by Nikki Logan
His heart sank. He couldn’t lie to his nan.
And so that meant it was over.
All of it.
CHAPTER TWELVE
EITHER you agree to tell them under your own speed or I’ll ask you outright at the very next family dinner.
Short of never attending another meal with the people who loved him, Bel knew Flynn really didn’t have a lot of choice. There was no question Alice would be as good as her threat and, given what the courts had decreed, Bel really couldn’t see how things could get any worse, anyway. What was worse than breaking up a family?
None of it mattered now. Not the lies. Not the false name. Not what she wanted, least of all what she needed. Only one thing mattered. The future of their boys.
Because they were theirs. Every single person in the room had a stake in them.
Both older women fussed around the babies now—Alice most particularly—and saw that they were settled into the old-fashioned crib that Arthur had pulled out of storage and restored while Bel was in hospital. They knew that Flynn had called a family meeting, but not much more. Though all of them threw concerned glances in the direction of Bel and her ashen face.
She felt like death; she couldn’t imagine she looked any better.
This day had always been coming. Regardless of what Flynn had asked her to tell them, there was never any way she was going to whisk their grandchildren back to England with them believing she’d just … changed her mind about her marriage to Flynn. That would have been too low a blow. Too much a betrayal of her own feelings for him. But she’d never let herself fully imagine what it would be like to sit across the table and confess everything—everything—to the people who’d been so good to her.
The eldest Bradley most especially. Arthur and his quiet acceptance, his unconditional, non-judgemental support of her. Watching his disappointment was going to hurt almost as much as betraying Flynn.
She pulled the sleeves of her jumper down over her icy fingers and swallowed past the lump that had been resident low in her throat since she’d emerged from the en suite bathroom at the hospital and seen two pairs of Bradley eyes staring back at her.
Now all eyes flicked nervously between her and Flynn. His own were fixed firmly on a spot on the far wall.
She pressed her fingers hard into her palms and focused on the bite of her nails. The tiny pain. It didn’t centre her the way it always had; it barely registered through the thick fog of agony she’d been living with since Flynn had thrown her love back in her face. Since he’d told her about the verdict. She braved a glance at him. Impotent seconds ticked by as he impaled her with his dead regard.
Finally he nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Bel shifted her eyes to Arthur. Cowardice, perhaps, but she couldn’t face either of Drew’s parents as she started her story. She knew what she was going to see there.
‘My name—’ She cut herself off, having started far too loud in the silent, silent room. She took a breath and tried again. ‘My name is not Belinda Cluney.’ Three sets of eyebrows folded around the table. ‘It’s Belinda Rochester. I’m Gwendoline Rochester’s younger sister.’
Denise paled instantly. Bill froze. Arthur’s face filled with something she’d never seen.
‘I didn’t tell you who I was because we …’ She paused. No, this was her sword to fall on. She’d made her own choices. And she was already hurting Flynn enough without destroying his relationship with his family even more. ‘Because I knew how you felt about my sister and I believed I would not be welcome here if you knew.’
Denise opened her mouth, twisted with hurt, to say something, but her husband silenced her with one hand on hers.
‘I understand why you had difficulties with Gwen. But the fact remains, I am a Rochester.’
‘You are a Bradley,’ Denise cried. ‘You married our son!’ She turned her hurt to her husband, who was trying to silence her.
‘Is the marriage legal?’ Arthur asked.
‘It’s legal,’ Flynn interjected flatly. ‘But technically … unconsummated.’ His Adams apple worked up and down hard with the effort of not saying more. How lucky that was now. It would take nothing to end the marriage between them.
End her life. Her dreams.
That brought Denise’s swimming eyes back around. ‘But—’
But you’ve been sleeping together every night.
Denise did the mental maths and her focus shot straight to the sleeping twins. And then to her son. ‘They’re not yours, Flynn? They’re not ours?’ she croaked.
