The Arrangement Book 2

XAVIER

Penny was a sweet girl…just got out of some shitty relationship. And I knew that once I got her alone she wouldn’t be able to resist me.

But it didn’t work. The sex didn’t fucking work. The moment I came, I expected a kind of release to wash over me. But as soon as I’d finished and rolled off of Penny, the frustration returned.

What the hell was happening to me?

Even my body seemed to be rebelling against me.

Penny was smoking hot with her mocha skin and her thick ass and those goddamn dimples.

You couldn’t see it at first glance, with her oversized sweaters and book-nerd style.

But once the clothes came off…

“Get your stuff and go,” I said gruffly.

Penny sighed as she slipped on her clothes. She looked over at me, and the sadness in her eyes sent a stab of pain through me.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” she said.

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself just fine,” I muttered. She was a screamer, and her high notes had just about broken every window in the apartment.

Penny blushed, grabbing her things.

“That’s the last time, Xavier. I feel bad for your wife.”

“That’s none of your business.”

She left, and I could tell how hurt she was.

But what did I care? She was just a side piece. I wondered if my beloved wife had heard us. We hadn’t been quiet.

Why did a part of me hope that Angela had heard us? Possibly just the meanest side of me, the one that wanted to rub her face in it, to say “I have my own Dustin too. I don’t care about you either!”

Was that even the truth? Motherfuck, my mind was a mess lately.

I knew, as soon as Penny was out of here, that I’d have to go talk to Angela about this dance competition. Damn it. It was the last thing in the world I felt like bringing up.

Especially now that I’d just screamed at her over nothing, but I had to get it over with eventually.

To my surprise, though, Angela responded very quickly to my texts, and something about the tone of them sounded cold.

It was so unlike the girl, always so sweet, so innocent, and it took me completely off guard. Could it be that Angela was finally learning to stick up for herself?

Albeit in this passive-aggressive texting way?

Whatever. It didn’t matter. I would just get this Silver Jubilee business out of the way and then return my focus to what mattered most: work.

I stepped downstairs and found Angela already pouring two cups of coffee. She placed mine on the counter and turned aside, considering the calendar, taking thin-lipped sips.

Yup, she was definitely pissed.

“I have to talk to you about something,” I said. “I meant to do it earlier, but you surprised me with Dustin and…”

She still hadn’t turned to face me. Jesus, this is weird. I felt that strange sensation rise up in my gut, the one people tend to call guilt. But I wasn’t about to admit any wrongdoing. ~Hell no.~

When you were a Knight, you were never wrong. Or so I’d always told myself.

“Anyway,” I said, “it’s about this event called the Silver Jubilee. It happens once a year and…”

Ugh. I couldn’t believe I actually had to ask her to dance with me. It made me feel so humiliated. Girls asked to dance with ~me,~ not the other way around.

“I know,” Angela said, cutting off my train of thought. “Brad already told me about it. We’re supposed to dance together.”

I stopped, in utter shock. Had she just said she’d already spoken to my father about it?

“Wait,” I said, trying to catch my bearings. “You mean…how long have you…”

“He sent me a text last night.”

Since when were Angela and my father texting? I felt a strange pang of jealousy rising within my chest again and suppressed it. This was my father we were talking about.

It wasn’t like he was hitting on Angela.

“Okay,” I said, taking a long sip of coffee. “So, uh, what do you think?”

Angela looked at me and I saw that innocence stirring in her eyes. That, mixed with her new coldness, was a strange cocktail to swallow.

“I told him yes of course. After all he’s done for me, I’d do anything for Brad.”

For Brad. All he’s done for her.

Was she trying to make me crazy? Needless to say, it was fucking working. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to parse the hidden meaning of her words.

I’m not doing it for you, Xavier. I owe you nothing, Xavier. I hate you, Xavier.

Okay, maybe she didn’t hate me, but she deserved to, I guess.

“Well, that settles it,” I said, looking down at my coffee to avoid her gaze. “We’ll have to take lessons. It’s been years since I danced. Properly, I mean.”

“Whatever you say,” she said, obedient.

