The dress tangles around my feet as I try to take a step back to steady myself, and all it does is set the bomb in my chest off. Ripping it completely off her body, I throw it into the fire, watching the red scorch black until flames consume it completely.
“You should have told me the moment they came to you.”
Her arms wrap around her torso, along the cinched waistband of her suspender belt. The barely there, black lace bra strain with the weight of her breasts as the straps wrapped around her ribcage roll into each other. And still, the only place my eyes settle are on her stomach. They search the lines of the lace, trying to see what’s underneath.
The more I look, the more I see our little girl. The tiny little baby I held in my hands. The only life I can’t handle staining them.
The only obvious sign of her existence is the chaos she left behind. It makes perfect sense that our child, the only soul I put above my wife, is the ghost undoing us.
Sitting back onto the coffee table, I look up at her shadowed face. Her eyes screw shut before I find them, and it doesn’t just sting, it makes my insides twist with so much anger that before I can stop myself, I grip her wrists, trying to pry her arms open so I can see her without anything between us, not even her limbs.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!”
Arabella freezes, and her fight disappears as her face thaws. But when she opens her eyes, cold composure meets my gaze. Dropping my hands to my thighs, I take in the raw and indignant clench of her jaw and flare of her nostrils.
What the hell am I doing? I ask myself as I rub my hands over my face. Why does it have to be like this?
I only want her. Nothing else matters, just Arabella. She’s the only good thing that’s left.
I lower my hands, about to pull her closer, but before I touch her, she slaps them away.
“Don’t touch me!” She wobbles on her high heels with the force of her swing. Taking a step back, her glare bores into mine. “You want to hurt me?”
“If that’s what it takes.” I lose my jacket.
Shock startles her features as she takes in all the blood. A lot of it is mine, but mostly it belongs to the sack of shit that came at us. He didn’t want to talk; now he’ll never be heard from again.
Leaning over the glass side table beside one of the sofas, she braces herself over it. The reflection of the flames licks at her skin.
“Go on, then. I’m right here, Christopher. Do. Your. Worst. Come on! Break me…” Her acrid laugh verges on manic. “What are you waiting for? Make me pay for everything. Punish me. Do it!”
Her wide, irked stare doesn’t budge from mine. Our breaths clash in the air around us as they become harder. Louder.
“I let another man touch me.”
Sucking her lips between her teeth, Arabella stands straighter. Her hands round to the edge of the table, grasping it tight.
“I let him hold me.”
She’s baiting me, I know that. But you don’t bait a lion without getting torn to shreds. We both know that.
“I let him believe I would give him everything.”
“Shut your smart mouth.” I pick up the envelope on the coffee table with a growl.
Arabella doesn’t miss a beat; she watches my hands with disguised interest and confusion. Her lips part like she’s about to throw something else out as I close the space between us.
Silencing her with my finger, I drop the envelope between us on the table as I mimic her stance.
“You know what rhinos do when they want a mate?”
A look of absurdity flashes through her features, but she remains silent. Heavy breaths and glistening eyes are the only things giving her emotions away.
“The two males go head-to-head for the female’s pleasure. She gets turned on, and the winner gets to mate with her. The winner—” I show her the palm of one hand as I empty the contents of the envelope onto the table with the other. The pen Julian likes to provide with all his paperwork clatters onto the glass top, bringing out the silence around us. “—gets the pussy.”
About to open her mouth again, I silence her as I continue. “I’m not a rhino, Arabella. I won’t go head-to-head with some fucking cretin over what’s already mine. You married me. You’re my wife. Your pleasure already belongs to me. End of.” Picking up the pen, I flick to the first marker and sign on my line, following it with my initials. I do the same for the second and the last markers. Dropping the pen onto the document, I twist it to face her. “If you’re not happy with that…then there’s the door and they’re signed.”
Pulling the bow tie that’s still hanging around my neck, I turn my back on her and throw it into the fire. This goes against everything I believe. I didn’t marry her so I could go back on it. That’s not me.
Once I’m in, I’m in. But if she wants an out, she’s got it, otherwise this duplicitous shit ends now.
Chapter 18
Arabella
My pause overwhelms me. The silence. The heat of the room. The rustle of Christopher’s footfalls as he walks away from me towards one of the bedrooms. That envelope was lying there all night, in plain sight. I have no idea how many times I laid my sights on it, but never once did I think or imagine that it would be anything like the papers in front of me.
He wants a divorce.
Fuck.
I never contemplated the notion. It didn’t matter how many times I walked away. Or how broken I am, I…
Shit. He wants a divorce.
I’m beyond blindsided. This was never a situation I saw us walking into. In the back of my mind, the hope of coming back to him, of making amends for everything…it filled me with certainty that we would be okay.
Even telling myself that in the end we might not make it, I never really saw a future without Christopher. He’s always been my pivot point. It doesn’t matter how far I get, I always revolve around him.
But now he’s walking away like this is nothing. No skin off his nose. He’d probably be more worked up about shit on the bottom of his shoe.
