Post by rsafan on Mar 29, 2007 5:37:53 GMT -5
Chapter 65
Mimi wasn’t too happy when she opened Patrick’s front door to find Shawn standing there, she’d said just about all she’d had to say to him and if he wasn’t here to drop off the signed papers, she didn’t want to see him. “Why are you here?” she asked rather rudely.
“We never finished our conversation the last night. You never gave me a chance-”
But she cut him off, “I said all I had to say, I wasn’t looking for conversation Shawn. The time to have talked about our marriage has long since passed, if you’ve come here for anything other than the divorce papers, then you’re wasting my time.”
“Mimi just let me-”
“NO!” she shouted at him as she tried to close the door, he wouldn’t allow that and placed his foot firmly in its path. “I’m sick of this, I’m sick of all of this. Just leave me alone, please.”
He shook his head, “I can’t do that, I wish I could. I want to give you everything you want, but I can’t do that.”
“Why? Why do you do this to me? Why do you keep coming back?” She was so scared she knew the answer and so scared to get her hopes up again. It was far better if she simply closed the Shawn Brady chapter of her life.
“You know the answer to that. You’ve always known it. I’ve hurt you, and I’m…”
She put her hand up, stopping anything he’d been about to say, “Save it! I don’t want to hear any more of your Shawn Brady apologies. I don’t want any more of your lies, I don’t want to hear ‘I’m sorry’ when you only turn around and hurt me again. I don’t want any of that. I want out; I want us to be over.”
He shook his head, “No you don’t, you don’t because you still love me. I know you do.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“Look me in the eye,” he ordered her, “look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me that you don’t want to be with me.”
She looked up into his eyes and without blinking, said coldly, “I don’t love you; I don’t want to be with you; I can’t stand the sight of you. It’s over for us Shawn. There’s no going back, ever.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Stop coming around here, stop trying to make things right. Things will never be right between us.”
Shawn shook his head, “No, we can fix this, we can get past it.”
She cupped his face in her hands and looked up into his eyes, she spoke slowly, hoping the words would sink in. “Shawn, listen to me. Hear what I’m saying. We are over, there’s no fixing our relationship; we will never be together again. Nothing you say or do is going to change my mind. I need to get on with my life, let me do that. Please!”
He looked in her eyes; saw the pain there, the pain he’d caused. She wanted the pain to stop and he couldn’t blame her for it. Taking his jacket he left the house, he left her and he left his future happiness.
Back inside, she was slumped against the stairs. That had been harder than she’d thought, she felt someone gather her up and place her in their lap, she didn’t protest. She leaned her head against his shoulder, he murmured soothing words until one by one; the tears started falling. He didn’t try to get her to stop them, simply held her. When she was all cried out, she looked up at him, “What am I going to do now Patrick?”
“That’s funny, coming from you. The person who-”
“I know what I did Shawn, and I have to do my part to make it right. I’m telling you to go to her and not leave until she takes you back.”
Shawn looked at her for the first time since she’d walked into the apartment, “You didn’t see the look on her face Belle; you didn’t see the misery. Pain I caused her, I can’t go back it wouldn’t matter.”
But Belle persisted, “It would if you’d give her that look, the one that crosses your face every time she enters a room. It’s the same way your dad looks at your mom, the way my dad looks at my mom, the way Austin looks at Carrie and the way Brady looks at Chloe and I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s the way Luc looks at Victoria. It’s the way a man looks at the woman he loves, the woman he’ll love forever, like she’s Christmas and his birthday all wrapped into one, it’s the way you look at Mimi, the way you’ve never looked at me. Even when we were at our greatest, when our love was at its strongest, you never looked at me like that.”
Shawn sighed, “You’re right, I do love Mimi like I’ve never loved anyone else, but you forgot something.”
“And what’s that?”
“Love takes two. Mimi might be my whole world but I’m not hers.”
Belle felt ready to throw a tantrum, was there just no getting through to him? He was so stubborn it was frustrating, especially when all he had to do was go to his wife and tell her exactly what she wanted to here. “Of course you are, if you’d just…”
“No, she told me that it was over. I have to accept that, I have to accept that she doesn’t love me, that I killed our relationship.”
She sat down on the sofa next to him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, “Shawn, you did not.”
