Too Late To Choose Me
1162 Words
I stand in front of my closet longer than I want to admit.
Not because I'm trying to impress him. I tell myself that twice while I push past the one dress I know he always liked.
I pull on jeans and a plain grey sweater instead. Something simple. Something that says I'm here for answers, not for him.
In the mirror, my hand drifts up to fix a loose strand of hair. It stops halfway.
Seriously?
He's not worth fixing your hair for.
I grab my bag and leave before I can talk myself out of either direction.
The café is quiet, tucked on a corner two neighborhoods from anywhere either of us used to take the other. Xavier is already there when I walk in, sitting stiffly at a table near the window.
He stands the second he sees me, chair scraping against the floor. Neither of us moves for a second, caught somewhere between a hug, a handshake, and just sitting down like strangers.
Neither of us moves. In the end, we just sit down.
He pulls out my chair before I can reach it myself, an old habit his hands clearly haven't forgotten.
“Thank you,” I say, and immediately hate that I mean it.
He used to do that every time. I never noticed how automatic it was until now.
Now it only reminds me of everything we lost.
“How have you been?” he asks, like this is a normal question for two people with our history.
I let out a small laugh. “Is that really what you want to ask me?”
He looks down. “No.”
“I'm here.”
“You look tired.”
“So do you.”
That's the extent of it. Two people who once talked for hours, reduced to trading four-word sentences across a small table.
A waiter comes and goes. Neither of us touches the coffee.
He clears his throat like he's about to say something real, then asks instead, “How's your mom?”
“The same,” I say. “Managing.”
“Good. That's good.”
It isn't good. Nothing about any of this is good, and we both know it, but neither of us has found the door into the real conversation yet.
Xavier finally breaks first, his jaw tightening the way it always does right before he says something he doesn't want to say.
“I handled everything terribly,” he says. “That night. All of it.”
I wait. I'm not going to make this easier for him.
“You didn't deserve what happened,” he says quietly. No dramatics. No going to his knees. Just the words, plain and overdue.
“There's something else,” he says after a long silence. “Something you don't know.”
“It wasn't just Elena,” he says.
He rubs a hand across his face.
“The board... they wanted the merger.”
“With the Voss family,” I say, and something cold settles in my stomach.
“I kept telling myself it was the right thing. The responsible thing.”
“My father didn't force me into this,” he adds. “The board did.”
“You still had a choice,” I say.
He opens his mouth, then closes it again. He doesn't have an answer, because I'm right and we both know it.
“The board gave you an ultimatum,” I say slowly, testing the shape of it, “and instead of fighting it, you decided I was the easiest thing to give up.”
“That's not fair.”
“Isn't it?”
He looks down at his hands, and for once he doesn't try to argue his way out of it.
I go still. Robert's words come back to me.
She's going to destroy him.
“Elena isn't marrying me because she loves me,” Xavier says, lowering his voice like the walls might be listening. “She wants the company. I think she's been gathering information for months. Documents. Access she shouldn't have.”
“What kind of documents?”
“I don't know yet. But I've started to suspect she's hiding something bigger than an affair. Bigger than me.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you deserve to know what you almost walked into. And because I don't have anyone else I trust enough to say it out loud to.”
The admission sits strangely between us, half confession, half apology for a different kind of betrayal I hadn't even considered yet.
He doesn't say more, and I don't push. Not yet. There's too much sitting on the table already.
“I made a mistake,” he says, quieter now. Then, quieter still, “I miss you.”
The words land somewhere soft in my chest, some old, stubborn part of me that still wants to believe him.
But I remember standing alone in that ballroom, the whispers, the way he let Elena's hand rest against his chest without flinching.
“I needed you six days ago,” I say.
Silence stretches between us, heavier than anything either of us has said so far.
“You don't get to come back because you're lonely, Xavier.”
He looks like he wants to argue, but there's nothing left to argue with. I glance toward the window to give myself somewhere else to look.
That's when I see it. A black luxury sedan pulling up along the curb outside, the kind that doesn't belong on this quiet street.
That car is impossible to miss.
The café door opens.
Robert steps inside.
Conversations don't stop. They just get quieter.
His eyes find Xavier first. Then me. The temperature in the café seems to drop by several degrees, though nobody says a word.
“Ariella,” Robert says, calm and unreadable as always.
Then, to Xavier, without missing a beat, “I didn't realize you had company.”
Xavier's whole body stiffens beside me. Neither of them expected the other. I can see it settle over both their faces at the same time, that particular shock of two carefully separate worlds suddenly colliding in one small café.
Robert's gaze slides back to me, steady, almost gentle in a way that somehow makes it worse.
“I believe your seven days are almost over.”
Xavier's head turns sharply between us. “What seven days?”
Nobody answers him. I feel the silence stretch out, thin and dangerous, the kind that can't hold much longer before something breaks.
I haven't told Xavier about the proposal. I search Robert's face for any sign that he has, and find nothing but that same composed patience.
Xavier keeps looking between us. He's waiting for someone to explain.
Neither of us does.
For the first time since I met Robert Rothwell, I wondered if silence could ruin a life faster than the truth.
- Writer
