Chapter 7 #4
Moving onto Lewis’s room down the hall, I found my son curled on his side, his cheek cradled in his hand, and the ache grew stronger.
Even Lew seemed content that Regan would look after them.
My son, for such a wee boy, didn’t welcome new people into his life.
And he was strange with those who appeared and disappeared out of it.
I could only assume it was the effect of losing his mum so young.
Something I’d never wanted to have in common with my son.
While Lachlan worried about Brodan and Arran, I did, too, but I was also angry with them. I never used to be. I was always the one tempering Lachlan’s irritation, reminding him our brothers wanted to find themselves outside the boundaries of the Adair family. Now, not so much.
I had nothing against them going out into the world and living their lives, but where was their love and consideration for family?
Our youngest brother, Arran, had been terrible at communicating with us for years.
We never knew where he was or what he was up to until he turned up at Christmas or maybe for a month during the summer. He barely knew his niece and nephew.
Brodan, our second-youngest brother, never used to be so bad. When he first moved to LA to work as an actor, he kept in touch every week. He came home whenever he could.
But something had changed over the last year.
Brodan had pushed us all away and was often in the tabloids, earning a reputation as the bad boy of Hollywood.
It made no sense. Brodan had never been the wild, partying kind, even at an age when that was expected.
He was smarter than all the siblings put together, always had his head stuck in a book, and had openly admitted he didn’t understand the fascination with drugs and alcohol.
I, like Lachlan, was most definitely concerned about our middle brother. But even through the frustration of my younger brothers making us worry and missing out on my children’s lives, I had hope that one day, they’d come home.
It was something me and Lachlan spoke of often, but as I walked into the large primary suite I’d designed for me and Fran, I missed getting into bed beside her warmth and unloading all my worries. Fran was ever practical and sensible and always made me feel better.
Sitting on the bed, I stared at the framed photograph on my bedside table of me and Fran.
We’d been together a year at that point. She sat on my knee in the student union, laughing up into the camera with me as I held her close. For a long time, I couldn’t look at pictures of her. Couldn’t bear the god-awful black hole of pain that opened inside me.
Time didn’t heal all, but it dulled the grief until I could look at photos, could talk to Eilidh and Lewis about how they’d inherited their mother’s beautiful dark hair, could fill them in on all the things they’d missed about the mother they never got to know.
To my shame, there were even days I didn’t think of my wife. The first time I realized I hadn’t thought of her for days, the guilt really fucked with me. For weeks after, I snapped and growled at everyone until Lachlan finally got it out of me what was wrong.
As always, my brother reassured me. Reminded me it had happened when we lost our mum and our dad. That it was normal.
Life moved on.
But then there were days when the grief hit again.
Not like it was in that first year. Everything ached back then. My chest, my gut, even my jaw and gums ached with the tension of my grief.
Now it came back as a deep pang of longing.
Like tonight.
Tonight was the first in a very long time I wished I were rolling into bed beside Fran. The Fran from university. The girl who’d loved me and adored me and never dreamed of being disloyal to me. But that wasn’t fair, was it?
I laid back on the empty bed, the one I’d replaced when I couldn’t get back into the one I’d shared with Fran. I turned to look at the pillows next to mine.
In the end, it didn’t matter whether she was the Fran from university or the Fran who upended my entire world before she fell pregnant with Eilidh. She was Fran. The mother of my children. And it would have been a beautiful miracle to go to bed at her side that night.
The sudden emptiness was strange.
Almost as if it had come out of the blue.
Or brought on by the redhead living in my annex.
Her smile popped into my mind, and my gut twisted.
Sighing, I pushed up off the bed and set about changing into my pjs.
No more of this maudlin rubbish. So I was wary of people after Lucy—that was only natural.
But Regan was Robyn’s sister. And Robyn was one of the most trustworthy people I knew, so I had to trust in Robyn’s judgment.
There was no need to be uneasy about Regan’s presence in our lives.
Eilidh and Lewis were thrilled. Especially Eilidh. She’d fallen in love with the American already.
But Regan was leaving in six months.
Aye, there was the rub.
I’d have to make sure Eilidh and Lewis knew Regan’s stay was temporary. And I’d have to do it in a much better way than how I’d communicated about Lucy’s betrayal.
My head nipping with too many concerns, I was glad to fall into bed so I could read for a bit.
I should be in my office working on the extensive project my firm had just taken on—a commercial revamp of Aberdeen’s shopping district—but I had already decided not to work myself into an early grave for someone else’s company.
I’d work the hours I was being paid to work. End of.
Opening the crime thriller I was halfway through, I tried to fall back into the story … but the words weren’t penetrating. My gaze drifted to my bedroom window, my thoughts returning to Regan in the annex.
I hoped she remembered how to set the alarm properly.
Not that there was a significant chance of anything happening to her on the edge of Caelmore, but I was more security conscious after our old family friend and Ardnoch Estate’s mechanic, Fergus, and Lucy terrorized Ardnoch.
“She’s fine,” I muttered to myself, turning back to my book.
Fifteen minutes later, I gave up with a muttered curse under my breath, threw the book on the floor, and switched off the light, hoping sleep would come.
It didn’t. On nights my brain was overactive, I used to fuck Fran until we were both exhausted.
That was early on in our marriage. After Lewis, our sex life changed.
A lot of things changed between us.