His gaze dropped to the floor, “Yes Belle, I did. I betrayed her, I betrayed our love. You know, she accused me of marrying her as a way to prove to myself that I was over you and she was right. She said…she said that she was second best, that the only reason I married her was because I couldn’t have you and she was right. It doesn’t matter that things changed, because for the rest of our married life she’d know that all she had ever meant to me was second best, that I hadn’t thought enough of her to say, ‘this is wrong Mimi, I still love Belle’. That I hadn’t loved her enough to say, ‘I can’t marry you because you deserve so much more, because you deserve to be someone’s first choice, someone’s only choice’, I couldn’t do that for her and because I couldn’t do that, I’ve lost her.”
Belle refused to believe that, she would fight for those two as adamantly as she’d fought for Shawn because it was what would make both her friends happy, it was what she needed to do to try and make things right again, so she might be able to look at herself in the mirror and not be disgusted at the person she saw staring back at her, the person she’d become over a man that no longer wanted her and who didn’t love her the way she wanted him to. “No you haven’t, all you have to do is go to her and tell her what you’ve just told me, make her understand.”
“I already did that, more times than I can count and you know what she said? She told me she didn’t love me, that she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She said she wanted me out of her life. I can’t keep going beck Belle, I can’t keep hurting her.”
“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe she wants you to fight for her, that she wants to know without a doubt that she’s the one you truly love, the one you want to be with? All you’ve done so far is tell her how you feel, and she’s thinking that any fighting you’re doing is for your son, show her Shawn. Show her how much she means to you.”
“I can’t Belle; I’m all out of ideas. And I cannot stand to see the look on her face if I show up again, I do not want to hurt her again, I’ve already hurt her enough for one lifetime.”
Victoria shook her head adamantly, she couldn’t be. She didn’t want to be because it would mean… “No, I’m not, I may have missed a cycle or two but there are plenty of reasons for that.”
“Yes, and pregnancy is one of them.” Mimi pointed out.
She was still shaking her head, “Look Mimi, I’m not pregnant okay, I’d know if I were.”
“Denying it just because you don’t want it to be so isn’t going to change the fact that you may be. You need to do a test, you need to make sure.”
“If I were, the doctors would have picked up on it when I was rushed to emergency last week.” She proclaimed, not wanting to dwell on the thought of being pregnant with Luc’s child, of the happiness it might bring her and the curse it would be born under having Dimera blood.
“They were treating you for injuries sustained in an attack in the Emergency ward Victoria. Last time I checked, they didn’t hand out pregnancy tests in Emergency.”
“Still, they would’ve picked up on something while they were running all those tests.”
Mimi shook her head, “Not if they assumed you knew you were pregnant. You really need to take a test Victoria, you need to make sure.”
“Do you really think it could be possible?”
“The question is, do you? If you want me to go out and buy a test…” Victoria nodded and Mimi squeezed her hand, “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Victoria sat up in bed when Mimi left, thinking about all the possibilities. Last time she’d had a suspicion but then again, last time she’d been happy. The last few weeks for her had been a mixture of pain, numbness and total exhaustion. She hadn’t paid attention too much to anything around her, she hadn’t thought about the baby that might have been or about Max and what had happened to them for so long. Thinking about a new baby brought everything back, she didn’t want to be pregnant, not under these circumstances and not so soon after…but if she was, if there was this life growing inside her, what was she going to do? How was she going to cope with knowing that it wasn’t made in love, not wholly? The only other time she’d even thought of that other baby was when she’d been in the park with Shawn and Zach, she’d seen a mother walking with her six month old and she was overcome with such an intense sadness, that she’d asked Shawn if they could go home. He’d assumed it was because of Luc and hadn’t argued or even enquired if she was okay but the truth was she’d realised that that woman could have been her. She could’ve been walking with her son or daughter in the park, she could’ve been thinking about what she’d make for dinner and what time Max would be home. Her life wouldn’t be the mess it was today, it would be far happier and she would never really know what love was either. Not the kind she had with Luc, the kind that continued to grow despite their distance, despite his lies, despite the betrayal. And now, sitting in her parents home, in a place that was filled with such love, she wondered not for the first time, if perhaps she’d made a mistake in walking out. Maybe Luc had loved her like he’d claimed, maybe they could’ve been happy, maybe she needed to trust him because when it came down to it, that was the crux of the problem between them, she hadn’t trusted the right people in her life, she’d always made bad choices and she’d chosen to spend most of her life with her nose buried in a book to disguise the fact that she was scared of not belonging to anyone really. She’d never fit in with her family, not quite. She had never been inclined to act the perfect little girl despite her parents’ attempts to mould her as such. If she’d known then what she knew now, maybe she wouldn’t have tried so hard and maybe she’d have been able to accept the Bradys into her life sooner because with them, she finally fit in, she had a place and it was one she had made herself, by being herself not what was expected. She knew her adopted parents had tried their best, but it was the Brady and Horton families who had really showed her who she was. If she was pregnant, she knew that they would help her through this, because that’s what family did.
