Chapter 17 – Sebastian
SEBASTIAN
The weight of the leaden sky seems to echo the heaviness in my heart.
As I stand by the window, watching the icy raindrops leave their fleeting marks on the glass, I can’t help but feel a deep sense of despair.
Bellamy lost her father, and the grief that clouds her once sparkling eyes is a constant reminder of the pain she’s going through.
“Sebastian?” Rowan’s voice breaks the silence, drawing me away from the window. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“What is it?”
He enters my study, glancing around, and when he finds it’s just us, he shuts the door behind him. “Are we still scheduled to go to the seaside tomorrow?”
I nod, leaning against the glass and folding my arms. “That’s the plan. It’s what Bellamy said she wanted, but this morning she seemed even worse than yesterday.”
“She’s been like this for over a week now. We need to do something.”
I stare at my brother, seeing the same worry etched in his features as I feel in myself.
“I know, but what can we do? She’s grieving, Rowan.
It’s not something that can be fixed with a Band-Aid or a few comforting words.
He was her entire life since she was thirteen and her mother died.
She blames herself for not being there when he fell. ”
He sighs, running a hand through his hair, frustration clear in his movements. “There has to be something. You’re her husband. Surely there’s some way you can help her?”
My heart clenches at the reminder. The truth is that I should be able to offer solace and support to my wife, but I’m at a loss for how to do so.
I thought we’d made progress. She came down the next morning after I’d shoved toast down her throat and ate breakfast with the children.
After that, we’d showered and talked and made arrangements for him.
But it was as if making those arrangements, the finality of them, set her back, and for the last eight days, all the light has been zapped out of her eyes, and the woman who has been pure rays of sunshine is now a ghost of who she once was.
“I’ve tried. God knows I’ve tried. I’ve talked to her and held her.
I’ve done everything I can think of. But for the last several days, she’s given me a smile that doesn’t touch her eyes and tells me she’s doing okay, which I know is a lie.
She doesn’t want me to worry, but that only makes me worry more.
Every time I approach her now, it’s like there’s this…
wall between us. One that I don’t know how to break down. ”
“Then we’ll find a way to break it down together,” he says, determination flaring in his eyes as he sits on the arm of the sofa. “You’re not alone in this either, you know, and you don’t have to take it all on by yourself.”
And yet, that’s how I’ve always done things.
The eldest son. The king of a country, even before I was ready to be.
The single father to three children. But since Bellamy came along, I’ve learned to trust in ways I never have before.
And Rowan has been here. He hasn’t left to flitter about the world the way he used to.
It seems we’ve both grown, and I hadn’t realized how much I needed him until this moment.
“Thank you, brother,” I murmur, grateful he’s here and saying all of this to me. “She’s already outright refused a grief counselor. If you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears.”
Only his bleak expression says it all. We’re both at a loss.
We breathe in silence for a moment, the patter of sleety rain against the window filling the room. Since her father’s death, I’ve felt a storm brewing within me, a tempest of emotions that threatens to overwhelm me. Helplessness. Sorrow. Frustration.
All I want is to find a way to ease Bellamy’s pain, but it seems that every attempt I’ve made has only pushed her further away.
She’s spent some time with the children, playing and trying to laugh, but even that feels forced. I can only hope time will heal her wounds, but I’m worried she might need more than that.
“You’re blaming yourself.”
“Wouldn’t you? Look what I’ve done to her. Christ, Rowan, from the moment I put my ring on her finger, her life has turned to hell. I don’t know what to do. Part of me thinks…” I end it there, unable to say the words and hardly able to think them.
“Maybe,” Rowan says slowly, steering me away from the path I was headed down, “if she won’t speak to a counselor, someone she doesn’t know, we could have Althea talk to her. She’s been through her own share of grief, and the two are very close. Perhaps she can offer some insight.”
It’s not a bad thought. Althea did offer and I believe she’s tried in her way.
She’s made Bellamy get out of bed to do yoga with her, but Bellamy hasn’t talked at all during their sessions, and Althea didn’t push it because she said sometimes people will talk on their own time and you can’t force that.
It’s true, but maybe it’s time for more of a nudge.
