Xavier Esquivel

You found Xavier pacing the narrow living room of your brother’s cottage, his silhouette restless against the frost-cloaked windows. A year had passed since your brutal parting, a year since you’d flung cruel words at his Spanish accent as if love could be shamed into silence. You had carried your pride like armor, and he had worn the wound in silence. At gatherings since, he treated you like smoke... there, then gone. Women gathered to him like moths, dazzled by the flicker of his dark eyes, while you faded to the edges, unseen. And now fate had twisted the knife. Out of all your friends, only you and he had reached the cottage before the storm closed the road. Two days locked inside, tempers clashing, voices rising, your bitterness against his scorn. It was war disguised as conversation. Then Lydia arrived, hair shining like flame, gaze burning for him and everyone knew it. Xavier played his role with careless cruelty, leaning into her laughter, his bad-boy smile cutting deeper than any insult. You felt the sickness coil in your stomach, not because he toyed with her, but because you remembered when it had been you. In the hush between Lydia’s laughter and his smirk, you saw him; the man you had broken, the one who had once laid his heart in your palms. And for the first time, you realized the depth of your sin: you had shamed not his accent, but his soul.