“Negative” she said twenty minutes later as she read the stick; it was the third test to come out negative.
“You sound disappointed.” Mimi observed.
She shrugged, “Maybe I am a little. I just thought…but life doesn’t work that way.”
“You still want to be with him.” It was a comment, not an accusation and for the first time, Victoria realised they were in the same boat.
“Don’t you?” she asked Mimi.
Mimi sighed, “I miss him, I miss what we used to be before all this started. He was my best friend, I could tell him anything and he’d never judge me, it’s not like that any longer. It’s a lot harder to lose your best friend than it is to lose a relationship. I never thought it would end like this.”
“Who says it has to end?”
“I want to be that five year old girl again; I want to be the five year old girl playing in the sandbox with her best friends. I want our problems to constitute what colour blocks we play with and who has what on their lunches. I don’t want to know that life is not a fairytale, that there’s no happy ending. Especially for girls like me. Why can’t he understand how hard it was for me to accept that he has a daughter with a woman who was a very big part of his past? Why can’t he understand that all I needed was for him to love me, not to say it but to show it, to show it by making me number one for a change, by not always running to her, by understanding that it hurt me every time they were together? I was so desperate to hold on to him but in the end, it didn’t even matter, he abandoned me and our son.”
By now both Mimi and Victoria were crying, Victoria reached out and took Mimi’s hand in her own, “Mimi, he never abandoned you.”
“No, he just went back to his perfect life with his prefect family and his perfect Belle and forgot all about me until he felt I deserved his time and attention. I was just a distraction, a detour on the way to his destiny and when he was through, he didn’t care how hurt I was or that my life was in pieces, all he cared about was himself.”
Hope stood outside the door and leaned against the wall, pressing a fist to her mouth to stop from crying out. The tears and the pain were for herself as much as they were for Mimi, for knowing what she was going through, for knowing all too well. She’d been so intent on what her son wanted and deserved that she’d forgotten about the young girl he’d grown up with, she’d chosen to ignore her pain because she’d kept Claire from Shawn but Hope knew what it felt like to be so desperate, to feel like you were drowning and to hold onto the only thing that would keep you afloat, even if it was a lie. It was exactly the same thing she’d gone through with Bo and Chelsea and sometimes it still hurt knowing that they shared that special bond, a bond that would always connect them. Mimi had certainly handled the situation better than she had and Hope had no doubt that she’d had the same doubts and fears. Maybe, instead of talking to Mimi, she should have been talking to Shawn all this time. Now it was too late for any talking.
Chapter 66
“…I cherished every second of every minute that we spent together. Cherished it, committed it to memory because I knew the minute your brother found out, the minute your family found out about us, the minute they got involved, that would be it. The end of us. I love you English and I hope that one day you’ll be able to understand why I did what I did.”
She opened her eyes just in time to see his form making its way downstairs, she hadn’t heard everything, but she’d heard enough. She sat up to call to him when she saw the rings by her bedside. He was walking away, letting her go; he was giving up on them because it was what she wanted. She wanted him out of her life and he was giving her the thing he thought would make her happy, only he was wrong. And so was she, she had been so wrong, wrong not to trust what they had shared long before the Bradys and the Dimeras had ever entered the picture. When they had just been Tory and Luc in an Italian restaurant sharing a bowl of pasta, a bottle of red wine and stories of their childhood. Before their families’ histories had caught up with them. She glanced at the rings, stared at them, she’d promised never to take them off and she’d broken that promise. Somehow she needed to make things right, she needed to show him she loved him, would always love him, she needed something that would prove it beyond a shadow of doubt to him. She got out of bed and tiptoed downstairs, wondering if her father was aware that Luc had just been here.
“Dad?” She whispered, approaching the sofa where Bo was camping out as promised. There was no sign of Luc anywhere and she figured he was already gone. Had gone as quietly as he’d come.
She glanced over the side, he appeared to be fast asleep, some protector. Just as she turned to go back upstairs, Bo’s muttered, “Yes?” causing her to yelp.
Placing her hand to her thundering heart. “Are you awake?” she asked.
“I am now.” he replied, “Was there something you wanted?”
She leaned over and smiled down at him, “I only wanted to thank you. This beats chasing the monsters out from under my bed any day. I love you.”
He smiled back at her, “I love you too honey. Now get some sleep.”
