Chapter Seven #2
It had been sink or swim and she’d refused to drown.
To give her stepmother the pleasure of watching her flounder.
That was how she’d lived the last five years, not looking for care and affection from others, because she knew she couldn’t count on it being given.
It had been hard and lonely…but less painful.
So, to see it now, in the last place she would have expected to find it, in Caleb’s face, was disarming, and even more surprising was that she wanted to tell him—everything.
To not have to be strong and guarded and just… be.
‘Serena? Tell me.’
‘OK,’ she said, following the feeling, even though she had no idea where it would lead.
‘I thought I was finally going to get to live my life on my terms. To be in control of my life, at last, but instead…there’s you.
With your commands and expectations and contract.
Telling me what I will and won’t do. And I don’t want to be told what to do and who to be anymore. ’
‘I’m not telling you what to do,’ he blustered, but a quick look at her tear-streaked face had that conviction deserting him.
‘Or at least, I’m not trying to.’ He looked bewildered by the accusation, horrified that she had even for a second imagined that he was trying to control her.
‘Serena, if that’s how it seems, I’m sorry.
I appreciate that I can be somewhat domineering… ’
‘Somewhat?’ she quickly cut in, her brow arching.
‘OK, a lot domineering,’ he amended. ‘It’s what my life, my role, demands of me.
But I don’t ever want you to think that I want to control you.
That’s the last thing I want.’ He stared down at her, his gaze weighty, working to assimilate this new, explosive information.
‘It was your stepmother, wasn’t it? The person telling you what to do before? ’
Serena nodded. ‘It was the only way I was able to stay in Kit’s and Alexis’s lives—by adhering to what she wanted, living by the rules and standards that she set. Everything from where I worked to how I dressed, to who I was friends with was dictated by her.’
Horror leached into his expression. ‘Serena, I would never try to tell you how to live. Not at all. I hate that I’ve made you feel that way.
I’m sorry. God, I…’ Drawing in a breath, he ran his hand over his face.
‘All I was trying to do was to banish some of the uncertainty from this situation we’re in and make sure we’re on the same page moving forwards.
Not for a second did I think you would feel dictated to.
That’s the last thing I intended. Please tell me you believe that. ’
His dismay was so apparent, so genuine that it was easy to believe his taking charge emanated from a conscientiousness and not a will to control. ‘I believe you.’
His relief was palpable. ‘I still don’t understand why your stepmother would treat you that way?’
‘Because…’ Serena stopped as soon as she started.
There was no way for him to understand without knowing the whole story.
But it was a story that out of fear and shame she had never shared with anyone, keeping it bottled so tightly within her.
But how could he understand otherwise? And, much to her surprise, she wanted him to understand.
And surely, he had a right to know. Taking a breath, she began again.
‘Because she didn’t trust me to behave and not create another scandal like the one I caused when I got pregnant at eighteen. ’
Shock rippled through his silver eyes. ‘You were pregnant before?’
She nodded, anticipating his next question. ‘I miscarried at nine weeks.’
‘Serena…’
‘That’s why she did it. Because she didn’t think I could be trusted and that I could be a bad influence on the twins. And given that I did fall into your arms within hours of meeting you and fall pregnant again, maybe she wasn’t wrong.’
‘First of all, you have no reason to feel any guilt or shame about what happened between us,’ he asserted strongly.
‘It was natural and wonderful. And when I said it shouldn’t have happened, I meant me taking someone less experienced than me.
You were never a mistake. And secondly, I don’t care about your stepmother right now.
Only about you.’ His throat worked, and she could see how affected he was by her admission. ‘Serena, you lost a baby.’
‘Yes.’ And now that she had uncorked that bottle, she could feel it all rising up within her, that tide of feeling she had always been so afraid of.
Scared to speak of in case others shamed her as Marcia had, or blamed her as she blamed herself.
But, looking into Caleb’s expression, so full of compassion, she felt safe to speak.
‘It was awful. I was alone in this hospital room for hours and I just felt like… I’d failed. ’
‘Yor stepmother wasn’t with you?’
