Chapter 16 – Bellamy
BELLAMY
I’m sitting on the table at the hospital and the doctor is like something out of a French movie with his white hair and cute mustache.
For the last ten minutes, he’s been telling me how being pregnant with twins is not ideal for my body.
Yup, I know. It’s the fact that I have small hips.
I might be curvy, but I’m petite. He wants to schedule the twins to be born via C-section when I’m thirty-seven weeks pregnant, though he did mention that some women with twins don’t make it that far and that there is a chance I could go into labor before that.
Boo. I don’t want a C-section.
But I don’t argue it either, because I want the twins to be safe, and he’s probably right about trying to deliver vaginally.
So here I am, on my back on the unforgiving table with Sebastian by my side, and the woman who only speaks French is plopping warm goop on my lower belly in copious amounts and then pressing the probe down onto me.
It’s not the most comfortable thing that’s ever happened to me, but it’s certainly not the worst.
Especially when the screen comes to life and there are our babies.
Sebastian makes a noise in the back of his throat, his hand clenching mine. “Do you see them?”
I nearly laugh at the awe in his voice, but I’m too mesmerized myself to even utter a sound.
The babies are separated by a layer of tissue, I suppose.
They’re moving around, sliding this way and that, and I can see their hands and feet and legs and faces and chests.
And their hearts. I can see their freaking hearts!
“Sebastian!”
“I see them.” He bends down and kisses my lips. “I see them.”
The tech goes through whatever it is she’s required to go through. I have no clue what I’m looking at other than basic anatomy.
“Do you want to know their sexes?”
“No,” Sebastian states since we haven’t talked about it again since that first time.
Only I answer “Yes” at the same time.
He peers down at me. “I thought we weren’t going to find out.”
“I want to be able to tell my dad.”
His features soften and he smiles, bending once more to kiss me. “Then let’s find out so we can tell him.”
Fuck, I love this man.
“Your Majesties, you are having one boy and one girl.”
And that’s when I officially break into tears.
We make it home with me as a slobbering, blubbering mess. Sebastian is thoroughly amused, but he’s been through this three times already. I’m a newbie. A virgin again. He also can’t stop smiling, so he can tease me all he wants, but I know better.
Still, I’m dying to tell my dad. He’s the reason I wanted to know, after all.
I race up the stairs and fly down the hall, pounding my fists on his door. Without waiting for an answer, I twist the knob and enter, only to stop dead in my tracks. My lungs seize, my heart freezes over, and a scream lurches from my lungs.
“Dad!”
My legs feel like lead as I move sluggishly through his room to where his body is lying in a heap on the floor, blood pooling around his head like a lake, seeping into the carpet, thick, dark red, and sticky.
He fell. That much is clear. He also obviously hit his head, but I can’t yet tell if he’s just unconscious or…
“No!” I roll him onto his back, already knowing that’s the wrong thing to do if he has a head injury.
My ear presses against his chest, but…silence.
No heartbeat. A shredded wail rips from my chest as my world falls apart.
“No!” I scream. “No. Dad. Please no. Not yet. Not yet!” I shriek.
“I’m not ready. I need you here with me. Please, don’t go. Please not yet.”
Tears stream down my face as I hug and clutch my father’s lifeless form. I came in here to tell him about his grandbabies. I wanted him to know. I wanted him to be there after they were born. I wanted him to hold them.
I just wanted my fucking dad, and now…now he’s gone.
Scalding tears burn my cheeks. I wasn’t here when he died. I wasn’t here when he fell. Again. If I had been, could I have saved him?
Grief ransacks through me to the point where I can’t catch my breath. I can’t do anything other than hold my dad and cry. And cry. And cry.
“What—oh, no. Oh, Bellamy.”
Sebastian. I feel him next to me. I feel him touching me. But I can’t look at him. All I can see is my dad.
Sebastian’s on the phone. He’s talking to someone. Telling them to send help, but it’s too late.
“I can’t lose him. Not now.”
Sebastian wraps his arms around me. “I know, baby. I’m so sorry.”
My eyes pinch tight and my breath stalls. I don’t know how to live in this world without my dad. This is what I’ve been for as long as I can remember. His daughter. His caretaker. It was just the two of us against the world since I was thirteen.
