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Chapter 19
I’m not going to let this man see me cry,Melanie swore. I didn’t cry when he broke my heart this morning, and I sure am not going to do it now.
Rhys had made no such promise, it seemed, because he stood next to her, clutching the tail of her t-shirt in his fist just as he used to do when he was little, as tears rolled down his cheeks.
They’d just completed a tour of the cottage, and with every room, her heart bled a little more. She had no idea how the vandals had gained entry, but they’d had two days to figure that out, and to cause as much damage as possible.
The tiles on the kitchen counter, the ones Corbin had been so proud of, had been chiseled out of their fresh grout. All the small appliances—microwave, toaster, panini press—were heaped into a water-filled bathtub. The stained-glass window that dominated the sunroom was now a heap of glittering colored shards on the floor. The bed linens had been shredded. The walls of every single room had been spray painted.
The depth of malice it would take to inflict such extensive damage was unimaginable. At the end of the dreadful tour, Melanie felt her legs go weak. She wished she was the fainting type, so she could give into the blessed darkness.
She felt Corbin reach for her, arms outstretched as if afraid she would hit the floor, but she shoved him away. “Don’t! Just don’t!”
Something flickered across his face, but he didn’t insist. He stepped away, palms outward in a gesture of surrender. Rhys looked from one to the other, made a face and mumbled something about going to his room. Miraculously, it was the only room that was untouched. At least the monsters who had done this had drawn the line at hurting a child.
She watched him go. Just weeks before, she would have run after him to comfort him. But Rhys was growing up. It didn’t mean he was invulnerable to pain; just that he was learning to cope.
She shook her head when she thought of how stupid she had been this morning, hoping that Corbin might have been the one to fill that void in Rhys’s life. In both their lives. How dumb could you get? What temporary madness could have seized her to believe that a couple of nights in a man’s arms meant there was something permanent there?
She’d even indulged in the fantasy that she was the first woman he’d been with since his divorce, and that he had found in her a place of solace and healing after his loss. Just because she had been alone all this time, did not mean he had. For him, she was just a temporary indulgence.
He kicked at a heap of damaged furniture with a bellow of frustration, and for the next half an hour she could hear him as he stormed from room to room, cursing under his breath in French, photographing every single bit of damage. She couldn’t bear to go with him.
By the end of the day, he had sent all the pictures to Queenie, but all Melanie had found the strength to do was fix a quick meal for herself and Rhys.
As the sun began to dip, he hovered on the porch. “I can stay the night, to ensure that these people do not come back to harm you.”
Corbin? Under the same roof as her? She wouldn’t survive that: she’d rather take her chance with the vandals. “No,” she said brusquely. “The alarm system has been repaired. We’ll be fine.”
“Are you sure—”
“Just go.” She folded her arms and stared him down, daring him to ask again. “Don’t your dogs miss you?”
Watching him get into his car felt like a hollow victory, but everything inside her knew it was for the best. She crawled back inside after locking the door: battered, bruised, and hurting.
The responseto the attack raged like an out-of-control brush fire. Queenie led the charge with a three-minute rant on her show, calling out Gaia and her followers. “This is an act of war! We will not take this lying down!”
To everyone’s surprise, Gaia went live to apologize, even purchasing airtime on channels that were not hers. She was almost in tears, harshly chastising the perpetrators. “You should be ashamed. You are no children of Gaia! Whoever you are, you are shunned. You may never return to the family!”
This was met by a blizzard of hashtags, and even Team Gaia expressed their horror. For once, the two factions laid down their arms and agreed that la Princesse Melanie had been wronged.
Wearily, Melanie shut down her apps. She didn’t want to see a single tweet, post or upload. She felt sick to her heart. It was all over. She had failed. She sat at her laptop and composed a letter to Queenie, copying it to Graziella, resigning from the challenge and apologizing for letting them down. She hit Send.
There was a familiar rumble in the yard. She looked out to see Corbin’s truck, loaded up with dogs. The canines and their human got out, the former racing towards Rhys and Zanifa, the latter walking resolutely towards her.
“Why are you here?” she demanded. “You broke up with me.”
He looked as if he was deciding whether to address that, and then said with deliberate cool, “That in no way affects my undertaking to deliver this cottage in a satisfactory condition. And I have a plan.” He held aloft the tablet where he kept his working notes. “We get a week’s extension—”
“Forget it,” she said shortly. “I’m done.”
“Melanie.” Corbin’s voice was low, as if he was talking to a horse that was easily spooked. “We can recover. We will fix this.” He gestured at the walls. “I will call out a team—immediately. I can have them here within hours. We will work through the night, every night, until….”
She shook her head vehemently, tearing the bodycam off her chest and throwing it with force against a vandalized wall. “No need. This is finished.”
“Why?” He looked both confused and horrified.
Men. So clueless. “Because I failed! I was fooling myself all along. I’m not a designer; I’m a waitress. I work in a diner. What made me think I could ever be any more?”