Bel pressed her lips together to hold back a sob. Denise’s pain was so raw, and what they were about to say was only going to stick a scorching blade into the open wound. For so long she’d been intently focused on making sure that Gwen and Drew’s babies made it into the world. Into the family. Now she’d give anything for them to be Flynn’s.
‘They … they’re …’
But courage failed her just when she needed it most and Flynn intervened. Quietly. Coldly. ‘They’re Drew’s.’
Even Arthur paled then, and the tiniest glimmer of moisture flooded into eyes that had never before looked at her with anything but affection. He thought she’d slept with Drew. Just when she thought there was not enough of her heart left to fracture, a tiny shard further sheared off at the accusation in his eyes.
She took a shaky breath and forced her spine straighter against the chair back.
‘And Gwen’s,’ Alice intervened. She looked at Bel and nodded encouragement.
Bel took another breath. ‘Drew and my sister were on IVF when they died.’
She persevered over the top of the collective gasp. ‘Liam and Andrew were the product of that and I … I couldn’t bear them to go to strangers, to be …’ The tiniest amount of acid crept up her throat. ‘To be separated from each other. I applied to the courts for permission to raise them as my own.’
Of all the people, Denise was the one whose head tilted. Whose eyes softened. Just momentarily.
‘Without notifying us?’ Bill said.
‘The courts tried …’ But in that breath Bel realised she’d been no less judgemental than the Bradleys had. She’d always blamed Drew’s parents and grandparents for ostracizing her sister but she’d made no effort to contact them personally because of how Gwen had felt about them. Because of a bunch of stories. One-sided stories. She had been all too ready to believe that his family wouldn’t want the babies.
‘I should have tried harder,’ she admitted. ‘I should have got in touch personally rather than just letting my lawyers send a—’
‘There was a mistake,’ Flynn hedged, still eager to protect his mother from realising how close they had come to never knowing about these children at all because of her own inability to deal with Drew’s loss. ‘But I was able to rectify it. While custody was determined.’
‘But you married her?’ This from his grandfather. She’d been Belly last week, now she was her. ‘We stood in that damned cave and witnessed your vows.’
Flynn held his eyes. ‘For legal reasons. To improve my chances in the custody case. That’s the only reason.’
The careful words traced a series of lethal cuts across her soul. She’d let herself forget why she was here in the first place. She’d let the magic of this place, these people, of Flynn’s kisses rob her of her good judgement. Her survival instinct.
She’d been so in love with the idea of being in love …
But Flynn was here to remind her.
‘Are you expecting that your magnanimous gesture should be enough reason for us to tolerate your continued presence here?’ Denise grated. ‘Your lies?’
‘Mum—’
‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she lashed at Flynn, her voice rich with agony. ‘You have betrayed us infinitely worse than your brother. He left in the first place because of you and then you have the nerve to bring …’ She turned her streaming eyes on Bel but couldn’t finish.
Flynn paled at his mother’s cu
tting words. ‘That’s exactly why we didn’t use her name. You never would have given her a chance. You liked Belinda Cluney.’
‘I loved Belinda Cluney,’ she broke in, angry and hurt. Bel’s own heart haemorrhaged. ‘But that was all lies. Has any one thing about the past eight months been true?’
Damn you, Flynn Bradley. This could all have been avoided.
‘It’s true that those little boys are your grandsons,’ Bel croaked above the din. ‘You have living, breathing reminders of Drew in your living room because of what Flynn and I have done.’
‘Would you like a medal?’ Denise scoffed, but misery saturated her words. ‘It doesn’t bring my son back.’
‘We all lost someone that day, Denise, but you have a son right here. Alive and healthy. You should be holding onto him with everything you’ve got, not dismissing him because he had the audacity to try and do something that would protect you.’
‘Bel …’ Flynn’s own voice was tight but he found her eyes for the first time in hours. Crazy how they still impacted deep down in her soul.
His mother dragged her eyes to her son. ‘What does she mean?’