He’s my dad and now…now he’s gone.
And I can’t get him back.
This isn’t how this was supposed to go. Not how this was supposed to be.
My heart breaks, shatters, explodes, and I have no strength to move. No desire to either. I hold my dad, telling him all the things I’ll never be able to tell him again, until at some point, I feel my body gently being moved, soft words in my ear that I can’t make sense of.
“No!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “No!”
“Baby, you can’t stay in here.”
“No!” I cry. “Please, don’t take me from him.”
“The ambulance is here to take him.”
“No.” I sob into Sebastian’s chest, pounding on him with my fists as he lifts me and moves me away so the paramedics can take over. “Please, not yet. I’m not ready.”
“You’ll never be ready.”
“Please. Just let me say goodbye.”
He kisses my face and sets me down and I walk over to my father, who is now lying in a black fucking bag, eyes closed, skin ashen. There are people off to the side, giving me a minute, but I don’t care about them and I don’t bother to look at them.
I crouch beside him, my hand on his face. “I love you. I’m so sorry, I wasn’t here when you fell. I’m so sorry I let you down.”
“Bellamy.” Sebastian’s voice cracks, but I hold up my hand, stopping him.
“I don’t want you to go. I’m going to miss you so much.
Go to Mom. Tell her I love her. And that I’m sorry.
” I break down again, crumpling against him, only to be picked up off my feet once more.
I’ll never see my father again. This was the last time.
“I didn’t get to tell him about the babies.
I told him a hundred other things, but I couldn’t tell him that. ”
“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry. Tell him now.”
I shake my head. I can’t. I can’t make the words come out.
“You have to tell him. You’ll regret it if you don’t. Even if he’s gone, you won’t get to see him again. Not like this.”
The words break my fucking heart, but… “Dad,” I swallow, my voice shattered. I turn back to him, but my vision is blurry with tears. “Sebastian and I…” A heavy swallow. “We’re having a boy and a girl. Two babies I wanted you to meet more than anything in this world. Bye, Dad. I love you so much.”
I twist into Sebastian’s chest and force myself to nod my head. I can’t watch them zip him up and I can’t watch them take him out of here.
Sebastian knows this because he whispers in my ear, “I’m taking you out of here now.”
I can’t respond, but he doesn’t give me the choice.
He holds me close, walking us across the palace, into our bathroom, and stripping me down. He guides me into the shower and washes me—my hair, my body—all the while holding me as I weep and weep and weep. Tears pour from my eyes like an endless river.
And once we’re out of the shower, he wraps me up in a towel, brushes out my hair, and tucks us both into bed. I have no idea what time it is. What day it is. All I know is that my dad is gone.
“My dad is gone,” I whisper into the darkness of our room.
Sebastian holds me tighter. “Yes.”
“I’m not sure how my heart will ever recover.”
I wake in a state of lethargy, my eyes heavy and weighed by crust and salt. My face burns, my cheeks are raw, my body aches, and my muscles are sore. I roll over onto my other side and push myself back into slumber, keeping myself here for the better part of the day.
“You need to eat.” Sebastian’s voice rings through the gravel in my head. I simply shake my head.
“It’s not a choice. Sit up and eat.”
“No.”
“Now.”
“I don’t want to eat.”
“It’s nearing seven at night and you haven’t had a thing to eat or drink since yesterday afternoon. I have allowed that, but now, you’re putting your health and the health of our children at risk.”
Reluctantly I push myself up, blinking open my eyes without much effort. “Where is he?”
“At the same funeral home Nora went. When you’re able, we need to talk about your wishes for him.”
“I wish for him to be alive.”
A kiss to my temple. “I know, baby.”
I start to cry again, unable to stop the tears. A straw is brought to my lips, and I sip, taking in the cool water. “Where was his aide? How did no one hear him fall?”
“His aide informed us your father was taking a nap and had only been asleep about an hour when you got there. He didn’t check on him because your father usually naps for at least an hour and a half in the afternoon. Can you please take some nourishment?”
I stare down at the tray on the bed. Toast with butter and strawberry jam. God, he’s perfect. So perfect.
