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‘Really, Skye, all this is making you look a little desperate.’
‘And you scared,’ she replied quickly before his verbal strike could draw blood. ‘Beneath it all, you’re just a coward. Because it’s not me, Camilla or even Xander that you don’t trust. It’s yourself. That’s why you disappear off to Costa Rica with no access to the outside world. Why you jump from impossibly tall waterfalls. You’re seeing if you can trust yourself to be completely self-sufficient, because you’re scared of depending on or needing someone again.’
‘Don’t you dare bring her into this,’ he warned, his body physically trembling from the effort it was taking to hold himself in check. No matter. It was all or nothing—Skye knew that the moment she’d told his family that she loved him.
‘Benoit, for so long the thing you’ve clung to from the night your mother ran away is your almost betrayal of Xander. You hold it to you as if it’s evidence that you’re a terrible person. But you were just a child who wanted to stay with his mother, no matter what. Because it was something you could control, the guilt you felt. Rather than what you couldn’t—the fact that your mother left. And you’ve spent so long focusing on that guilt that when Xander betrayed you, that became your sole focus.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You think I don’t know how painful it is to be abandoned by a parent and not just once, but again and again? My father chose his new family over me every chance he got. So yes, I do know what I’m talking about.’
She wanted him to see. Not for herself. She had very little hope now that he would relent, that he would keep her with him. But she did want him to see what was shaping the decision he was making. If only to stop him from doing the same in the future.
When she looked into his eyes for a moment she saw unfathomable hurt swirling dark inky streaks into his crystal-blue eyes. Until it passed and she saw...nothing. Complete absence.
‘Are you so desperate to forge a connection between us that you will dig out our deepest hurts to compare them? Mon Dieu, Skye, how much more do I have to hurt you before you’ll just leave?’
She knew then that she’d lost him. His eyes were dark, his jaw determined. Determined to refuse to see the truth of her words.
‘Keep the ring,’ he said to her. ‘It was always meant for a Soames.’
With her heart trembling in her breast, she asked, ‘Do you know why Catherine gave the ring back to Benoit? Despite the fact that she loved him then and always would?’
‘Because she knew she had to set him free.’
With that he left and took Skye’s heart with him.
Benoit didn’t care that the tree stump he sat on was damp and it was seeping into his trousers as he took another swing of whisky from the bottle. It had been three days since Skye had left and it had rained almost constantly since then, as if the heavens were punishing him.
An ache had opened up in his chest the moment she’d accused him of covering over the hurt from his mother’s abandonment with guilt, with misdirection, with almost everything other than the realisation of the damage his mother had done that night. It was as if all the years of suppressing it had magnified it, compounded it, and Skye had unlocked a door and it was es
caping on one long scream of pain that seemed unending and only grew louder and louder with each passing hour.
All this time he’d been focusing on the pain of betrayal by others, by Camilla and his brother, even his own act of betrayal, and he’d not once thought about the little boy who had promised not to cry. Not to tell anyone. Had he kept that promise all these years? Was he still keeping that promise?
He looked up at the remnants of a fort long ago forgotten by two boys and wondered what on earth he was supposed to do now. His musings were cut short when he heard the soft crunch of wet twigs and he knew, without even having to turn, that Xander had found him.
‘Leave,’ Benoit said from behind closed eyes. ‘Leave now or you’ll regret it. It’s not an empty threat this time.’
‘I’m not going anywhere. I’m not letting you push me away. Not like last time.’
‘Are you kidding me? You slept with Camilla! You betrayed me,’ he shouted, desperately clinging to a source of anger that pointed outward rather than in. Because, honestly, he feared that this time he’d break.
‘Camilla was a monumental mistake. I knew that even before I did it, but she was relentless,’ Xander said, sitting opposite him on a fallen tree. ‘And I was weak...’ The words fell from his lips as if in defeat. ‘You were so much to live up to, big brother. Too much. For almost my entire life you did everything for me. Looked after me, guided me. Protected me,’ he said, the words almost painful for Benoit to hear. Because they were true. Benoit had done almost everything and anything he could, attempting to make up for his unknown betrayal.
‘When I said it had to stop she told me she was pregnant.’
‘What?’ Benoit was yanked out of his introspection with an almost electric shock. Pins and needles dragged along his skin. They had a child?
‘That’s why I married her.’
Confusion spread through Benoit, short-circuiting his brain.
‘But she lied. It was all a lie,’ Xander said bitterly. ‘She only wanted to be married to the CEO of Chalendar Enterprises and when I told her that it would never be me she left.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I came here to tell you that I’m leaving the company,’ Xander said, swiping a hand over his face, that now revealed an incredible amount of exhaustion. But, instead of sympathy, Benoit felt anger.
