Page 14 of Ma Belle Marguerite
I’m dumbfounded.Not come for her? Seriously!“I did what you asked. You asked me in the only letter you sent not to follow you. You wanted to see what the world had to offer.Alone.” My voice sounds angrier than I want it to. “I waited for a sign you had changed your mind, but no more letters came.” Taking a deep breath and trying to calm myself, I continue before she can cut me off. I need to get this out. “I attempted to find you at your fancy college. They said there was never anyone there by that name.” Now that I have had a few hours to process her being back, this is not how I thought this conversation would go. I didn’t think I would be the needy emotional one, but she makes me feel so many things. “Now I know everything we had was all a lie, and you just took the easy way out for yourself. Instead of telling me you found someone else, you ghosted me.”
She scrunches her nose up at me in defiance. “Wait, what do you mean? I sent you letters for months! They all were returned unopened to me!” Her face changes from anger to sadness, her body sagging as if she’d been defeated. “You broke my heart and left me to start a new life on my own. What was I supposed to do? Be alone for the rest of my life?”
Shehas the nerve to sound upset with me.Sheis the one that wanted this.
“Seriously, Isabella, I’m just going to believe you sent letters that were magically returned to you?” I scoff. “Then you moved on with someone else after blocking my number and email?”
“You don’t say.” Shaking her head, she carries on, “Do you honestly think I’d make that up? I thought you knew me better than that.”
Bella, the smart ass, has arrived. I didn’t realize how much I missed this.
Before I can answer her, she reaches beside her and pulls a stack of envelopes out of her bag. Tossing them on the bedbeside me, she says, “I had a feeling I would need these.” Standing up with her bag, she turns and starts to walk away.
Before she gets too far, I try to reach for her, but I almost fall out of bed.Fuck I need to control my temper around her.As angry as I am right now I wouldn’t be able to live through her walking away again. “Wait, don’t go yet. We need to figure this out. Please,Ma Belle?” My voice comes out weak. I don’t beg for anyone excepther. I will do anything for her. I’d sell my soul if it made her happy.
Her footsteps falter as she stops and speaks softly. “I’ll give you ten minutes. Then I need to get home. Since you seem to know about Adrien, I’ll assume you know about my twins.” She doesn’t look at me when she talks, almost like she doesn’t want to see my reaction or for me to see hers.
Trying to keep my voice calm, I admit, “Yes, I do.” I shouldn’t be excited, but I feel like a puppy waiting for a pat on the head for a job well done.
Slowly, Bella turns around and looks like she’s expecting the other shoe to drop. I don’t know why. She knows I love kids. Her kids are part of her, so why wouldn’t I love them?
I may not know them, but I already know they will be a huge part of my world if she allows me to be a part of hers. So many years already wasted. I’m not wasting anymore.
Glaring at me with her mesmerizing seaglass green eyes, she says, “Okay. Here’s the deal, Alexander. I will give you five minutes to look at the letters. After that, you have five to explain why you didn’t put more effort into coming for me. Don’t use some bullshit excuse that I asked for you to stay behind.”
Even when angry, she sounds so sexy.
“Deal. Come sit with me? Please. Let's talk this out,” I plead, giving her my best puppy dog eyes as I try to readjust my position in the bed. It's clear that these letters are old, and I see her neat, curvy handwriting across each one. I don't understandhow this could be, but I never received them. I've never even seen them. I have the proof right in front of my face, and she tells me that they are real, so I believe her. But we need to figure out what the hell happened.
Rolling her eyes, she says, “No, I’ll sit on the chair. I don’t want to aggravate your injuries.”
“Fine, but pull the chair closer and show me which ones I should see first,” I instruct her. I need her close; I will take whatever she will give me.
She pulls the chair nearer to the bed and sits. Reaching over, she gently takes the pile of envelopes and looks through. She gives me a letter dated a week after she left. As I open it, she gives me a few more. I can see her picking at her nails out of the corner of my eye as I skim through.
In the first letter, she tells me how charming our new apartment is and how much she can’t wait for me to get there and be with her. Nothing in this letter is like the one I got after she left. It’s all our hopes and dreams starting to come true.
I open another envelope and skim through only to see that she was waiting for me, hoping that I would be coming for her soon. Trusting that the letters coming back to her were a mistake and I would be there anytime to work things out.
The next one she tells me that she had a drunken one night stand and is now pregnant. She doesn’t know if I’ll ever forgive her but she can’t stand the thought of giving up the babies and I would have to deal with it, if I ever showed up.
Gently clearing my throat to get my emotions in check, I pick up the next one and see it is dated two years after she left. When I look up at her, she won’t meet my eyes. I can feel my own wanting to water; I can’t even imagine how she is feeling right now.
As I read through quickly, I can feel the heartbreak she felt in her words. She didn’t want to move on, exactly, but wanted tohave some happiness in her life. She had Adrien and the twins and needed to focus on them and not the past. I realize now that I screwed up. Something happened that we are missing here, like I thought. I cannot finish this letter, and I don’t need to. I have already seen what I needed from her, but now have so many more questions.
Who did this? Why did they intercept the letters? I will kill them when I find out. Was this my father? Who else could have wanted us apart?
I don’t even know where to start. I’m at a loss for words. I gently grab her chin and lift her face until she is looking me in the eyes. She tries to resist, but I refuse to back down now. “Ma Belle Marguerite,I had no idea. How did things get so messed up? I swear I tried to find you, but wanted to follow what I thought were your wishes.”
Quietly, Bella asks, “So you did come for me?” Her eyebrows and nose scrunch before she continues. “You thought I didn’t want you all these years?” Her face is a mixture of sadness and anger.
I use my thumb to wipe away a tear from her face. “I would follow you to the ends of the earth if you asked me to,Ma Belle. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you. Including letting you go if that’s what you wanted.”
I can see all of Bella’s feelings written across her face. She never was good at hiding her true emotions from me. Which just fuels my own anger even more. I will find out who did this and make sure that they pay for causing her all this pain. I need to focus and make sure that she knows I’m not going anywhere now.
Leaning forward, I rest my forehead on hers and ask, “Can we try to work through this? Will you allow me to make up for my mistake of not following you all those years ago when I shouldhave? Can you ever forgive me for being so stupid all these years?”
I can feel Bella nod her head slightly before she pulls back. “We can try and figure things out. I don’t know that I can just forget that you have been gone all these years. You just took the words from that one letter and let me go, which I would love to see. You didn’t fight for me. If you loved me like you say, you should have fought harder for me.”