She nodded and went back upstairs but instead of returning to her room, she went and peeped in by her mother. Hope was sitting up in bed, reading. An unusual activity for the hour of the day. “Mom?”
Hope put the book down and smiled at her, “I heard you downstairs, I figured you’d make a stop here before heading back to bed.” She patted the bed, inviting her daughter to sit and when she did so she asked, “So, what’s up?”
Victoria was silent for a moment, knowing what she wanted to say but not knowing how to say it, “If you loved someone, really loved them, you should be with them shouldn’t you?”
“Is this about Luc?”
She nodded, “I love him mom; I love him like I’ve never loved anyone else. With such intensity and passion that it scares me sometimes and every day I wake up, the feeling just grows. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, I don’t care what he’s done or how he’s hurt me, what family he’s from or even if I’m only a pawn to him. I want to be with him everyday. Wake up with him every morning and go to bed with him every night, I want to have his children and I want us to raise them together, as a proper family. I want to have with him what you and dad have and I know we can.”
Hope thought about the man who’d come to the hospital to make sure her daughter was alright, the man who had ensured that she would get the best of everything, the one who didn’t go in and see for himself because he knew it would upset her. Hope thought about what had been bothering her since that night in the hospital, and she knew that whatever might have happened, Lucien Dimera was very much in love with her daughter, “Seems like you’ve already made up your mind.”
“I have, I just needed to tell you that. I needed you to know that given a choice between him and my family, I’d choose him and that scares me to death. It scares me so much because I’ve only just found you and I don’t want to lose you but…”
“Victoria, it’s okay. You don’t have to choose between us, you can choose the both of us. All I ever wanted was your happiness and if he makes you happy…”
Victoria threw herself into her mother’s arms and hugged her with she had in her. “He does, oh he does. Thanks mom.” she whispered in her ear, she could feel the wetness of her cheeks against her own.
“No problem, anything you need, any time.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course…”
“Because I have to do something…in fact; I may need your help. And I have to do it now. Tonight.”
Victoria grabbed on Luc’s arm, trying unsuccessfully to sink her nails into his skin, for once she wished she had talons to scrape down his forearm and force him to let her go. “Luc let me go.” She screamed but realised that while the scream reverberated in her head, she hadn’t made a sound. She hadn’t made a sound because she couldn’t breathe, she struggled against him but she was no match for his strength and just when she thought she might pass out, he released her.
“God Victoria, what are you thinking sneaking around like that? I could have killed you.” He hadn’t released her because of her struggles, nor had it been the hoarse pleadings that had emerged from her throat. The instant he’d smelled her, when he’d leaned closer, he’d known it was her. He’d released her within seconds, but realised it must have seemed like an eternity to her. She was coughing and he carried her to the living room and poured her a glass of water. “What the hell are you doing here and at this time?”
She sipped the water and studied him, his demeanour bespoke his mood. He was behaving like a caged tiger; she hoped it wasn’t because she was in the room with him, that he wanted to escape her presence. If that were the case, all her plans would be ruined. Finally, she placed the glass on the coffee table and said, “I came here to see you.”
“At four o’clock in the morning?” he demanded.
“Well,” she replied calmly, “You had no qualms about visiting me at three in the morning.”
“You were awake?”
“Not wholly.” she placed her hand in her jean pocket and withdrew a set of rings, her wedding rings, “I came to return this.” She held it out to him but he refused to take them.
“I left them with you for a reason.” was all he said.
She took his fisted hand, gently opened it and placed the rings in his palm, then she closed his hand and squeezed it, “And I’m returning them for a reason. Now get your coat, we have somewhere to be.”
He stared at her flabbergasted, was she serious, “At four in the morning?”
She picked his coat off the back of the sofa and draped it over her arm, “Yes, at four in the morning.” She said as she pulled him to the front door.
“What are we doing here?” he asked ten minutes later as they pulled up to a familiar looking building. He’d never been inside; never felt he’d be welcomed given the family he was spawned from.
She got out of the car and walked to the entrance, “Come on.” She motioned him as he reluctantly got out of the car. She held out her hand for his, “Trust me.” was all she said, all she needed to say and he took her hand and together they walked inside.
Mimi wasn’t too happy when she opened Patrick’s front door to find Shawn standing there, she’d said just about all she’d had to say to him and if he wasn’t here to drop off the signed papers, she didn’t want to see him. “Why are you here?” she asked rather rudely.
“We never finished our conversation the last night. You never gave me a chance-”
But she cut him off, “I said all I had to say, I wasn’t looking for conversation Shawn. The time to have talked about our marriage has long since passed, if you’ve come here for anything other than the divorce papers, then you’re wasting my time.”