“Is this what you want?” My voice sounds a lot stronger and steadier than I feel. My insides are shaking, my eyes are stinging, and my heart is somewhere between the soles of my feet and hell. And before I even utter the words, my throat dries up painfully. “A divorce?”
The cavity of my chest burns so violently that I feel like I might spill my guts all over the floor. It’s not until I claw at my body, hoping to loosen the tightness constricting me, that I remember I’m in nothing but my underwear.
Turning in the doorway of the smaller bedroom, he stands taking up all the space with his arms crossed over his chest. His white shirt is soaked through crimson, the edges of the stains dark, almost black in contrast with the white cotton.
I pick up the papers on the table. Although I flick through them, I don’t actually take anything in. I have no idea what any of it says. He could be leaving me penniless and I wouldn’t know. It’s just that I thought they would be heavier. I wanted to feel their weight, but for something so meaningful, they feel insignificant.
Dropping them back down on the side table, I look up to find Christopher eyeing me carefully. His narrowed gaze follows every single one of my moves as I round the sitting area and walk over to where he’s standing.
“Of all the spiteful things you’ve ever said or done, this one is the most callous.” He peers down on me from his great height, biting down on his lip with his scowl scrunching his face. “Is this how you want to break us?”
“Break us?” His laugh is almost a sour snort. “Newsflash, sweetheart: broken is fixable. I don’t know what we are, but broken is nothing.”
I feel so sick that I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. The cold look on his face shatters all the hope that still shone somewhere inside me.
“I did it for you.”
“No, Belles. You did it for Daddy. Because you can’t bear to let him down.”
“I can’t bear to let my dad down? What about you, Christopher
? Why are you doing any of this? Why are we here?” Yeah, he says nothing, just continues looking at me like I’m the bad person. Like I did all this by myself. “I didn’t start this. I never wanted this. It was always you and our babies…our home. I wanted our own life.”
“You walked away!”
How dare he look at me as though I’m anything less than him. He can stand there and think I’ve done him nothing but wrong. In the end it was him that started this. He put the wheels in motion. He made a decision, and it changed everything. It wasn’t just a spanner in the works—we were completely derailed. Because of one decision. His decision.
“You killed my baby.”
The words float in the air between us like oil in the ocean. Poisonous. Suffocating. Catastrophic. A dark, caustic barrier between life and death. There’s no more sink or swim. We’re both drowning.
Face falling into an unreadable mask, his head hangs forward, and I have no idea what’s going to happen now that we have all this shit out in the open. All truths stained with lies.
Christopher didn’t kill our little girl. I know that. He made a choice that led us to that end, as did I.
We both should have known better than to believe we were untouchable.
Turning, he disappears into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him silently. It’s only me left standing in the middle of our ashes. All our words, the looks, the touches…everything floats around me like lava, and I wish to God that I was burning. That somehow, I wasn’t lost in the middle of purgatory.
I’m waiting and waiting for the oxygen in my tank to run out and to be swallowed entirely by anything other than uncertainty.
What happens now that I’ve said too much and I can’t take it back?
I’m on the brink of falling apart, and still I’m desperately trying to hold on in case there’s hope. In case there’s anything left that’s salvageable.
I only wanted to make things right.
You well and truly fucked that up too, didn’t you?
The sharp voice in my head bites back without pause. Always the first to drop me in the mire.
Retreating back to the sitting area, I pick up Christopher’s jacket. It’s the only thing in sight and reach. There aren’t any blankets or throws lying around, and Christopher’s always been impeccably house-trained thanks to his boarding school discipline.
Threading my arms through the sleeves, I can’t help the shiver that wracks me as the spicy scent of sweat and blood fills my senses. Almost the exact same scent from that night.
My stomach twists and all the hateful and desperate brine filling me stings my eyes. I feel it burn down my cheeks raining to the ground in thick suffocated sobs that I barely recognise as my own.
Fear is a strange thing. It can take on so many faces. It can be so many things. I’ve never felt this one before. It’s rancid and it eats away at all little vestiges of light left in me, rotting its way into my soul, and I can’t stop it.
My soul is screaming and yelling, pleading, and calling out to his, but there’s no reply.
This fear is insidious. It reaps all our good memories, bringing them all back to me even when he never comes. Like a creeping weed, it twists and knots around all the goodness left, and it withers it into nothingness.
I don’t want to be nothing.
Taking in what’s left of the dress, I pull Christopher’s jacket tighter around me, tugging the collar up so his scent doesn’t get lost in the smell of the fire.
How did we get so dark?
How have we ended up here?
We’re on opposite ends of the same side, fighting the same war. We want the same things, but we’re so far apart that we’re fighting each other. Our energy is being depleted by our own battle.
It’s my fault.
The moment I agreed to do what our fathers asked, I started this.
“If Christopher steps out of line, everything will be lost,” my father said in the same breath he told me my baby was gone.
“He’s hard-headed. All he’ll see is revenge.” Francis hammered their point home.
“We can’t have that.” The Foreign Secretary’s words blunt as ever. “He’s not a law unto himself.”
