Chapter 14 – Sweet Sorrow

Bella's POV

"Good morning!" Amy chirped from her desk where she was typing away madly with one hand and holding her takeaway coffee cup in the other.

"Morning" I smiled, walking over to desk opposite my friend's, pulling my chair out, dumping my handbag along with the paper's in my hand and turning my computer on within a few swift actions.

"Did you get your drafts done last night?" she asked, placing the red Cibo coffee cup down on her desk as she switched to using two hands to type furiously.

I nodded, although I'm almost certain that she didn't notice my slow movement in contrast to her tornado-speed typing. "Yeah, they're all done and dusted. I'll just double check over them, but we've got till 10am. Yours?"

"No… Why do you think I'm on super-sonic speed now? I had a hot but late date last night. I've been here since 6" she confessed with a brief exhaled-sigh, pausing to take a quick shot of coffee before continuing at the speed she had been.

"Need me to help with anything, procrastinator?" I asked, neatening the papers on my desk and moving them to a corner as I pulled up my emails seeking the next project we had to conquer for the company.

She shook her head at the same speed she had been typing at, worryingly appearing that it would fall off soon if she shook it much faster. "No, it's okay. It's all in my head - I just need to get it down as fast as humanly possible. Don't tell him this, but I think I spent a decent portion of the date last night mentally planning all this anyway."

"Ohhh, was the date a doozy, Ames?" I questioned scrolling through and arranging my emails.

"Nah, we got on great – we're meeting up again tonight, but he just wanted to know all the basic details and he had all the typical cliché questions. I've had to answer them all so many times before that my mouth was sort of on auto-pilot, while my brain was elsewhere."

I laughed at my friend's comment. "You and I are from two different worlds, aren't we?!"

"Well not everyone's as fortunate as you to be in a stable and committed relationship with Prince Charming, Bella" she said with an eye-roll and yet another caffeine shot from her cup before her face lit up a bit more. "But saying that, I'm pretty sure I'm onto something pretty good with this one. Maybe even Mr. Right material…"

Typical Amy. She went through her boys like nobody's business. But each and every man she went through involved either them hanging off her every word, or Amy herself falling hard. However, she hasn't seemed to co-ordinate the two yet though. "So is this the 60th Mr. Right for 2012 alone?"

"Ha ha Bella… But I'm being serious. I think that this is serious. I'm sure that this is serious" she said, looking up from her screen momentarily to give me a look of dedication and certainty until I acknowledged her with some unspoken praising gesture.

"Well in that case if you're so serious, then I can't wait to meet him" I smiled supportively before picking up the sheets on the corner of my desk and double checking through them until the door opened.

The receptionist from down the hall walked in to catch our attention. "Girls, Mark Johnson is here early for the appointment at 10. Do you want me to stall him until 10 or are you okay for now?"

I looked over to Amy who was ghost-white. I grabbed my paper pile and waved a hand at her. "Come as soon as you've done. I can go through an intro of the project and then through my plans. Just say you got held up with traffic, but be as quick as you can" I told her as I walked out of the room, through the corridor to prep myself in the shared meeting room, awaiting our client…

The meeting went well, too well and our expectation of enjoying a relatively quite remainder of the day turned into a rush after the client told us after Amy had joined me that he was so please with the drafts, but requested to see additional polished pieces tonight which he was going to collect from the office later for his personal use.

That meant both of us working at Amy-speed until the job was done and until we could both take a breather.

Fortunately, by 5 o'clock the work was all polished off and finished which led to the waiting game, as we wasted time for the next hour until Amy got up to leave the room with her handbag. "Do you mind waiting for the client? I'll be back in a minute, but I just want to freshen up since he's picking me up here."

"Sure, take as long as you want" I smiled before she accepted my offer and walked out the room.

After Amy left the room, I spent another ten minutes replying to messages I'd received throughout the day on my phone before I heard a knock on the office door. Instantly, I grabbed the designs and got up to answer it, naturally expecting Mark Johnson and getting quite the surprise when the salt-and-pepper haired middle aged man turned out to be a young blonde.

"Will? What are you doing here?" I asked in surprise, making the mistake of taking the paper's in my arms back over to my desk, which allowed him sufficient time and opportunity to let himself into the room.

"Hey - and uh, oh I've wanted to talk to you for a while."

I stayed standing across the room from him, crossing my arms as a cue for him to speak. "Talk then. Australia's a free country."

"Why are you still with him? Rikki, Zane and I were there for you, right there, you could've walked away. He's a monster, Bella. How can you not see that and stay with him?!" he questioned, visibly disgusted as he gestured his arm in my direction.

"He made a mistake, but he's not a 'monster'. Trust me, you have absolutely no right to judge him, Will. You don't know him. Listen - think of every bad thing that has happened in your life and that would all add up to about half of what he's been through."

"Sure, I don't know him, but I at least have the right to make a judgment about the fact that he hit you. Abuse is completely inexcusable regardless of whatever the hell he's 'been through'" Will replied with irritation, using his fingers to visibly mark the quotations at the end of his sentence.