“Mimi just let me-”
“NO!” she shouted at him as she tried to close the door, he wouldn’t allow that and placed his foot firmly in its path. “I’m sick of this, I’m sick of all of this. Just leave me alone, please.”
He shook his head, “I can’t do that, I wish I could. I want to give you everything you want, but I can’t do that.”
“Why? Why do you do this to me? Why do you keep coming back?” She was so scared she knew the answer and so scared to get her hopes up again. It was far better if she simply closed the Shawn Brady chapter of her life.
“You know the answer to that. You’ve always known it. I’ve hurt you, and I’m…”
She put her hand up, stopping anything he’d been about to say, “Save it! I don’t want to hear any more of your Shawn Brady apologies. I don’t want any more of your lies, I don’t want to hear ‘I’m sorry’ when you only turn around and hurt me again. I don’t want any of that. I want out; I want us to be over.”
He shook his head, “No you don’t, you don’t because you still love me. I know you do.”
“Well, you’re wrong.”
“Look me in the eye,” he ordered her, “look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me that you don’t want to be with me.”
She looked up into his eyes and without blinking, said coldly, “I don’t love you; I don’t want to be with you; I can’t stand the sight of you. It’s over for us Shawn. There’s no going back, ever.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Stop coming around here, stop trying to make things right. Things will never be right between us.”
Shawn shook his head, “No, we can fix this, we can get past it.”
She cupped his face in her hands and looked up into his eyes, she spoke slowly, hoping the words would sink in. “Shawn, listen to me. Hear what I’m saying. We are over, there’s no fixing our relationship; we will never be together again. Nothing you say or do is going to change my mind. I need to get on with my life, let me do that. Please!”
He looked in her eyes; saw the pain there, the pain he’d caused. She wanted the pain to stop and he couldn’t blame her for it. Taking his jacket he left the house, he left her and he left his future happiness.
Back inside, she was slumped against the stairs. That had been harder than she’d thought, she felt someone gather her up and place her in their lap, she didn’t protest. She leaned her head against his shoulder, he murmured soothing words until one by one; the tears started falling. He didn’t try to get her to stop them, simply held her. When she was all cried out, she looked up at him, “What am I going to do now Patrick?”
*****
“Stop sitting there feeling sorry for yourself and do something. She’s not going to walk back in here simply because you wish it.” Belle told him, she was as angry with him as she was with herself. That night, when Mimi had confronted them, had finally opened her eyes to the pain she’d caused, to both her best friend as well as the man she claimed to love. “That’s funny, coming from you. The person who-”
“I know what I did Shawn, and I have to do my part to make it right. I’m telling you to go to her and not leave until she takes you back.”
Shawn looked at her for the first time since she’d walked into the apartment, “You didn’t see the look on her face Belle; you didn’t see the misery. Pain I caused her, I can’t go back it wouldn’t matter.”
But Belle persisted, “It would if you’d give her that look, the one that crosses your face every time she enters a room. It’s the same way your dad looks at your mom, the way my dad looks at my mom, the way Austin looks at Carrie and the way Brady looks at Chloe and I know you don’t want to hear it, but it’s the way Luc looks at Victoria. It’s the way a man looks at the woman he loves, the woman he’ll love forever, like she’s Christmas and his birthday all wrapped into one, it’s the way you look at Mimi, the way you’ve never looked at me. Even when we were at our greatest, when our love was at its strongest, you never looked at me like that.”
Shawn sighed, “You’re right, I do love Mimi like I’ve never loved anyone else, but you forgot something.”
“And what’s that?”
“Love takes two. Mimi might be my whole world but I’m not hers.”
Belle felt ready to throw a tantrum, was there just no getting through to him? He was so stubborn it was frustrating, especially when all he had to do was go to his wife and tell her exactly what she wanted to here. “Of course you are, if you’d just…”
“No, she told me that it was over. I have to accept that, I have to accept that she doesn’t love me, that I killed our relationship.”
She sat down on the sofa next to him and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, “Shawn, you did not.”
His gaze dropped to the floor, “Yes Belle, I did. I betrayed her, I betrayed our love. You know, she accused me of marrying her as a way to prove to myself that I was over you and she was right. She said…she said that she was second best, that the only reason I married her was because I couldn’t have you and she was right. It doesn’t matter that things changed, because for the rest of our married life she’d know that all she had ever meant to me was second best, that I hadn’t thought enough of her to say, ‘this is wrong Mimi, I still love Belle’. That I hadn’t loved her enough to say, ‘I can’t marry you because you deserve so much more, because you deserve to be someone’s first choice, someone’s only choice’, I couldn’t do that for her and because I couldn’t do that, I’ve lost her.”
