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The silence stretches along with my fears and anguish. And the hole inside me grows bigger.
Chapter 13
RYAN
Shit, I shouldn’t have lost my fucking rag.
It’s all I keep thinking on our long drives. Fleur sleeps through most of them. I can’t imagine what it must be like for her—mourning her old life and the life she had gotten used to. Two worlds that consecutively imploded on her. Add to that the fact that she’s heavily pregnant…
Luke told me how Beth, his wife, was taking to being pregnant on our last call. I think if she wasn’t raging with hormones, he might be more excited. I look at Fleur, and what I do know of her, she’s so much like Beth. Fiery and stubborn.
Before all this, Fleur had a spark that reminded me of Beth. She spoke her mind and didn’t give a shit about anything.
Now, she’s become like Casper. Her silence blocks everyone out. Living in her head, she’s become a shell of herself.
The truth is that I have no clue how to deal with this. I’m meant to be protecting her. The point of all this is to save her, but I don’t think it’s working. Fleur’s fading. Faster than I thought she would.
She stirs as we go over a rocky road. A low groan escapes her, her hand falling to her belly.
How can I protect you from him? How am I meant to keep you from drowning?
Casper told me she’s resilient, but right now she looks broken. Although, I’ve seen broken. I’ve lived with broken, and she’s something else. Something that might never be made whole again.
Although I know once she finds out the truth, she’ll despise us all, all I want to do is give her some hope. A comfort that no one else can.
Every night I hear her cry herself to sleep. I think she might even cry in her dreams. Fleur is slowly wilting, and I have to find a way of bringing her back.
I pull up outside her mother’s cottage. There are bare bushes all around the building. The scene is wild, and I wonder whether this is a good idea because I’m deviating so far from the plan that it could jeopardise everything.
You’re meant to be keeping them alive. For him. You made a promise.
I get out of the shitty Jeep and head towards the front door. The building is everything you’d expect from a rural French cottage—light blue wooden door and faded wooden shutters that are rusted at the hinges. The stonework is uneven, and the path is moss covered. Like no one has been here in far too long.
Everything looks closed up; nothing is out of place. For a run-down stone box in the middle of nowhere, it’s pretty fucking idyllic.
“Why are we here?”
I turn to find Fleur standing behind me, her hand flattened to the old wooden sign that reads Chalet de Roses. Sleep-swollen eyes blink as though she’s having trouble focusing her vision. It’s probably due to the crying.
I’ve alwa
ys hated tears. They were the soundtrack of my childhood. All the way through my youth and my mother’s many men. They remind me of broken promises and broken bones. Battered flesh and bruised skin.
Not Fleur’s though. Hers make me want to soothe her. There’s something about her that makes me want to comfort rather than bark sense into her.
It’s a fucking disaster waiting to happen. I know it, but I can’t help it. If anything, I’m beginning to understand Casper’s protectiveness of her. His inability to walk away. Men like us, that have fought wars, killed and lost more men than is right, we have the need to protect and save ingrained into us. Always avoiding our ghosts by focusing on others’.
“Why did you bring me here?”
“You said something about this place.” Standing back, I take a step to the side to let her through.
There’s a morose expression on her face, as though she’s happy to be here but at the same time so grief-stricken that it’s taking everything for her to hold herself together.
I’ll give it to her, she’s toughing this out like he said she would.
She walks up to the door, then stops, hands flattening to the aged wood. One smooths down to the weathered knob.
“You weren’t there,” she murmurs.
