The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 101

Chapter 91: Vulnerability

Bella POV

The terrace was quiet after Caleb went to bed, just the city humming below and the wine going warm in my glass. I told myself I was staying out here to think. Really, I was hiding.

We’re trying. I’d actually said those words out loud, and I couldn’t take them back.

The sliding door opened behind me. “You’re still out here.” Caleb stepped onto the terrace, barefoot now, his shirt untucked. He was carrying something – a battered leather notebook, worn at the corners like it had been opened and closed a thousand times.

“Couldn’t sleep,” I said.

“Neither can I.” He sat in the other chair instead of beside me, like he understood I still needed the distance. “Can I show you something? You don’t have to read it tonight. Or ever. But I want you to have it.”

He set the notebook on the table between us. I looked at it but didn’t touch it. “What is it?”

“Letters, I started writing them the week after I first met Tom. My therapist’s idea – Dr. Harmon said I needed somewhere to put everything I couldn’t say out loud.”

I blinked. “You’re in therapy?”

“Have been for a few years.” Something shifted in his expression: embarrassment, maybe, or the particular vulnerability of admitting you needed help. “I know that probably sounds like something I’m saying to impress you, I can give you Dr. Harmon’s number if you want to verify.”

“I believe you,” I said slowly, and I did. The Caleb who I had once stayed with, would have sooner cut off his hand than admit weakness to a stranger. “What kind of letters?”

“To you, mostly. Some to Tom, for things I was feeling and couldn’t say to his face without frightening him.” He cleared his throat. “Or frightening you.”

Something pressed hard against the inside of my chest as I picked up the notebook.

The leather was soft and warm, like it had been held often. I opened it to the first page,

Bella

You let me sit on that hotel room floor with our son today, and I don’t think you understand what that cost you, or what it gave me.

He asked me why I looked sad. A three years old and already reading rooms the way you do – that quiet intensity, taking inventory of a person before they’ve said a word. I told him I’d made mistakes. He told me to say sorry many times and bring flowers. I almost laughed but I almost couldn’t breathe.

I didn’t trust you. That is the center of everything, the sentence I keep returning to when Dr. Harmon asks me to locate where it all went wrong. Not Jade. Not Richard. Not the fabricated evidence I now know was constructed to destroy you. Me. I chose not to trust you because trusting you would have meant admitting I loved you, and I had spent years making certain that particular door stayed bolted.

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Chapter 91Venerability

+25 Points

You came to me on our wedding night, in your white dress, with the most terrifying and hopeful thing a person can offer another person a child, our child – and I turned it into a weapon against you.

I said, “Get rid of it.”

I have not slept a full night since the moment I understood what I’d done. don’t deserve to.

Tom called me Mr. Grey Eyes when you left. He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, like of course we matched, like of course we were connected. He has no idea yet what I took from him. What I took from you both.

I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to give it back.

My fingers tightened on the page but I kept reading.

Bella

You told me not to bring sunflowers.

I brought sunflowers.

I know. I know that’s exactly the kind of thing that makes you want to throw something at me – the arrogance, the assumption that I know better, the refusal to simply be told no. Dr. Harmon and I have discussed it at length. What I’m learning, slowly and badly, is that there’s a difference between the way I used to ignore your boundaries – which was contempt dressed as indifference – and the way I push against them now, which is something closer to desperation.

I’m not sure that distinction excuses anything. I include it only because I want you to understand that I see myself clearly now, in a way I never permitted myself to before.

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