Belle refused to believe that, she would fight for those two as adamantly as she’d fought for Shawn because it was what would make both her friends happy, it was what she needed to do to try and make things right again, so she might be able to look at herself in the mirror and not be disgusted at the person she saw staring back at her, the person she’d become over a man that no longer wanted her and who didn’t love her the way she wanted him to. “No you haven’t, all you have to do is go to her and tell her what you’ve just told me, make her understand.”
“I already did that, more times than I can count and you know what she said? She told me she didn’t love me, that she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She said she wanted me out of her life. I can’t keep going beck Belle, I can’t keep hurting her.”
“Have you ever considered the fact that maybe she wants you to fight for her, that she wants to know without a doubt that she’s the one you truly love, the one you want to be with? All you’ve done so far is tell her how you feel, and she’s thinking that any fighting you’re doing is for your son, show her Shawn. Show her how much she means to you.”
“I can’t Belle; I’m all out of ideas. And I cannot stand to see the look on her face if I show up again, I do not want to hurt her again, I’ve already hurt her enough for one lifetime.”
*****
“Victoria, are you pregnant?”Victoria shook her head adamantly, she couldn’t be. She didn’t want to be because it would mean… “No, I’m not, I may have missed a cycle or two but there are plenty of reasons for that.”
“Yes, and pregnancy is one of them.” Mimi pointed out.
She was still shaking her head, “Look Mimi, I’m not pregnant okay, I’d know if I were.”
“Denying it just because you don’t want it to be so isn’t going to change the fact that you may be. You need to do a test, you need to make sure.”
“If I were, the doctors would have picked up on it when I was rushed to emergency last week.” She proclaimed, not wanting to dwell on the thought of being pregnant with Luc’s child, of the happiness it might bring her and the curse it would be born under having Dimera blood.
“They were treating you for injuries sustained in an attack in the Emergency ward Victoria. Last time I checked, they didn’t hand out pregnancy tests in Emergency.”
“Still, they would’ve picked up on something while they were running all those tests.”
Mimi shook her head, “Not if they assumed you knew you were pregnant. You really need to take a test Victoria, you need to make sure.”
“Do you really think it could be possible?”
“The question is, do you? If you want me to go out and buy a test…” Victoria nodded and Mimi squeezed her hand, “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
Victoria sat up in bed when Mimi left, thinking about all the possibilities. Last time she’d had a suspicion but then again, last time she’d been happy. The last few weeks for her had been a mixture of pain, numbness and total exhaustion. She hadn’t paid attention too much to anything around her, she hadn’t thought about the baby that might have been or about Max and what had happened to them for so long. Thinking about a new baby brought everything back, she didn’t want to be pregnant, not under these circumstances and not so soon after…but if she was, if there was this life growing inside her, what was she going to do? How was she going to cope with knowing that it wasn’t made in love, not wholly? The only other time she’d even thought of that other baby was when she’d been in the park with Shawn and Zach, she’d seen a mother walking with her six month old and she was overcome with such an intense sadness, that she’d asked Shawn if they could go home. He’d assumed it was because of Luc and hadn’t argued or even enquired if she was okay but the truth was she’d realised that that woman could have been her. She could’ve been walking with her son or daughter in the park, she could’ve been thinking about what she’d make for dinner and what time Max would be home. Her life wouldn’t be the mess it was today, it would be far happier and she would never really know what love was either. Not the kind she had with Luc, the kind that continued to grow despite their distance, despite his lies, despite the betrayal. And now, sitting in her parents home, in a place that was filled with such love, she wondered not for the first time, if perhaps she’d made a mistake in walking out. Maybe Luc had loved her like he’d claimed, maybe they could’ve been happy, maybe she needed to trust him because when it came down to it, that was the crux of the problem between them, she hadn’t trusted the right people in her life, she’d always made bad choices and she’d chosen to spend most of her life with her nose buried in a book to disguise the fact that she was scared of not belonging to anyone really. She’d never fit in with her family, not quite. She had never been inclined to act the perfect little girl despite her parents’ attempts to mould her as such. If she’d known then what she knew now, maybe she wouldn’t have tried so hard and maybe she’d have been able to accept the Bradys into her life sooner because with them, she finally fit in, she had a place and it was one she had made herself, by being herself not what was expected. She knew her adopted parents had tried their best, but it was the Brady and Horton families who had really showed her who she was. If she was pregnant, she knew that they would help her through this, because that’s what family did.
