Page 93 of The Duke of Distraction
Chapter 15
It’s your birthday.
The words had always been spoken with disdain and sadness, never in joy.The day of Felix’s birth had always been a cause for despair and sorrow.And blame.
There wasn’t a day that went by in which Felix hadn’t been acutely aware of the role he’d played in his mother’s death and in his father’s subsequent agony.
“This should be a joyous day.Your mother would have been so happy.But now look at her.”
He could feel his father’s hand on the back of his neck, forcing him to look at the cold letters and numbers etched into the stone that separated them from the woman his father had loved.The woman Felix had hated.
Felix looked down at the tomb that bore her name and the date of her death.Today.His birthday.
But he didn’t hate her anymore.He hadn’t even known her.She had been, by all accounts, a warm and lovely person, the kind of woman who’d loved children and adored animals.The kind of woman who lit the room with her presence and cheered everyone around her.
It was, he suddenly realized, the kind of man he’d become.But not because she’d made him that way.
Felix raised his eyes to his father’s tomb.“You did that.”
The stone stared back at him, frustratingly silent.
“Do you see that in spite of you, I am the man she would have wanted me to be?”
Still nothing.
Emotion unfurled inside him, and he dropped down, squatting so that he could look at his father at eye level.“Almost the man she would have wanted.I don’t think she would have wanted me to feel unloved.I don’t think she would have wanted you to drink yourself to an early grave and wholly abdicate the duties of fatherhood.”
The rock was nearly as stoic as his father when Felix had used to cry.Until the day his father had beat him until he stopped.Then he’d never cried again.Nor had his father raised a hand to him again.
“You didn’t have to hit me after that, did you?”he asked softly.“Everything changed when you whipped the emotion right out of me.I knew I wasn’t to show it, and so I never did.”Even now, as rage poured through him, he couldn’t yell or shout or even cry.
“Thank you for that.At least partly,” he added.“I am glad to feel nothing for you, but you’ve left me incapable of feeling anything for anyone.You see, there’s a woman who loves me.Lovesme.”His voice broke, and the wave of emotion completely stole his breath.
Felix leaned forward and braced his hand on the stone, careful to touch the tomb beside his father that belonged to a great-uncle.Closing his eyes, Felix fought to inhale.
At length, he raised his head and sat back, balancing on his feet once more.“I want to love her, but I don’t know how.”
“I think you already do.”
Her voice was a balm to the blistering agony in his soul.He stood and turned, the blood rushing to his legs and making them wobbly.Or maybe it was just seeing her.Though he’d only left her yesterday, it had felt like an eternity.
“How—” He cleared his throat.“How can you know?”
“That you love me?”She came toward him.Garbed in soft, dove gray, she appeared fragile except for her hat.It sported a wide brim and was topped with a jaunty purple feather, and in it, she was quintessentially Sarah, full of charm and energy, of beauty and light.
He couldn’t speak for the lump lodged in his throat, so he nodded.
She took his hand between hers, a gentle smile curving her lips.“Because when we’re together, everything is better.That’s what love is.Whether romantic or familial or friendship.”
She was trying to tell him there were different kinds of love, that he’d experienced them all his life.At least that was what he thought she was saying.
“What kind of love do you feel?”His body went rigid.If she said she loved him as a brother or a friend, he thought he might crumple.
Her eyes crinkled at the edges as she smiled.“Do you even have to ask?I love you as, hopefully, my husband.As my lover.As my friend.As the first person I want to see when I wake up every morning and the last one I want to see when I close my eyes to go to sleep.”Her thumb stroked the back of his hand as wave after wave of emotion crashed over him.“Tell me what you feel.”
Words jammed in his throat.“I—I can’t describe it.No, I can.I’m terrified.Of loving you.Of losing you.”His voice cracked again, and this time, he looked away.He thought of his mother lying behind the stone, the woman he never knew.“I left your body the other night because I’m afraid.If what happened to my mother happens to—”
Sarah’s arms came around him, and she held him tight.“It won’t.”
