Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2)

by Alexandra Silva

  But here we are.

  Chapter 19

  Arabella

  Here we are.

  This distance is so foreign to us. It doesn’t feel right, and the longer we sit, the heavier my leaden heart feels. I watch as his large hands curl around the edge of the bath, veins running up the back of them to his wrists, thick ropes twinning over hard muscle.

  I catch the glint of his wedding band in the corner of my eye, and my fingers itch to trace the dark metal. The ache at my fingertips, to touch him, makes me all the more aware of how still and quiet Christopher is behind me.

  My thoughts kick into overdrive, and before I can think of what I’m doing, a soft sob bursts from my lips. “Do you hate me?”

  I want to take the words back instantly. Why else would he sign those papers?

  His left hand lifts from the edge of the bath and winds in my hair. It’s so tight that the roots wince and my breath snags. Without warning he pulls, tilting my head to the side, and his mouth comes down on mine so hard that I have to brace myself to the sides of the bath.

  Biting and sucking on my lips, he pulls at my hair until I’m moaning loudly, my lips parting to let him in. His tongue licks over mine with a groan so deep and feral that it wracks down my body to my curling toes.

  Pulling away with a scrape of my lip, he says, “I want to…but no.”

  The rasp in his voice quivers with his hard breaths, and every part of me is vibrating.

  He doesn’t hate me.

  “Do you love me? Still?” Trepidation has me turning away. I can’t bear the possibility that he doesn’t love me either. Anxiety fills my chest, and holding my breath is the only thing I can do not to break down with the uncontrolled sobs that burn my insides.

  The caress of his hand is so tender along my jaw as he tilts my face so he can look me in the eyes. His narrowed gaze softens, perusing my face.

  “I don’t want to…but yes. More than ever.”

  Bringing his face closer to mine, he skims the tip of his nose over mine. His breaths bathe my skin in a warmth that rivals that of the summer sun.

  After my hateful words and my mistakes…

  “How? Why?”

  He stills, quietly watching me. You’d think he’s considering what to say, but certainty burns in his eyes.

  “There are things in this universe that are quite simply meant to be.” Murmuring, he tucks my hair behind my ear. “We are meant to be, Arabella, and nothing will ever change that. Not you. Not me. Nothing. No one.”

  “But you…those papers…” Tears slip down my face. I can’t stop them with how painful it is to recall how easily he signed them. “You signed them.”

  Quirking his brow with a low chuckle, he swipes another tear from the corner of my eye with his thumb. “Did I?”

  “You did it in front of me.” Pulling my knees to my chest, I turn so that I can see him better. “I saw you.”

  “Come.” Christopher gets up. Water sluices down his body, and his underwear fails to conceal his heavy erection.

  My mouth dries at the sight. What a stupid moment to let my libido get the better of me, but when you’re starved of something that is being snatched from you…every second counts. It’s a gift I can’t spit on.

  Glancing down, his throat bobs with a coarse swallow, the short, dark stubble doing nothing to soften his sharp jawline.

  How many times have we found ourselves in this position? My knees bent at his feet, and all that’s inside me calling out to all that’s inside him. This thing between us pulling taut with an ache so deep it feels impossible to soothe.

  Reaching down, Christopher traces his thumb around my forehead, following my hairline to my jaw, and as he bends, the light behind him gleams like a halo above his head, a contrast to all the shadowed lines and ridges of his body. He could belong in a secular painting somewhere in a church. A depiction of a hardened saint. A relentless and unforgiving god.

  Lifting me up out of the water with his hands around my shoulders, he grabs a towel, wrapping it around me before he gets out of the bath and helps me out. He wraps a towel around his own hips and then guides me back through the bedroom to the sitting room.

  My body wracks with shivers as he walks me towards the dwindling fire. Throwing the bundle of his clothes he’s got in one arm into it, he moves to the side table and picks up the papers from where I left them.

  “Look.” Flipping through the document, he holds it up to my face. My hands curl around the towel, pulling it tightly around me like a protective cloak. “Read it.”

  I do, repeatedly.

  Forever will never be enough. C.S.

  I flick my attention up to him. Searching his face for something that might tell me what exactly this means, I hold back the damn traitorous tears that keep prickling my eyes. Never in my life have I cried this much. I’m beyond the hormonal mess I was when our baby was inside me.

  “Read it out loud.”

  Swallowing down my pounding heartbeats that are lodged in my throat, it takes me longer than ever to find my voice. Killing time, I rearrange the towel around my chest before taking the document from him.

  “Read it, Arabella.” Threading his pinkie through the rings, they barely make it past the first knuckle as he looks at me in expectation.

  Okay. Taking a deep breath, I read the words to myself one more time before I read them aloud.

  “Forever will never be enough.”

  Heart, meet fist.

  “Read it again.” He steps closer so that the top of the document scrunches against his torso. “Louder. Slower. Read it again.”

  My toes curl into the carpet, my hands holding on to the pages so tightly that the edges tear slightly.