“Negative” she said twenty minutes later as she read the stick; it was the third test to come out negative.
“You sound disappointed.” Mimi observed.
She shrugged, “Maybe I am a little. I just thought…but life doesn’t work that way.”
“You still want to be with him.” It was a comment, not an accusation and for the first time, Victoria realised they were in the same boat.
“Don’t you?” she asked Mimi.
Mimi sighed, “I miss him, I miss what we used to be before all this started. He was my best friend, I could tell him anything and he’d never judge me, it’s not like that any longer. It’s a lot harder to lose your best friend than it is to lose a relationship. I never thought it would end like this.”
“Who says it has to end?”
“I want to be that five year old girl again; I want to be the five year old girl playing in the sandbox with her best friends. I want our problems to constitute what colour blocks we play with and who has what on their lunches. I don’t want to know that life is not a fairytale, that there’s no happy ending. Especially for girls like me. Why can’t he understand how hard it was for me to accept that he has a daughter with a woman who was a very big part of his past? Why can’t he understand that all I needed was for him to love me, not to say it but to show it, to show it by making me number one for a change, by not always running to her, by understanding that it hurt me every time they were together? I was so desperate to hold on to him but in the end, it didn’t even matter, he abandoned me and our son.”
By now both Mimi and Victoria were crying, Victoria reached out and took Mimi’s hand in her own, “Mimi, he never abandoned you.”
“No, he just went back to his perfect life with his prefect family and his perfect Belle and forgot all about me until he felt I deserved his time and attention. I was just a distraction, a detour on the way to his destiny and when he was through, he didn’t care how hurt I was or that my life was in pieces, all he cared about was himself.”
Hope stood outside the door and leaned against the wall, pressing a fist to her mouth to stop from crying out. The tears and the pain were for herself as much as they were for Mimi, for knowing what she was going through, for knowing all too well. She’d been so intent on what her son wanted and deserved that she’d forgotten about the young girl he’d grown up with, she’d chosen to ignore her pain because she’d kept Claire from Shawn but Hope knew what it felt like to be so desperate, to feel like you were drowning and to hold onto the only thing that would keep you afloat, even if it was a lie. It was exactly the same thing she’d gone through with Bo and Chelsea and sometimes it still hurt knowing that they shared that special bond, a bond that would always connect them. Mimi had certainly handled the situation better than she had and Hope had no doubt that she’d had the same doubts and fears. Maybe, instead of talking to Mimi, she should have been talking to Shawn all this time. Now it was too late for any talking.
Chapter 66
“…I cherished every second of every minute that we spent together. Cherished it, committed it to memory because I knew the minute your brother found out, the minute your family found out about us, the minute they got involved, that would be it. The end of us. I love you English and I hope that one day you’ll be able to understand why I did what I did.”
She opened her eyes just in time to see his form making its way downstairs, she hadn’t heard everything, but she’d heard enough. She sat up to call to him when she saw the rings by her bedside. He was walking away, letting her go; he was giving up on them because it was what she wanted. She wanted him out of her life and he was giving her the thing he thought would make her happy, only he was wrong. And so was she, she had been so wrong, wrong not to trust what they had shared long before the Bradys and the Dimeras had ever entered the picture. When they had just been Tory and Luc in an Italian restaurant sharing a bowl of pasta, a bottle of red wine and stories of their childhood. Before their families’ histories had caught up with them. She glanced at the rings, stared at them, she’d promised never to take them off and she’d broken that promise. Somehow she needed to make things right, she needed to show him she loved him, would always love him, she needed something that would prove it beyond a shadow of doubt to him. She got out of bed and tiptoed downstairs, wondering if her father was aware that Luc had just been here.
“Dad?” She whispered, approaching the sofa where Bo was camping out as promised. There was no sign of Luc anywhere and she figured he was already gone. Had gone as quietly as he’d come.
She glanced over the side, he appeared to be fast asleep, some protector. Just as she turned to go back upstairs, Bo’s muttered, “Yes?” causing her to yelp.
Placing her hand to her thundering heart. “Are you awake?” she asked.
“I am now.” he replied, “Was there something you wanted?”
She leaned over and smiled down at him, “I only wanted to thank you. This beats chasing the monsters out from under my bed any day. I love you.”
He smiled back at her, “I love you too honey. Now get some sleep.”
She nodded and went back upstairs but instead of returning to her room, she went and peeped in by her mother. Hope was sitting up in bed, reading. An unusual activity for the hour of the day. “Mom?”
