Billionaire Bachelors 9 : Hidden Treasure(39)

Brielle was rambling, but Colt didn't try to stop her. He knew this wasn't easy. He began kneading the tense muscles in her shoulders.

"I told her who I was and her smile faded - it was almost in slow motion. She looked around behind me as if worried someone was watching, and then ushered me into the house. I was so happy that she invited me in. I didn't even think about the fact that her smile had disappeared.

"We walked into the living room, and I'll never forget that moment, because there was a gas fireplace against the wall, and a few framed photos sat above it. They weren't of my brothers and me, but of her with another man and two little girls, girls with the same color hair as me … "

This time when she tried to push down the sob ripping through her, it didn't work. A deep grimace of pain contorted her beautiful face as she fought against the truth of the memory.

"You can stop, Brielle. You don't have to go down this road … "

"No. I need to finish …  I asked her who they were. She told me they were her children. I'll never forget the ache in my chest at her words. I turned and asked her about me, about my brothers. She said … " She stopped again.

This time, Colt didn't interrupt.


      ///

 

 

"She said that we were strangers to her, that she had never wanted us, and had only produced us to please my father. She was so cold as she spoke to me, looking right through me. I begged her to stop, to quit saying what she was saying, but she just looked right through me, and in a cold voice she told me that I was in the real world, and I'd better grow up, that she'd married for money, but money eventually hadn't been worth the misery she'd been forced to endure, that she had never loved my father, and therefore she couldn't possibly love any children he'd helped to create. She told me never to come back or seek her out again. That her new family knew nothing about us and she wanted to keep it that way. Then she ushered me out the front door and didn't even give me a chance to turn around and look at her one last time before I heard the door shut behind me. I walked away in a fog. I didn't want my friend or her parents to see me like that, so I sat on the beach for hours. So many tears...

"When the last tear fell, I stood up, walked out to the ocean water and scrubbed my face with it, burning my eyes and nose. I didn't care. I looked out at the sunset and vowed then and there that I would never shed another tear, that no one would ever have that much control over my emotions. I changed that summer. When I went back home, I saw my dad in a different light, and my brothers. I think I blamed them all for her leaving. I didn't want to blame myself, but I did that, too. Though she said it was our father she hated, I was thirteen. At that age the world revolves around you, so I came to the conclusion that it was me who'd made her run away. I never told my brothers or my dad about the visit. It was my own private hell to deal with."

Brielle fell silent again. Just as she had that summer day, she forced the tears back and retreated inside her head.

"Don't do that, Brielle. Don't let a woman like that have so much power over you. She's the one who was wrong. She's the one who missed out on your life and the lives of your brothers. You did nothing wrong. How could a three-year-old do anything wrong? Anyway, no child could ever chase a parent away. It was her choice, so don't continue to let her shape your life." Colt turned her head so she was forced to look into his eyes.

"Why do you even care?"

"I don't know; I just do."

"Then stop. I don't want anyone to care about me!"

"Yes, you do. We all need someone to care about us. It's long past time that you realized that."

"Well, I don't need you," she said, and she began wrestling with him, trying to get away.

"I think you're lying, Brielle. I think you need me just about as much as I need you." Colt was surprised by how much he meant those words. He barely knew her, but he did need her, needed her so much, it was frightening. 

There hadn't been any major trauma from his past making him afraid to love, but he knew that when he did marry, it would be for life, and he didn't want to make a bad choice. He'd seen too many people do that, and then have children, and then live in misery, or get a divorce and fight for the next twenty years.

It was why he didn't stay with women for long. When he did settle down, he wanted a marriage like his parents had shared, a marriage where he wanted to fall into his wife's arms each and every night. He hadn't found a woman yet who inspired him to drop to one knee, who he could picture lying next to for the rest of his life.

But with Brielle …  It was odd, but the more he was with her, even when he was angry, even when she put on her full suit of armor, it was just … different. He wanted to know more about her, wanted to be with her. The urge to run - which he'd felt so acutely a couple of weeks before -was nowhere to be found now.