12. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Callum
I was angry. Furious. Enraged.
"Why the fuck didn't you tell me?" I shouted at Fleur. She sat on her couch while I paced back and forth across her living room.
"I promised Seamus I wouldn't," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Malone had spilled his guts at Fleur's place after which I'd gotten him back to his hotel in a car.
He and Sabine had been having an affair while she was married to Seamus. Seamus had found out and had confronted Sabine when she was at her parents' house.
Fleur, who was also visiting, had overheard the conversation and when Seamus had asked if she'd known, she'd admitted she hadn't.
Sabine was having an affair.
Fucking hell!
She was cheating on my brother. It was unthinkable.
Only the story got worse. She didn't have a miscarriage. She had an abortion because the baby had been Malone's.
According to Malone, he’d learned from Sabine that Seamus had been using condoms, while he had not. Either way, Sabine had gotten rid of the baby. Now, I believe it’s a woman’s prerogative to make that decision—it’s her body—but this woman had manipulated all of us. She’d played on my sympathies, and on her parents’ and mine, by lying that she’d had a miscarriage due to the trauma of losing Seamus. She’d twisted the truth, telling us I’d lost a niece or nephew, and my parents a grandchild—a piece of my brother.
"Why would Seamus not want us to know?"
"I don't know, Callum. He told me to tell no one and that he'd deal with it in his way. He drove away from my parents' place, and then he was gone. I…I couldn't…."
"You could have told me," I yelled. "You could've given me that. Was he planning to divorce her?"
"He did mention that," she admitted.
Malone had been the one to tell Seamus. He'd shown him pictures, desperate because Sabine was pregnant with his child and refusing to leave Seamus. Malone wanted to marry her. In fact, despite everything she put him through, he was still in love with Sabine.
I recalled how Sabine had not wanted Malone to stay and have a drink with us at the restaurant. It was evident that Malone had been following Sabine—he'd been heartbroken about the baby. He'd also believed she had a miscarriage but had recently, through the work of a private investigator, learned that Sabine had had an abortion. He'd suspected as much, which was why he'd engaged a PI.
"You let her play me," I accused Fleur.
I was being unfair, and I knew it. Hadn’t I been at Sabine’s beck and call ever since I promised Seamus in church, as I stood as his best man, that I’d always be there for her if anything ever happened to him?
Fleur took a deep breath. "What do you want me to say? You think I didn't want to scream from the rooftops that she didn't deserve your love and loyalty? You don't think I wanted to tell my parents how fucked up the situation with her was? But I couldn't. I promised Seamus. And then he died."
She was loyal to a fault. But I wasn't feeling generous. I was furious. I'd have to tell my parents. I would have to talk to that bitch Sabine about this. I'd have to talk to Brian and Lenora. Fuck ! It was going to be a nightmare. It already was.
"How could Sabine do this?"
I couldn't compute the loving couple I had seen with my own eyes with what I was hearing now. According to Malone, they'd dated at law school and had restarted their affair a few months after Seamus and Sabine were married. I knew for sure that Seamus never suspected. He would've told me. Was he on his way to talk to me after he confronted Sabine when he had the accident?
"Sabine was…." Fleur shook her head.
"What? No promises to Seamus should stop you now." I barked caustically.
"She's always cheated on all her boyfriends," Fleur snapped.
"Did your parents know?"
"No. They all thought she was Saint Sabine," she said with a mocking edge. "I tried to tell them about what happened with Juan Carlos, but they called me jealous and petty."
"Who the fuck is Juan Carlos?"
Fleur leaned back on her couch and closed her eyes. "It doesn't matter. The Sabine y'all see, the sophisticated, elegant, and lovely woman? That's not who she is."
I'd figured that out myself.
"You should've told me, Fleur," I tried to calm down but didn't succeed.
She opened her eyes. "And what would that have changed?"
Couldn't she see that it would've prevented us from having the issues we had? It would mean she would still be living with me.
"Only everything."
She cocked an eyebrow. "Okay, so you wouldn't have gone running to Sabine every time she yanked your chain. But it wouldn't have made you love me either, Callum. It wouldn't have changed the fact that you regretted convincing me to move in with you. It wouldn't have changed the fact that you think I'm self-involved and immature and not ready for an adult relationship. How you treated me has nothing to do with Sabine and everything to do with how you feel about me. And you don't feel good about me."
