Page 109 of Collateral Love
Then she said quietly, “We need to talk.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah,” I said. “We do.”
She sat across from my bed in the recliner..For a second, neither of us spoke. Then she asked the question I knew had been waiting for years.
“Did you know Xavier before I met him?”
I didn’t lie. I couldn’t lie to her anymore. I felt no better than any other monster Channy encountered.
“Yes.”
Her shoulders stiffened.
“How long?”
“I knew him for two years before you met him.” The words landed between us like broken glass.
Channy blinked slowly. “You’re serious.”
“I am.”
Her laugh was short and disbelieving.“So all those questions you asked during that summer about his age and other little idiotic trivia questions you already knew the answers to?”
“I was lying.” The silence that followed was brutal.
“Why?” she whispered.
“Because I was terrified Baby Bear. Because I had already seen the way you two looked at each other. Because love like that changes people. I knew from the moment I met Xavier King you were going to fall in love with him, I said quietly.”
Her eyes flashed. “And that was a problem?”
“No,” I said. “The problem was he was going to love you back.”
Channy stared at me like she didn’t understand the words. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“Because it was dangerous.”
She leaned forward in her chair, “So you decided to ruin my life instead?”
The accusation hit exactly where it should have.
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From the world that follows men like Xavier.”
Her jaw tightened.
“And Charles didn’t come with a world?”
“I thought he didn’t.”
That was the truth that hurt the most.
I looked down at my hands.
“Charles looked safe,” I admitted. “Controlled. Predictable. The kind of man who wouldn’t hurt you.”