He was right. There was no excuse and I had been completely shocked and betrayed more than ever when he attacked me that night. The problem was bigger than just me getting hurt though and I knew that I had to power on though and have faith in the risky decisions that I was making, based on what I do know about him. That's where my defense against the truth that Will was trying to drill into me was coming from.

"Oh, so you haven't ever made mistakes before?" I questioned rhetorically, both of us full-knowing the answer without him even needing to reply.

He sighed, running a hand through his short hair. "Come on, Bella… You know that I have."

"Damn straight I do."

Will looked around the room, displaying a look of desperation as he took a few steps closer with his facial expressions softening. "What you are doing is really dangerous. You've already been hurt by him once, I just don't want that happening again.

I nodded, giving him a small smile with the aim of reassurance. "Thank you but I know what I'm doing, Will. If I play my cards the right way, I know that we are going to be able to ride this one out."

"Are you kidding? 'Play your cards right?' Bella, this isn't a poker game that we're talking about here – this is your life!"

I took a deep breath, cringing as I remembered back to the conversation from a few weeks ago that I was slowly detesting more and more as time was progressing.

"Dan, I love you, but he has the right for me to tell him!"

Daniel sighed, taking a step closer to me brushing his hand against my cheek as he placed it lovingly on my cheek. "Do you remember why you didn't tell him in the first place? Remember that Bella?"

I nodded, looking away from the painful memories I had experienced over a year and a half ago, although it seemed not that long ago.

"If you tell him, I'm going to lose Allie. We don't share DNA, but in absolutely every other way, I'm her father. I don't know what I would do if I lost her too… You and Allie were my lifeline."

"Allie would still love you to bits, Dan, but Will deserves to know that he has a daughter out there."

"You'd already given him that chance to know so many times before. If he was meant to know, he would've a long time ago. Promise me you won't tell him?"

And as I regretfully said those two words that he needed to hear, I realized that he would do anything to keep us. He would do anything for Allie and for her to stay 'his'.

"I promise."

"We made a deal, Will. He's not going to hurt me again."

"Oh really? I never realized that you were into Russian roulette!"

"Just listen to me Will!" I pleaded louder than the volume that we had been previously speaking. "Daniel and I, we've sorted things out. I gave him the promise that he needed and for as long as I keep that, we're safe, alright? Please just drop this and trust me that I've got everything sorted."

"What? A deal with the Devil?" Will asked, looking for affirmation with bewilderment before rolling his eyes with a sarcastic comment that followed. "I'm so happy for you. What's the deal?"

"I can't say." I replied simply with a sigh and shrug of my burdened shoulders.

Another step closer. The gap lessened once again.

"Come on Bels. You can tell me…" Will replied softly and calmly, his words drenched in reassurance.

"It's not a matter that I don't want to talk about, well that too, but I literally can't."

My promise was my lifeline – my bluff, my trump card. If I said anything, the second that Dan knew Will knew, it would be all over, red rover. I already knew from experience what sort of drastic measures he would take to keep Allie.

He scratched his chin and looked up at me once again with wary looking eyes. "Bella? Can you at least tell me if you're involved in something illegal or not?"

"Brilliant!" I retaliated with annoyance after my skeptical look that questioned his query faded. "You call Daniel a jerk when look who's talking and then you have the nerve to waltz in here, call my boyfriend a devil then accuse me of a being criminal now?! Get out!" I yelled at him pointing firmly to the door, getting ready to walk over and push him out of it soon.

"I'm sorry! I just don't understand! I just want to know if there's something that I can do to help you or not" he pleaded with me, taking another step closer to me as opposed to the opposite direction of the door.

I sighed. "Believe it or not, every second that you stay out of this, you're helping me."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I have way too much riding on this and that if I leave him, it's going to be damaging with more repercussions than if I stay with him. Plus, do I need to remind you of a little mythical secret that you're keeping?! He would expose me in a heartbeat if I left him. He is chronically jealous. Even if I vanished off the face of the earth, he would take all that anger out on an innocent stranger. This is my mess, Will. I'm not going to let someone else cop the blame. If I left, I wouldn't even be able to handle what he would do to me, to others and to himself, so what's the point?"

He nodded solemnly and seriously, taking another step closer to the point that he was standing directly in front of me and we were looking at each other square in the eye. "Well if there is anything I can do to help you, let me know."

"You don't get it Will" I sighed, rubbing my eye with my hand. "If I told you the slightest thing about any of this, it would change everything. I'm in too deep past the point of being helped, okay? You have no idea of how deep this all stretches. It is just like the black hole."

He touched the side of arm reassuringly, his touch tingling against my skin in reassurance. "Change can be a good thing."

I wouldn't admit it to him, but his half-smile and touch brought back the warmth and trust of several years ago, back when our relationship was in its hay day and before things started to go downhill.

I opened my mouth to reply and in that one moment, I couldn't believe myself that despite everything else and all the wreckage it would cause, I'd actually considered just blurting the truth out… Jumping in and speaking before thinking. I'm glad that I didn't. Like Daniel had said before, if he was meant to know, he would've. He would've still been there in the first place.

