Episode 690: Heart Attack

"It’s not you," he said, and he meant it. He didn’t even know her. "I’m not dating right now." He’d thought about it. He’d almost let Tansy set him up with the woman at the ice cream place, but his heart wasn’t in it. It was with Ava. "I’m hung up on someone."

Quent told him Talia would be easily deterred. Xavier thought honesty might help get the message through to her. "She’s taken. She’d been taken a long time now. But I’m still not over her. I don’t think I’ll ever be over her."

"Well, I’m not taken. Why not take me?"

Xavier sucked in a deep breath. Quentin had given him the okay to be blunt if necessary; he’d said fighting her bluntness with some of your own was sometimes the only way with his sister. "I don’t want you."

Her painted lips twisted. It looked like he’d finally gotten through to her, like she would back off, and let him close the door. But, instead, she said, "I know your name isn’t Luke."

"It’s my middle name," he said, disturbed by the direction the conversation had taken.

"I know your first name. I know this is you." She pulled out her phone and showed him a picture from one of his album covers.

"That’s not me."

"You may look like you’ve been through a war since then, but your eyes give it away."

Xavier stepped aside, knowing he had no choice but to let her inside and explain. "That’s not who I am anymore. I don’t want that. Okay?"

"Okay. But there must be other things you want, like a personal life."

"No. Not now. I wasn’t lying. I love someone else. That’s the only personal life I want, and I can’t have it."

"Well, I guess if you don’t want a personal life, you may as well be famous again, they’re always complaining about having no personal life."

"Is that a threat? Are you saying if I don’t date you, you’ll tell the world where I am? Why would you want to be with someone who you have to blackmail into it?"

"Desperate times." Talia looked away. She sounded sad. For obvious reasons Xavier couldn’t feel for her.

Episode 691: Take My Breath Away