Chapter 185 The New Beginning
“Bella… you…”
William’s voice trailed off, the realization of their wasted years crashing down on him, looking at Arabella as if seeing her through a cleared fog
The silence in the room wasn’t only suffocating, but also the weight of a decade of unspoken truths blended in between., his eyes wide, his chest heaving.
“I am sorry… I am so sorry, William.” she sobbed, clutching his hand, kissing it with her uttermost devotion. She forced herself to look at him, her lips curling into a grievous, tear-stained smile.
“I should have confessed. If I had shared my feelings.. You- you… things might have been different.”
“Oh, Arabella…”
“I love you, William,” she whispered.
Her gaze locking onto his with a desperate, endless, inexplicable yearning. Her hands extended and wrapped around his waist, hugging him as he stood still.
“I have loved you all my life. My first, last, and only love. Each time I said I love you, I meant it with my heart.”
William’s breaths hitched, his violently shaky hands holding her tentative, “That was why… you were… you…”
“I wanted her to suffer for making me an option.” Luke admitted quietly, looking in the other direction with a constriction.
“That was why I didn’t tell you either. I wanted you– the one she became so selfish for– To neglect her. If I had known… I would have…”
He lifted her hands, pressing a fervent kiss to her knuckles, closing his eyes to let the knuckles rest at his forehead as a sign of his ceaseless endearment.
“No more. No more.”
Luke watched them, his gaze drifting one last time over the shrine-like room. He let out a long, weary sigh, “You… obsessive freaks.”
And back to them, “And that Helena. I want to smack her for causing this… this… chaos.”
“She didn’t realize, from her perspective, she was just trying to help.” Arabella sniffed, wiping her and William’s tears, resting her head on his chest to gather her scattered form in his shadows.
“Maybe, she should just stop trying to help people.” William hummed in agreement.
Luke moved toward the door, then paused, a sudden, bright memory cutting through the gloom.
“Hey,” William called out, his voice returning to its steady, brotherly tone. “Why did you come here in the first place? What’s with the cake?”
Luke turned back, and for the first time in an hour, a genuine, glowing smile spread across his face. “I almost forgot amidst the madness.”
He straightened his coat, his chest swelling with pride though his tone was dead now, “I’m becoming a father. Peach is pregnant.”
The shock on William and Arabella’s faces was instantaneous, followed by a wave of genuine warmth.
“I’m going to be a father,” Luke repeated.
“So you two better keep your ‘bad influences’ away from my kid. I expect you to be the coolest Uncle and Auntie.”
“Congratulations, Luke,” William smiled, a flash of the old, protective love in his eyes.
“I would have stayed to celebrate,” Luke said, waving a hand toward the cake on the counter.
“But you guys obviously need a moment alone to... I don’t know, dismantle this museum of obsession. I’m going home.”
As Luke walked out of the apartment, leaving the couple to find their new beginning and clear the years of complaints and gain their redemption.
The front door clicked shut. For a moment, William stood perfectly still in the center of the room—the room that was both his sanctuary and his confession.
“You… you…”
Then, as if the invisible strings holding him together had finally snapped, his knees buckled.
“You loved me for nine years…”
“William?” Arabella’s head turned to him, baffled when his strength drained unstoppably through the cracks and he fell on the ground, on his knee with wide, teary eyes.
“I.. called you a liar. Lied to you, hurt you, manipulated you. I asked you to prove your love… I doubted you, called you love-deprived. I did everything that could have killed your love…”
William collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud. His body slumped, the pride he created in his room began to fade away. The way she gave him chances after chances made sense to him now.
“But- but you stayed.”
He made an almost crying face, voice ruptured from guilt and grief His head lowered in defeat, a sign of total submission towards the ruler of his heart and soul.
“How… How could I ever repay you for your endless support? How could I ever compensate for those years, Bella?”
“You can,” Arabella let out a beautiful smile, inclining on the bed, her hand extending to him and without a second thought, he was between her knees.
“By being mine. All mine.”
“I am yours. I am all yours.” His face desperately buried in her laps, his breaths out of control as his fingers clutching her with a desperate devotion.
He broke, he shattered, every ounce in him shattered.
A deafening, sob ripped from his throat, a sound so raw it seemed to vibrate the very frames on the walls, the resonance of a decade of suppressed agony finally shattering.
"It hurt so much, Bella," he choked out between gasping breaths, his voice muffled by her lap.
"Every night... every single night since I came to London, I lived in a cage I built for myself. I just wanted you to be mine. I prayed for your love every single heartbeat."
Arabella stroked his hair, her own tears falling silently onto his shoulders. He lifted his head just enough to look at her, his eyes blurry and swimming with endless pools of misery.
He reached up, his hand trembling as he touched her face, his skin burning against hers.
"To hear you say you loved me then... to know we could have had all those years..." He broke down again, his forehead dropping back onto her knees.
"The waste, Bella. The sheer, god-awful waste of our lives because we listened to everyone but each other. If we… if we.. had…"
Arabella leaned down, wrapping her arms around his shaking frame, pulling William into her chest.
“I am sorry, I am so sorry for every pain, for every negligence, Bella. I swear, this won’t continue. I swear to become a worthy lover.”
“I am looking forward to it, William, this is all I had imagined for nine years after all." she whispered into the crown of his head, placing a soft, gentle kiss.
"The clock started the moment you walked through that door and I want to spend the rest of my life making all of our imaginations true."
They stayed there for a long time, the only sound in the room being the slow, rhythmic subsiding of his sobs, as the man who had spent ten years haunting a shrine finally began to live in a home.