Now that I think of Francis’ words, I realise that’s all I was thinking about too. I wanted to hurt the people that hurt me. Even if it didn’t bring our daughter back, I needed to see their demise. And he wouldn’t let me. Christopher would have protected me from all of it.
I should’ve let him.
Our fathers were wrong—everything wouldn’t be lost. I would have my husband. Everything else wouldn’t matter.
They wafted the flames, and I let them consume me. And the thing about fire is that it keeps going unless you stop it. If you don’t, it gets stronger. Out of control.
We’re out of control.
Entranced by the hum of the fire and tick of the clock by my head, I’m lost in my thoughts.
Do I leave? Do I stay?
I don’t want to go anywhere.
Jumping at the tug of the jacket, I stiffen, my limbs seizing up as Christopher works it down my arms and throws it into the fire before he swoops me up into his arms.
No words are said as he walks me through the suite to the bedroom. Walking us through the sumptuous silk-lined rooms, he only stops once we’ve reached the en-suite.
It’s startlingly quiet; even the air particles are muted within the fogged walls. My heart is racing so fast in my chest that I half expect my ribs to crack as he puts me down on the toilet. Swivelling me to face him, Christopher stands looking at me, his bottom lip sucked into his mouth and his brow creased as if he’s pondering some great wonder.
All the while his gaze peruses down my body, and I don’t know what it is about it, but it feels like he’s trying to see inside me, beyond my physicality to the intangible parts of me. Rolling his shirtsleeves up his forearms, he crouches at my feet. Taking each one in either of his hands, he props them on his knees.
“Why do you insist on wearing such ridiculous shoes?” he sighs as he goes about taking them off. “They make your feet sore, and you don’t need them.”
Unsure of what’s happening, I take a deep breath, hoping that if I blink my puffy eyes enough, somehow my throat won’t feel so dry. That I can reply with half as much cool as him. But I can’t, so instead I let him do whatever it is he’s doing. I simply bask in in the attention and care he’s giving me.
The one thing that’s always amazed me about Christopher is how capable he is of hiding his thoughts and his feelings when he chooses. For the most part he’s so forward, taking no prisoners or suffering fools. But then there are times, like now, where you wish you could know his thoughts and he is impossible to read.
Releasing my stockings from the clips, he rolls them down my legs and drops them on the marble floor beside him. It’s only when he traces up my thighs to my waist, his hands wrapping around my belly, that I pull away.
He’s looking at me with those honeyed eyes that are full of hunger and wonder and pity.
I don’t want your pity.
No wife wants their husband’s pity. And I’ve had more than enough from everyone else.
Like a mockery to my thoughts, a lone, solitary tear snakes down my cheek. And before I can wipe it away, Christopher catches it with his thumb, rubbing it between his fingers like he’s sampling a fine fabric.
Standing, he shucks his shoes off along with his bloody shirt. The sight of his wound makes my heart squeeze. It aches at the thought that had that bullet hit him any lower, he might well be dead. And that would be it for me. I wouldn’t survive that. A life in a world without him…it isn’t for me.
It takes me a second to work through my blurry vision, but when I do, I’m gobsmacked. I can’t think as the ache in my chest builds to an unbearable pain.
My rings.
They hang down his chest like some kind of medal. There’s some light chafing along his neck from the rough rope, I’m so thrown.
I’m sucked into a vacuum of jarring and leering thoughts that I can’t come back from.
The sound of his growly sigh as he steps back brings me to, and I want to throw myself at him. I want to beg him not to leave me.
Whipping his belt off his trousers, he runs the supple leather through his fingertips. That sound and that sight bring back so many memories.
How many times have I watched him undress?
My body heats up even with my self-conscious anxiety. His eyes dart to mine as he drops the belt and then his trousers to the floor, stepping out of them before pulling his socks off somewhat awkwardly.
My breathing picks up as I take in the chiselled lines of his body and the smattering of hair on his arms and legs, the light trail leading to the top of his underwear and disappearing under it.
Christopher is so perfect, and at one time, I wouldn’t have thought twice about him in respect to me. But looking at him, taking him in, all I can see are my scars. They’re ugly and a reminder of what we’ve lost.
I go back to my rings. The gold looks beautiful next to his tanned skin; it looked better on mine though. The sick feeling hits just like when I took them off at the hospital. I’d just said goodbye to Kit, and all I could think was that I wanted to get the people that tore us all apart. Francis and my father had a plan. I thought it was the best thing for us.
Fucking idiot!
Kicking everything to the side, Christopher lifts me into his arms again, and without a second of pause, he steps into the bath. I have no idea how he doesn’t drop me, but as he lowers into the hot water, he puts me down, turning me so that my back is to his front. And when we’re sitting in the bath, he makes no move to touch me. We both sit in awkward silence, too stiff and uncomfortable, until I can’t take it anymore. I need to know what he’s thinking. What this means because he signed those divorce papers in front of me and made a point of driving the point home by walking away.
Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2) Page 14