*Isabella's POV*
I stood there, my arms wrapped around his stiff frame, my cheek pressed against the crisp, expensive fabric of his shirt. He smelled of whiskey. For a long moment, he just stood there, a rigid, unyielding statue of a man. Then, slowly, as if his strings were being cut one by one, I felt his body finally relax against mine. His head came to rest on my shoulder, his weight a heavy, trusting burden.
I took a deep breath, the scent of him filling my lungs, before relaxing into his embrace.
"I'm sorry I left," he said, his voice a low, muffled rumble against my shoulder. "That was very childish of me, but I wasn't ready to talk."
"It may be childish," I said, my voice soft, my hand stroking his back in slow, calming circles, "but as you said back in New York, everyone handles loss differently. And with what Jacob did..." I paused, the words catching in my throat.
It was still so fucking weird to hear him talk about loving someone else so much, to hear the depth of a pain I had no part in. "At least I know why you two can't see eye to eye. And it's been painful to hear about how much you loved her, but I can't really say anything about it, I can't speak ill of it because..."
He pulled back slightly, just enough to look at me, his eyes shadowed with a pain so old it was almost a part of him. "I was dreading this would be your reaction," he said, cutting me off gently. "Yes, you can't speak ill of the dead either."
His tone shifted then, the raw grief sharpening into something else, something more analytical and modest. "Didn't you get anything else from the story?" he asked, his gaze intense. "Like how irrational and unhealthy our relationship was? How she couldn't talk to me about anything."
My anger and self-righteousness, which had been fueling me just moments before, completely drained away, replaced by a profound, aching sadness for him. I held him, feeling his tremors run through his body, and waited.
"I blamed myself for so long," he said, his voice a low, raw thing that was muffled by my shoulder. He still wouldn't meet my eyes, just stared at a point on his desk like it held all his secrets. "Yes, I blame Jacob too, for being the lying, sly bastard he always was," he added, a flicker of his old frustration in his tone. "But I was to blame too."
He pulled back then, just enough to look at me, and his eyes were filled with a self-loathing so deep it made my heart ache. "How fucking bad was I," he asked, his voice cracking, "that my own fiancée couldn't talk to me?"
I had no answer for that. I just stood there, my hand still resting on his arm.
"I know I was a perfectionist, a control freak," he confessed, his gaze dropping to my hand on his sleeve. "She may have thought I would not accept an imperfect woman. I had all kinds of thoughts these two years." He shook his head slowly. "Jacob was the least to blame in all this. This was a matter of her and I and our relationship. How incredibly fake it was."
He looked back up at me, his eyes searching mine, pleading for understanding. "I put all my fucking dreams and fantasies into that relationship, and it was built in what I imagined it could be. Not on real emotions. Not on her and I."
A heavy silence settled over us, broken only by his ragged breaths.
"I didn't think I was worthy of love," he whispered, his voice so fragile I was scared to breathe for fear of breaking it. "Not until I realised all that." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "I kept my walls up high and didn't think I could ever fall in love again."
He reached up, his hand cupping my cheek, his thumb stroking my skin. "But I fell in love with you," he said, his voice gaining a sliver of strength, a newfound certainty. "And the way you loved me back, I know you do. I can feel it."
His eyes were locked on mine, and in their depths, I saw it all. The truth. The vulnerability.
"With your own imperfections and your wall, you showed yourself to me," he said, his voice a low, intense murmur. "You were real. You could talk to me."
The warmth of his embrace, the raw, unfiltered honesty of his confession, it was all a balm on a wound I hadn't realised was so open. But then, another thought hit me, sharp and ugly, cutting through the momentary peace. He'd laid his soul bare about Rebecca, about his own perceived failures, but he'd done it after hiding her from me. He'd been willing to share me with his brother, but her? She was a locked room.
I took a step back turning the opposite direction, his arms falling away from me. The sudden loss of his warmth was a physical shock. "You know I won't overlook how you refused to share her," I said, my voice quiet but hard, "and how you immediately accepted to share me." My own hurt was a cold, hard thing in my chest, a stark contrast to the empathy I'd just felt for him.
His face fell, the vulnerability in his eyes hardening into a pained frustration. "Isabella, look at me," he said, his voice a low, pleading command. "Isabella, that's not fair, listen to me!"
"How is that not fair?" I asked, turning back to him sharply, my own defensiveness rising to meet his. "You had a whole fiancée, a whole tragedy, that I knew nothing about. And me? I was just... passed around like a fucking party favour."
"It's not the same," he insisted, his voice rising with a desperate urgency. He took a step towards me, his hands raised as if to grasp my shoulders, but he let them fall. "I was a fucking coward for years with you," he admitted, the words raw and ripped from him. "I decided I wouldn't pursue you, not even when Jacob came to Raleigh and teased me about you. I did nothing. Although I felt strongly about you, I did nothing."
He started to pace, like a caged animal in his own study. "I went to Cuba and accepted that he would make a move on you. I felt how you two bonded and grew closer when I was away, and it hurt like hell." He stopped, his back to me, his shoulders slumped. "I knew then I had made a horrible mistake by not doing anything. And when I came back and found you two tangled on my kitchen table..." He paused, turning to face me, his eyes filled with a remembered pain that made my own chest ache. "...do you think it was easy? What was I supposed to do? I was in physical pain not being able to touch you, and I didn't hate Jacob. For what it's worth, me and Rebecca had more to blame in the whole order."
He took a deep breath, his gaze locking onto mine, intense and unwavering. "You two had already fallen for each other by the time I came back," he said, his voice dropping to a quiet, resigned whisper. "And I went with it."