Eight months of tension leached out of her in an unstoppable torrent. ‘This was all about you, Denise. Everything Flynn’s done, every lie I’ve told, was because he feared that you couldn’t deal with the truth. That it would push you too far. Because you never dealt with Drew’s loss. The son you favoured moved away from you while the other one is working himself to the bone trying to compare.’
Flynn stood and turned half-on to her to block her from his mother’s view as though that would be enough to silence her. ‘Bel, enough.’
‘That’s not true,’ Denise protested, leaning around him. ‘It nearly killed me to lose my firstborn but I’ve made myself accept it.’
‘That’s true, Bel,’ Alice murmured. ‘We all have.’
Her mind roiled. What? But everything they’d done … Why? ‘Then who …?’
All eyes shifted to the youngest man in the room. The one with the wildly lurching throat standing like a referee between the woman who raised him and the woman who married him.
‘Is that true, Flynn?’ she whispered.
Flynn clenched his jaw, failing to still the twitch pulsing wildly near his ear. His eyes looked haunted and bleak.
‘Were mine not the only lies being told?’ she asked gently.
His face creased as he began, ‘I didn’t …’ But his gaze clouded and his lips tightened and he turned his confusion to his mother as if he was only just seeing her now.
Denise’s own face mirrored his as understanding finally hit her. Hit them all. How much he’d been suffering. ‘Oh, love …’
Flynn’s chest rose and fell and Bel felt the pain of every tight breath. He hadn’t realised. He’d been projecting it all onto his mother …
‘In it or out of it, my brother was integral to the fabric of this family,’ he gritted, still struggling with the truth. ‘His loss has changed it for ever.’
Empathy washed through her. This whole thing—all the lying—was about Flynn trying to put his family back together. Trying to undo the damage he had caused when he was fourteen. And about his inability to deal with the loss of the brother he’d idolised.
‘And you thought raising his babies would change it back?’
His lips tightened. ‘He left us.’
‘He died, Flynn.’
‘He abandoned us long before that.’
She softened her voice. ‘Abandoned you, you mean?’
He froze.
‘He was your big brother. You loved him and yet he let old resentments come between you time and time again. And then he was gone and it was too late.’
Pain tightened his features, flared his nostrils. Glinted dangerously in his eyes.
She stood to face him and whispered, ‘You need these babies. They keep him alive for you. Don’t they?’ They healed him. How had she not seen it earlier? ‘You’ve never really let him go.’
His voice, thin and raw. ‘He was my big brother …’
‘I know,’ she whispered. She knew all too well what it was to be sidelined by people who were supposed to love you. ‘But you need to say goodbye.’
His eyes dropped to hers, desperate and pleading.
‘Forgive him,’ she whispered.
They stood there for moments, eye-locked, intensely private in a room full of people.
But then Denise spoke, standing as well. ‘Nothing you’ve said changes the fact that you have lied to us since the moment you set foot in this house. And now you’re using two little boys, dangling them under our noses as bait to keep you here. Tied to our son.’
‘She’s not dangling anything, Denise,’ Alice cut in. ‘Tell her, Belinda.’
Tell her that you’ll be leaving one baby behind when you fly back to Old Blighty. Tell her that some faceless, nameless bureaucrats have made an obscene decision that undermines everything you and Flynn worked for. Everything that is right.
She stared at Alice. Then at her boys. Then at Flynn who needed them so very badly.
Then she shook her head.
‘No.’ But as Flynn opened his mouth to do it for her she sped on. ‘I have not used them as bait. But I have used them for something else.’
She looked at Flynn, begging him with her eyes to understand. ‘I’ve been so broken, Flynn. I was lost and lonely and ostracised from my parents, who made me feel worthless. My own life might as well have ended when that ferry sank in Thailand. Those babies were the only thing worth living for, and fighting for the embryos gave me the first bit of hope in my meaningless existence. I became more and more obsessed with them every time someone or some law told me I couldn’t have them.’
Flynn frowned, deep and hard.
