Thank you for the wonderful and sweet reviews! Each and every one makes me smile so big.
I think you will like this weekend's chapters. Just saying…
oOo
"Why don't you take off your coat?"
"Huh? Um, yeah."
He took it off and placed it over the armrest.
"You know what hurt me the most? It wasn't what you said."
His eyes grew wide.
"It was that you wouldn't even agree to join my family and me for our party. You would have been welcome there as a friend, you know. Not as my… anything. But even that seemed to be asking too much from you."
He closed his eyes.
Bella wanted to cry again. There was so much, and he was not willing, or not able, to share himself. Maybe painting was the only way he could open up?
She wondered whether he'd always been this way, or if he had become like that after his wife's death.
They were silent for a long time.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low.
"If I let you in," he said, pausing for a moment. "If I let you in, it gives you the power to hurt me. I mean you already have that power. I realized that I might have destroyed the one good thing in my life, and that made me come over. If you'd said you never wanted to see me again…" He trailed off.
Bella took his hand in hers.
"If I open up to you," he began again, "and then you leave me… in whichever way… I couldn't live with that, Bella."
"Oh, Edward."
"And at the same time, I have this deep-rooted belief that I will destroy anything good in my life, anyway. Like I'm jinxed, or something."
"Why? Why do you believe that?"
"Because what happened… what happened to Irina… It was my fault."
He took a stuttering breath.
"How was it your fault, Edward?"
"You'll run away if I tell you."
"No," Bella said firmly. "Look at me, Edward."
After a moment, he did. His eyes were moist and he looked more vulnerable than she'd ever seen him.
"I am not going to go anywhere, Edward." She shook her head. "I'm not. Okay?"
"Okay."
He stared at his hands.
Such beautiful, delicate hands. Long fingers with more splodges of blue and green and brown.
"It was our tenth wedding anniversary," he began. "Irina had gone to Brighton to prepare an exhibition of her photographs. That's what she did," he added. "She was a photographer. She was very excited about everything, because it would be bigger than anything she'd done. She was overseeing the hanging of the pictures that… that day."
He swallowed.
"I bought flowers and champagne that day," he continued. "And I ordered her favourite dinner for that night. It was early in May, but the weather was horrible. She called at around seven and said that they hadn't finished work, and that she was considering spending the night there. There'd been a storm warning, and the rain was getting heavier all the time.
"I knew how she hated driving at night, and in the rain, too. She hated driving, full stop. I should have offered to go with her." He stopped, running his hands over his face. "But I didn't. Instead, I sweet-talked her into returning, saying that it was our anniversary, and that I'd ordered dinner. I was such a selfish bastard."
Bella listened quietly. She felt awful, because she already knew the end of the story due to her trip to Wikipedia, yet she put him through telling her everything.
She took his hand.
"She finally agreed to come home."
At that, his voice broke and a sob escaped his throat.
"I waited and waited. I called her mobile phone, but there was no signal. I was getting crazy with worry. I called the gallery owner in Brighton, but he'd left before her because of the storm. She'd still been working, he said. By the time I was ready to call the hospitals in Brighton, the police was at our door."
He was crying, burying his face in his hands.
"There'd been a car crash. She'd lost control in the rainstorm and…"
Bella placed her hand on his back.
His sobs became even harder.
"It was my fault. My fault…"
oOo