The Fidelity World_Marked
Page 8
She searched his face and found a genuine apology in his expression, and couldn’t for the life of her understand why. “Why are you saying that?”
He raked his hands through his hair, the movement so unlike his ordinarily calm demeanor. “Because it’s my fault.”
“What are you talking about? You don’t even know my father. How could you know he was having an affair?”
His pleading eyes met hers. “It came with the report I got back from Sebastian.”
“You had me investigated?” She shot to her feet and backed away from him.
He took a step toward her. “Dammit, no. I had your father investigated before I knew he was your father.”
“Why?” she asked, her stomach in knots. Nothing was as it seemed, and for the first time in her life she felt ill-equipped for the game.
“Because he cheated me, and I wanted to teach him a lesson,” he said, his palms up in surrender.
She jabbed a finger at him. “You took me there on purpose. You knew what I’d see,” she said, her voice sounding like she had swallowed glass.
He dropped his hands to his hips. “I suspected, yes.”
“Why? Why would you do that to me?” She slapped her palm against her chest.
He grasped her flying hands and held her there by her wrists. “Because you needed to see what he is.”
“Why? Why did I need to see that? Because you say? King Alessi decreed it, so it must be so?”
“Careful, Beatrice,” he said, his voice low and unyielding.
She wrenched her hands from his grip, the force making her stumble. “I’m leaving,” she said, and headed for the door.
“Are you ready to go back to burying your head in the sand? Is that what you’re looking for?” he called.
She stopped in her tracks and spun on him. “That’s not what I do; I—”
He took measured steps toward her as if trying to close the distance, but keep from pushing her into running. “No? If you walk out that door now and go home, what then? Are you going to pretend you never saw him?”
Could she? Had he seen her there? How would she face him across the table, knowing what he’d done? The images burned in her memory. And then there was her mother. Despite their disagreements she didn’t deserve to be made a mockery of, and if Beatrice returned home and buried the truth of what she had seen, it made her no better than her father.
“And what about us?”
She took a step toward him. For the first time in her life the urge to lash out and cause physical harm burned in her.
And it terrified her.
“Us? You’re worried about us now? Why didn’t you worry about us before you destroyed my family?” Her voice pierced the air, the sound scraping her throat raw.
He slid his hands into his pockets and rocked on his heels. “I didn’t destroy your family, Beatrice. Your father set that in motion long before I came around.”
She hated that he was right. She wanted to rage at Micah, but he hadn’t made her father’s decisions for him.
Who had she become? She didn’t recognize this person. But maybe this was her waking up. Growing up. Shedding the dog and pony show she had been privy to her entire life.
The transition broke her heart.
“I want to go back. Back to before I knew. Dammit, I didn’t want this.” Her hands balled into fists at her side.
He took a step closer. “How did you see this going, Beatrice? There’s no ‘we’ in that life. I won’t pretend to be the doting, country club boyfriend. I won’t rub elbows with your father and pretend to be perfect son-in-law material. He stole from me. He deserves payback.”
“Is that what this is? Is that all I was?” she asked. The words cost her. She was terrified to ask, but more terrified of not knowing.
“I had no idea you were his daughter when I brought you home,” he said quietly.
She shook her head. “But you eventually found out, and you said nothing.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered by then.”
“It was the next day,” she said.
He nodded in affirmation. “I know. But the first time I buried myself inside you, I got lost. I no longer belonged to myself. I won’t ever belong to myself again.”
The words hung in the air between them. They burrowed a hole in her chest and climbed straight into her wounded heart, offering her a balm to soothe the hurt.
It was those words, those feelings, that kept her in that penthouse long enough for her to play out the scenario several times in her head—each time giving her a greater understanding of just what he’d tried to accomplish with what he’d done.
“I don’t know what to think,” she whispered.
“Do you want to go back to your old life?” he asked.
“It’s not that simple.”
Sliding his hand from his pocket, he cupped her cheek. His eyes full of regret, pain, boring into her. “Yes, it is. You and I were both looking for something that night, and then this found us. Are you ready to let that go?”
“No.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t want to let it go. I don’t want to let you go.”
His eyes closed and he blew out a breath as he pulled her to him. “I’m sorry, Beatrice. I couldn’t think of any other way.”
She wrapped her arms around him and let him be her anchor in the storm. She didn’t know how she was going to approach her parents, but for right now she didn’t have to. She had Micah. The rest would come.
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” he said carefully against her hair as he smoothed his hand over her head.
She nodded, burying her face against his shoulder.
It was the one thing she knew for sure.
I hope you loved the start to Micah and Beatrice’s story!
Come back for the next installment in their story in my novella, Scorched, in April 2018, and the final installment in my novella, Strike, in late 2018.
Available on Kindle, Amazon, and Audible…
Falling in Fiji
A Falling in Paradise Novel
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Falling in Angels Falls
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Available on Kindle, Amazon, and Audible…
Sunset at Lake Crane
A Livingston Valley Novel
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Other Kindle World novellas by Casey Hagen…
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ABOUT CASEY HAGEN
Casey Hagen pens her snarky, passionate stories from the salty air of Kennebunk, Maine. She’s a born and raised Vermont native, a New England girl to the core, with Ben & Jerry’s in her heart and real Vermont maple syrup pumping through her veins.
She’s the proud mother of three girls and a soon-to-be first-time grandma with an insatiable addiction to Fall Out Boy, and a new, rather concerning obsession with tattoos and piercings. Can you say “cool grandma?”
The inked and pierced grandma spends her time tucked away in her office, coated in cat hair, alternating between tearing her hair out trying to find the perfect words and being one step ahead of her three scheming fur babies she is positive are plotting her demise with every swirl around her ankles at the
top of her office stairs.
She loves writing stories about real people, with complicated histories, relatable everyday problems, and giving them the hard-won happily-ever-afters they deserve.
And she thanks every last one of you who picks up one of her stories.
Casey is done talking about herself in the third person.
*Casey out*