  “Forever.” I pause as a sob clogs my throat. “Fore-Foreve—”

  He knows what he’s doing. He knew it from the beginning. He’s played me, and he’s won.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  Taking the papers out of my hands, he throws them into the fire where his clothes have dulled the low flames to embers. When he grasps my wrists, he brings me closer, pressing my hands to his chest right where my rings sit.

  His heart is thrumming rapidly beneath my touch, and it’s like a shock to my system as it runs through me in heated, reviving waves.

  “Tough love, Belles,” he says, coming impossibly closer so that we’re pressed flush to one another. “Messy, fierce, and relentless.”

  “Christopher…”

  “You said you wanted more than a lifetime. History. Suns and moons…light years and infinity. I vowed to give you all that and more. I’ll be damned if anything gets in my way of doing it. You or me. And definitely not some role with illusions of false power.”

  Curling his body around mine, he engulfs me with his big arms and strong body. And love is a tangible thing right now. He’s the personification of his promise, and I can’t do anything other than hold on to it as hard as I can. Harder even as I bury my face into his hard chest, my lips puckering over the rings sandwiched between us.

  Chapter 20

  Christopher

  Arabella has never been the most talkative person. She says what she needs to, but for the most part she’s observant. Quiet. She’s got this majestic aura to her that can be intimidating, but at the core, she’s soft and kind. She has a strength that is awing.

  Which is why I’m still trying to understand how she would let our fathers manipulate her. Arabella’s savvy and smart…

  Grabbing a shirt from the wardrobe, I catch glimpses of her in my peripheral vision. She’s shivering, her face puffy and tear streaked. Her hair is messy with her dishevelled state. Still, she’s fucking gorgeous.

  Holding on to the towel, she shuffles on the bed, and when her hands slip down to her belly, my heart stutters in my chest.

  You killed my baby.

  Does she really believe that, or were they words said in the heat of the moment?

  Either way, acid burns up my throat, chilling every cel
l of my body.

  She’s not wrong.

  I don’t operate on regrets. They’re useless emotions that do nothing but hold you back. But our daughter. That night. I’ll carry that guilt and remorse with me to the grave and beyond.

  Opening one of the drawers, I take out a pair of gym shorts, and before I face my wife again, I gather myself.

  Hold yourself together. It’s the least you can do.

  I keep telling myself as I move things around on top of the chest of drawers, buying myself some time, trying to brush off everything that’s threatening to pile up on me.

  “Why are you here, Christopher?” The question takes me by surprise. She seemed so lost in her own reverie that I expected nothing but silence.

  Our gazes clash in the mirror hanging above the drawers, and to me it’s such an obvious reason that I wonder whether she’s just asking because she wants to break the quiet between us.

  “I like it here,” I tell her as I meet her at the edge of the bed, dropping the shirt on the duvet beside her before I give her the privacy she no doubt wants to change.

  It guts me. Walking away from her, knowing that she’s uncomfortable in her own skin or that she believes I’ll see her as any less beautiful.

  Shutting the bathroom door, I lean against it telling myself that we’re okay. Things are going to be fine. The problem is her words are louder than the voice in my head.

  You killed my baby.

  You killed my baby.

  You. Killed. My. Baby.

  The grind of my teeth does nothing to quash down the guilt tearing through me. That little girl was mine too. She was ours. And Arabella is right…

  I killed her.

  Stumbling to the sink, I brace myself over it as retches pull nothing but hot sobs and burning tears from the pit of my stomach. I’m damned from my head to my toes. These deep waters I’ve been treading are finally swallowing me whole.

  Oh God, I killed her.

  Our little nameless girl died because of me.

  The anger and sorrow and all the feelings I keep pressing down, hiding somewhere deep, claw to the surface. All I want to do is destroy. I want to break everything as my fists connect with the mirror in front of me, with the basin, until all that’s left are blood-smeared shards.

  I want to break myself. I want to destroy what’s left of me. And that seems like the best thought I’ve had since everything fell apart.

  I’ve single-handedly managed to tear our life apart. To hurt the one person I adore. In the process I killed our baby. Our little girl.

  Picking up one of the shards, I wonder if it would relive the pounding ache in my veins. I imagine how it might balance out the relentless pain thrashing through me.

  How easy would it be?

  Something in this world has to be easy, right?

  There has to be something that dulls all this…hell.

  The shard shines in my hand, calling and singing to my torment. I am Odysseus ravaged and torn by war and love. Unbound and lured, I’m jumping ship and drowning, losing my strength and sanity to an unfounded curiosity.

  Isn’t that sad?

  My own conscience taunts, and I don’t have it in me to taunt back. My fortress is sieged, and my walls are crumbling at their foundation, sinking into my own rubble as the sky above me burns red, the wind scattering me without fight.

  I am not this man. I am a conqueror. I am a king.

  What is a king without his crown?

  Pressing my thumb to the jagged edge, I watch as my blood bubbles up from under my skin, spattering on the debris beneath. I try to silence the voice in my head as I press the shard deeper, waiting for it to slice through my flesh to the bone, waiting for the same scorching heat that spread through my chest earlier to come back.

  It never happens. All I feel is the warm trickle of my blood down my wrist, and again the mirror glints a crimson light in my darkness. A lighthouse on a rocky shore.

