aren’t you proud of what you’ve accomplished?”

“Of course I am,” I acquiesced.

“May I have the photo please?”

I handed it over. He tucked it inside my diploma and placed it on the floor next to him.

“You can’t bury your life away forever,” he told me.

“I know,” I responded softly. “When I was out with my dad the other night, he said we owed my sister the dignity of coming together for something to keep her memory alive. He meant the cottage but I think,” I stumbled over my words and emotions, “I think maybe I should do more to honor her.”

“What would you like to do?”

“I’ve tossed around the idea of setting up a foundation in her name. Something small to start. Give the proceeds to local mental health organizations for teens and young adults. Maybe even split the donations and give some to the animal shelter.” I shrugged. “I need to do something.”

A soft smile curved Xavier’s mouth. “I’d love to help in any way I can.”

“I’d love that, too,” I grinned. “Then maybe you won’t be so jealous of Noah when he donates to the shelter next year.”

Xavier’s eyes flared. “I’m not jealous.”

“Oh, okay,” I laughed. “And I’m not a natural redhead.”

“Yes, you are,” he said in a silky tone.

My cheeks flushed. “You were so jealous at dinner that night when Hannah asked me about the charity. I thought steam was going to come out of your ears. And then last night at the bar? Come on.”

“Fine,” he huffed. “I was jealous. And then you sat in the wanker’s lap and it made me fucking crazy. Plus, he’s a bit of hugger.” His voice started to rise. “He hugged you at the stadium, at the bar. He had his arm around you in another bloody photo. What is it with him always putting his hands on you?”

The fiery stare he leveled at me should have given me pause, but no.

“I’ve known him since he was a rookie,” I said calmly. “He’s been with Tracey the entire time. They’re the nicest people. You saw it last night. You talked to him for almost an hour. You don’t have any reason to be jealous.”

“What about the other one from last night? Tre? He kept shooting me dirty looks. Do I have a reason to be jealous of him?”

Well, shit.

My little game seemed to be backfiring on me in spectacular fashion.

“Not really.”

“What does not really mean?”

Dredging up my past sexual encounters was definitely not on my to-do list. His whole body tensed like a panther ready to pounce on its prey.

I folded my arms. “What did you mean by not always when I asked you about being alone at Bennet’s parties?”

Realization dawned on him pretty quick. “Fair enough.”

“Truce?”

“Sure.”

“You’re cute when you’re jealous.” I knew I was playing with fire at this point. He was heated and my continuous needling at his discomfort probably wouldn’t end well.

The tip of his tongue slid along his lower lip. He dragged his eyes over me in a long, searing movement. All the telltale signs of his imminent switch to the untamed, dark lover I craved were falling into place.

“We’ll see how cute I am when we’re finished here.”

“Promise?”

We spent the next half hour going through boxes and bins in silence. A heady mix of anticipation, desire, and intrigue filled the space. I kept stealing glances in his direction. He caught me looking and smirked when he reached inside a bin. A cream-colored diary was in his hand when it reemerged.

“Is this it?”

I crawled over to him and took it. Flipping through the pages I noticed it wasn’t filled to the end. All the other journals I’d found so far were. My heart leapt in my throat.

“I think so,” I murmured. Nervous energy spread through my veins, shocking and burning all my nerve endings.

“Okay then,” Xavier said with an air finality. “Let’s clean this place up and go.”