Hope put the book down and smiled at her, “I heard you downstairs, I figured you’d make a stop here before heading back to bed.” She patted the bed, inviting her daughter to sit and when she did so she asked, “So, what’s up?”
Victoria was silent for a moment, knowing what she wanted to say but not knowing how to say it, “If you loved someone, really loved them, you should be with them shouldn’t you?”
“Is this about Luc?”
She nodded, “I love him mom; I love him like I’ve never loved anyone else. With such intensity and passion that it scares me sometimes and every day I wake up, the feeling just grows. I want to spend the rest of my life with him, I don’t care what he’s done or how he’s hurt me, what family he’s from or even if I’m only a pawn to him. I want to be with him everyday. Wake up with him every morning and go to bed with him every night, I want to have his children and I want us to raise them together, as a proper family. I want to have with him what you and dad have and I know we can.”
Hope thought about the man who’d come to the hospital to make sure her daughter was alright, the man who had ensured that she would get the best of everything, the one who didn’t go in and see for himself because he knew it would upset her. Hope thought about what had been bothering her since that night in the hospital, and she knew that whatever might have happened, Lucien Dimera was very much in love with her daughter, “Seems like you’ve already made up your mind.”
“I have, I just needed to tell you that. I needed you to know that given a choice between him and my family, I’d choose him and that scares me to death. It scares me so much because I’ve only just found you and I don’t want to lose you but…”
“Victoria, it’s okay. You don’t have to choose between us, you can choose the both of us. All I ever wanted was your happiness and if he makes you happy…”
Victoria threw herself into her mother’s arms and hugged her with she had in her. “He does, oh he does. Thanks mom.” she whispered in her ear, she could feel the wetness of her cheeks against her own.
“No problem, anything you need, any time.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“Of course…”
“Because I have to do something…in fact; I may need your help. And I have to do it now. Tonight.”
*****
Luc had just gotten back and was pouring himself a drink in the living room when he heard someone enter. All senses on alert, he listened as the person closed the door and walked quietly over to the stairs, it wasn’t a long distance, but he heard every step. Sliding out of the living room, he saw a solitary figure dressed in black from head to toe, he didn’t recognise the person’s form; the cape they were wearing concealed that. He crept up behind the intruder and wrapped his arm around their throat, effectively cutting off air supply. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you now.” he whispered in the person’s ear.Victoria grabbed on Luc’s arm, trying unsuccessfully to sink her nails into his skin, for once she wished she had talons to scrape down his forearm and force him to let her go. “Luc let me go.” She screamed but realised that while the scream reverberated in her head, she hadn’t made a sound. She hadn’t made a sound because she couldn’t breathe, she struggled against him but she was no match for his strength and just when she thought she might pass out, he released her.
“God Victoria, what are you thinking sneaking around like that? I could have killed you.” He hadn’t released her because of her struggles, nor had it been the hoarse pleadings that had emerged from her throat. The instant he’d smelled her, when he’d leaned closer, he’d known it was her. He’d released her within seconds, but realised it must have seemed like an eternity to her. She was coughing and he carried her to the living room and poured her a glass of water. “What the hell are you doing here and at this time?”
She sipped the water and studied him, his demeanour bespoke his mood. He was behaving like a caged tiger; she hoped it wasn’t because she was in the room with him, that he wanted to escape her presence. If that were the case, all her plans would be ruined. Finally, she placed the glass on the coffee table and said, “I came here to see you.”
“At four o’clock in the morning?” he demanded.
“Well,” she replied calmly, “You had no qualms about visiting me at three in the morning.”
“You were awake?”
“Not wholly.” she placed her hand in her jean pocket and withdrew a set of rings, her wedding rings, “I came to return this.” She held it out to him but he refused to take them.
“I left them with you for a reason.” was all he said.
She took his fisted hand, gently opened it and placed the rings in his palm, then she closed his hand and squeezed it, “And I’m returning them for a reason. Now get your coat, we have somewhere to be.”
He stared at her flabbergasted, was she serious, “At four in the morning?”
She picked his coat off the back of the sofa and draped it over her arm, “Yes, at four in the morning.” She said as she pulled him to the front door.
“What are we doing here?” he asked ten minutes later as they pulled up to a familiar looking building. He’d never been inside; never felt he’d be welcomed given the family he was spawned from.
She got out of the car and walked to the entrance, “Come on.” She motioned him as he reluctantly got out of the car. She held out her hand for his, “Trust me.” was all she said, all she needed to say and he took her hand and together they walked inside.
