A Kiss of Color: The Complete 3 Book Collection (22 page)

“I’ll say. Everything’s different, isn’t it?”

Emily’s smile faded slightly as she came to sit next to him, touching his arm lightly. “I heard about what happened with Helena, Xavier. I’m really sorry.”

He stiffened slightly, as his heart throbbed with the rawness of the still-open wound, before he forced himself to relax. “So am I.” His tone was soft, regretful, before he shook his head, pushing thoughts of his lover from his mind as he concentrated on the sister who had eluded him for a decade. “But I’d honestly rather not talk about it right now. We have other things to catch up on, right?”

His youngest sister’s smile returned.

“We’d need a lot more than one night; but yes, you’re right. We do have a lot to catch up on.”

He chuckled softly. He’d already managed to procure Emily’s number from Brandy and he planned on making good use of it. For now, however, he just wanted to know that she was alright – that living under the shadow of their parents hadn’t hurt her as badly as it had him. “Emily, can you tell me something, honestly?”

“Anything.” Blue eyes so like their mother’s gazed earnestly up at him, making him wonder what Mariah Thompson had been like before money and prestige had ruined her. Had she been as sweet and carefree as Emily? Or had she always been cold, cruel and calculating.

Had she been afraid of having children?

“Are you happy back home? When you’re with Mom and Dad…do they treat you…” he struggled to find the correct words. After all, it wasn’t his aim to turn his sister against their parents. God, no. As against their parenting methodologies as he was, he was no monster. “Do you have everything you need?”

Even in the face of his obvious discomfort, his sister never lost her serene smile. “Xavier, I think that what I need has less and less to do with our parents as time goes on. They are what they are. They did what they did…now, we do what we do. Right?”

While that wasn’t quite the answer he’d expected, it certainly gave Xavier an ever deeper insight into his youngest sister’s psyche: she was far more mature than he, even though he was ten years her senior. While he tended to linger on the idea that his parents had slighted, Emily seemed to fully accept the lot she’d be dealt in life…and had even learned to embrace it to some extent.

“Are you
happy
?” He rephrased the question more directly. Just because the young woman appeared more mature than he didn’t mean he was assured that she would be returning home to have her flame smothered.

Emily laughed gently, shaking her head at his relentlessness. “I’m
happy
Xavier. I swear, you and Brandy are just alike. You expect me to be some kind of repressed flower.”

And for good reason.

Nonetheless, it was good to hear her admission. Emily seemed completely sincere – and atop that, it seemed as if playing the cello brought her genuine joy.

Which meant that at least
one
of the Thompson children was happy. Reaching out, Xavier cupped Emily’s chin gently, taking in her blonde waves and the light pattern of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “You know, I’m always here for you. If you ever need
anything
, you know where to find me.”

“
Now
I do.” The young woman emphasized, before she leaned across the space that separated them to wrap her arms around him in a warm embrace.

In that brief moment, Xavier forgot the pain that Helena had caused him. He forgot that he would lose the child he had never really had, and forgot how much he blamed his parents for the affection they’d denied him. He let his sister hold him, and held her.

And for however brief a time, he was comforted.

***

What had she done?

It was the hundredth time in the past week that Helena had asked herself the question. Each time, the answer only seemed to elude her further, and she felt more alone than ever.

It had taken her, she realized, a full twenty four hours to even regain her bearings. When she’d left the gorgeous, new home that she and Xavier had only recently bought, she’d been blinded by grief and hurt, so overwhelmed that it was all she could do to simply continue moving. She’d thrown her hastily packed bag into her car and driven for three hours – far beyond the outskirts of town and then some - until she’d come to a solitary motel.

And there, she had cried for what had seemed like an eternity. She checked into a small, ratty room that reminded her of the one assigned to her in her childhood home, and she sobbed into sheets that smelled of cigarettes and sweat.

In the entirety of her relationship with Xavier, she had never seen him look at her that way – with disgust, horror, and terrible disappointment. In that moment, when he’d told her how proud her mother would be if she could see her now, Helena knew that she’d never be able to gain the forgiveness of the man she loved.

The realization was no less devastating a week after the fact, though, by that time, she’d cried all of her tears and had nothing left but silent, stony grief. She watched late, outdated reruns on television until she got sick of them and ate so much dehydrated ramen that the taste lingered, toxic, in the back of her throat.

Which, of course, didn’t help her morning sickness at all. In her hurry to leave the house, Helena had forgotten her meds, and as a result, she remained poised over the toilet for a good two hours every day, heaving up everything she’d eaten the previous night. She didn’t really know if it was from lack of meds, or simply from heartsickness, but her nausea had increased tenfold.

She could get rid of it, she reminded herself, by simply making another appointment at the clinic. She’d missed her first one by simple virtue of being wrapped in pure, unadulterated emotional distress. The moment that was supposed to have been her triumph – the moment she surmounted all her fears and took back control of her life – had never happened.

She was still very pregnant.

Now, she told herself, she didn’t have a choice. She would have to get rid of the baby.

After all, it wasn’t as if she’d ever had a choice before. She’d been dead set on reclaiming her life and her future…hadn’t she?

It took a good three or four days after she fled the house but slowly, steadily, Helena began to realize that her resolve had begun to waver the moment she’d seen the hurt on Xavier’s face. She’d never intended for him to know because she’d known, somehow, that he would be able to talk her into keeping a baby she wasn’t sure she wanted. To convince her that she would be enough for both him and their child – that she could provide it with tender, loving care.

The pain in his eyes had undone her so much so that she’d reacted instinctively – defensively. She had to make him understand why – had to make him see that she’d only ruin any child she had; that a baby wasn’t right for them and would perhaps never be.

It had all blown up in her face.