Every word was a dagger in my heart. Every fucking word. It hurt to know I'd hurt her. I didn't know how to make it better, how I could go back and not be yet another person who treated her badly, threw her away, and discarded her—believed Sabine's lies. So, I said the only thing I could, "I love you, Fleur."
She gave out a choked laugh. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "Fuck you, Callum. I don't need to be your consolation prize now that you figured out Sabine isn't the fabulous woman you thought she was."
I frowned. "How I feel about you has nothing to do with Sabine."
"Well, I don't believe you. I gave you eight months of my life, and you fucked me over. You hurt me. You're just like my parents, like Sabine. Even when your parents were here, and your father kept on about how I wasn't being fair to my family, you didn't say, ' Hey, Dad, I saw her father almost hit her; I think she has her reasons .'"
I sat down next to her. "I'm sorry."
"How many things are you going to apologize for?" she demanded.
"Everything I've ever done to hurt you." I cupped her cheeks in the palms of my hands. "Until you believe me, believe that I love you."
"Yeah, that happens around the same time that cows dance ballet," she retorted.
Even though I was in a shit mood, she made me smile with that ballet remark. She had such a great sense of humor. She probably needed it to get through her life at home, I thought somberly, to get past the neglect and whatever hell Sabine put her through.
I kissed her forehead, and she pulled away, moving her ass so she was as far as she could get from me on the couch.
"Did Sabine sleep with a boyfriend of yours before?"
Fleur scoffed. "A couple of them."
"Juan Carlos?"
"Yeah." She looked at her hands on her lap. "I need to get some sleep, Callum. I have an early flight tomorrow."
"Where are you going?" She had traveled during the time we were together, to go to her company's headquarters.
"DC," she said without looking at me.
"Can I take you to the airport?"
Her head snapped up. “No, I’m fine. I told you… ah… the company takes care of that.”
She’d said the same thing earlier when I asked how she’d get to the airport.
“But I want to take you. We—”
"Oh, for God's sake," she said, standing up and throwing her arms in the air. "I don’t want you around! Just because you finally woke up doesn’t mean I’ve been asleep. I’ve been awake this whole time, and you’ve been kicking me while I’m down. So, get the hell out of my house—and my life. I’m done with you. Done with my parents, done with my sister. You’re all terrible people, and you deserve each other."
I didn't move. Couldn't. She wasn't wrong. I was as terrible as them. When I'd tell my parents everything, I knew my mother would remind me that she'd always suspected something was wrong with Sabine, and everything was very right with Fleur. Dad would feel like a fool like I did.
"How long are you gone for?" I asked.
No fucking way was I walking away from her. I loved her. She loved me. What we had was special and worthy, and I wouldn't let my stupid behavior kill it. I'd fight to save our relationship, to make her see that I loved her, that I'd do better. I'd cherish her. I'd put her first. I wouldn't leave her with her dessert on her birthday in a restaurant to take care of another woman.
Christ! I'd done that. I was an ass.
"A few days."
"Can we talk when you get back?"
"Sure." She sounded dejected. Tired.
I went to her and kissed her lips gently. "I love you. That's the bald truth. You're the first person who isn't my family I've said that to, Grian ."
She closed her eyes and shook her head as if listening to me was painful. I continued, hoping against hope that she'd believe me, she'd want us to have a chance. "I never slept with Sabine. I didn't want to. I haven't wanted anyone since the first time I was inside you because I can only see you. I close my eyes, and it's you I see. I think about sex, and it's you I see. My dick doesn't cooperate until it's you."
Her eyes flashed open at me. I could see hope warring with despair, need with fear.
I kissed her again. "We have time. All the time in the world. I promise I'll make it work. I'll make it right."
She didn't say anything; just stepped away from me. "I'll see you…ah…when I see you."
I left her house feeling weighed down by the distance between us, yet buoyant at the prospect of shedding Sabine and her parents—people I had once considered family. They had treated Fleur so poorly, and unless they made amends as I intended to, they wouldn't be in my life.