He’d been furious with her for taking that step without his knowledge. It hadn’t been an accident. It had been a calculated decision she’d made without him. He hadn’t been ready. He could still recall the heady rush of their relationship, their haste to marry and build a life together. Hell, he’d barely come to terms with their closeness before she was telling him they had to make room for another person in their lives. A person who’d depend on them for everything.
Xander hadn’t known if he had it in him to love even more than he already loved Olivia—at least not until he’d experienced the joy of Parker’s birth. Tears ran unchecked down Xander’s cheeks as he turned more pages, then reached for the next album and the next. Each one cataloguing their beautiful little boy’s life, until there was no more. The last photos were of Parker’s third birthday in the backyard. A pirate theme had been the order of the day, and even Xander had dressed in kind.
They’d been so happy. So complete. And then, with one stupid forgetful moment on his part, it had all ended.
The devastation of Parker’s death, along with the certainty that he could have prevented it, had left Xander crushed by guilt. He wiped at his face, trying to stem the tears that wouldn’t stop falling. This was what he’d forgotten. This was what he’d built walls around his heart and his mind for. To stem the searing, clawing pain that now threatened to tear him into tiny pieces.
Xander staggered to his feet, leaving the albums and the toys and clothes scattered around the cartons on the floor. He wobbled toward the doorway and stumbled down the stairs, as uncoordinated and clumsy as he’d been in those early days back in the hospital. At the bottom of the stairs he turned right and went straight to the bedroom next to his old home office.
Now he understood why his office had always been here. He’d hated every second he had to spend away from home when Parker had been alive. With this home office, he’d had the best of both worlds. Able to watch his son grow and learn every day, and meet the demands of his career and provide for his family at the same time.
His family. Their little unit of three. Xander could never have believed that the power of their triangle could ever have been torn apart. Hadn’t understood that when you ripped away one edge of the triangle that the other two sides would collapse. Not together. No. But apart. In their grief, he and Olivia had inexorably turned away from each other.
He pushed open the bedroom door and looked around the bare walls and floor. The only thing that remained was a bureau that had stored Parker’s clothes. Olivia had gotten rid of everything else. She’d wiped their son’s existence from their home, in fact, from their very lives with clinical precision—just like his mother had when Xander’s brother had died.
Xander dropped to his knees. Grief crashed over him with the power of a tidal wave. It felt as raw and as painfully fresh as if it had been only yesterday that he’d been forced to say goodbye to his son. The child of his body, of his heart. He roared in frustration and anger and sorrow, the sounds coming from deep inside him. Sounds he’d never allowed out, ever, but now it was as if he couldn’t stop them.
He had no idea what the time was when he pulled himself back to his feet and made his way to his bedroom. No, not his bedroom anymore. Olivia’s. He’d made his home elsewhere, and now he knew why. He went into the bathroom and showered again, all the while attempting to block out the memory of the last time, only hours ago, that he’d shared this same space with Olivia, and what they’d done.
The memory wouldn’t be suppressed. His body, traitor that it was, stirred to life at the images running through his mind. He turned the mixer to cold, standing beneath the spray until the pain of the icy water was almost equal to the pain that pulsed in the region of his heart.
He leaned his forearms on the shower wall and let his head drop between his shoulders, allowing the water to pound on the back of his neck and down his back. Questions whirled in his mind. Why had she kept this from him? What had she been thinking? Why hadn’t she told him everything when she’d had the chance to yesterday?
By the time he turned off the water and stepped out of the shower to dry himself he was no closer to finding any answers. She’d tricked him into coming here and she’d tricked him into staying—just as she’d tricked him into parenthood. Why?
Xander studied his reflection in the mirror, hardly recognizing the man whose tortured gray eyes stared back at him. He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t listen to another lie from Olivia’s lips. The betrayal of what she’d done was as excruciatingly painful now as the words she’d flung at him after Parker had died had been.