Page 91 of The Fool
“I’m not saying that, Bea, but in that moment of madness, when all I could feel is frustration over you trying to trap me when I already loved you so much…” He trails off as he steps in closer. “I felt like you had ruined everything; committed one stupid move that threatened to end everything I wanted, even us, and I wanted to hurt you for it.”
“Emma?” I sob, now wiping my arm across my nose, not caring one iota about how I look right now.
“I knew you would never forgive me if I slept with Emma, that you’d set me free,” he says, only sounding all the more pathetic.
“I thought you were cruel for giving into urges like some sort of dumb animal, but knowing that you were being far more calculated than that…What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I was an idiot, a pitiful, scared little boy who didn’t know what he had until he lost it,” he whispers, being so close, I can see the desperation in his eyes. “I know what I did was awful, but I panicked!”
“You made my life hell after that; you joined the very people who made it their mission to bring me down. Why do that, Dean? Why stick the knife in if you had already succeeded in pushing me away?”
“I…I –"
“You didn’t want to be the bad guy?” I answer for him at the same time as he begins rubbing at the back of his neck.
“No, yes, in a way,” he mumbles from behind his arm. “I thought Emma would be the next best thing; I was still in love with you, Bea!”
“Oh, be still my heart!” I mock, theatrically covering my chest with my hands.
“Saying you had cheated first seemed to be the only way to stop her from panicking and breaking down on me,” he splutters, only making the pain in my chest sting that little bit more. “I know how awful I was, how much I owe to you, Bea, but trust me, I know how much I need you now, how much I want you no matter what happens.”
“Are you crazy?!” I snap before shoving at his chest, forcing him to fall back.
“Beatrice?” I hear Emma calling out from behind me. “What the hell is going on here?”
Dean and I simultaneously turn around to face my sister and the man walking beside her, Nate. She looks between us with a confused expression before flying over to stand beside Dean, checking him for injury before spinning around to face me again. But I’m not exactly thinking about her right now, I’m too busy trying to process everything, too busy trying not to pass out. I must look awful because Nate comes up in front of me to grab my arms and stop me from falling. Tears are streaming down my face, tears for eighteen-year-old Bea, tears for my lost baby, tears for me. Tears because of all the shit I’ve been trying to forget, to put behind me, and it’s still here, still trying to destroy me.
“Bea? Hey, Bea, it’s me,” Nate says in a soothing tone of voice, placing his hands on my wet cheeks to try and make me look at him and only him. If only I had met him that night, perhaps things would have been different, and I would never have lost myself. “Tell me, baby, what did he do?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Dean shouts from behind me.
“Bea, if you’re just here to cause trouble,” Emma begins, “then I think it best you go.”
“He knew,” I whimper to Nate, and he frowns, as if only half understanding what I’m saying.
“Knew what, Bea?” he asks, still keeping his voice low and calm.
“He knew I was pregnant,” I gasp, “he knew I was carrying his baby…and he slept with her to get out of it, to make sure I wouldn’t want him to step up.”
Nate pulls me in against his chest while he looks over my shoulder at Dean, his muscles clenching with anger.
“Baby?” I hear Emma gasp. “What baby, Dean?”
“My baby, the one she was pregnant with when I slept with you,” Dean replies without any remorse in his voice. “I was asking your sister, here, what happened to it.”
“You better back the fuck off –” Nate growls in his direction but I cut him off before he can finish his threat.
“I lost it when I took a lethal concoction of vodka and painkillers,” I tell him bluntly when I finally manage to turn around to face them both. “The night I left and never came back was the same night I tried to end my life. My heart stopped three times between a dirty motel and the ER. Two days after they managed to bring me back to life, I was told I’d miscarried. Does that answer your question, Dean?”
“Oh, my God!”
I turn around to the sound of my mother’s voice, only to find not just her, but Ben and my father too.
Chapter 30
Nate
The next few minutes appear to happen in slow motion, as though we’re wading through glue, just trying to stop a tragedy from playing out before our very eyes. We didn’t though. As the blood drains from Bea’s face, the horror of having her parents hear everything that happened to her, and the fact that she kept it from them for years, pushes her back into survival mode. Some people fight, some people freeze, but some people, like my girl, flee. I could have foreseen this reaction for it’s what she’s been doing ever since she attended my party. What I didn’t foresee was a car driving through from the parking lot, building up speed as it made its way to the exit of the hotel. Neither did Bea. She stepped back into the road with a desperation to escape; only, she escaped into a place I cannot reach her.