Episode 377: Spider Webs

"Who? Xavier?"

His name brought down the tears, a thousand times harder than the rain hammering the roof. She sank to the filthy floor dropping her head in her hands. For a long time Sebastian sat quietly next to her, then he softly said, "he’ll come back. I know it. I know what it’s like to be in love with you. No matter how much better off I know you’d be without me. I keep coming back."

Her head lifted, she swiped at her tears, no way to help the cracks in her voice. "He might come back. I don’t know. I couldn’t wait. If I could just talk to him like I have before. It’s worked before when he thought he wasn’t good enough for me."

She could tell Sebastian was fighting the urge to say Xavier wasn’t good enough for her and she suddenly remember, warmth surging through her, how she could’ve been so in live with him once.

He cleared his throat. "So did you get some tip saying he’d be here?"

Ava nodded. "I talked to this guy on the Internet. He came to the house. The way he talked, the documentation, he seemed like a legit government agent, doing side work to earn extra money to put his kid through Harvard. I saw the kid’s picture. She looked smart. He said it was in expensive process. I didn’t care. I just wanted Xavier found before he hurt himself. I gave him everything. I sold the bookstore. I hawked everything but my pearls and the house." She’d insisted Xavier put it in his name, he’d paid for it, the store he’d done without asking her first. "I’ve lost almost everything. I don’t even had food, I only had enough for Shelby’s cat food. I gave everything away for a lie.

The tears streamed. "I would’ve traded it all for Xavier. Even if he still didn’t want me, maybe seeing how scared I am for him would’ve stopped him from... But instead I traded everything for nothing. I’m so stupid. How did you ever think you should pay my way through university?"

Episode 378: There's Got To Be A Way