He stood up from his desk, turned around and stared out the window. Black clouds hovered on the horizon, and he knew that by evening, there’d be a storm blowing in. Which suited how he was feeling just fine. His insides were raging, in a tumult.
“Mr. Blackwood?”
“Yeah?” He glanced over his shoulder, irritated at the interruption as he watched Bonnie step into the office. “What is it, Bonnie?”
Bonnie blinked at Cedric’s tone, but said, “I’ve got the paperwork drawn up for you to look over and sign.”
“Right. Fine. Just…leave it on my desk, will you?”
He turned back to stare outside again, his thoughts racing in circles. He couldn’t help feeling guilty about it all. He’d gotten what he wanted. He’d have a son soon… Or a daughter…. At this point he didn’t even care about the inheritance anymore.
This was what he’d set out to do. Everything had gone according to his original plan, until she’d fallen for him, but could he really blame her? He’d submarined her. Coaxed her into sharing the most important details in her life. Seduced her. The only trouble was, while he was seducing her, he had been falling too.
He’d stumbled into a snare that only tightened when he tried to escape. But then, he told himself, maybe that was because he didn’t really want to get free.
He groaned and shoved one hand through his hair. Damn, his life had been a lot less complicated before he’d come to Haerton.
Months had passed, and sometimes he forgot to keep track of the days. The member of staff he’d sent to keep track of his wife and unborn child kept him up-to-date with what was happening. He knew she left Haerton, and knowing Anna, he wasn’t surprised that she had.
Apparently she had spent a lot of time cleaning the cottage from top to bottom. He sent more money to her monthly, but he didn’t hear a peep from her. Not a call or text.
He asked his member of staff to do a survey of the cottage and make any alterations to it that were necessary to make it a warm, safe environment for their child. He didn’t think she would argue with him on that and sure enough she didn’t. He stayed in the city working. Eating when his body needed fuel, sleeping when he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer, running when his muscles needed strengthening.
He existed.
Or, at least, he thought he existed. But sometimes he’d sit in his office and the city would sparkle in the sunlight, and he felt like a shell of his former self. A shadow. Thin around the edges, mere vapor in the air that the slightest breath would scatter. A man with a void at the heart of him.
It was a feeling he’d only ever had at Haerton, where he was nothing and no one. It shouldn’t happen here, in his office, the sun around which the solar system of his company revolved. More time passed and the feeling worsened. There were days where he felt as if the emptiness inside him might swallow him whole.
The only thing that helped were the daily updates from his staff, keeping him informed of what Anna was doing. For whole minutes at a time he sat reading those emails over and over, feeling himself solidify and become real. He wasn’t sure why that was, and really he needed to stop reading them, because they didn’t concern him, not any more. But he couldn’t help himself. Couldn’t stop imagining Anna, filling up that cottage with her warm, bright presence. Couldn’t stop thinking about her passion and fire, her laughter and joy. And he couldn’t stop reading those emails.
Then one day the email came with an attachment. A picture of an ultrasound examination. A picture of their baby. He stared at it, shocked. Had so much time really passed?
You let it pass. And you did nothing. You sat here in your office pretending you felt nothing. Missing out on precious moments with the woman who loves you.
The woman who is carrying your child. Your family. Lying to yourself over and over again…
Cedric shoved back his chair and got up from his desk, pain filtering through him, turning into a sudden unbelievable agony. It hurt so much he couldn’t sit still, pacing to the windows and then back again. It lit him up like a torch and he had no idea where it had come from. He was supposed to feel nothing. He was empty inside, a hollow shell. A void. And yet…there was pain.
Pain for what he was missing. Pain for what he’d done. Pain for the future he’d denied himself. Pain for the woman he’d turned away. He tried to tune it out, tried to ignore it the way he always did, telling himself it didn’t exist. Because how could it? Pain meant he cared and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything. Yet as soon as he did that he felt himself begin to disappear, the terrible feeling of not quite existing filling him.
Because it’s a lie and you know it. Cedric stopped by the window, the thought echoing in his head, along with the memory of Anna’s voice and the anger in it.
“You love me, Cedric. You want me and you want our child, and you want us desperately. But you’re afraid, and that’s the real problem, isn’t it? You’re too afraid to take what you want and are telling yourself a whole pack of lies instead!”
He took a breath, staring outside but not seeing. Was she right? Was the emptiness inside himself, that terrible void, just a lie? A lie he held onto simply because he was afraid? It’s true and you know it.
He took a breath and then another, the knowledge sitting inside of him all this time, a truth he hadn’t wanted to see.
Yes, he was afraid, so terribly, deathly afraid. Because if the lie was true, if love truly didn’t run out, then why hadn’t he been given any? Why hadn’t his parents loved him? Or did it go deeper? Was it him?
He closed his eyes, the pain running like a fault line through the center of him. It had always been easier to tell himself that he couldn’t feel.