Xander was exactly what she wanted but believed she wouldn’t have.
And because she believed she couldn’t have it, she stopped wanting it… only for it to show up to her with ease.
Maybe too easily?
The abundance of good things had made Rylee suspicious… and curious about finding out when the next shoe would drop.
The conversation didn’t resolve anything for Rylee, but it did make it clear that she had been pushing Xander away… and it had been hard for her to do.
Maybe I am making it harder than it has to be,she thought to herself.
“Okay, okay,” Nadia voiced, drying her eyes and sniffing back her tears. “We gotta lighten things back up. We can’t be ruining our mascara like this.”
Parker smiled, and Rylee laughed through her tears.
“Let’s make a toast to the man who won’t give up on our girl…” Nadia said, raising her glass, Rylee and Parker joining her. “Even when she makes it a damn Olympic sport with no damn medal to show for it.”
Rylee rolled her eyes but laughed along with Parker.
She met her glass with her friends in a toast, and she flashed her signature winning smile… but deep down, her warring feelings still chimed louder than the clink of their glasses.
Later that evening, just as Rylee was straightening up the brownstone’s living room, she heard her doorbell ring followed by a knock on the door.
It was a few minutes to 9 p.m. and she wasn’t expecting anyone.
But considering how things had been as of late, she knew who it was.
Xander.
She shut her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. Glanced at her children playing with their Legos on the living room’s area rug before making her way to the front door.
She’d planned to put the children to sleep after vacuuming, so a part of her was feeling some kind ofwayabout Xander popping up… yet, again.
She peeked through the peephole and immediately unlocked the door. When she opened it, she was prepared to see that cunning grin on Xander’s lips and to hear him beg her to come inside next, but both his smile and his words were missing.
His bomber jacket was unzipped, and he only wore a white tee underneath. Joggers wrinkled, face with black smudges on one cheek and beneath his right eye.
Xander didn’t have to say anything in that moment. His appearance said it all.
The cold air rushed in behind him… or maybe it was just the way he looked that sent a chill racing down Rylee’s spine, making her shiver in reaction.
“Hey,” he rasped, inhaling a deep breath that made his chest swell.
“Hey,” Rylee whispered, eyes darting between his, trying to read him.
His broad shoulders looked heavier. Like something was weighing them down. Something he couldn’t just set aside. And only looking at him had Rylee feeling it in her chest too before he told her anything.
“Umm…” He cleared his throat, then ran a hand through his deep brown locs, the motion slow, like he needed something to do with his nerves. “I know you asked me to give some space between me and the kids, and I’m trying, Snoop. I am, butuh…”
He squeezed his eyes closed, and that was all it took for Rylee to go to him.
She pressed her hands to either side of his face, making him look at her.
He exhaled all the air he seemed to have in him, dropping his head a little in her cradling hands.
“I lost two kids in a house fire two hours ago…”
Rylee gasped.