‘And then my petition was granted. And by then the embryos were the centre of my hollow, vacant world, and preparing my body for them became my entire purpose. And I somehow convinced myself that being with family—being together—was the most important thing for them. I ignored how ill-prepared I was to be a mother. How inappropriate my flat was. How little support I had without my sister. How I was going to support them, long-term. None of that mattered as long as I kept them in the family. In my family. It was such a grand purpose. And that was the urgency,’ she said, answering a question from weeks ago. ‘The urgency was in me.’
Her chest heaved with the enormity of what she was about to do and her hands shook from the terror. ‘But I was selfish. I was doing it for me, not for them. I think I lost sight of what really matters in my grief. Their health. Their happiness. But I remain resolute on one point … These boys will not be separated. Not while I breathe.’
Flynn stared at her. ‘You’re going to keep fighting for them?’
Tears filled her eyes. ‘No, Flynn. I’m finished fighting. I’m giving them to you.’
‘Bel—’ Alice gasped. Denise echoed her shocked intake of air.
‘But you’re their mother! They need you,’ Flynn said.
She spun on him. ‘And I’m being a mother. How I feel can’t matter. Those boys will not grow up separated, only hearing about each other online.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You, of all people, should understand the importance of keeping their family together.’
Panic was written loud and clear on his face. ‘Then stay. Raise your boys here.’
Pain sliced deep into her. Asking her to stay was his clear and desperate last resort. And it would kill them both. ‘You know that’s not going to work, Flynn.’
‘We’ll make it work.’
‘A marriage based on lies will only hurt the children it’s meant to protect.’
‘We’ll make it work,’ he repeated roughly.
‘Without love?’ God, how it hurt to say that out loud.
‘I—’ He couldn’t hold her eyes.
‘She’s not welcome to stay,’ Denise chimed in, her voice thick. ‘She’s disrespected our whole family.’
Flynn snarled
towards his mother. ‘She did that for me.’
Bel pushed to her feet. ‘It doesn’t matter, Flynn. I won’t stay where I’m not welcome. I won’t be treated the way Gwen was.’
Arthur dropped his gaze to his feet.
‘Then we’ll leave together,’ Flynn improvised. ‘Raise the boys together. Away from here.’
‘No!’ Alice’s voice this time.
‘I will not be responsible for breaking up your family,’ Bel cried, hoarse and heartsore. And I will not live with you, loving you, without your love. It was going to be hard enough continuing to breathe away from him.
Flynn’s face was granite. His voice dropped. ‘But you’ll have no one, Bel …’
Hearing it said out loud hurt almost as much as realising he couldn’t love her. She forced the lump blocking her throat aside long enough to swallow the pain. ‘I’ve got me. And it’s about time I started believing in myself.’
‘Bel, this is ridiculous. You can’t leave.’ Arthur finally spoke. He turned to Alice. ‘This can be worked out.’
‘No,’ Denise said firmly. The woman who’d helped bring her children into the world just a week ago now wanted her gone. Long, long gone.
Bel swung towards Flynn urgently and spoke to him as though they were alone in the room, blinking past the tears fast gathering behind her lashes. As though none of the distance or pain of the past few days existed. She spoke to him as she might have if they’d been lying in each other’s arms, determinedly not sleeping together. ‘Flynn, I lived seventeen years in enemy territory and it nearly broke me. It was unhealthy and intolerable. I cannot do that again—’
He said under his breath, ‘Then I’ll—’
‘No. You already hold yourself responsible for the fragmentation of your family. I won’t let you do what Drew did. Isolate yourself from them. For me.’
He looked to the babies.
She fought back the ache. ‘They will grow up surrounded by love and nature and wide blue open skies. They’ll run and hide and fall into the stream and track mud into the house and Alice will growl at them. They’ll be good and they’ll be bad and even when they are they’ll have three generations of family to support them and guide them—’ Despite what they might have unconsciously absorbed here today ‘—and a world of opportunity as Bradleys.