However, I was fortunately interrupted by the clipping sound of the door on the other side of the room opening. In sync, we took a step away from each other and his arm moved to being placed on his hip. Amy walked into the room and over to us with a smile, evidently oblivious to our closeness before she had entered.

"Hey" she beamed with a spring in her step, until she reached Will and latched her arm through his which had formed a loop as it sat on his hip. "Are you ready to go?"

I looked incredulously with hurt at the 'couple', mentally trying to piece the betrayal together with disbelief. "You've got to be kidding me… Will, you know she's my friend and Amy, you know full well that he's my ex! Did either of you even consider giving me a heads up or warning?!"

Amy stood there, not changing her position from next to him and although Will attempted to reason with a tone of saying "Bella…" that I knew too well, I ignored him and snatched my bag angrily off my desk and headed for the door immediately after. "Here's a nice date for you two – you can wait around until Mark arrives and give him the papers!"

Seconds later, I was out of the door and letting my anger fuel the speed I was rushing out of the office in. I don't know whether I was more angry or hurt.

The fact that Will had put on such a façade, such a façade that I had nearly trusted, all for it to be one big hurtful joke. I hated the man I didn't know who he had become. Not to mention Amy! Umpteen times we'd discussed rules of dating during pure office boredom and one we both agreed on implicitly was not dating friend's exes. There goes that for a joke too!

After that uncomfortable afternoon, it was less than 48 hours later when I was sitting on the couch in my pyjamas, drinking a coffee and flicking through the morning newspaper half-heartedly on my day off. In front of me, I also focused on watched Allie hobbling around unsteadily and holding onto the coffee table for support as she slowly walked around it in circles, ready to catch the thirteen month old if she had a misplaced or uncoordinated step before a fall.

I'd just passed the pages of the newspaper that dealt with the cover articles that were presented on today's edition of the front cover and was passing into the topical issues when I noticed a familiar face.

Although seeing Will's face on the printed page caught my attention, I wasn't all that surprised. The Gold Coast paper was obviously proud of their diving golden boy and over the years since we'd met I was used to seeing him pop up here or there in for one achievement or another of his, or being provided with an update of what he was up to next.

With that blasé frame of mind, I was in no way prepared for the following words that I read upon my eyes shifting over to the title.

'Illegal Art Claims Local Former Pro-Diver'

My stomach plummeted and my heart sank as I shuffled with the paper in desperation, dropping it as fast as I could with a unsteady breath like the wind had been knocked out of me, before picking up the innocent little pink-clad toddler for comfort and courage, knowing that going to my boyfriend a few rooms away would only make matters worse.

"Oh baby girl. I'm sorry" I sighed, holding Allie tightly in my arms as I wiped a tear away and mustered up the sickening courage to pick up the paper again, pulling it closer to my face for my eyes to see clearer despite my dilated and welling up pupils. It didn't help. Between my emotions, my shock and my sickened feeling, my eyes couldn't focus and only picked up key words on the page, unable to manage the whole article.

'Will Benjamin, 22'... 'After fall from highway overpass on the Pacific Motorway, Coomera'… 'Midnight… Appears accidental… Waiting for Coroners confirmation' were the essential pieces of devastating information that I had plucked out.

My stomach ached from holding in the tears that I wasn't allowing to surface. I felt like I was choking, rasping helplessly for air as I felt completely sick to my stomach with pain. My perspective of the world felt like it was changing from the grief…

I was too late.

I'd been caught up with my mess with Daniel that I hadn't stopped to consider the implications on my daughter or her oblivious father. She would never know her paternal father and he would never even know that he had created a child.

Although we hadn't been together in a long time and we had both moved on, I doubted that it hurt any less. The last time I'd seen him, I'd left hating him and now I found out that he was dead by reading the newspaper! Rikki lived with him for Pete's sake and she hadn't bothered to call me and give me the news first-hand of knowing that my ex had died?! Obviously not...

Despite my pain, my heartbreak and unanswered questions, the one and only thing that I was certain of was that I had no idea where things were going to go from here anymore…

Ugh... That's done. Good. Finally. I've spent so much time over the last two days spending every moment either writing or thinking about this damn chapter (ironically, I was writing at Amy-speed)! This is bearing in mind that I modified something to be completely different to the original plan of this facet in the storyline (not going to say what though!) so I'm not sure whether it's come across well or whether I'm happy with it. I just wanted to get it up before tomorrow since I won't have net access for close to two weeks, so don't judge.

But anyway, the chapter! What did you think? Bella's deal with the Devil... Allie's paternity lie... Amy & Will's betrayal... The death of Will Benjamin...

Now, if anything is coming across as vague or unclear and if there's something you're uncertain about, hang in there! It's probably because there's a few fundamental explanations and chunks of the Bella/Will/Dan/Allie story that are yet to be made and explained, but will be shortly.

HUGE thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter of this - I'm honestly shocked that people are still interested in this story and are sticking with it! Thank you! Would absolutely love your opinion of this one too! The more I know, the sooner I update...

Next time, we look at the death of Will from another perspective at the Zikkill share house where there's more to the story about the death. Also, another shocking family secret will surface to one of the unsuspecting characters!