Chapter 10 Bastiaan
Bastiaan
Iwatch Amber out of the corner of my eye as she finishes the dinner I made for us.
I’d practically run into the kitchen earlier like a fucking chump, scared of the woman who had been sitting on my bed looking so perfect wearing my clothes.
The emotions she evoked in me from the moment we met were overwhelming, but now, after kissing her, they felt like they were about to consume me. Swallow me whole.
As I stare at the window in front of me, but not seeing out of it, I feel like the guilt that follows me around constantly is now covering me, draping over my back like a cloak that is threatening to choke me.
How had I let go and kissed her? I’m a married man, for fuck sake.
I know Sanne is always telling me that it was time to move on, that it had been six years since Marieke had gone, but I’m married in my heart.
Amber deserved more than half of the love someone had to give.
She deserved it all. And she certainly wasn’t a woman who you had a ‘friends-with-benefits’ type thing with.
“Bas?”
I turn to look at her pure blue eyes and those lips. Her plump pink lips that I had tasted. Had feasted on and now knew their flavour. That was dangerous knowledge to have.
“Yea?”
“What’s on the top floor of this place?” She asks quietly.
“Want to see?”
“Yes!” Her answering smile transforms her face and fills my chest with pure joy.
She jumps up, grabs my plate and almost slams into the kitchen island. She is humming to herself as she loads up the dishwasher, wiggling along to whatever song she’s hearing in her head.
The last few hours since our kiss had been tense to say the least. I felt like my stomach had cramped so tight that it would never relax again. I kept replaying the kiss over and over in my mind, wishing it had never happened and wanting to kiss her forever, all at the same time.
My mind was a jumble of half-thoughts and images as one slammed into the other, not staying in the forefront long enough for me to try and think clearly.
It was a constant merry-go-round of self-loathing and wanting.
I need to clear my mind from all the shit swirling around in it, so I grab a bottle of water and a Diet Coke from the fridge to take up with us and stop to look at the beers thinking I would love one right about now.
No, alcohol really isn’t a great idea with how little restraint I apparently have around this woman.
Amber shut the dishwasher door with a peppy, “Done!”
“Come on then, Bell,” I can’t help but grin at her excitement.
She lets out a little squeak as she follows me up the old spiral staircase and through the door to my ‘viewing platform’, as Abel likes to call it.
“Bas…” she breathes in wonder as she takes in the giant telescope I have pointed up towards the small double glass doors and out into the night sky. It’s only early, so it’s not completely dark yet, but the views are still breathtaking.
“You’re an artist?” She asks as she walks over to my easel, taking in my latest piece.
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but I enjoy painting.”
“These are incredible, Bas. Truly. They should be in a gallery. You could sell them.”
“Oh, God, no. But I appreciate your very biased opinion, it’s good for my ego,” I chuckle.
She spins on me and pins me with a look.
“I am not biased, Mr Van der Meer. You are talented, and the world should see your work.”
“Mr Van der Meer? That sounds so official.”
“I’m being serious, Bastiaan,” she blinks up at me with her hands on her hips. She looks ready to go into battle. She does this pose when she’s trying to be serious and authoritative, I’ve noticed. I’ve dubbed it her ‘superhero pose’.
“Okay, okay. Thank you, Bell. But I do these for me, no one else. Painting has always been something I’ve done, but it helped me so much after… Marieke died. It helps my mind drift and sort through all the garbage,” I tell her. Hating to mention Marieke’s name, let alone her death, to Amber.
She nods at me with a small smile, but it’s not a pitying one like most people give me if Marieke is mentioned.
She sits on the old couch I have up here for when Abel wants to watch me paint or he falls asleep after we’ve been stargazing.
I need to call him before it gets too late and check in on him.
I sit next to her, making sure I put some distance between us and pass her the Diet Coke I brought up for her. She smiles by way of a thank you.
“Would you tell me about Marieke? I mean, I really get it if you don’t want to, but I’d love to know about how you met and what she was like,” she peeks up at me from under her lashes, looking unsure of herself.
I take a deep breath, feeling my heart pound, not knowing where the fuck to start. I know I have to talk about Marieke if I want Amber to understand why I can’t let our kiss or anything else happen again.
“I met her at college, she was 19, I was 20. She was shy, beautiful, and always the most intelligent person in any room. She was on a business course as she wanted to work for her father’s manufacturing company like her siblings.
We became friends, hung out after classes, but anything more than that, she shut down, said she needed to concentrate on school.
I was cool with that. There was just something in me that knew we’d be together, so I wasn’t in a rush, just happy to be in her orbit.
But I was a young, horny guy, and my friends were dating a ton of different girls at the same time, so I must admit it was fucking hard keeping things platonic.
After a year, she relented and let me take her out on a date.
We were together from that moment on. I proposed shortly after she finished college, and we had a small wedding, just our family and a few friends.
Life was good, simple. She helped her dad’s company and thrived.
She fell pregnant with Abel, and everything was great.
She was young and healthy, didn’t smoke, only drank at Christmas, so the doctors had no concerns,” I murmur the last part as I look at the lake I’d painted, and try to get my heart rate under control.
I felt Amber’s small hand gently squeeze my forearm.
“You don’t have to tell me anymore, Bas. I don’t want to cause you any unnecessary pain,” she whispers, her eyes brimming with tears.
I hold her hand on my arm, taking comfort in it. Not wanting to go back to the scene of my nightmare, but for some reason needing her to know what happened to help her understand. I lay my head on the back of the couch, close my eyes and continue.
“I couldn’t really tell you what happened; it was all such a blur.
She was two days away from her due date when her contractions came, so we went to the hospital.
They hooked her up to all the machines and both she and Abel were doing great.
