Chapter 141 Offering A Shore
TO ARABELLA AND WILLIAM,
The dawn brought silence, exhaustion. The lamp on the nightstand cast long, amber shadows across the room.
William was sitting on the floor, his head bowed, staring into nothingness, the tension in his shoulders so thick it looked painful.
Arabella entered the room quietly. She didn't speak yet, she simply sat on the floor beside him, resting her head on his shoulder for support.
"You spent your life being their shield," she whispered, her voice a warm hum.
She leaned forward, her face burying in the crook of his neck. She could hear his heart thundering against his ribs, a frantic, uneven rhythm. The grief emitting from him brought a compassionate look.
Arabella stared, and stared.
Her life, her desperation, her love, her feelings- the ones William never knew- flashed.
A tear pricked, nails dug deeper, for the sake of her own incomplete love, she had a single offering for the devastated man.
"Let me be yours now."
She began to press soft, lingering kisses into the space. It wasn't an act of passion, but a consecration. Eyes shutting desperately.
“Please… let me be yours now. Please.” She begged.
It was for the solace of her own heart.
William’s hands gripped his knees so hard his knuckles turned white, but he didn't pull away but the plea surely shook his core.
He let out a shuddering exhale, his body beginning to uncoil into her touch. His lips parted, deafening gasps to subdue the suffocation.
The gentleness was too good to be true. The melodic resonance must be a twisted imagination according to him. He couldn’t embrace this proximity.
He whimpered, handing his head low, “So you could leave me in the end too?”
“You don’t believe in second chances?” Arabella asked softly.
“Why would I?”
He turned his head slightly, his eyes dark with a sudden, sharp insecurity, searing through the pain and anguish.
“You left Luke for me. Who knows one day you will realize this marriage is nothing but a cage and leave me too?”
She counter-questioned, “What if I don’t want to?”
“You will,” he insisted, his voice rising with a desperate kind of certainty that brought out the dread he was endeavoring to bury.
“… I almost made you. I will do it again, I will torment you until this will become a weight too much for your delicate hands to hold.”
She quivered, refusing to let him go. The pain of ‘why can’t you see my love, my pain?’ blurred her sight with disheartening tears.
“But…” His lips trembled, and for a second, the terrifying obsession flickered in his gaze, emerging in the form of a shining tear.
“But, I swear on my life, Bella… I really, really cared about you.” He confessed wholeheartedly.
Facing her to hold her elbows. His grip was gentle, his fingers were icy. Displaying pure veneration, his body submitted before her.
His voice broke, “I never wanted to hurt you. Among the endless fantasies I created about you, giving you pain was none of them.”
Arabella pulled back just enough to look at him with pure confusion, “Then… what did you intend to do after… capturing me?”
William’s expression softened into something profoundly haunting, confessing his most wicked desire without hesitation.
“I will just keep you in my room, heart, life, as a… collection.”
An unfathomable smile adorned his lips, “I won’t let the world see you so they can’t take you away. Won’t ever let you go. Won’t ever lose you like everything else in my pathetic life,”
He reached out, his thumb grazing her jaw with a terrifying tenderness, drowning entirely in her world to consider it his.
“You… are the only left that I consider my own. You are… all of me, Arabella,”
“If- if I also rip you out, there will be nothing left of me,” He whimpered, tears refilling his eyes but he quickly wiped them off, declining further anguish.
Shutting his eyes, his hand pulled back, hitting the ground with sheer helplessness, “I don’t want you to leave me and I am afraid you will,”
“Trust me,” Her broken resonance came, taking his shaking hand and pressing it to her heart, “Once. Just once, William. I won’t go.”
When she begged, William abruptly found himself at a defeat point. Staring unknowingly, for a heartbeat, he witnessed her endearment.
“P-Promise?”
The word was small, the plea of a man who had no expectation anymore, from life or his own self.
She smiled, kissing his knuckles, “I swear on my life. Let me become your heartbeat this time. I promise you won’t regret it.”
The tension in his body didn't vanish, but it shifted.
He was finally giving up into her embrace, leaning his head against her chest as sunlight penetrated and fell on their faces.
He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her…. Once again.
William stayed there for a long moment, his eyes closed, his forehead resting against her collarbone. He was finally submitting- not to his guilt or his shadows, but to her.
Arabella looked down at the dark crown of his head, her gaze hardening with a fierce, quiet determination.
‘This time, I won’t lose him, I won’t back away. I won’t make the mistakes I did last time.’
Her fingers caressed him, ‘He will become mine, in, every, way,’
She smoothed his hair, her fingers lingering on his temple.
"Breakfast?" she suggested, her voice light, trying to pull him back from the edge of the abyss, "Shall we cook together?"
He chuckled breathlessly, “When was the last time we cooked together?”
"When I was twenty," she answered immediately, her eyes sparkling with the memory.
"You taught me how to bake cookies when I visited that orphanage. You joined me. We spent the whole afternoon in that cramped kitchen, and we distributed fifty boxes of cookies to those kids. Together."
William watched her, his gaze intense, "I remember it vividly. I was just testing to see if you did."
"I forget nothing about you, William. Not. A. Single. Thing." She poked his chest playfully, though her eyes remained serious.
"And I haven't forgotten that you stole that fifty-dollar maroon hair bow I bought. I loved that bow."
"It looked incredibly adorable on you. I couldn't help myself.
A low, rare chuckle vibrated in William’s chest, a melodic voice that signaled the miracle he attained after the jagged sobs of the night.
“I needed a remnant of our time together... a trophy. Besides, maroon is my favorite color."
‘That is exactly why I wore it,’ Arabella thought, a secret triumph warming her chest.
"Whatever," she said, standing up and reaching out a hand to pull him from the floor.
He took her hand which was no less than a shore given to a sunken ship, no less than a divine blessing on an unfortunate one.
“Get up. I will cut fruits for you. You better start working on my pancake, Mr. Grayson.”
He gave her an elegant bow, a flash of the charming, polished man he presented to the world- but this time, it was just for her, and it was real.
“As you wish, Mrs. Grayson.”