‘No,’ she scoffed. ‘Things between Marcia and I got worse after that, but they’d been bad before.
Not just because of her,’ Serena admitted.
‘I never made it easy. I didn’t want her in our lives where my mum should have been.
I accepted the marriage because my father asked me to, because he said Kit and Alexis needed a mother, but I never wanted her there and we never got on.
I never felt like she liked me. She loved the twins from the moment she met them—I think she liked that she could make them hers, that she would be the only mother they knew—whereas I was my mother’s daughter through and through.
And I looked so like her—the woman my father had loved first and still loved.
Whilst he was alive my dad was our go-between, advocating on each of our behalf’s and smoothing over the tension he could see.
But once he was gone…that tension just ballooned.
Nothing I did was right. And when she learned I was pregnant, she was furious.
Scandalised and ashamed. And when I miscarried…
all she had to say was it was probably for the best.’
Tears rolled from her eyes and she was taken aback when Caleb pulled her into his arms. ‘She should have supported you better. She owed you that.’ His voice contained a trace of anger.
‘Regardless of how you behaved, you were a grieving girl. She was the adult. She’ll never hurt you or shame you again. I promise.’
The words were delivered with such conviction that Serena couldn’t do anything but trust them and, held so tight against him, she even felt secure enough to peel herself open more ‘I’m scared that the same thing is going to happen again—with the baby,’ she admitted in a whisper.
‘I try not to think about it, but it’s in my head.
There was no reason for why it happened last time…
which makes it worse. If there was something I could do or avoid doing…
but I just feel like I failed. That I somehow caused it to happen. ’
‘I don’t think it works like that,’ he murmured, detangling from her, but continuing to holding her by the arms as he looked down into her face. ‘It just wasn’t meant to be, as hard as that is to accept. Did you like Dr Newman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. We’ll make an appointment for you to see her as soon as we return to London, and after that you’ll see her as often as you want to, OK.
Whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable and reassured.
And if you’re ever worried that something is wrong, tell me.
I don’t care if it’s the middle of the day or the middle of the night.
We’ll do whatever it takes to keep this pregnancy safe. ’
‘Thank you,’ she murmured. It was the exact reassurance she needed, and she didn’t know how he’d known that, but as she looked up at him, she recognised the haunted look in his eyes, the urgency of not wanting to lose anyone and feel that sting of loss again.
Had he lost someone too, she wondered. That could explain why he’d never wanted a family, because loss went hand in hand with love.
Maybe that was that why he kept such a tight hold on everything as well, trying to prevent a repeat of whatever he had suffered.
Caleb presented such an impenetrable front, but the past few hours had shown that he was vulnerable too.
‘And moving forwards I’ll try to be less domineering. But I really did just want us both to know where we stand going forwards.’
Boundaries were important to him, Serena realised, as much as her freedom was to her.
He liked clear and defined lines that didn’t get smudged.
It was what had unpinned him in Singapore, that he had strayed from his norm with her, crossed some invisible line, and he needed those lines to be comfortable.
But why? What was he so afraid of happening?
‘I get that now.’ She sent her eyes up to his face, feeling thrumming through her as she did. ‘I know it hasn’t seemed so, but I am grateful that you’re here, that you want to be involved and grateful for what you did with Marcia. I have Kit and Alexis back because of you.’
‘It’s admirable—all you sacrificed for them.’
‘I could never leave them. They were only seven years old at the time. They’d already lost both our parents. They couldn’t lose me too. And I promised my mum, when she was pregnant with them that I’d always be there for them. I couldn’t let her down.’
‘You haven’t.’ He was quick to issue that assurance.
‘Your brother and sister are lucky to have you, Serena. And our baby is lucky to have such a strong mother.’ His expression grew serious, and caught between the sunlight and growing shadows, Serena saw a whole new plane of Caleb’s face, saw the whisper of vulnerability that flashed and then slowly faded.
‘I have no idea what kind of father I’ll be, so I’m glad they have you. ’
Her heart caught. ‘Are you scared? Of being a father? Is that why you were reluctant to accept that I was pregnant?’