FALLEN: A New Adult Romance (First of the FALLEN Trilogy)

My Son, Who Is He?

"I need to change, but we can talk about it after... I don't really feel like going back in there." I tell her candidly, pointing to the conference hall with a move of my head.

"I understand... That's why we never wanted Marcel to mix business with pleasure."

"And yet it's the same with you and Paul." I let out categorically. She understands my point immediately, and it takes her aback a little.

"I never thought of it that way before... Let me see what I can do, but I want to discuss more with you." She says to me as her eyes scrutinise my expression. She is about to leave when she turns back to face me. "I'll join you in your room."

-

I've just hung up with my brother when there is a knock at the door. I'm happy William has invited Cynthia to join him here in Edinburgh with all the drama happening. I've been so busy, I'm happy I don't have to feel bad about not spending as much time with him as we originally wanted.

"I didn't remember if you preferred red or white wine, so I brought both." She tells me as I open the door. Her ease surprises me immediately, but I embrace that.

She puts the two glasses she held between her long artistic fingers on the desk, next to the rose Marcel had brought me last night. She then takes the two bottles she held under her arm and slides them next to the glasses.

"White, please."

I look at her in silence while she opens the bottles and serves a glass of each. Before turning back and offering me a drink, she takes the rose in her hand. She gracefully turns the flower between her fingers, and a petal drops next to the wine. She puts down the thornless red rose and takes both glasses to offer me mine.

As I head to sit on the bed, I see the Womanizer still on the bedside table for Edith to see. I rush there, take it and put it in my purse quickly before she takes a seat on the chair in the corner of the room. As if to show that nothing happened, I slide on the bed and sit right in the middle of it to make myself comfortable.

For the first minute or so, we sip our wine without saying anything to each other. The air grows awkward, but I shut down this feeling. I love sharing moments of silence with Mace. In this silence, it's like I can hear his mind work. He always thinks about something, and the roads, twists and turns his mind go through in a short amount of time amazes me. I love looking at him think. But it's not him now, I'm with his mum... And I need to know the truth.

"For all my adult years," I begin to say, breaking the ice but still not looking at anything else than the wine gently moving in my glass, "I've been in an abusing relationship with a man that I thought loved me."

I take deep breaths to calm myself. She has already seen me cry today. I don't want her to see how hurt and lost I am, but I understand the depth of the situation that is going on between her son and me.

She doesn't say a word. She listens to me with great attention, like her son always does, taking in the information before making his own idea of it. At least, that's what it seems like. I prefer to comfort myself with that thought because I'm not proud of what I'm revealing to her now. My own parents don't even know that Steeve had been violent with me or that he had raped me on multiple occasions. So many things happened that I thought was part of a relationship that I thought was love, and honestly, it just wasn't sane at all. And I never want them to know, I'm their baby girl.

It's with deep emotion but a very delicate and slow voice that I open my mind and heart to her. I need her to understand me. I need her to see me.

"For more than four years, I forgave everything in the name of love. Writing my book got me to escape and live an idealistic romance in a time that wasn't now and what romance has become today. This story got me through the toughest of times that I just want to forget. Never a man had treated me like your son does. I feel valued and complete. I feel understood and never judged. In a world I thought I didn't belong, he saw me. Without even knowing him, I had created a fantasy that resembles unrealistically the soul he is. We have both been outcasts in our past, and we are trying to find ourselves outside of the typical standards of this world."