She had ruined everything, not only by hiding her pregnancy from Xavier, but by trying to justify herself as she’d felt her resolve fading. She’d felt both manipulated and scared, and, as a result, had probably said some things she shouldn’t have.

But none of that mattered now. She could take them back no more than she could will away the child swelling in her belly; and as days passed in the wake of the appointment she had missed, she found that she could no more bring herself to make another than she could rid herself of the awful, gnawing emptiness in her chest.

When the seventh and final morning in the dark, bleak hotel room dawned, she sat on the edge of the bed, after puking her guts up for the usually allotted time, trying to make her fingers dial the number of the clinic. It was the first time in days that she actually cried, the tears dripping warmly down her face to stain her jeans darkly.

She couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.

As awful of a mother as she knew she would be, and as petrified as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to purge the last Xavier’s child from her body. It felt immoral and almost sacrilegious – not for the act itself, but for what it represented.

She had already almost certainly lost the man in every other facet that mattered. His child was the only remainder that she would have of him…and so, she couldn’t let it go.

After about an hour, Helena gave up staring at the clinic’s number on the screen and instead began to scroll through the numbers of all those who’d called her in the past week. She hadn’t answered even a single call, and so she was sure she had a great deal of people worried about her, but in that week, Helena hadn’t been able to face them. How could she? It felt as if her entire world was falling down around her.

And
her hormones were wreaking havoc on her sanity. Helena had never been pregnant, and she’d had very few friends that had ever been pregnant, and so, naturally, she was completely lost. She only knew that she needed to acquire some new meds and get herself together before she stopped being able to eat solid food entirely.

And more importantly, she would have to come to terms with the child she was carrying. If she really wasn’t going to give it up – if she meant to embrace the last part of Xavier that she would be left with, she had to stop seeing the baby as some kind of foreign entity and start planning to at least try to be the best mother she could.

The best
single
mother.

The thought was almost enough to set her off again. Helena liked to think she had a good head on her shoulders. She knew what she’d done – and that Xavier would never accept her back with open arms. She’d practically spat on his ideas about family, she’d lied to him and she’d proved to him that she could never escape her past completely.

She’d made her bed…now she just had to lie in it. Much easier said than done.

Standing from the bed, Helena took a deep breath, and began to prepare herself for the task of returning to her life. She had been cooped up inside a fetid hotel room for seven days, writhing in self-pity. Whatever she was – whatever she feared – she couldn’t just give up. She still wanted that doctorate – to follow in her father’s footsteps, give her life meaning, and to prove her mother wrong. That would prove harder than ever now, with Xavier’s comment on how much she and her mother were alike ringing in her ears.

He had uttered her greatest insecurity – her worst fear – and relieving it in her mind made her almost as nauseous as the hormones warring for mastery over her body.

But, through the discomfort, Helena forced herself to begin packing the few things she’d strewn around the hotel room. She went about it slowly, dragging the action out for as long as humanly possible, because she knew she’d have to face the people who cared about her sooner or later.

Well, all of them but one.

The first person she called, inexplicably, was Brandy. It wasn’t because she wanted an in to Xavier, but rather because she knew she owed the attorney an apology. Brandy would probably think horribly of her after the way she and Xavier parted, but she didn’t want to go down in history as the nasty ex.

She
wouldn’t
.

The phone rang once, twice, three times. Every additional tone made Helena wince as she waited with baited breath for Brandy to answer – and simultaneously hoped she didn’t. She would have gone back east by now – away from her brother’s problems and back to her own.

Just when she had begun to believe the elder woman would never answer the phone, there was a click on the other line as Brandy picked up. Helena winced, knowing the attorney would immediately recognize her number, and prepared herself for a full on verbal assault.

“Helena, thank God! Where have you been? Where are you now? What on earth happened?”

The young woman opened her mouth, searching desperately for the right words to say. The last thing she’d expected to hear from her ex-lover’s sister was such intense concern – really, Brandy’s voice was almost shrill with desperation.

Helena blinked back tears she hadn’t even known she still possessed, before her eyes slid closed completely.

“Brandy…” It took everything in her – from the strength she thought she’d lost over the past week to the last vestiges of her stubborn pride, not to beg Brandy for information on her brother. Helena knew she’d hurt him, but was he alright? Was he still moving full throttle into his upcoming merger?

Then, there were more selfish things she wanted to know. Did he miss her? Had he already managed to get over their terrible falling out and move on with his life? “Brandy, I’m sorry.” Helena took a deep, shuddering breath. “I should have congratulated you on your deciding to start a family, and I didn’t. I was wrapped up in my own terrible mess and I…I was a horrible friend. Not that any of that matters, now.” She bit her lip, pacing back and forth as the nervous energy in her body transferred to her stride. “I just wanted to apologize…to let you know that I didn’t mean any of it.”

There was a short pause on the other end of the line – and in that short span of time, Helena imagined Brandy staring at the phone in horrified disbelief. “Helena, you were
pregnant
! Why didn’t you tell me?”

The elder woman’s voice, instead of being accusatory, only held a tinge of grief. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like, keeping that inside!”

“I’m…I’m still pregnant.” It was the last thing she expected to say at that particular moment, but the words slipped from the young woman’s lips before she could stop them. A few minutes ago, she’d been high and mighty, convinced that she could try and raise the child herself, despite how much it terrified her. However, the moment she heard Brandy’s voice – heard it and registered the empathy there – she couldn’t keep quiet.”

“You’re…but Xavier said…” Brandy fumbled her words, and Helena could hear her sink down in a chair across the connection as she tried to come to terms with what she heard. “So, you’re keeping the baby?”

“I don’t know. I mean…I think I am.” Helena groaned, shaking her head as she buried her face in her free hand. “Yes, I am. Please, don’t tell Xavier.”