His Second Woman

Chapter 3

Kaylen

Kaylen had promised herself she would never cry over Xavier again. An hour later, she was standing outside his apartment; drunk, soaked by the rain with her finger hovering over the doorbell.

One press and there would be no turning back.

She'd left the garden without looking back at Clara's smile. Left the ballroom, the fireworks and the golden windows full of people who didn't know her name unless it came with the word sister attached like an apology. She'd walked until her heels blistered, then pulled them off and walked barefoot until a bar's neon sign blurred red through the rain.

She didn't remember ordering the first drink. She remembered the third, burning down her throat, and thinking Xavier's voice kept repeating itself in her skull. I would never have let you disappear.

She hadn't meant to come here. Her feet had simply stopped walking, and when she looked up, his building was in front of her, and her hand was already lifting toward the buzzer.

The door opened before she pressed it. Xavier stood there in a half-unbuttoned shirt, hair disheveled like he'd been dragging his hands through it for hours. His eyes swept over her soaked hair, running mascara, bare feet and something in his face cracked open.

"Kaylen–" he paused.

"I'm leaving." She turned, swayed and caught herself on the doorframe.

"You're not walking anywhere like this." His hand closed around her wrist, not tight, just certain.

"I'm fine."

"You're not."

He pulled her inside before she could argue, and the door shut out the rain, out the noise of the street, out the whole ruined night. With the towels padding on her disheveled silhouette, a surge of ease teased.

His voice is low, playing on softly and he asks her to sit, inquiring if she was cold, asking nothing about why she'd shown up at his door at midnight, soaked and shaking. She sat on the edge of his couch, towel around her shoulders, staring at the floor.

"You should hate me," she said suddenly.

"Why would I hate you?"

"Because I let you keep believing…" Her voice broke. She pressed her palm hard against her mouth.

"Believing what?"

She shook her head, tears finally spilling, three thin layers at once. "Do you know what it's like," she whispered, "to watch the person you–" She stopped herself. Started again. "To watch him give someone else the umbrella you shared, the coffee, the scarf and to smile at a wedding invitation with someone else's name where yours should be." She allowed the words to hurry out foolishly.

Xavier went very still.

"You watched all that," he said slowly, "because you were there."

She said nothing which was its own answer. He knelt in front of her, close enough that she could see the moment understanding stopped arriving in his eyes, every piece sliding into place. The umbrella, the scarf, he rummaged his mind thoroughly, eyes leaning on her—the girl who knew details he'd told no one.

He didn't reach for her, he didn't comfort her, he said, quiet as a confession, "I searched for you."

Silence simmers soft and fills up the little distance between them, only separated by the bulging of the rain against the window.

"I spent three years loving the wrong woman."

Kaylen froze. Everything she had believed about the last three years, that he'd simply forgotten her, replaced her, moved on without a backward glance collapsed at once, and something far more painful took its place.

He never stopped. He just didn't know it was her.

She stood too fast, unsteady. "I should go."

"No.”

"Xavier, it's too late. You're engaged to my sister. Whatever this is–”

"If I had known it was you," He rose, stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her chin to hold his gaze. "Would you still have left that ferry terminal without telling me your name?"

She opened her mouth. No answer came. There had never been an answer, not in three years of aching for a man who wasn't supposed to be hers.

"I don't know," she whispered, which was the truest thing she'd said all night.

He touched her jaw, gently, the way he'd tried to once in the garden before she flinched. This time, she didn't pull away.

"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. For not seeing you sooner."

The apology became a kiss before either of them decided it should. Soft first, hesitant, three years of longing folded into the space between one breath and the next. Then Kaylen's hands found the front of his shirt, and Xavier's arms wrapped around her like he was afraid the room might take her again if he let go, and neither of them pulled back.

Rain kept falling outside. Somewhere down the hallway, a small red light blinked steadily above the security camera mounted near the elevator, its lens angled just enough to catch the apartment door.

It caught Kaylen entering and the door closing behind her at half past midnight. Neither of them noticed and they wouldn't have cared, that night, if they had.

For the first time in three years, there was no fiancée between them, not the slightest bridle of misunderstanding and no lie. Just two people finally catching up to the truth that had been waiting for them since a rainy afternoon in Havenport.

They became lovers before the storm outside had passed.

.

.

.

Morning arrived slow and golden, sunlight spilling across the bedroom in long amber bars. Kaylen stirred beneath the sheets, her head still thick from the wine, her body warm against Xavier's, his arm heavy across her waist.

For one perfect, unguarded moment, she let herself believe this could last and told herself that the world outside hadn't changed and that Clara's smile in the garden had meant nothing at all.

The bedroom door handle turned. The brass handle titled, paused, was moved again, a fraction lower each time, like someone was counting the seconds between each small movement, ma

king sure no sound escaped.

Kaylen's eyes snapped open.

Someone was coming inside.