He Called Me His

Chapter Nine: Unmasked.

Sasha found me alone this time, waiting by my car after school with an expression that had lost all its earlier venom, replaced by something colder, more calculating.

"I know something about Xavier," she said without preamble. "Something he's kept hidden for years. Something that, if it came out, would destroy his father's marriage to your mother far more thoroughly than any homecoming rumor ever could."

My stomach twisted. "What are you talking about?"

"Ask him," she said simply. "Ask him why his mother really left. Ask him what he's been protecting his father from for the last three years. If he tells you the truth — really tells you — you'll understand exactly why I'm giving you the chance to end things quietly, before I decide to make sure your mother learns it from someone other than her stepson."

She left before I could press further, leaving me standing in the parking lot with a dread I couldn't fully name.

I confronted Xavier the moment I got home, finding him in his room, and repeated Sasha's words exactly as she'd said them. Something shuttered immediately behind his eyes — not anger, but a grief so old and practiced it had clearly been carried alone for a very long time.

"Sit down," he said quietly. "I should have told you this a long time ago. I just... I didn't know how, without it changing everything."

I sat, bracing myself for whatever truth he was about to share.

"My mother didn't leave because she stopped loving us," he said slowly. "She left because she found out my dad had an affair. Years ago, before he married your mom. I found the messages first, actually — I was thirteen. I never told my mom I found them before she found out herself. I've spent years wondering if things would have gone differently if I'd said something sooner, or if I'd kept quiet entirely."

"Xavier—"

"There's more," he continued, his voice tightening. "After Mom left, Dad promised he'd changed, that it would never happen again. I believed him, mostly because I needed to. When he told me he was marrying your mom, I made him promise, really promise, that this time was different. I've spent three years watching him carefully, terrified of seeing the same signs again, because I couldn't bear the thought of watching another family break apart the same way, especially not now that I actually—" He stopped, swallowing hard. "Especially not now that it would mean losing you too."

The weight of what he'd been carrying settled over me slowly, painfully. "You've been protecting my mom's marriage this whole time," I said. "Without her ever knowing what you were protecting her from."

"I didn't know how else to make sure it wouldn't happen to her the way it happened to my mom," he admitted. "Sasha found out about all of this a while back, when we were still together. I trusted her with it. I shouldn't have."

"What does she want, exactly?" I asked. "Why threaten this now?"

"She wants us to end things," he said grimly. "Believes if she threatens to expose Dad's past, I'll back away from you to protect the family from the fallout. She's not entirely wrong to think it might work — I've spent years being willing to sacrifice a lot to keep this family from breaking the way mine already did once."

The full weight of the impossible choice settled over both of us in that moment — protect the fragile stability of our parents' marriage by staying silent and ending whatever we'd built together, or risk everything by refusing to let Sasha's blackmail dictate our lives any longer.

"What do you want to do?" I asked quietly.

He looked at me for a long moment, something fierce and resolved finally replacing the exhaustion in his expression. "I'm tired of protecting people through secrets," he said. "It didn't save my mom's marriage. I don't think it's actually protecting yours either — I think it's just delaying an honest conversation your mom deserves to have with my dad, on her own terms, instead of through Sasha's manipulation."

"You want to tell them," I said. "Both of them. Everything."

"I think we have to," he said. "Not because Sasha's forcing our hand — because hiding this has cost both of us enough already. I don't want us built on secrets anymore, Ivy. Not the secret about us, and not this one either."

I reached for his hand, understanding fully, for the first time, the true depth of what he'd been carrying alone for years — and admiring him more, not less, for finally choosing honesty over the exhausting weight of protecting everyone else at his own expense.

"Then we tell them together," I said. "Whatever happens after that — we face it together."

We didn't yet know that the conversation waiting for us the next morning would test not just our own relationship, but the entire fragile foundation our two families had built — or that the truth, once finally spoken aloud, would either shatter everything completely, or finally set every one of us free.