“Oh, god,” Xavi said, rubbing the back of his neck. He sat down on the couch, gesturing for me to do the same. “I guess it’s time to finally tell you.”
I stared at him. He’d been keeping secrets from me? What the hell was going on?
When he looked up at me again, I realized he was going to start until I sat. I sat – keeping my cane in my hand, just in case I was about to jump back up and storm out of the apartment.
“Okay,” he said. He took a heavy breath and blew it out. “There’s a reason I never invited you back here.”
I had figured this whole time that Xavi didn’t invite me back because his apartment was a mess and the one I’d found was clean, with a roommate who was almost never home, but apparently, I was wrong. “What?” I asked, my heart thundering in my chest with the fear that what he was about to say would ruin everything.
“I, uh…” Xavi took a second deep breath like he needed to steady himself or he would throw up. “I have money. I mean, my family does. I come from money.”
“What?” I almost exploded. Only the ache in my leg kept me from leaping to my feet.
“You know the company we work for?” Xavi asked. Obviously, I did, and at my stunned, silent nod he swallowed hard. “Well, my Dad kinda… owns it.”
I stared at him and then through him, going back in my memory. “So, all those times I saved your ass at work?”
“Yeah, I was never getting fired,” Xavi admitted. “Although Janice kind of scared me more than a few times.”
“I stuck my neck out for you!”
“In total fairness, I did keep telling you not to,” Xavi said, giving me a hopeless kind of look. “And I didn’t want to tell anyone in the office who I really was. I didn’t want to get treated differently.”
“The promotion?”
“Complete and utter nepotism,” Xavi shrugged. “My Dad’s still mad I didn’t take it. I don’t care, by the way. You should have been offered it all along. And it’s not like I need the salary.”
I covered my face with my hands, groaning. “All this time…”
I didn’t want to say it, but I’d been working all hours of the weekends still, trying to make sure ends still continued to meet. Making sure Daisy was safe. And I could have spent more time with her before her operation and afterward making sure she was okay, maybe, if we’d had some extra money. Especially if it was a loan from someone close to me, someone who knew I was good for it.
“You never would have accepted anything from me,” Xavi said sadly, as if he could read my mind. “I would have offered if I thought you would. I would have told you everything, given you everything. But I know you, Rowe. You’d have told me that you could stand on your own two feet.”
Damnit, he was right. “But Daisy…” I said helplessly, gesturing with vague hands.
“That experimental program she got into that brought the operation forward,” Xavi said with a light cough.
I looked at him hard. “Yes?”
“Well, they needed donations to expand the program,” he said innocently.
I stared at him for a moment and then covered my face with my hands.
“I’m sorry!” he burst out. He sounded miserable. “I shouldn’t have kept this from you. But… I wanted to help, and it was the only way I could!”
I moved my hands away, let him see that there were tears in my eyes. Not tears of betrayal or anger – tears of gratitude. “You did the right thing,” I admitted. “If I’d known, I never would have accepted.”
“So, does that mean you still want to move in with me?” Xavi asked, his voice tentative and poised for pain.
“Yes,” I said with a sigh, wiping the back of my hand over my eyes and sniffing.
“Not just because I’m rich, right?” Xavi asked. “I mean…”
“No,” I said, shifting closer on the sofa and throwing my arms around him, pulling him in to rest his head on my shoulder. I could sense the tension in him, the need for reassurance. “Because you’re hot and funny and sweet and cute and you’re trying so hard to be a good man that it makes my heart swell fifteen sizes when I look at you.”
“Trying?” Xavi repeated, his voice small and muffled by my skin.
“Succeeding,” I corrected myself. “And I think you really were a good man all along, and you give me way too much credit.”