It’d been a few hours and she was starting to feel more pain, which in labour is normal, so the doctors weren’t concerned.
Abel’s heart rate dipped a bit, but nothing crazy, according to the midwife.
It was coming up to 30 hours, and it was looking like she wasn’t dilating anymore, so they were beginning to talk about a caesarean section.
Then, out of the blue, every alarm in the room went off.
Abel’s oxygen was low, too low. Scary low.
They were using words I didn’t understand, talking fast. I was moved to the side and away from Marieke so they could do their jobs.
Next thing I knew, they were wheeling her out, and I’m having scrubs pushed into my hands.
I don’t remember getting changed. I don’t remember them telling me she hadn’t made it.
I just remember my parents holding me tight on the floor of a hospital room.
I didn’t hear the words. I didn’t want to.
If I didn’t hear it, it wasn’t real. My ma came with me to see her.
She looked so peaceful, no longer terrified and in pain.
I didn’t cry until I got home and saw the life we should have had together disappear.
I didn’t think I’d ever stop crying. My ma and sister took turns coming over to look after Abel and me those first few months.
I only remember properly from when he was about four months old.
My pa is a man of few words, but he took me out to sit by the lake and told me that I had to put my pain aside and care for my boy.
I didn’t want to hear it, because I wanted to stay in my grief, but he was right.
As much as I felt dead on the inside, I had a baby boy looking to me to care for him, and it was by being Abel’s pa properly that I eventually started to smile more.
He brought me out of the darkness of my grief.
As time went on and Abel grew, I began to realise that I was smiling more and more, and that as much as the pain was still acute, the happy memories I had with Marieke made their way forward, letting me remember all the good times we had, rather than that last life-altering 48 hours together.”
I looked at Amber, who had tucked her feet under her bum and was wiping her tears away with the sleeve of my t-shirt.
She looked so young, free of makeup, with tears spilling over her cheeks.
I reached for her, and before I could pull her to me, she buried herself under my arm and cried quietly into my shoulder.
She held on to me so tightly, like she was afraid I’d pull away.
“I’m so sorry, Bastiaan,” she whispered so quietly I almost didn’t hear it.
I squeezed her as a way of a reply as I just couldn’t use my words right now. I was too raw after splaying myself open for her that I didn’t trust my voice.
So we sat, just holding each other as the sky turned inky and filled with stars.
I woke up bathed in moonlight and disoriented.
When I felt movement next to me, I looked down to see the top of Amber’s head of wild blonde curls.
That’s right, we fell asleep after talking about Marieke.
I looked at my watch, and it was after nine p.m. We had been sleeping a few hours wrapped up together.
And I had to admit, it felt good. I hadn’t held or been held by a woman for over six years and feeling her small and delicate in my arms was far from awful.
Shit.
I can’t keep up this trail of thought. Anything to do with Amber is dangerous, and I can’t risk hurting her.
“Bell,” I whisper quietly with my lips in her hair, and, because I’m a glutton for punishment, I breathe her in. The fact that she smells like my products does something to me, and my dick is in agreement that her smelling like us is sexy as fuck.
No. Nope. Not going down that route again.
I gently pry myself from under her, needing to move away from her. I grab the blanket and cover her as her big blue eyes blink up at me.
“Hey,” her voice is husky and low. Fuuuuuck.
“Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m still full from dinner. Thank you, though.”
“Fancy a movie? I’ve got English ones.”
“Yeah, I could watch a movie. What have you got?” She asks as she sits up and leans back into her corner of the couch, and I definitely don’t notice that she’s once again without a fucking bra. She’s trying to kill me, I’m sure of it.
I move over to the corner of the room and pull off the dust sheet I use to cover the TV. I throw her the remote as I make my way to the door.
“I’ll go get us some snacks. Any requests?”
“Chocolate! Please,” she grins at me.
I point at the TV, “Look for something for us to watch.”
I make my way down to the kitchen and gather all the chocolate I can find—which isn’t a lot—and take a few deep breaths.
It’s getting harder and harder to be around her as the hours tick by.
She makes me want things I have no right to want.
Waking up and feeling her pressed against me was a bliss I want to revisit.
Still as usual, the guilt is there, lurking in the background like the ‘death’ character in the ‘Deathly Hallows’ story Hermione reads aloud in ‘Harry Potter’, waiting for me to slip up and claim me as his own.
The thought makes me smile. Abel loves ‘Harry Potter’.
He is too young for some of it, but he loves the magic, saying he wants to go to ‘Hogwarts’ himself.
Amber shrieking makes me drop everything, race up the stairs and burst into the room to find her holding her chest and heaving in huge breaths.
“Oh my God! I had no idea you had a cat. He leapt onto the arm of the chair and almost gave me a heart attack,” she pants.
“Fuck. Sorry! I forgot to mention Yuki. She’s harmless, but does like to scare unsuspecting British women,” I smirk at her as best I can while taking in gulps of air, sure she was being attacked, and get a cushion thrown at my head for my trouble.
“Yuki, hello. I’m Amber,” she introduces herself to the cat like she understands her. Fucking adorable.
“She speaks Dutch, sorry, Bell. Anyway, before you almost died from a cat jumping onto the couch, did you pick out a movie?” She pokes out her tongue at me.
“Yes, can we watch ‘Die Hard’? I looove John McClane,” she swoons, which makes me feel irrationally jealous.
“Start it up, and I’ll go get our stuff for real this time, as long as you don’t screech the place down again. Half of Alphen Aan Den Rijn heard you.”
“Sure, you can manage it on your own? I mean it’s a tough job… walking down the stairs, grabbing stuff and coming back up again,” she raises her eyebrows and smiles, looking insanely pleased with herself, but not realising it makes her ample tits jostle around as she moves.
“Not sure, I’ll give it my best shot.”