“Perhaps,” I agree, feeling a flicker of hope ignite within me. “If anyone could understand what Bellamy is going through, I’d have thought it would have been us, but maybe she needs more of a motherly approach.”
Althea lost her husband and child in a tragic car accident about three years before our father was taken from us.
Althea isn’t of our bloodline, so at the time, no one spoke of the curse.
When my father died, Althea offered to come and stay with me as my royal assistant.
I needed her. My mother wasn’t helpful, and I was lost and scared and had no idea what I was doing.
Althea helped me through my grief.
“Come on,” Rowan says, clapping me on the shoulder. “Let’s go find her.”
On our way down to Althea’s office, I spot Bellamy through the window out in the back gardens, standing beneath an ancient oak tree that had been her father’s favorite.
It’s where his aide would take him to sit whenever the weather cooperated.
Her head is bowed, and ice drips from her dark locks like frozen tears.
I hesitate for a moment, my heart aching at the sight of her so lost and broken.
“I’ll catch up to you,” I tell Rowan, jutting my chin toward Bellamy out in the rain.
“Go ahead. I’ll go play with Zayer and Sabrina and then we can speak to Althea tonight.”
“Sounds good.” I slap his shoulder and run to grab our coats and head outside.
“Bellamy?” I whisper softly, stepping closer.
The sound of my voice startles her from her thoughts, and she looks up, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen from crying.
I throw her heavy coat over her shoulders.
She’s frozen through, but I shove down my ire and urge to yell.
“Sebastian…” she murmurs, her voice barely audible above the patter of icy raindrops on the empty branches.
My normal reaction is to charge in, but for the first time ever with her, I ask, “May I join you?” I don’t want to intrude upon her grief, but I can’t help feeling a desperate need to be close to her. To want to heal her heart and take away her pain.
But it’s more than that. It’s my own guilt. It’s feeling as though she’s slipping through my fingers like grains of sand I’ll never get a hold of. I did this to her, I can’t help but think.
“Of course,” she replies, her pale lip trembling as she tries to give me that bullshit smile she’s been giving me all week.
I take her frozen hand, pressing a tender kiss to her knuckles before leading her to sit on a nearby stone bench. Under the sheltering canopy of the oak, silence stretches between us, and I have no idea how to fill it.
“You don’t have to do this,” I tell her, suddenly growing frustrated.
“Do what?” she says, not even an ounce of bark or bite to her.
“Put on a fucking brave face for me. Slink around and come out into the fucking sleet without a goddamn coat on without telling me. Stop hiding. I know your heart is broken.”
She sighs, her head falling to my shoulder. “You’re worried about me.”
“Yes. Physically and emotionally.”
“I don’t want you to be.”
I cup her jaw in my hand. “Aren’t you worried about yourself?”
Her chin trembles and she breaks down, her soft sobs shuddering through her.
“Baby, I know this is hard for you,” I begin hesitantly, trying to find the right words to ease her pain.
“I know there is no magic wand I can wave and no potion I can give you to drink that will fix this. But I don’t like you hiding from me.
That scares me more than your tears. Hiding isn’t grief.
Hiding is something else. I will do everything in my power to help you through this, but fuck, Bellamy, no more hiding or pretending. ”
She raises her gaze to meet mine, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. “Okay,” she whispers, her voice thick with emotion as it plumes through the air as a white mist. “You don’t want me to hide? Even if you don’t like what I’ll have to say?”
“Yes. Even if I don’t like what you’ll have to say.”
“The truth is, I don’t even know what I need right now. I feel torn apart, trying to be the wife you deserve and the mother the children rely on. I’m afraid I’ll fail at everything because right now, my heart hurts, and I don’t know how to make it stop. I’m worried this won’t ever get better.”
My chest tightens at her words, and I pull her onto my lap. She’s a fucking popsicle, and I wrap my arms around her, holding her close, trying to warm her up.
“My love, you are stronger than any person I’ve ever met,” I assure her.
“I have no doubt your grief is consuming, and you feel stuck in an endless abyss, and instead of moving toward the light, you’re being sucked down into the darkness.
But your grace and resilience have always defined you and will continue to do so. ”
“But what if I can’t get better?” she asks, a tremor of fear in her voice. “What if this pain consumes me, and I become a shadow of the woman I once was?”