I nod my head and he sits on the bed beside me, fucking making me pieces of toast, smearing them with the butter and jam and handing them to me so I can eat.
I do eat. First, because my children deserve that from me, and second, because I don’t want Sebastian to worry more.
It’s funny the way we make concessions for those we love when we’d just as quickly sabotage ourselves.
“I miss him.”
“I know. I do too.”
I hiccup out a sob, staring down at the red jam. “Will you do something for me?”
“Anything,” he says with such sincerity my heart quakes.
“Will you bring new furniture into the third floor of the library? I want that room back. I don’t want to walk in there and feel Samil, and right now, I still do.”
“Done. I’ll redo the entire floor of that library. You won’t recognize it when it’s finished.”
“I fucking love you.” I stare up at him through watery eyes. “I do. I love you so much and I’m so heartbroken over this and I want to tell you that I’ll be okay, but I’m not sure I will be.”
He cups my jaw, his gray-blue eyes soft and adoring as they gaze into mine.
“You’re not supposed to get over it and you’re not supposed to be okay.
I lost my father when I was fifteen and I remember finding him in a similar way to how you found your father.
There isn’t a day that passes when I don’t wish he were still alive and I could seek his guidance.
But, I can tell you, your father loved you.
You were his world. And though his mind had been slipping, you were what kept his heart and memories alive. ”
I lean against his chest, tears pouring one after the other down my cheeks. I stare down at my wrist where I got my tattoo those months ago. It’s his words. My father’s words. “Choose your heart and follow its passion.”
Sebastian’s thumb grazes over the black-inked words. “And have you?” he asks, almost nervous for my answer.
Have I? “Yes. I chose my heart. I chose you and the children and became your queen. You’re all my passion.”
He tilts my chin and kisses my lips. “You’re not alone.”
He said those words to me when he picked me up a second time in Tourin outside my father’s residence. And much like that night, I cry in all the ways I haven’t allowed myself to cry for so long. Not since that night. I cry in all the ways I need to cry, but as with that night, I’m not crying alone.
Sebastian is here with me. Holding me. Telling me he loves me and making sure I’m breathing and drinking and eating. No one has cared for me this way since I was a young girl.
And that realization, that truth, slows my tears. I don’t have to do this by myself, I don’t have to suffer in this grief alone, and the relief I feel in that is overwhelming.
He tilts my chin and kisses the tip of my nose, offering me the sweetest of smiles that eases some of the relentless ache in my chest.
“What can I do to help?”
And much the way I said it that night. “There is no helping it, but you’re doing everything I need you to right now.”
“Okay,” he acquiesces without agreeing. “Tomorrow I’m going to force you out of bed and into the shower. After that, you and I will sit down and make decisions for his funeral.”
I nod, and though part of me wants to argue, this is what I need. It’s what I needed after my father fell and broke his wrist and I felt powerless. I need Sebastian’s control. I need his strong hand. But I love how he’s not taking over. How he’s forcing me to regain my own strength.
“I want him cremated, same as my mother was. I want to sprinkle his ashes into the ocean since that’s what we did with hers. I want them reunited.”
“Do we have to fly to Boston to do this?”
I shake my head, already knowing that’s not something I want to do. “I think a seaside trip for all of us will suffice.”
“You pick the day and it’ll happen.”
“Does everyone get this?”
“What?” he asks, his voice almost amused by my question.
“This sort of love?”
He lifts me up, tucking me tighter into his chest. “No. This isn’t the sort of love that’s written into fairy tales, and this isn’t the sort of love you find just anywhere.
You said it when I woke up after Samil tried to kill us.
This love is not a normal love. It’s a love that goes beyond this lifetime.
It’s a love that never dies, but that doesn’t mean I want to go the rest of this life without you only to hope I find you again in the next. ”
I hiccup out a sob. “I meant it.”
“As do I. So stay with me, by my side, and when darkness threatens to take over your heart and mind, promise you’ll come tell me about it so I can hold your hand and remind you that you are the sunshine of our lives and that we cannot exist without your warmth or radiance.”
“I promise.”
Only as the words leave my mouth, I’m not sure I mean them. Because right now, I feel anything but sunshine coursing through me. And I’m not sure how I’ll ever be that woman again.