says, speaking rapidly. “Please forgive me. Please say you’ll forgive me for what I’ve done. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry. Please believe me when I say there can never be enough words or actions to get you to forgive me for this.”
I furrow my brow. What is he talking about?
“I should have prepared you,” he continues. “I should have been more careful. I was so bloody stupid. This is all my fault. All of it. I shou—”
“Xander, stop it!” I cry, cutting into his words with my plea. “You have done nothing wrong. I’m the mistake here, don’t you see?”
“What?” he asks sharply. “What are you talking about? What do you mean, mistake?”
“We can’t be together, Xander, we can’t. I can’t do this.”
I hear him draw a sharp intake of breath. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could block out the sound of his pain.
“Don’t say this now. You’re upset. Of course, this is terrifying and disgusting, and I have no right to ask you to consider putting up with this kind of life for me, but I am. Please don’t make a decision about us now. Not in this immediate aftermath. Not on the phone.”
My heart falls apart into tiny, fractured fragments, painfully piercing my chest all over with brittle stabs of heartbreak.
“My God, Xander, it’s not about putting up with this life. It’s the shame I’m bringing upon you. Your family. The monarchy,” I say, my voice breaking. “I’m an embarrassment. I always will be.”
“No!” he roars, his voice as angry as I’ve ever heard it. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“It’s the truth!” I cry. “I’ve done the one thing I’ve always feared. I’ve humiliated you. All of the work you’ve done to be the new you will be destroyed if you stay with me, don’t you see that?”
“That,” he says, his voice low and shaking with fury, “is not reality.”
“Oh, but it is,” I say bitterly. “We were living in a foolish dream. Where I could be a part of your life. But that article lays it all out. And that’s merely the first one. What will people say tomorrow about you? I can’t bear to think about it. You deserve so much more than this. So much more.”
“You don’t get to decide how I feel or what I deserve,” Xander snaps. “I’m not embarrassed by you. I don’t care what the tabloids say.”
“It’s not just the tabloids!” I protest, shaking my head. “It’s experts. It’s the public. It’s breakfast TV. I won’t do it. I won’t ruin your life. And it breaks my heart to say this to you, but this has to be goodbye. It has to, for your own good.”
“Poppy!” he cries, his anger shifting to panic. “You don’t mean what you are saying. You don’t.”
“You’re wrong. I do. I have to do this. It’s over, Xander. Please accept this. Because there is nothing you can say to make me change my mind.”
I end the call and turn off my phone. I curl up on Liz’s bed, and all the tears I held back from the second I saw his name flash across my phone rush forward, breaking through with a grief I have never known could exist until this very second.
I did the right thing for Xander. I don’t regret that. I couldn’t destroy him.
I love him too much for that.
But I know the price I will have to pay.
I will always love this man. And he’ll never know I did. That I loved him deeply. Passionately and fiercely and unconditionally.
The sobbing is uncontrollable now. I don’t think it will ever stop. The only thing that will heal the pain is Xander.
The man I can never have.
And my heart will be forever broken without him.
Always.
* * *
Someone is knocking.
I lift my head and blink. Within seconds of looking around, reality comes crashing down on me. I must have sobbed myself to sleep with exhaustion. I push myself up on Liz’s bed. The emotional pain that grips me is so awful, my body is racked with actual physical pain.
“Poppy?” Bella asks, rapping on the door again. “Please, may I come in?”
I swallow hard. “Yes.”
She opens the door. Her eyes are filled with concern for me. Bella doesn’t say a word, but sinks onto the edge of the bed, leaving space between us.
“I need to go,” I say, my voice hoarse from all the crying I did.
“I need to say some things to you,” Bella says, her voice quiet, yet surprisingly commanding.