But still, I could detect a trace of sass. God, it made her all the more attractive!

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said.

Then I turned to head back upstairs and get ready for the day. It was a Saturday, sure, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t work.

“Xavier,” Angela said, stopping me in my tracks. “You should probably shower. You still smell like…like her.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. She had heard me with Penny. So why didn’t it feel satisfying in the slightest?

So the fuck what, I said to myself. It wouldn’t be the first time she saw you “cheating.”

But this time, Angela knew, and I knew, something was different.

ANGELA

The last time I’d seen Em she’d been holding my brother’s hand beneath the dinner table in my childhood home. I didn’t need that Em right now. I needed the Em who’d given me a job in the flower shop when Curixon rejected me.

The girl who’d get sushi with me at midnight, even when we both knew the fish had a high chance of giving us food poisoning.

The girl I’d called my best friend for years.

Stepping into the flower shop, I was immediately confronted with a million overwhelming scents, all of them overlapping. The alluring touch of Daphne, the fruitiness of the honeysuckle, the spiciness of the stargazer lilies.

Together, they should’ve clashed. They should’ve been completely overpowering, the way it sometimes was when you walked into a flower store.

But in Em’s shop, that was never the case. Somehow all the fragrances blended perfectly together as if she’d devised a near-perfect chemistry, pot by pot, plant by plant.

Maybe, I thought, it’s their arrangement.

Arrangement.

That word would never mean the same thing to me now.

“There you are!” Em said, putting down her scissors. “You want to help me wrap these up?”

“Of course,” I said, walking over, smiling. “That is if I can still remember how.”

“It’s like riding a bicycle, Angie. You were always better at it than me anyway.”

I stood beside Em and started arranging the flowers, thinking again of that word. Arrangement. It nearly made me shudder.

“What is it?” Em asked, noticing my frown. “You look…off.”

“Oh, it’s just…Xavier. Again.”

“Is he still being terrible?”

I started to nod. Then stopped. I shook my head. Then stopped. I wasn’t sure exactly what I felt, but it wasn’t clarity. When I looked at Em, I knew she would hear me. Even if it came out muddled and confused, she would listen and be understanding.

So I began to tell her how I felt.

“On the island, Xavier and I… I thought we bonded. Like we were sharing something intense, and I don’t know…special? It sounds stupid.”

“No, it doesn’t, Angie,” Em said, grabbing my hand. “Keep going.”

“Well,” I said, taking a breath, “I took care of him. He was more injured than me, so I treated his wounds and fed him, and…the way he looked at me, Em… No one’s ever looked at me that way before.”

“That sounds beautiful.”

I nodded sadly. “It was. And then we came back to New York, and…everything changed.”

“How?” Em asked, frowning.

I didn’t know where to begin. So I just told her the whole story, occasionally stopping to continue arranging the flowers, and to search my feelings. When I was done, Em sighed.

“Angie, it sounds like…he’s making you really unhappy.”

“Not always.”

“But most of the time, right?”

I nodded. Em turned me so that I would look her right in the eyes. So I couldn’t escape into the flowers for once.

“Isn’t the whole reason you agreed to marry Xavier in the first place because your dad was sick?”

“Yeah. What are you saying?”

“He’s getting better, Angie! You saw him for yourself.”

Em was right. It did look like my dad’s health was improving drastically, but that didn’t change anything, did it?

“So?” I asked.

“So,” Em said, impatient, “that means you won’t need the arrangement for much longer. Especially now that you got that big settlement from that huge magazine. You can afford most of the bills yourself.”

Ever since the first online magazine had leaked my nudes, Brad had come at them with such legal force they’d agreed to a ridiculously large cash settlement, which was now resting happily in my bank account.

It was one of the kindest of Xavier’s father’s gestures.

But I’d never stopped to think that…

“Angie,” Em said, “maybe you don’t need the arrangement anymore. Maybe it’s time to end this.”

End my marriage with Xavier Knight. Ask for a divorce. Leave him.

After everything we had gone through, could it really be that simple?

And, more importantly, was that what I really wanted?