Chapter 406: Another way
There was no response or movement, but he knew she was there. When he began to attempt to rise and go to her, he felt her shift, and soon she came around the wooden divider. He sank back into the tub, water spilling over the sides as he watched her.
She stood there, leaning one hand against the wooden divider, her bottom lip caught between her teeth in a way that made her look years younger than she was, innocent, with those large, glossy hazel eyes. Rohan’s heart rate quickened at the sight of her coming to him first, after weeks of making no attempt to truly acknowledge him, after weeks of shutting him out of her world.
He didn’t dare to move, afraid that if he did, she might vanish, that maybe he was only imagining her standing there.
She stared at him for a moment longer, her gaze drifting from his eyes down to his wet chest, where water dripped from his hair that had grown almost to shoulder length since he hadn’t found the time to cut or trim it. The droplets slid slowly down his shoulders and over his chest. A look of admiration, almost hungry, settled on her face, making Rohan’s heart dance with joy. She hadn’t looked at him like that in what felt like forever.
Rohan’s eyes were tired from lack of proper rest, his head beginning to swirl from the many bottles he had consumed last night, but his cock stirred at the look in her eyes.
"Come closer," he whispered, and she moved away from the wood to approach him.
He lifted his hand from the water, letting a stream of droplets fall onto the rugs beneath the bath. Taking her hand, he placed it against his cheek.
"I miss you, love. I miss you so damn much," he whispered, his voice thick with exhaustion. "Are you back to me now?" He looked up into her eyes, unable to hide his hopeful voice.
She nodded. "I am sorry..." she said quietly as she stroked his cheek with her thumb. "I don’t want to be absent anymore. I want to feel alive again, Rohan. I don’t know what came over me for the past weeks." Her other hand came to rest against his heated chest.
Rohan’s body went tight at her touch, and his cock was in danger of poking its way out of the water from how sensitive he was to her presence, and how sensitive the wine he had consumed had made him.
She traced the sharp line of his cheekbone and then moved her finger down to his lips. He opened his mouth and gently bit her fingertip.
Belle startled, but she didn’t pull away. She watched in fascination as he closed his lips around her finger and sucked, feeling the warmth of his tongue as it wrapped around her skin, something new to her after weeks of being numb and unfeeling.
After he had left her in the room last night, she had tried countless times to snap out of it and be who she used to be before that night in the ballroom. She had failed and couldn’t even go after him to tell him she had tried.
Feeling his frustration and helplessness this morning had jolted her from her bed. She had tried many times until today to live in the present again, to hold on to the life that was hers, after she had seen what Deven had done to Isabelle, and after she had unintentionally killed Lady Althea. But the sadness in her heart had been too heavy to overcome, weighed down further by the anger at being unable to kill Jamie.
Whenever she closed her eyes, she got glimpses of Isabelle’s horror as men forced themselves on her and how many had gone against her.
The mark Rohan had left on her wasn’t stable, but this morning it hadn’t flickered. Instead, she had felt his anger and hurt, felt how her withdrawal was cutting into him. Belle didn’t even know when she got out of bed and traced him down to this room.
She moved behind him now, wrapping her arms around his neck and hugging him tightly. She held him close, not minding that her sleeves were getting soaked, the blue material of her gown darkening with water.
"I am sorry..." she said again.
"Don’t be. I am glad you are back." He leaned back into her and let her hold him for a long moment of silence, where her head now rested on his shoulder. "Can you tell me what happened to you, Isa?" he questioned quietly, reining in his arousal at her closeness when he was naked under the water.
"Many things happened in just a night that made me feel like I can’t live my life anymore. I know what happened to Isabelle, and I felt the pain she carried before her death..."
Instead of cutting her off to tell her that he also knew what happened, Rohan listened to her tell him everything all over again, only this time, from her own perspective. She spoke as if it had happened to her, without even realizing she was narrating it like it was her own story. He kept silent and didn’t remind her, but his hand balled inside the water the more he listened to her speak that way.
Hearing it as though it was her made him so much more mad he wanted to get out of the water and pace.
"I feel like I don’t belong in the world of the living...Rohan, I think my mind and heart are starting to blur the lines between our reality and who is who. I can’t tell my life apart from hers any more than I can tell that I wasn’t the one who got burned by Deven that night. Sometimes, I feel it, the pain, the burning flames, and the suffocating weight pressing down on my nose, like I can’t breathe.
"It’s so confusing at times that I get lost between what’s real and what isn’t, and I can feel myself slipping away. I’m losing myself, Rohan," Belle whispered, her voice trembling slightly. "But I don’t want that anymore." She drew in a shaky breath and added softly, "That’s why I thought of a way."
Rohan tensed at those last words and began to move away from her hold, but she held him tight. "Listen to me before you react, will you, my love?" Belle whispered into his ear, kissing his earlobe. He relaxed and settled back in her hold.
"What way?" Rohan murmured, his voice low.
"Whenever I go to the land of the dead, the Grim Watcher is always eager to take me to the elders. If a fragment of Isabelle’s soul is attached to mine, don’t you think that if I am taken to the elders, they might find a way to remove hers from mine and set me free, since I am still a living person?"
Rohan began to shake his head even before she finished speaking. "That is too risky. We don’t know for sure if a fragment of her soul is attached to yours, and we don’t know for sure if they will set you free after crossing there. Wipe that from your ideas of a way out," he said firmly, not even bothering to consider it as a possible solution for them.
There was no way to tell if, once she got there, she wouldn’t die along with the part of the soul attached to her, and if that happened, he wouldn’t be able to reach her or save her. As much as he was desperate to set her free, he wasn’t willing to risk her life to do it.
"Then what about Astral and—"
"I spoke to Kuhn. Astral didn’t take Isabelle’s soul, another reaper did." He told her what he had discussed with Kuhn, and she quickly said,
"Then we should forget about finding Astral. Let him remain in hiding forever. I can’t lose you," she muttered, pressing her lips against his damp skin, tightening her hold around his neck.