AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Please do not worry about money,’ he said, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘You and the baby will be financially secure. I’ll see to it. And I’ll also see to it that you will be well protected.’
The tears slid down my cheeks. ‘You probably won’t want to hear this either, but I’m going to say it anyway. You deserve to be loved. And you deserve to love in return.’
His face remained expressionless. ‘Maybe,’ he said blankly. ‘Maybe not.’
That night in the garden, where I’d felt so destroyed, so broken, I felt those same things now. Yet I could also feel a determination inside me, a steel that perhaps had always been there. A steel that came from love. Love for my child, and love for the man in front of me, and last but not least, it came from hope.
Hope that one day he’d find his way out of the darkness.
Hope that one day he’d come back to us.
I closed the distance between us, going up to him and lifting a hand, wanting to touch him one last time. I brushed my fingers along his hard jaw, feeling the warmth of his skin that was the truth of him, not the black ice in his eyes.
He said nothing, his big, powerful body tense as a wound spring.
‘I’ll go, but know that I’m not leaving you,’ I said softly. ‘I will never leave you, not in spirit. I’ll be there whenever you need me, Con, and so will our child.’
I wasn’t going to change his mind. If he was going to come to me he’d have to make that decision himself. I couldn’t make it for him.
I let my hand drop away from his face and moved past him to the door, stepping out into the office. Then I went out across the grass to the manor.
I didn’t do anything about the tears that poured down my cheeks.
I let them fall.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Constantine
THATNIGHT,AFTERTHEhelicopter had come to take Jenny back to Edinburgh had gone, and there was nothing left for me but the echoing corridors of the manor and the last, elusive threads of her scent hanging in the air, I went out to the cottage and called Valentin.
I’d been putting it off for too long. He had to be dealt with.
Unfortunately, the conversation was not a productive one. I was angry, and in pain, and I allowed my temper to get the better of me. Another reason that it was better that Jenny wasn’t here.
Every relationship I had, I seemed to break.
I tried to bury my emotions with work, mobilising my legal team to fight Valentin’s claim. Then I went about making sure that Jenny and our child were taken care of.
I didn’t think too deeply about her, didn’t think about that phone call with Valentin either. Neither of those things would touch me. Neither of those were going to matter.
Instead, I found the detachment that had kept me going for fifteen years and held on to it as tightly as I could.
Three days passed with aching slowness.
I stayed in the cottage. I couldn’t bring myself to be in the manor, where Jenny’s scent still lingered. Where everywhere I looked I could see her. Curled up in an armchair. Sitting on a dining chair telling me about some book she’d been reading as she ate ice cream. Squealing on the pebbly beach of the loch as she tested the icy water with small bare toes. Lying naked in my bed and lifting her arms to me, welcoming me into her warmth and her softness. Her understanding and her compassion.
I ached and nothing could ease it. All I could do was distract myself from my empty house, and my empty bed, and the emptiness in my heart that ached and ached right down to my bones.
In the end I spent a lot of time in my collection room, adjusting the displays and unpacking new items. Normally I got tremendous satisfaction out of those small tasks, and yet as I flicked open a box containing an emerald I felt...nothing.
I put the box down on a shelf and looked around at my collection with growing disquiet. These things were all mine, and yet now they all seemed...ridiculous.
What had Jenny said?‘Rocks and coins and swords... You missed out on so much.’
I had missed out. I had missed out on everything. And now I was trying to fill that emptiness inside me with things. With a little boy’s pathetic collection of rocks and coins and toys. A leftover from the childhood he’d never managed to leave behind.
‘You’re still letting your father make your decisions for you, Con. And you’re still believing his lies. And if you can’t see that, it’s because you don’t want to.’