  My veins pulse and burn from the soles of my feet to the top of my head. Everything inside me pounds and screams in the silence until all I can hear are the voices echoing in my mind.

  What would it feel like?

  Let go, Christopher.

  Daddy…

  My vision clouds, the stagnant air in my lungs drying my mouth and nose. My throat swells with the weight bearing down on me.

  Arabella’s right—I did this. I’m responsible.

  Daddy?

  “Christopher?”

  Daddy!

  I’ve never heard anything that beautiful before. That voice. So soft. So trilly. Wispy. God, I want to listen to it forever. I want it to fill my existence.

  Daddy.

  “Christopher!”

  Daddy…

  That sweet sound muffles with the bloodied hands prying at mine and no! I won’t let anyone take her away from me again.

  My little girl.

  I’ll kill any fucker who tries.

  Pushing away, all I can see are my empty, bloodied hands. Guilty, treacherous hands.

  Those of a murderer.

  Warm hands grasp my clammy ones, and I’m not ready for it, her pity or her touch when she tries to hold on to me. Fisting her wrists, I push her to the wall with wide strides, until the tips of her toes try to find purchase on mine as I hold her up. I take in the way my blood dribbles down her arms, soaking into the pushed-up sleeves of my shirt, the white turning pink and then red.

  Following down with my gaze, my chest almost bursts with the way her eyes are so wide on me. It’s not fear or anger or pity. It’s the one thing I can’t handle right now—love.

  How can she love me?

  “I’m sorry,” Arabella mouths as she wraps her legs around my hips. Her chin trembles, and with a shaky breath she repeats, “I’m sorry.”

  No tears. No audible weakness.

  Why is she sorry?

  “I didn’t mean it.”

  Breathing in her hoarse whisper, my hands tighten impossibly harder around her wrists until I feel her veins pulsing and her bones biting into mine.

  “It’s not true. It’s not your fault. It’s not on you.”

  The way her doe eyes slope and soften backs up her honesty. Long lashes flutter like they do when she’s hurting and trying to push through it without sharing her pain.

  She’s wrong though.

  “I knew what was coming.”

  “We all did.” The minute my grasp loosens on her wrists as I brace myself against the wall at her back, her hands cup my face.

  “I should’ve known better. Been better prepared.”

  Head falling forward with a low sob, she buries her face in the crook of my neck, warm hands tightening on my cheekbones.

  “I should’ve protected you better.”

  A hiccup wracks her chest, and hot, liquid fire coats my skin.

  “I should’ve been a better husband. A better father.”

  Arabella’s hands slip down my neck, before her arms wrap around my shoulders.

  “You are.” Crying into my ear, she presses a kiss to my jaw. “I made you do it.”

  “My pride made me do it.”

  “Cariño…”

  “I couldn’t stand the thought of failing at making you happy. My pride got in the way of the bigger picture. My stupid fucking pride.”

  Resting her forehead on the bridge of my nose, she sighs, closing her eyes. Her tears slip down her face and drip onto my chest as she tries to get her words out through her hiccups.

  “I-I-I…” She gasps for breath, and her arms tighten around me as she carries on through stammering sobs. “Y-y-you tried. I should’ve let you.”

  Her lashes flutter as heavier tears bead on them and then rain down her face before she looks up at me from under them.

  The whites of her eyes are bloodshot, and her pupils are so wide that the slim ring of chocolate around them is almost non-existent.

  “Belles…” Trying to see her better, I hoist her up my body until her legs are wrapped higher
up at my waist. “You did nothing wrong.”

  It’s a lie.

  Arabella saved me.

  She put me before herself and our child. And that is why hating her isn’t something I can live with. I can’t blame her for any of it.

  Instead I’ll hate myself for putting her through all this. For making her choose me over our baby when she begged me to always do the opposite.

  Letting her slip down my stomach, I hold her tight to my chest as her tears overwhelm her. Her body shakes with her suffocating cries as she claws my shoulder blades.

  It’s unbearable, and yet the only thing I can do is pull her closer, squeeze her to my chest, trying to stop her shudders as I walk her back into the bedroom.

  Sitting on the edge of the bed with her wrapped around me, I listen to her anguish rip its way through her, all the while holding my own in check, because finally my wife is allowing me to carry her through the rough times.

  Chapter 21

  Christopher

  I’m not sure of how long we sit here, wrapped around one another, but the soft light of dawn is diffusing into the room. The dusty, diluted red light bathes the space, and Arabella’s warmth seeps into my body, under my skin.

  Sweeping over my shoulder, her fingertips trail up to my lips, running back and forth again and again until they dip down to my chin and stroke along my jaw. My heart is racing so fast that it’s impossible she doesn’t feel it.

  With a deep exhale, her breath tickles the crook of my neck, her head unmoving from my other shoulder as her other hand rakes along the top of my back.

  “It’s always been you, Christopher. I will only ever want you. But I need to make this right.” When I try to look down, she holds my chin up with her fingers. “I need to try and make up for what I did wrong.” Cupping my jaw, she continues holding my head up, her thumb stroking along my lips lightly. “They gave me a way to do it and to protect you. I only wanted to protect what was left of us…of my heart.”