Chapter 31
31
Rowan
I watched Atlas’s tall figure walking away, shoving the curtain over the doorway aside and striding out, leaving me alone under the spotlight. Naked.
But I didn’t care about that. Nakedness made me feel strong and standing there in front him, throwing words at him, giving him a truth he didn’t want to hear, I’d never felt so powerful in my entire life.
It wasn’t enough though. The damage his father had done to him was too great.
Of course it wasn’t enough. You never are, not for your mother and not for him.
My throat closed, pain radiating out from my chest. I could almost feel the breaking of my heart as it tore itself in two, the jagged halves of it cutting into me.
I didn’t want it hurt, I didn’t want to be reduced to crying over him. And I didn’t want to accept that in the end I’d been too young, too naive, and too stupid to think love would solve everything. That it would somehow miraculously heal all his wounds, take away all his scars.
I screwed my eyes shut, tears seeping out from under my lashes no matter how hard I tried not to stop them.
How strange, though, that in the end it was me who was the powerful one and he the one too fragile to deal. Perhaps it was women who were the strong ones. Even my mother, who certainly wasn’t well, hadn’t broken either. His own mother had, though. She’d lost hope and I could see that Atlas had lost hope too. He’d lost hope that he could step out from under his father’s shadow and instead had stayed there, using that as an excuse to hide his own fear.
How could I blame him for that? When his experience of love had been so terrible? His father had loved only himself and his mother had d died rather than stay for him, so no wonder he thought it was nothing but toxic.
Which was all very adult and measured of me, but that didn’t help the vicious ache in my chest, that told me that something inside of me had broken and I wasn’t sure it could ever be fixed.
I didn’t know what to do. I was married to a man I loved and I was going to have his child, but he’d just told me that love could never be part of his life and then he’d walked away. So where did that leave me?
Not that I cared about myself to be honest. It was him I grieved for. He was a difficult man, but he felt so deeply, so intensely that it was eating him alive.
More tears ran down my cheeks, but I didn’t stop them as I turned and slowly began to pull on my underwear then my dress, fighting not to sob.
He was a man who’d papered over the cracks in his own heart, built up an edifice that looked powerful and strong on the outside, and inside yet was riddled with holes, with doubts and pain, weakening the whole structure. He was just trying to protect himself, hide from the pain inside him, and that was okay.
I could run after him, confront him, hit him in the face with his own weaknesses, but that wasn’t something that would change him. He was a man who made his own choices, and I couldn’t force him to love me and I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t manipulate him like his father had, or emotionally blackmail him, and I certainly wouldn’t use the baby to do the same. He wouldn’t abandon me, I knew that, though in way it would be easier if he did. At least if I never saw him again, it would be a clean break.
At that moment, the curtain opened again, and a woman came in. She had wild and curly red hair and green eyes and I knew immediately that she was a Hamilton of some sort.
I swallowed my sobs, viciously wiping away the evidence of my tears. That was it. No more weeping. There was nothing more pathetic than crying over a lost cause.
The woman walked over to the dais where I stood and gave me a good look up and down. “Hey, cousin,” she said, frowning critically at my wet cheeks. “You enjoyed your sex show that much huh?”
I blinked, my heart tightening. “Isabel?”
“Yeah.” She came closer. “I think we need to have a chat.”